บท 3: After-effects

Though he felt both weary and tired, but, after undergoing such a tumultuous situation, Li Qiu still felt an excess amount of adrenaline pumping up vigorously through his veins.

There were still various explosions happening in and around Li Qiu. Actually, they were even more intense than the initial 15 minutes as by now almost all of the Golden dust had been absorbed into something or the other.

"Holy grandmother of chaos…." Li Qiu shouted out in shock as he saw multiple aeroplanes descending at a steep angle while giving rise to fumes from the rear end of their fuselage as they eventually crashed into the skyscrapers and made them collapse to the ground.

Even though Li Qiu was still worried about his friend David who was probably still stuck panicking inside his office a few blocks away, his grandfather who lived in a far away town and his family who had gone on a trip to New York, he neither had any brain power nor the physical strength left in him currently to even walk.

After he had burned that blasted parasite into oblivion, while his eyes had returned to their previous dark brown colour, he also seemed to have lost quite a few kilograms of his body mass.

If not for the fact that he initially had quite a bit of belly fat and a lot of unnecessary muscle tissues that had accumulated in his body due to his work life and eating habits, he would have turned into a pile of skin and bones.

When Li Qiu observed his immediate surroundings, he found out to his surprise that the park bench under which he had initially hid actually didn't even have a single scorch mark. The soil was still damp and wet due to the incoming rain and even those bits and pieces of insects nearby remained the same.

"Strange…" Before he could even consolidate his thoughts properly, his eyes bulged out almost to the point of falling out of his eye-sockets as he saw several ants which were still alive, and moreover, they had a reddish-gold glow over their carapace.

What was most shocking was the fact that they were double their previous size and even seemed to be growing at a slow but considerable speed?

There were a few other surviving insects who were also exhibiting this strange phenomenon around Li Qiu.

Partly disgusted but mostly terrified, Li Qiu instantly sprang up from under the bench, his body having gained an extra layer of cold sweat.

"God, is this the apocalypse? I…what should I do, where should I go, will-will I even survive this hell or become a puddle of goo like the rest of them, t-this….right….this must be a dream, I just have to wake up from this mess, a little bit of pain will snap me out of it, a pinch might….Eiouch….aaaarrrgh"

As a feeling of intense pain assaulted him…again? This time from his right leg, Li Qiu's first reaction was to jump back a couple steps away from his initial position.

And then, when he looked down on his leg at the place where the pain originated from, Li Qiu was horrified as he witnessed the sight of the very same light radiating ant clamping onto his leather shoes.

Petrified by the sight that he witnessed in front of him, and by the time his brain could even transmit the necessary signals for his next course of action, another insect, this time some kind of bug came from behind the ant and ripped off its body, its head and a part of his shoes into shreds.

While the bug started burying itself in its little feast, Li Qiu dashed onto a nearby concrete path before checking his surroundings for any more bugs that were still alive.

Now that he had calmed down a bit, Li Qiu tried to look at the severity of his injury while he hoped that he hadn't lost any of his toes to that insect.

Judging by the intense amount of pain that he still felt radiating from his toes, Li Qiu expected the worst.

Li Qiu was dumbfounded once again, this time because he failed to find any missing toes, in fact, he had a wound that barely qualified as a scratch which even 4-year-old babies would ignore.

He couldn't write it off as hallucination because he still felt a bit of pain transmitting from that tiny scratch.

"Deep breath, take a deep breath from your left nostril, hold it in your lungs and release it from your right, okay Li Qiu you handsome hunk, think about all those beautiful ladies who would feel absolute despair on seeing your hurting look, yeah that's it, calm yourself…"

With just a step away from losing his sanity, Li Qiu kept blabbering random gibberish from presidential speeches and anime punch lines to even nursery rhymes.

It took nearly 2 hours for Li Qiu to gradually calm his over tensed nerves and mentality to a somewhat sane level and thankfully it seemed nothing much changed other than the fact that the explosions had almost died down.

Since the concrete path that Li Qiu currently stood upon was isolated at one corner of the park, there weren't any other unexpected encounters that suddenly harmed him.

If not for Li Qiu's strong mentality and iron-willed nature, it would have taken even longer for any other person in his place to calm down as quickly as him. Heck, a normal person might even mentally collapse after the initial shock, not to mention having their world view and common sense collapse right in front of them.

Now that things have calmed down a bit for him, Li Qiu decided to first take a look at his surroundings and try to better comprehend what in the devil's prophecy had happened.

The distance between the park and his office was a little more than 200 meters, not much of a distance considering that it was just a single straight path.

Li Qiu tried his best to avoid looking at the middle-aged lady who at present just existed as a puddle of nasty goo from some creepy witch's concoction while passing by that area but still retched his stomach out till it became empty when he saw more of those puddles at the park's entrance, probably those strangers he passed by while entering the park.

Once he exited the park, Li Qiu instantly regretted his decision. Broken cars, burning tires, bloodied clothes, demolished buildings but most of all, he couldn't comprehend how people could even survive the after-effects of the collapse of a 60-story building.

Li Qiu steeled himself for whatever that was about to come in his way and started to scale up the debris of the 60-story building.

"Can anyone hear me?" Li Qiu kept exclaiming every now and then to look for even the faintest hint of any survivors.

Li Qiu barely managed to reach the top of the debris when he almost felt like dying due to having overdrafted his muscle power. He had already become completely exhausted and even lost a dozen kilograms of his body mass after that damned incident with the parasite, but scaling up this pile of debris took up almost everything he had.

Standing atop the debris that was the result of the collapse of a 60-story building, Li Qiu observed that most of the buildings were either in rubbles or almost on the verge of becoming one but the strangest thing that he observed was that most of the buildings that were built in the 1990s or before fared relatively better, unless of course, the unfortunate buildings that were directly hit by aeroplanes.

The next intact building was a supermarket that existed between his office and the rubble of the 60-story building. But, to the dismay of all his hope, his office building was another big pile of steel, concrete, and glass while the supermarket was in a relatively better condition.

No matter how anxious Li Qiu felt for the safety of his friend David, he knew that he would faint halfway before he even reached to his friend's aid. With no other alternatives left for him to execute, he decided to put everything aside and first take care of his immediate needs and necessities.

Li Qiu barely managed to drag himself into the supermarket when he experienced his third round of being dumbfounded.

From what he could see, the interior wasn't damaged much, the groceries and meat section were mostly undamaged, the daily necessities and furniture area were almost in a pristine condition except for plenty of unattended witch's concoctions.

But the section containing electronic appliances looked like a disaster-stricken area with metal shrapnel embedded everywhere, racks and shelves burned, and humans….he looked away.

Without having enough energy to even put up an expression, Li Qiu entered the meat section and decided to just eat a piece of pork meat raw, not caring about the smell, taste or even hygiene which was the least of his concerns right now.

After he was sufficiently satiated, Li Qiu started to feel drowsy. Knowing that he had to find some cover during his defenseless state of sleep in this apocalypse, he started to look for a suitable place.

Luckily though, he didn't need to travel far as he discovered a caretaking area that was meant for nursing newborn babies.

It was a room with a dimension of 5 meters in length and 3 metres in width, and surprisingly, this room was clean without any broken items, blood or any unwanted elements.

Li Qiu entered the room, sealed the door and immediately made sure to check if the windows were locked. Not finding any open windows, he decided to rest his weary mind and body when his eyes fell on a fish tank nearby.

There was actually a goldfish still swimming nonchalantly without a care as to whatever that may happen to the world, though, it was shining with a pale blue light.

The moment Li Qiu laid his eyes on it; he instinctively came to know that eating the goldfish would prove to be beneficial for him.

"I have nothing to lose now, might as well try," Li Qiu thought to himself as he went towards the fish tank, picked up a fishnet that was placed near it and calmly fished out the goldfish like an experienced pro.

The dumb goldfish became nutrition to our protagonist before it could even question its sorry fate.

Li Qiu felt a bit of warmth spreading through his belly when he consumed the fish and his mental tension which was stretched taut till now started to gradually relax.

Ignoring everything else that happened around him and throwing his caution and concerns to the back of his head, Li Qiu laid down atop the bed and instantly drifted away to the land of dreams.