Seeing Li Wei slap the three men across the face without a word, the supermarket manager hurried forward to stop him. "Enough, stop it. Let's hear what they have to say!"
The three men who had been slapped for no reason felt utterly wronged, especially Wayne. He was from this town too—a local—yet he had been slapped by an outsider. Ridiculous!
So this is what it feels like to be betrayed by your companions? I was the one who tricked those two into coming in. We're on the same side!
David and the others deliberately avoided Wayne's grief-stricken, furious gaze, not daring to meet his eyes.
"Ahem, enough. Hurry up and explain what the U.S. military base in the mountains was doing!" Brent stepped in to smooth things over, urging the three men to reveal what the military base had been researching.
Of the three soldiers, aside from Wayne, the somewhat chubby white man was named Moras, while the shortest of the three, a Black man, was named Donaldson.
Donaldson, the most eloquent of the three, spoke first. Not wanting to be hit, he rattled off everything they knew in a practiced stream of rap.
"Inside the military base, the scientists believed there was another world beyond ours. They made a window to observe that other world, but they screwed up and brought monsters into ours! That's all I know! We really don't know anything else!"
The plump Moras hurriedly nodded as well. They had only been responsible for standing guard. Occasionally, they had overheard fragmented bits of information from veteran soldiers with internal access, but they truly knew nothing specific.
Compared to that explanation, David and the others were more willing to believe that some sort of biological experiment had created those mutated monsters.
A window into another world?
The more they heard it, the more fantastical it sounded!
"I don't believe it!" Brent looked at Donaldson as though he were an idiot. "A window? Why not a door? Compared to this other-world nonsense, I'd rather believe it was a military biological experiment. Do I look like an idiot? Who here believes you?"
David, Ollie, and the others did not believe it either. Though the monsters were unusual, they had not yet exceeded the limits of their imagination.
Opening a window into another world and observing it through that window might work in science fiction, but in reality, their imaginations simply would not allow them to believe such nonsense.
"Of course I believe it!"
But as a visitor from another world, Li Wei naturally believed such a claim. He also seemed to understand why Key had prompted him to go there. Perhaps it wanted him to collect something.
"You believe it?" Hearing Li Wei say that, the supermarket manager looked utterly bewildered.
He believed that nonsense?
David and Ollie found Li Wei even stranger. His words and actions had always been out of step with theirs, and now even his way of thinking was different. They had every reason to suspect Li Wei was mentally ill.
No, no, no!
It was still too early to jump to conclusions. Maybe he was just joking...
Li Wei smiled. "Because I came from another world!"
Diagnosis confirmed!
"Uh..."
Even the three men tied to the shelves froze. They awkwardly glanced toward their companions, and then everyone quietly skipped over the subject.
In the end, the three men were untied. The information they had gained was extremely limited. Other than learning that the monsters outside had been created by the military base, they knew nothing.
The night was silent. While everyone slept soundly, the faint light spilling from the supermarket drew the intense attention of certain mutated creatures.
With a thud, a mutated mosquito landed on the glass exterior wall.
A bearded man sleeping beside the glass was woken by the sound of something hitting it. Annoyed, he climbed up and peered outside through an observation gap in the dog-food barricade. What he saw was a gigantic mosquito, enlarged over a thousand times, clinging to the glass.
The mosquito's abdomen was streaked black and gray. Its eight slender segmented legs were covered in fine fuzz and trembled as it moved. Its grotesque face and curled body struck directly at the deepest taboos of human fear.
"Ahhhhhhh!!!"
After two seconds of stunned silence, the man's expression changed from irritation to terror, and he let out a scream like a pig being slaughtered.
The thunderous shout jolted everyone from sleep. They sprang up from the floor and looked around in panic, trying to find out who had made that bloodcurdling scream.
The group emerging from the storage room heard the slaughterhouse-like cry and were instantly alarmed, rushing toward its source.
The others barely needed to approach the source to see the enormous mosquitoes flying in from outside, one after another.
Dozens of mosquitoes as large as faces emerged continuously from the fog beneath the glow of the streetlights still functioning outside the supermarket. One mutated mosquito after another landed on the glass, clinging close to the light as they crawled upward.
Everyone woke from their sleep and gathered near the glass exterior wall. They turned on the lights and watched the giant mosquitoes cover the glass. Some who had never seen the tentacles before wore expressions of pure horror at the sight.
Li Wei walked through the shelves, looking at the head-sized mutated mosquitoes outside with an interested expression.
Suddenly, someone tugged at his pant leg. Looking down, he saw Anna dragging along a groggy little black bear, with Isha following behind her daughter.
Both mother and daughter wore frightened expressions, apparently deeply afraid of the mosquitoes outside.
"Mr. Demon, are you scared?" Anna asked shyly.
Li Wei picked up a flashlight from the shelf and handed it to Anna's mother, Isha. Instead of answering Anna's question, he instructed, "Go to the storage room. It's safer there."
Isha silently nodded and led Anna into the storage room.
"'Out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth, and they were given power like that of the scorpions of the earth!'" Looking at the mutated mosquitoes crawling over the glass exterior wall, Carmody finally recited the "prophecy" from the Old Testament and walked through the crowd, step by step, toward the glass wall.
Watching those hideous mosquitoes, she exclaimed again and again, "Wow~ Wow! Look at these spiked monsters!"
While everyone watched the mosquitoes outside with fear and shock, someone cursed, "Damn it," and another change occurred outside the supermarket!
Creatures with two pairs of wings flew out of the fog and snatched away the mosquitoes clinging to the glass. With his exceptional eyesight, Li Wei clearly saw what those creatures looked like.
They were the color of an untreated slab of braised pork belly, though their hue leaned more toward dark red.
Their two huge, bell-like eyes resembled goldfish eyes. Their mouths looked like those of chicks, their torsos like hairless bats, but their legs resembled nothing at all. They were like chicken claws wrapped in a layer of flesh; dinosaur feet would have been a more fitting comparison.
In their efforts to eat the mosquitoes, these strange birds repeatedly slammed into the glass exterior wall covered in insects. The imported tempered glass gradually began to crack under the repeated impacts.
Everyone who had been gathered near the glass wall retreated in panic. Those who could do nothing but scream moved away the fastest. Watching cracks spread across the glass, they began to fear for their safety.
In front of the glass wall, Ollie watched the strange birds repeatedly strike the glass and nervously guessed, "It looks like they were attracted by the lights."
Before you continue