Ye Jiuyuan · Conversa

The chilly, pattering rain had been falling for most of the night. Neon lights soaked through the damp curtain of rain, while the entire city slept peacefully under the illusion of tranquility. Sporadic late-returning cars drove along the streets, a few shop lamps still glowed along the roadside, and off-duty pedestrians pulled their coats tight, quietly complaining about this stubborn wave of the flu. The emergency building remained brightly lit. The smell of disinfectant permeated the corridors, where numerous patients leaned against seats wrapped in thick blankets. Persistent low-grade fevers flushed their cheeks, and suppressed coughs broke out from time to time. Doctors and nurses were too overwhelmed to catch a breath; the lab test sheets showed only persistently elevated inflammation levels, unable to pin down an exact pathogen. "Another case of unexplained flu," a young doctor muttered, rubbing his throbbing temples as he looked over the recurring symptoms on the medical chart: high fever, body-wide bone aches, lethargy, and dry cough. Some patients were discharged once their fevers broke, yet during follow-up calls, they reported feeling strangely cold for no reason, accompanied by an inexplicable restlessness. No one knew that for those who seemingly recovered and left the hospital, the virus had not departed with the fever. It lay dormant deep within their flesh, like a timed seed buried inside the human body, unhurriedly rewriting their physical form. Deeper below the city, crisscrossing sewers gurgled softly in the rainy night. Rainwater seeped continuously downward, carrying fine, grayish-white viral dust. Within the dark subterranean passages, mutated vines entwined old pipes, and mutated insects crawled silently in the shadows of stagnant water. In the suburban wastelands, wild mutated vegetation grew rampant; washed by rain, the turbid, virus-laden wastewater trickled inward along the pipe network, quietly creeping toward the main urban district. Above ground, it remained an ordinary rainy night. Night market vendors were packing up their stalls, couples walked across zebra crossings under shared umbrellas, and residents slept peacefully in their homes. On social media, people were still reminding one another to stay warm and guard against this tough wave of flu. Yet the rain had become an invisible vector. Some of the carriers walked among the homeward crowds, completely unaware of their condition. They coughed softly, wiped away the light sweat left by a lingering low-grade fever, and merged into the sea of city lights. The subterranean undercurrent had already surged forward. The fever was merely a prelude; the cataclysm that would sweep away everything was separated from this brightly lit city by nothing more than a total, torrential downpour.