Apocalyptic Hoarding Diary

She felt helpless. She had felt the same way when that yellow-toothed man grabbed her arm during the day, a kind of confusion about "why me again".

Just because she's a young girl, does everyone think she's easy to bully?

"What kind of people are they?" she sighed inwardly, too tired to be angry at these kinds of rotten people and messy things that pop up every now and then.

Xu Xiaoyan now only wants to solve the problem in the fastest, most effective, and least troublesome way.

She was glad that she still had a few tents in her space. It didn't matter that this one was broken; she could just mend it and make do with it.

She had even mentally rehearsed the repair process, taping up the tear in the outer tent from both the inside and outside.

That's right, she was prepared to use the knife directly, without any extraneous thoughts like "should I ask who it is first?"

The act of setting up a tent in the middle of the night says it all; the person is either a bad guy or a fool.

Bad people know they are hurting others, and stupid people don't know they will hurt others, but the result is the same: her safety is threatened.

Xu Xiaoyan couldn't possibly reason with someone, ask for their reasons, or distinguish between good and evil in the darkness of the early morning, through two layers of tent fabric. She didn't have the time or the obligation.

The tent zipper was pulled down a little further, this time a bit more than before.

Perhaps feeling that his previous attempts had failed to elicit a response, he grew bolder, or perhaps it was because it was late at night and the surroundings were quieter, and he wanted to succeed as soon as possible.

Xu Xiaoyan's eyes had adjusted to the darkness inside the tent. The door was open about ten centimeters, and a breath of air carrying the smell of rain squeezed in through the crack.

A hand reached in from outside the curtain; the fingers were short and thick, with black dirt embedded in the nail crevices, and the back of the hand was rough and wrinkled.

Xu Xiaoyan gripped the knife handle with her right hand, aimed at the back of that hand, and stabbed it directly in.

The blade pierced deep into his palm, and a small trickle of dark red, warm blood dripped onto the tent's underlay. The color was indistinguishable in the darkness, but the metallic stench of rust was unmistakable.

A man's scream rang out, short and sharp.

However, it was suppressed in a very short time, as if realizing that they should not make a sound, or that someone had covered their mouth.

The moment the hand was pierced, the person instinctively tried to pull it back, but the knife was still inside. The harder the person tried to pull back, the more the wound was torn apart, causing even more pain.

His hand froze in mid-air, a knife stuck in his palm, the hilt still held in Xu Xiaoyan's hand. He couldn't struggle or back out.

Xu Xiaoyan did not let go, nor did she even look at the painful, contorted face peeking through the gap in the curtain.

She was simply confirming the angle, depth, and location of the blade's penetration. The feedback from her hand told her that she had made a correct stab.

The needle didn't hit the fingertip; it hit the very center of the palm, the most painful, functionally most affected, and hardest-to-heal spot.

This location has many tendons and dense nerves, so it heals slowly, giving him plenty of time to remember it.

As if that wasn't enough, she rotated the knife handle slightly in her palm, the blade cutting into the tissue that hadn't been cut before.

The man's hand twitched violently, and his whole body trembled. His scream turned into a painful cry squeezed from deep in his throat, "Ugh—ugh—".

Only then did Xu Xiaoyan pull out the knife. The moment the blade was pulled from her palm, she could feel the suction force of the contracting muscles and healing tissues tightly enveloping her.

A thin line of blood ran along the blade, flashing a dark red light in the darkness.

The man hurriedly withdrew his hand, seemingly wanting to shout, but before he could utter a sound, a hand reached out from behind him and covered his mouth with its palm.

The hand pressed down hard on his face, so hard that it forced his shout back down his throat.

Another hand reached under his armpit, grabbed his shoulder, and pulled him back forcefully, quickly dragging him away from the scene.

People were approaching from nearby, and sounds came from the woods outside the tent from different directions.

Someone was woken up by the screams, muttering as they sat up, the sound of a zipper being pulled open.

Someone raised their voice and asked, "What's wrong?", but no one answered.

Someone poked their head out of the tent, the beam of a flashlight flickered a few times in the darkness, and then disappeared.

Xu Xiaoyan sat in the tent, still holding the fruit knife in her hand. Blood from the blade dripped down the body of the knife, onto the back of her hand, warm and sticky.

Outside the tent, the rain was still falling, and voices could be heard in the distance, but then it quickly fell silent again.

She held her hands and knife outside the tent, letting the rain wash away the blood, and then zipped the tent up.

She thought she would have to tear the tent apart, but the person simply reached in, saving her a lot of trouble.

The night passed just like that.

The next day, after walking for about half a day, the whispers around me suddenly increased.

She looked up and followed the crowd's gaze, then saw the foot of the mountains, with layers upon layers of peaks rising abruptly from the ground.

The mountain is brown, with gray-white clouds occasionally swirling around its upper half. The ridge stretches from near to far until it disappears into the hazy horizon.

They were about to reach the mountains! The crowd cheered with joy.

Some people squatted down, covered their faces with their hands, and their shoulders were shaking, it was hard to tell whether they were crying or laughing.

Someone threw something into the air: a hat, a tree branch, and a piece of rag that they had picked up from somewhere.

Then, watching them fall and hit his head, he didn't dodge.

Two complete strangers embraced at the foot of this muddy mountain.

They patted each other on the back, muttering, "We're here, we're here," "We're finally here."

An old man knelt down, not to worship any god, but because his knees could no longer support him. He knelt in the mud, his hands supporting him on the ground, panting heavily.

Everyone knows that we've finally escaped the forced march phase.

Mountains mean that you can disperse, you can stay, and you can find your own hilltops, caves, and shelter from the rain, instead of rushing forward day and night like before.

The army seemed unusually generous today, perhaps because they were in a good mood upon arriving at their destination, and they notified everyone to rest on the spot before it even got dark.

Commands came from the front, one after another from the front of the column to the back: "Rest on the spot!" "Rest on the spot!" "Rest on the spot!"

The crowd dispersed faster than during any previous rest, scattering to the hillsides, woods, and rocky beaches on either side.

Some people had even started making fires, using half-dried branches they had picked up from somewhere.

The lighter snapped, and a ball of orange-red flame leaped up in the rain, eliciting a satisfied sigh from the surrounding crowd.