A Chicken Unlike Any Other

After countless simulation trials, Su Wu finally triggered this talent.

And when the electronic voice sounded, he felt certain that the girl would follow his "instructions" and come to the car.

He quickly covered the dashboard with rows of candles.

All that remained was to light them.

Ahead, illuminated by the headlights, the girl froze for a moment before clutching her "Emergency Can" and walking toward the passenger side with her head down.

Only after opening the door and sitting in the passenger seat did she notice the man beside her doggedly setting candles upright on the dashboard.

The first candle on the left burned with an orange flame. In its glow, a faint sense of security slowly welled up within her.

"You..." She was about to ask Su Wu what he was doing.

Su Wu cut her off. "Don't speak yet!"

His cold tone frightened the girl into shrinking back.

Just then, blood-red lanterns slowly rose from behind the buildings on both sides of the street. They turned lazily in the sky, staining the dark blue night crimson.

The lanterns formed a long river across the heavens, spilling crimson light over the neighborhood.

The sight was breathtakingly beautiful, like something out of a dream.

Yet amid this dreamlike scene, Su Wu felt a chill rise from his tailbone and spread all the way to the crown of his head!

He held his breath.

The young woman in the passenger seat stole glances at Su Wu's profile. Seeing the grave, intent expression on his sweat-beaded face, she grew nervous too, not daring to breathe too loudly.

She had witnessed the deaths of many people around her.

She had seen their heads fly up and drift away.

But those heads had never turned into red lanterns before her eyes, making it difficult for her to connect the lanterns in the sky with the heads of the dead.

Or perhaps she had subconsciously refused to make that connection.

Red light poured through the windows and fell across both their shoulders.

Without blinking, Su Wu stared at the red candle standing on the dashboard. It burned quietly, showing no sign of burning any faster.

At the sight, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.

The reason the candle had not burned faster was the rooster in the young woman's arms!

The rooster itself had some ability to shield the people around him from the Eye Fiend's selection, or resist its attempts to select and kill them.

The flames in the little temple had a similar ability.

When the two overlapped, the former took effect, and the latter would not expend any additional fuel.

For now, staying within three paces of the rooster seemed relatively safe. Beyond that distance, a person could still be selected by the Eye Fiend.

Just like last time, when the girl had backed seven or eight paces away out of fear of him. The moment the lanterns rose into the sky, they had taken her head.

Did all roosters possess this ability?

Or was the rooster in the girl's arms the only one of his kind?

As these thoughts raced through his mind, Su Wu did not forget to start the car and drive forward.

The car gradually picked up speed. He softened his tone and explained to the girl beside him, "You walked here from somewhere else. You must have seen people's heads fly away like balloons right in front of you, haven't you?"

"...Yes." The memories were agonizing for the girl to revisit.

But faced with Su Wu's question, she still summoned the courage to recall what she had seen and heard. Her eyes reddened, and her voice trembled with tears. "I don't know what happened. So many red lanterns suddenly appeared in the sky tonight. I was still telling Mom how pretty they were...

"Then Dad, who was cooking in the kitchen, suddenly went quiet. His head floated out of the kitchen and called out to Mom..."

As she spoke, the girl broke down sobbing.

Su Wu drove at high speed, setting the destination on his phone's navigation app to a small bus station on the outskirts of Mingzhou and racing along the suggested route.

Listening to her, he thought of how all this would inevitably happen in reality. Then he remembered his own parents' faces and voices, and his heart ached.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

After a long silence, he sighed and offered those words of comfort.

The girl had stopped sobbing and was wiping away her tears. She said nothing more.

"Those red lanterns in the sky are the heads of the dead. Wherever there are lanterns, people will die." Su Wu initiated the conversation himself. "The newly dead will call to the people around them for help.

"Then those around them will die one after another, as though they've been infected."

There was really no need for Su Wu to explain so much to someone in a simulation.

But perhaps because this girl was the first living person he had encountered in the simulated future, he said a little more.

Even in the future reality, he would need her help.

The rooster was her pet.

"But I..." The girl caught on fairly quickly. Hearing Su Wu's explanation, she instinctively thought of herself.

Her parents had indeed died just as this man described.

But how did that explain why she had not died along with them?

"That rooster of yours looks pretty... strong. Where did you buy him?" Su Wu changed the subject.

He had initially wanted to say the chicken looked plump and delicious, but that seemed disrespectful, so he used "strong" to describe the rooster instead.

"Emergency Can" had vivid feathers, a bright red comb, and a fierce gaze. He had clearly been raised well.

The girl hugged the rooster in her arms and said quietly, "Grandpa sent him from the countryside. He said he was the only chick hatched from a wild pheasant and one of his hens.

"The others never hatched. They all died."

"Aren't wild pheasants and domestic chickens reproductively isolated? That's..." Su Wu stopped himself halfway through.

Supernatural horrors were already awakening. What did reproductive isolation matter?

Besides, he knew little about the subject, so he ought not jump to conclusions.

It was enough to establish that Emergency Can was a rooster unlike any other.

"Domestic chickens and wild pheasants can still mate, can't they...?" The girl bit her lip, uncertain herself.

"Let's leave that aside for now."

Su Wu shook his head and drove onto an overpass. "The reason you escaped without having your head taken like the people around you...

"Really does have a lot to do with the rooster in your arms.

"He protected you.

"And now he's protecting me too."

The girl lowered her gaze to the rooster in her arms, who occasionally turned his head to study Su Wu. Her eyes suddenly reddened again, and she murmured to herself, "Is that it? Is that really it...?"

There was no telling what sorrowful memory had come back to her.

The car crossed the overpass and plunged into the city streets, where neon lights intertwined.

The red lanterns rose several more times afterward, but not once did they harm Su Wu or the young woman.

The candle on the dashboard gradually burned down by more than half.

Through their halting conversation, Su Wu learned her name-Jiang Yingying.

The buildings on either side of the street grew lower and more scattered. Ahead, the once-wide road was completely blocked by a heap of crashed cars piled as high as a mountain.

Streetlights illuminated the ruins of steel, their dim yellow glow flickering faintly.