"Today, we will once again review some key
Chapters—ones you will definitely see in the college entrance examination. We will begin with the Cambrian Explosion. This concept has been on the exam for two consecutive years, so it is worthwhile to remember everything about it.”
The teacher who passed by Chang’s dorm last night was on the podium. He was young and seemed kind, and he wore black-rimmed glasses today. He didn’t talk much in the lecture, but he covered the most important topics.
“The Cambrian Explosion is one of the ten myths of modern science. Can the individual sitting next to the sleeping student please wake him up and tell him to explain the Cambrian Explosion?”
The biology teacher pointed at the kid sitting beside Chang, so Chang woke up glasses-man.
“The teacher is asking you what happened in the Cambrian Explosion." Prodding glasses-man with his elbow, Chang whispered the teacher's question to his desk mate.
Still half-asleep, glasses-man reluctantly stood up, adjusted and cleaned his glasses using his shirt, and then murmured, “The Cambrian Explosion probably happened hundreds of million years ago. It was a short and sudden evolutionary event. Evolutionary speeds were hundreds of millions of times faster during this event. According to my memory, there were no mammals or plants prior to this, but after that event, the species we know about today appeared on Earth for the first time.”
"Hundreds of millions of years ago? What has changed in species morphology? These are key concepts. You also have to remember specific years." The teacher waved his hands, allowing glasses-man to sit down.
"While your summary was not bad, pay attention in particular to the time period of the Cambrian Explosion. Not only did all species evolve much quicker, but new species were also born at unimaginable speeds. The ancestors of modern species all came from that period. Sponges, coelenterates, priapulida, lobopodia, brachiopods, molluscs, arthropods, echinoderms, chordates and more all evolved in that era."
“Such amazing creatures! The Cambrian Explosion is a strong piece of evidence against Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and Darwin himself had been wondering about that, too."
“Sir, are you criticizing Darwinism?” A loud voice came from the corner of the classroom; it was Tao.
"Uh, yes. Do you have a problem?" The teacher smiled and said, "Well, there are three levels of arguments: Hypothesis, Theory and Law. Darwin's Theory of Evolution was just a theory, so why can’t I criticize it? You can certainly criticize a theory—even Darwin himself criticized his own theory.”
“Since we’ve discussed this, it wouldn’t be harmful to mention the reasons why the Cambrian Explosion occurred.”
“The main stream academic notion for the Cambrian Explosion is that the sudden abundance of free oxygen resulted in a large number of species rapidly evolving. However, I think this argument is flawed. With only free oxygen, how could species evolve that much in a short period of time?”
While he was making his statement, the classroom darkened in seconds.
“What’s going on?” Chang looked out the window.
The fog outside the window was getting dense! That was why it suddenly became dark. The pink fog didn’t dissipate, but rather grew thicker. The fog filled the entire world outside the building as if a giant piece of cotton had expanded in air.
Perhaps it was because the fog was getting thicker, but for some reason, the pink fog now turned into an oxblood-red colour. The world turned bloody red at a noticeable pace. The sun was completely blocked and the whole world sunk into edgeless darkness.
More accurately, with the oxblood red fog covering the sky, the world now looked like a territory with patches of black and red scattered randomly.
The bizarre colours gave Chang shivers. As he turned around, he realized that his classmates’ faces had become blurred in the black and red fog.
Normally if it was dark, some naughty kids would take the opportunity to tease the girls, but no one even dared to speak at this moment. Everyone had seen this world in darkness before, but never as a bloody red colour.
All the students were deeply terrified. Their faces explained everything, and the classroom was overwhelmed with silence.
“I will go to the office to see what is going on.” In this solemn atmosphere, the biology teacher broke the silence.
He left with those words, and then his figure immediately disappeared into the red fog.
"Look, the fog is sneaking through the seams of the doors and windows," one student screamed. The fog was opaque; it was clearly visible to the students.
Glasses-man subconsciously covered his nose and mouth after seeing this scene.
"It shouldn’t be toxic, and even if it is, how long can you hold your breath for?” Seeing the red fog drift in front of him, Chang sniffed it. He noticed a strong scent of fishy sweetness.
“Oh, it smells awful!” The classroom was now filled with complaints. After their initial shock, they all began discussing the strange phenomenon.
“What is this??”
"Bloody fog, I bet there must be a lot of car accidents out there.”
“The fog is so thick; I can’t see what is happening out there!”
“Hey! Call your family!” Chang took the phone out of his pocket and dialed his mother’s phone number.
The response was a busy signal ———
“The phone call can’t be connected!” Chang stared at the strange fog and felt panic from his gut. “Is the fog blocking the signal?”
“I need to check out what is going on!” A daring student stood up and walked to the door.
This attracted the attention of all the students. After he went out the door of the classroom, everyone flocked to the window to look at him.
Visibility was less than five meters outside the window, and when the daring student took two steps outside, his figure had already become obscure.
“Hey, don’t go too far! We can’t see you if you go further,” a friend of his faced the window and shouted.
"Oh! Okay, it’s really red out here, and I can’t see anything. I can’t even identify which room is the teacher’s office,” the daring student shouted back. His voice came through the fog, forming small ripples.
Then ……
As the daring student’s response came from the other side of the hallway, further ripples tore apart the fog as a group of sparrows rushed towards the source of the sound.
Sounds of flapping wings—
A group of sparrows fearlessly crashed onto the daring student’s cheek!
“Crack—”
When the first sparrow impacted the daring student, it made a strange noise as if a tomato was being smashed. A few more similar sounds were heard after that.
Chang turned his head and saw the daring student utter a shrill scream as his face was immediately pierced by the sparrows. More sparrows noticed the prey, and in less than a second, his whole face was ruined like a rotten watermelon.
“Help----“
The daring student screamed desperately. He was pushed to the ground by the monster sparrows. However, his screams were very short, as if he was choking on his own flesh and blood. He kneeled and finally fell on the ground, muttering meaningless sounds. The normally timid sparrows began to peck the blood-soaked flesh as they heard the sounds.
The horrifying feeling paralyzed all the students in the classroom. No one was able to even move an inch. They had never seen this scenario before, not even in a horror movie.
A moment ago, that student was still jumping around, but now he was crawling on the ground. The timid sparrows had become completely bloodthirsty. At this moment, no one dared to go out and stop these monsters; rather, fear flooded the crowd. No one wanted to move—not until those sparrows finished their “meal” and the daring student stopped twitching.
“Can someone please tell me what…has happened to this world?” The ashen-faced glasses-man muttered.
Chapter 3: The Crowbar and The Rat
“How is San’er?" The student who was shouting to the daring student ran out. He looked like he was a good friend of that daring student; they probably came from the same high school. Otherwise, no one would take the risk of running into the dense fog.
Unfortunately, the daring student died, and his blood smeared everywhere.
"I want to go home to see my parents. I don’t know what may have happened to them…” Looking at the mess, Chang weakly muttered to himself.
"You would dare go into this fog?" Glasses didn’t seem to have recovered from the horrifying scene.
"I have to go, even though it’s miserable." Chang took out his cell phone and called his mother again—there was still a busy signal.
"Can you guys see if you can make a call with your phone?" Chang put his phone into his pocket and tried calling his parents using glasses-man’s and another student’s phone. "I have to go home to see if my parents are okay," Chang said after he found out the signal was completely blocked.
"Don’t go out, it’s dangerous," Pang Zi squeezed over and said.
'I have to, I’m worried about them." Chang hesitated for a moment, and then walked out of the classroom. Entering the fog, he found that it was denser than in the classroom. As if the fog was alive, it kept trying to get into Chang’s eye sockets. The whole world was enshrouded in the bloody darkness, and without the sun, his visibility was less than 5 meters.
Chang wasn’t able to see anything three steps away; he couldn’t even see the main gate of the school. He could only focus on the brick floors as he moved forward bit by bit, tracing their texture.
"Grass is growing out from the rock’s crevices." Because he could only see his own feet, he was particularly focused on everything within his visible range.
Chang noticed that between the edges of the brick floors, grass was growing out. It wasn’t an illusion; they were getting taller at a rate noticeable. With this speed, the sidewalk would become a meadow in less than an hour.
"What happened...?" Stepping on these tenacious grass, he carefully went all the way to the school gate and opened it. What welcomed him was more bloody darkness.
The sky and horizon were connected seamlessly; the world was completely silent.
There were no car honks, nor were there any screaming pedestrians. There were only some distant muffled sounds. The strange fog seemed to be able to absorb sound waves, so sounds could only be heard within a certain range.
In this soundless bloody hell, Chang carefully sought for directions to his home, relying on his familiarity with the bluestone brick flooring.
A few meters away, he saw a car stopped in the middle of the street, but the driver was missing.
It wasn’t a surprise; in this mysterious situation, the driver could only see from the cabin to the very front of the car, so there was no way anyone could drive in this fog.
Chang looked into the empty cabin and found some blood stains on the steering wheel. There were also dents on the door—obviously, they were signs of a scuffle. Just thinking of the danger that San’er encountered, Chang decided to look for a weapon to defend himself.
“Click”, the door was unlocked. Chang turned to a crowbar in the cabin—the kind of crowbar that would be used to change a tire. It was flat and pointy, sharp like a small shovel and round on one end, all connected to a half meter long solid iron bar.
Grabbing onto the round end, Chang continued his way home. This was a small town in Northern China, so Chang’s family wasn’t far away from the school. Usually, 20 minutes would be enough for him to walk home.
Walking alone on the sidewalk, it didn’t feel like the doomsday pictured in games and movies, where the world was lifeless. Instead, every few minutes, he would see small groups of people gathered. Some were on the streets, while some stayed in their yards; some were even brave enough to surround a corpse and try to figure out what was going on.
Every face was filled with doubt, uncertainty, and fear. Chang didn’t join any of them. Communication had been cut off, including cell phones and TV signals, so he didn’t know whether equipment with transmission lines were still functioning or not. However, the entire radio transmission was definitely malfunctioning.
Carefully carrying the crowbar, Chang continued investigating forward. Unexpectedly, a homeless dog sprang in front of Chang with its crimson eyes and crushed teeth.
The dog stared at Chang, emitting a threatening “whining” sound.
Thinking of San’er, Chang clenched the crowbar. He stared at the dog while keeping up his guard.
The two were stuck in a confrontation for a while. A moment later, the homeless dog seemed to recall its fear of humans; it shook its head and tucked its tail, then ran away while deeply whimpering.
"Ha......" seeing the back of the dog, Chang was relieved. He continued to follow the brick floors while paying close attention to the movements around him as he slowly continued back home.
After about 15 minutes, he finally reached his house. Although the grass on the ground was about an inch tall, they didn’t completely conceal the ground.
Chang’s home was a house enclosed with a courtyard, and the yard was usually groomed neatly and tidily. However, standing at the doorway, Chang saw that the home he was familiar with had changed appearance—the yard was covered with moss and the house was wrapped in ivy. Apparently, plants with insanely strong vitality grew here.
In the yard, Chang ripped off some vines on the door handle and inserted the key to open the door.
"Mom, are you here?” He entered the house. The fog in the house was a lot thinner than outside, so Chang’s eyes felt a sudden discomfort as he had gotten used to the bloody darkness on the street.
He called, but no one answered.
“Dad, are you here?” He shouted. Again, there was no response.
The house was overwhelmed with a smothering silence. Chang had a bad feeling about this.
Walking inside the house for a while, he saw a pool of blood on the floor….and a finger.
That was his dad’s finger. Living together for so many years, he knew his father extremely well, just like how anyone else knew their family members very well. It was an arched finger soaked in blood. Indeed, it belonged to his father.
"Dad!" Seeing the smeared blood, Chang’s heart shrunk, and he quickly rushed into the living room and rummaged around.
However, he couldn’t find anything except for those blood stains on the furniture. He thought there was no one in this house, until he discovered a huge rat chewing on a human finger.
“F**k!” Seeing this cat-sized rat chewing on the finger, Chang burst in anger. Chang kicked the desk heavily, scaring the rat and causing it to sneak out from under the bed.
It was fast; normally, humans weren’t able to catch a mouse with ease, not to mention a rat that was now the size of a cat. Its huge body didn’t limit its footsteps. Rather, it helped it move further and faster.
Facing this creature, Chang wasn’t able to keep his mind stable; there wasn’t any fear in him, but rather an explosive anger and hatred.
Chang moved a step forward and smashed the rat with the crowbar.
Bam!
The tip of the crowbar hit the tiles, releasing a harsh sound. The moment he hit a small hole, the crowbar almost slipped from his hands due to the vibration.
The speedy and huge rat had already dodged to the side the moment it saw the crowbar aimed at it.
It didn’t run away after it dodged. Instead, it “creaked” towards Chang from where it was.
Chang calmed down slightly after the first hit. Holding the crowbar with both hands, he confronted this rat.
Whoosh!!!
This time, the rat attacked first. It turned into a gust of wind, aiming at Chang’s feet with its wide-open mouth and sharp teeth, biting onto Chang’s ankle tendon.
Chang involunta
rily dodged, but compared to the speed of the rat, he was much slower. Although he managed to move his feet away, the rat still ripped off a small piece of flesh.
Upon ripping of that flesh, the rat was still not satisfied, so it made a turn and once again aimed for the ankle tendon.
“Ah!!!” Staggering under the pain, Chang raised the crowbar and aimed at the rat, directing it to the rat’s head.
Seeming to feel the threat of the crowbar, the rat stopped its second attack and dodged again.
But this time, Chang didn’t allow the rat to escape. The moment the rat ran between Chang’s legs, he stepped on its long tail, and then the crowbar pieced through the rat from the back since it was locked in place.
“Creak!!!”
The rat struggled vigorously, emitting a harsh and shrill scream.
Although the rat was strong, its size was still small compared to humans. While Chang clenched the crowbar to ensure the rat stayed in place, he kicked on the head of the rat again and again. Every kick was violent and powerful, and accompanying them were numerous curses—“F**k you!”
After dozens of curses, the rat stopped twitching and its whole body softened.
Chang kneeled and fell down, as if he had used up every bit of his stamina.
Bam!
A crisp sound was heard as the crowbar fell to the ground when Chang loosened his hand.
Sitting on the floor and talking large breaths, Chang stood up again. He felt a crisp and burning sensation from his ankle.
When humans were in an intense fight, their epinephrine levels would accelerate. They often wouldn’t be able to feel the pain until everything settled down.
His flesh, about the size of half a finger long, was torn off and blood oozed out of it. This was the most severe wound he had ever gotten in his life.
As a teenager, fighting with others was usually an outlet for their anger from puberty, but no one actually wanted to kill one another. But in this battle, both he and the beast struck at each other fatally every time. Thus, this wound was deep.
Chapter 4: Preparation
Staggering a few steps, Chang endured the pain coming from his ankle and searched the house again, but he didn’t find anyone. There were only the one and a half fingers—half of one finger was bitten off by that rat.
Global Evolution Page 2