Darkness Descends

Ye Zhao followed the flow of the crowd into the subway station. The group was still in a state of shock, having no idea what had just happened. Ye Zhao certainly didn't know either, but that didn't stop her from sitting on her suitcase and gasping for air; heaven knows how hard she had run to get here.

The surroundings were chaotic and filled with heated discussion, while some passengers who had just exited the subway were clamoring to get out. "Why is everyone crowding the entrance? Move aside, I need to get out!"

"You'd better not go out there yet. I heard something happened outside! People are dead!"

"What? People are dead?!"

"Seriously, why are you all running? You came charging in like a swarm of bees, you're going to scare us to death even if nothing happened!"

"What exactly is going on out there? Is someone killing people?"

Ye Zhao said, "I don't know either. I just saw everyone running, so I followed along."

Someone chimed in, "Yeah, me too. I just saw so many people running, and I got so scared I just started running too!"

"Does anyone know what's going on?"

The group questioned one another until someone finally spoke up: "It seems like people were dying up ahead. I saw it with my own eyes—a perfectly healthy, handsome young man suddenly collapsed and turned into a hundred-year-old man. It was terrifying! It wasn't just one; so many people around me collapsed one after another, all of them turning shriveled and wrinkled. It was so horrific!"

"You're making that up, right? No matter how hot it is, the sun can't turn a person into a dried corpse, can it?"

"Exactly, stop blowing smoke!"

The man's face was pale, he was drenched in cold sweat, and his