Black Rain

"Shhh~"

Dim light, exposed bricks and gravel, and crumbling, dried cement lay scattered silently all around.

A beetle crawled over their surface, its six hard legs moving in alternation as it searched for something to fill its belly.

It had gone nearly a week without food.

Finding anything edible beneath these ruins was harder than climbing to the heavens.

One careless moment, and it could become someone else's meal.

But this beetle was nearly half a meter long, with a glossy black carapace, sharp limbs that could leave dense prints in chunks of cement, and mandibles capable of slicing through steel rebar with ease.

All of this proved that it was a formidable predator in this dark corner of the ruins.

The Giant Armor Beetle pried up brittle chunks of cement with its mouthparts, hoping to find something it could swallow and digest, even if it was just a tuft of hair.

But after searching for a long time, it couldn't find a single strand of hair, let alone the waste of another creature.

Just as it was about to leave in disappointment, its two emerald-green eyes suddenly lit up, and it let out an insect cry more excited than one it might make upon finding a mate!

It had caught the scent of food for the first time in ages.

In the depths of starvation, even a mate was just food.

Though the strangely appearing scent of blood came and went, and its sudden presence seemed bizarre, it still deeply stirred the beetle's brain, smaller than a thumb.

Mutation had evolved its body, but not its intelligence, so it flung itself toward the source of the scent without hesitation.

The faint "fragrance" was like a red thread, leading it to a single-story house not far away.

The room was just as dark, so dim that it was impossible to see a hand in front of one's face. Other insects had long since eaten the wood of the fallen wardrobe and furniture, leaving only a rust-speckled iron frame amid the rubble.

The source of the food smell was a bloodstained piece of rag inside the frame.

The Giant Armor Beetle didn't hesitate. The delicious morsel was so close that it forgot all about the dangers that might be lurking and threw itself at it.

In this day and age, dying with a full belly was still far better than becoming someone else's food.

And, as expected, the Giant Armor Beetle had now become one of the unfortunate ones.

The instant it crawled into the iron frame, which was just large enough to fit its body—

Creak!

A black fabric strap tied around one corner of the frame suddenly tightened under the force of a tug, snapping the entire frame shut and trapping the half-meter-long beetle inside!

"Shhh!!"

Startled, the beetle immediately let out a hiss like escaping gas. In the silent room, the sound was especially grating!

At the same time, a figure hidden in a dark corner sprang into action!

His lean yet nimble body swept quickly over the rubble like a gentle breeze.

Just before the Giant Armor Beetle could break through the rusted iron frame, the figure pounced onto its hard, iron-like carapace!

But this only made the beetle struggle more violently.

Without a moment's hesitation, the figure brought down the metal crowbar already clenched in his right hand, striking the beetle's armored head with all his might!

Thud!

The first strike glanced off the Giant Armor Beetle's smooth, hard head, throwing off a faint spark. The fleeting flash lit up the boy's dark, resolute, gaunt face.

Whoosh!

The second strike drove the curved end of the crowbar into a gap between the beetle's head and body.

Crack!

On the third blow, the boy used his body weight, braced the crowbar's curve as a fulcrum, and shoved down hard!

At last, the Giant Armor Beetle's hard headplate was pried open, revealing the steaming muscle tissue within!

Before it could let out a shrill cry and attract other high-level mutated creatures, the boy swiftly pulled out the crowbar and drove its sharp opposite end into the spot where he remembered the beetle's brain to be!

Whoosh!

In an instant, foul-smelling green fluid splattered across his face. The Giant Armor Beetle stopped struggling altogether, with only its six pointed legs twitching faintly in reflex.

After killing the Giant Armor Beetle, the boy didn't let his guard down. He pulled a piece of plastic sheeting from behind him, one he had prepared earlier, and wrapped it tightly around the beetle's mangled head to keep the stench from spreading.

Finally, he picked up the beetle's carcass, which weighed nearly several dozen pounds, and quickly left the house.

About a minute after he left—

A dense rustling suddenly came from the ceiling, beneath the floor, outside the door, and from every corner of the room. Just hearing it made one's scalp crawl.

Hundreds of fist-sized Venom-Pincer Ants had been drawn by the lingering stench. They swarmed into the abandoned house and instantly covered it, turning it into a sea of writhing black bodies.

Inside a three-story building that looked so crooked it might collapse at any moment, the boy set down the Giant Armor Beetle carcass he had carried all the way there.

The long run with the beetle in his arms left him gasping for breath, but he kept the sound deliberately low.

He pulled a sharp bone knife from his waist and deftly punctured the plastic sheeting wrapped around the beetle's head.

Then he lowered his head, brought his cracked lips to the hole, and greedily sucked at the Giant Armor Beetle's foul-smelling, dark-green brain matter.

Only when his sunken belly had swollen slightly did he stop this beastlike act and cover the hole again with another layer of plastic.

It had probably been a long time since he last ate.

Xia Leng sat on the floor, wiped the thick liquid from the corner of his mouth, and let out a slight sigh of relief.

This hunt should let him maintain a combat strength of around -5.

He couldn't stand the disgusting blood of insects either, and he wanted to roast the meat over a fire to make it taste better.

But without a sturdy shelter to protect him at night, lighting a fire was no different from seeking death.

In this absurd apocalypse, beasts no longer feared fire, insects no longer dreaded the cold, and plants no longer needed photosynthesis.

Lighting a flickering campfire on a dark night was no different from announcing to every high-level hunter that some idiot was waiting to be claimed.

And Xia Leng no longer had enough strength to last until the next day.

So eating raw flesh and drinking blood was the simplest, most direct way to regain his strength. It wasn't as if this was his first time.

As he waited for his strength to gradually return, he looked around the three-story building where he was.

The wreckage of a shattered refrigerator, a rotting sofa toppled onto the floor, a high-end crystal chandelier hanging precariously from the ceiling, and a dusty photo frame lying beside him all proved that, five years and three months ago, this had been a happy family of three.

Five years and three months ago, everyone had been immersed in a happy life, with plenty to eat and wear and endless entertainment.

Xia Leng had been just seventeen then, a student newly admitted to college. He was introverted and inarticulate, and by the end of the semester, he had barely made any friends.

But he didn't mind. That was just his nature.

Then, one day, the sky was suddenly covered by dark clouds without warning, and an eerie black rain poured down from above.

And on that day, the school was holding its anniversary celebration in the campus plaza. Aside from a handful of people like Xia Leng, who had taken sick leave and stayed in their dorms to sleep, tens of thousands of students and faculty were drenched by the sudden Black Rain.

Xia Leng didn't remember how long he had slept then. He only remembered waking to all kinds of horrifying roars coming from outside the window...