"Mom?!"
"Xinxin, the window broke…"
Mother’s breathing grew more and more rapid.
"Outside, it’s raining blue…"
The call was suddenly cut off.
Blue? What? I still refused to believe it.
I stood there for a while, my fingernails digging into my palm, leaving bloody marks.
I didn’t know when I had bitten my tongue, the taste of blood spreading in my mouth.
The television was on, and the news footage inside began to distort, turning into static, and finally freezing on a map of Harbin, the entire city covered in wriggling blue patches.
The vivid image was before my eyes, my mother’s voice still in my ears, my brain reminded me:
I had to act.
I grabbed my backpack and rushed out the door. The elevator display screen was black.
Under the emergency lights of the fire escape, something was reflecting light. I held my breath and walked over, crouching down to see that it was Xiāo Jìn’s jade pendant.
My heart pounded, and I ran down the stairs.
Running out of the building, I passed the twenty-four-hour convenience store by the entrance, which was still lit. The light at this moment felt like a lifeline to me.
I pushed open the glass door and saw the cashier taping up the vents.
"Hand warmers, all of them."
I swept more than thirty packs from the shelves into my shopping basket.
"And alcohol wipes and bottled water, give me all you have."
"Second one today," the cashier muttered as he scanned the barcodes.
"Are you guys from the doomsday survival group?"
My hand trembled, and coins slipped through my fingers, bouncing high on the tiles. As if possessed, I reached out and caught them, the coins landing precisely in my palm.
The cashier’s eyes widened: "Holy crap, amazing!"
Suddenly, a crashing sound came from outside the store. We both turned our heads, only to see a stray dog smashing its head against the display window, its eyes a discolored grayish-blue.
Its claws hit the glass, leaving sticky blue liquid streaks.
"What the hell is that thing?!"
The cashier grabbed a mop and approached the window.
"There have been a lot of rabid dogs outside lately."
After paying, I sprinted out with my supplies. The bright light of the advertising screen enveloped the entire street.
I looked up and saw a giant poster for "Phoenix Ascends the Nine Provinces." For that one moment, I froze—
Xiāo Jìn, who should have been standing with his sword, now had two streams of blood tears flowing from his eyes.
The slogan below had turned scarlet:
"The time has come."
The blood-red words on the ad screen flickered in the rain, and the hand warmers in my arms suddenly felt scorching hot.
The convenience store's glass door reflected my pale face, and my phone was still vibrating incessantly. Weibo push notifications exploded one after another:
【Harbin blue hail caused by chemical pollution? Experts say it might be a special climate phenomenon】
【Eyewitnesses claim hail has life-like features, officials deny: video used special effects】
I clicked on the warning Weibo I posted last night, and the retweet section had already collapsed.
A popular science blogger with millions of followers screenshotted and mocked: "New material for 'Horizons,' web novel writer summoning snow online," and the top comment was: "I suggest the author fight with the meteorological bureau; whoever wins, I'll believe them."
I stared intently at the number of likes—32,000. None of these people knew that perhaps soon they wouldn't be able to laugh anymore.
The plastic bag made a tearing sound. In the pile of trash outside the convenience store, a familiar black shadow flashed past.
"You again!"
I lunged forward and grabbed the stolen bag of dried fish, my fingertips touching a furry ear.
I noticed it was missing the tip of its left ear.
The black cat retreated with its prize, its green eyes glowing in the shadows.
It purred in its throat. I frowned; it seemed quite comfortable!
"Miss, your change," the cashier called from behind the glass door.
Just as I turned around, the black cat darted into the alley like lightning, leaving only two rows of teeth marks on the bag.
My phone in my hand felt hot. "Old Zhang of the Meteorological Bureau" sent a new message:
【See the real blue snow (encrypted attachment)】
Without hesitation, I clicked it.
The decrypted photos made my hair stand on end: blue ice crystals under a microscope, clearly looking like some kind of flagellated microorganism, exactly like the "Cold Gu" I described in "Phoenix Ascends the Nine Provinces."
As my fingertip touched the screen, a strange scene flashed before my eyes:
In a white laboratory, a hand wearing rubber gloves was adjusting a microscope. The camera zoomed in, and the blue microorganisms in the petri dish suddenly lunged towards the lens...
"Ah!"
I suddenly withdrew my hand. The calendar date in the corner of the photo remained on my retina: 2023.5.17.
My brother’s birthday.
May 17, 2023, was also the day my brother disappeared.
The sound of hail hitting the awning pulled me back to reality. The convenience store owner was already starting to lock the storage room door.
"Give me thirty more packs of hand warmers."
I slapped the cash on the counter and said:
"And medical alcohol."
The owner raised an eyebrow: "What's going on these past two days? All these young ladies buying these things."
He grumbled as he bent down to get the items: "Yesterday, there was a girl in a red dress who bought fifty packs at once."
My heart tightened: "What did she look like?"
He pointed to my phone: "Couldn't see her clearly with the mask, but she was just like you, staring at that blue hail news."
A few meows accompanied the clanging sound of the glass door. The black cat had returned. It held the gap in the door with its front paws, its tail flicking back and forth anxiously.
"Shoo, shoo!" The owner waved his broom.
The black cat, however, stared at me, then turned and ran towards the back alley, stopping halfway to look back as if waiting for me to follow.
This black cat had been appearing too often lately. For some reason, I followed it, seeming to trust it implicitly.
But as soon as I entered the back alley, a strong stench of decay hit me.
The black cat squatted on the lid of a trash can. Below, seven or eight stray cats were dragging the convenience store's near-expiry food into the drainage ditch.
The skinniest calico cat was even trying to drag a whole bag of cat food. Around its neck hung half of a pet collar.
I took out my vibrating phone from my bag. Lin Yan’s name popped up.
"Xinxin, you're not home?"
Her voice had a strange nasal quality.
"I just knocked on the door, and no one answered."
The clear "crackling" sound in the background made my whole body tense. As a writer, I considered myself very sensitive to certain things, and I clearly remembered this was the sound of blue hail falling.
But Harbin was over a thousand kilometers away. Unless...
"Where are you?" I asked, staring at the notch on the black cat's ear.
There was a two-second silence on the other end of the line: "Home, at home... Oh, by the way, how's your dad?"
I clenched my fist. Lin Yan had no idea my dad was hospitalized.
At this moment, the black cat leaped off the trash can and pawed at my phone.
The call interface immediately switched to a new email from Old Zhang, a map with IP location. More than a dozen red dots were concentrated in our residential complex. One was marked "It’s not raining today" (my alternate account), and another was "Yan Yan Little Sun."
Lin Yan's backup social media account.
"Yan Yan Little Sun" was the account Lin Yan used for following stars. The profile picture was still a chibi portrait of me that I had drawn for her last year.