Once We Lived in Nanjing

Bai Yang looked at that hand, wondering what kind of person she might be. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, showing just a glimpse of a hand was enough to inspire his imagination about her entire appearance. Bai Yang had imagined what the girl might look like, but fantasies are after all just fantasies. Now that he was about to actually see her, a sense of nervousness rose in him for no reason.

"Why hasn't she shown her face yet?" Wang Ning said.

This guy seemed even more anxious than Bai Yang.

"What's the rush? She's still adjusting the camera."

Zhao Bowen leaned back on the sofa, adjusting his glasses, as the image in the video window continued to wobble. The other party was indeed adjusting the camera. In the extremely dim light, they could vaguely make out some details—like a desk flashed by under the flashlight, and the curtains above it, which clearly indicated it was inside a room.

"Once she has it adjusted, you'll naturally be able to..."

Zhao Bowen's phone suddenly rang from his pocket.

He hadn't even managed to answer the call when, in just four or five seconds, Bai Zhen and Wang Ning's phones in their pockets also started ringing. In no time, every communication device in the command center was ringing urgently.

"Hello, it's me, what... what did you say?"

Zhao Bowen's face suddenly changed.

He walked around the sofa, leaned over the coffee table, and opened his laptop. The second photo restored by the computer team, which was still of Meihua Villa, had been sent over. It showed the other half of the residential area that was not included in the first photo. Bai Zhen and Wang Ning also came over to see, and their expressions drastically changed.

"Holy shit."

"This... this fucking..."

A gigantic, black, blurry spider was perched on the rooftop of an apartment building. Its limbs were freakishly long, sprawling across this building's roof and its long legs could even cling to the outer wall of the adjacent building.

Bai Yang poked his father.

Bai Zhen turned his head and saw his son's face pale as death.

Bai Yang pointed at the computer screen.

The video playback window emitted a red glow, faintly illuminating the originally pitch-dark room. Through the curtains, the people on this side of the computer could see a huge, glowing, blinking red eyeball moving horizontally outside the window, stopping, and then slowly inching closer. It moved so close that it was impossible to see the entire eyeball through the window, as if the bedroom was targeted by a huge red laser pointer from outside.

The satellite captured only a static photo, while the computer streamed a live broadcast. Bai Yang stared straight at the screen, his body so stiff he couldn't move. He was actually staring face-to-face with the giant eye.

Even separated by two decades, the people in the command center felt suffocated, scarcely able to breathe.

Ban Xia held her breath, tightly hugging Grandpa Huang and curling up under the desk.

She was not adjusting the camera just now but driving Grandpa Huang away. Somehow, Grandpa Huang had slipped into the room and was frantically circling around her feet. When Ban Xia bent down to grab it, she noticed the red light reflecting off the camera lens facing the window—she didn't have time to think more, grabbing Grandpa Huang and immediately rolling under the desk, her back against the wall, daring not to move or make a sound.

The red light outside the window grew stronger and stronger, bright enough to light up the bedroom even through the curtain. Soon, Ban Xia heard a "clack clack clack" sound, which was the giant eye crawling on the building's outer wall.

Bai Yang at the other end of the video could only see the image, unable to hear the sound. If he could hear it, his understanding of the terrifying nature of the giant eye would deepen—Ban Xia hid in the darkness, shivering. She closed her eyes and buried her head in Grandpa Huang's warm, soft fur. She then heard that sharp, playful, woman-like voice again, just outside the window, only a wall away:

"Come out—where are you—where are you—"

"Give me the fruit—"