Chapter 84 Part 1: Divine Song

The smell of smoke followed them for about half a street.

The wind in the ruins had no direction, blowing for a while and then stopping.

But the smell of burnt meat and alcohol mixed together just wouldn’t go away.

Mu Yingying hadn’t spoken the whole time.

She walked at the back with the knife hanging at her waist.

Her fingers unconsciously rubbed the handle.

Little Frost pushed the bike and walked in the middle.

White Night was curled up in the bike basket, her chin resting on the basket’s edge, her eyes fixed on the ground.

The broken glass on the ground was getting more numerous.

Walking to this section, the shops on both sides of the street were the most damaged.

This area must have been a bustling district before, with dense shops and lots of glass.

When the doomsday came, this place collapsed the most completely.

White Peace walked at the front, barefoot.

Her feet stepped on the glass but were not cut.

As they walked, Mu Yingying suddenly stopped.

“Hey, everyone stop!”

She looked up.

“Did you hear that? There’s movement ahead!”

Little Frost stopped pushing the bike.

“Hear what? What movement?”

Mu Yingying pointed ahead.

The wind blew from that direction, carrying a sound.

Very distant, and very faint.

Like someone humming a song.

But the tune was wavering, intermittent, rising and falling erratically, like a radio with a weak signal.

Little Frost held her breath and listened for a while.

“. . . There really is, like someone humming a song.”

White Night also heard it.

She sat up straight in the bike basket, her soul body’s little ears perking up.

That melody, she felt she had heard it somewhere before.

Very familiar, but she couldn’t name the song.

White Peace stopped ahead.

She didn’t turn around or explain, just stood there.

Mu Yingying asked.

“What the hell is this? Sounds really creepy.”

White Peace said.

“Don’t panic yet. Go over and take a look, and we’ll know.”

Walking another five hundred meters along the street, the sound grew clearer.

It wasn’t one person humming; it was many voices mixed together—out-of-tune, broken phrases, vague humming.

Each segment was incomplete, but together they pieced together a complete melody.

Little Frost listened, her brow slowly furrowing.

“This tune… I’ve definitely heard it somewhere before. It’s too familiar.”

Mu Yingying also frowned.

“Me too. Damn, isn’t this one of those brainwashing earworms?”

She couldn’t help herself and hummed a couple of lines softly.

When she hummed the second line, she froze.

Her mouth was still moving, but she didn’t want to hum anymore.

But her mouth kept moving on its own.

“Holy shit, something’s wrong!”

She fiercely bit her lower lip.

Little Frost looked at her warily.

“Yingying? What’s wrong? What’s the problem?”

Mu Yingying bit her lip hard and only spoke after a few seconds, her voice a bit tight.

“I can’t stop! My mouth is humming on its own. I can’t control it at all!”

After hearing that, Little Frost also tried to stop herself.

But that melody in her head had already started spinning, round and round, getting louder and louder, impossible to shake off.

“. This thing is wrong. The melody burrows into the brain and won’t leave!”

She reached out and gripped the hammer handle.

White Peace raised her hand.

“Don’t hum along, everyone. Guard your mind.”

Her voice wasn’t loud, but when it reached the two women’s minds, that melody was cut off like by a pair of scissors.

Mu Yingying and Little Frost both snapped back to reality.

Mu Yingying took a deep breath and cursed.

“What the fuck kind of creepy thing is this? We almost fell for it!”

White Peace said.

“The sound chases the memory anchors in people’s minds. Before the doomsday, this street was a bustling area, with tens of thousands of people passing through every day. No matter where you went, you couldn’t avoid it.”

“This kind of song had already burrowed into their brains, becoming indelible memory fragments.”

“When the doomsday descended, they were trapped here. In the seconds before the buildings collapsed, the shop speakers on the street were still playing, and some people still had it in their earphones. The last thing lingering in their ears before death was this very song.”

“Now, the lingering thoughts of all the dead on this street are strung together by this shared memory. The song is the thread, and they are the beads. The thread passes through, stringing them one by one.”

“They are now hanging on the highest conductor in this area.”

She raised her hand and pointed.

Two intersections ahead on the street, there stood a utility pole.

Lonely and isolated.

All the other utility poles around had fallen, only this one remained standing.

Its top wasn’t connected to any cables, and the transformer that was originally mounted on top was askew, half hanging from the pole.

This utility pole stood in the center of a chaotic heap of ruins, as if it were the only thing on this street that hadn’t fallen.

The sound came from there.

The group moved a bit closer, not daring to get too close, stopping about twenty meters away.

After getting closer, that humming became clearer.

It was a brainwashing earworm.

The tune was simple and catchy, the lyrics repeated just a few lines over and over, playing everywhere in the streets.

But it wasn’t one person humming.

A crowd—men, women, old people, children—each hummed something different.

Some were ridiculously out of tune.

Some were clearly trying to match the original rhythm but couldn’t keep up at all.

Some could only hum the first two repeated lines and then lost the connection.

Some were halfway through when another voice drowned them out.

Some tried very hard to hum the whole segment.

But all together, they did assemble a complete melody.

Mu Yingying listened and her face began to turn ugly.

“This song is creepy.”

Little Frost’s voice was dull.

“. . . It’s really creepy.”

“I remember this song now. There was a milk tea shop downstairs from my house, with a small speaker hanging at the door. They played this kind of brainwashing earworm on loop every day from opening. Summer, winter, even rainy days, the volume never dropped.”

“Every time I went downstairs to buy milk tea, from queuing to paying to carrying the tea upstairs, I had to listen to it from start to finish. For a while, I deliberately took a detour to avoid it, but that detour took me past a phone store that was also playing it at the door. No escape from it.”

The wind picked up again.

The singing on the utility pole grew louder.

After getting closer, they could hear other sounds mixed beneath the singing.

Very small, very faint.

Like whispers stuffed into the gaps between the lyrics.

Little Frost heard it first, and her face changed.

“. . . No, there’s other sounds mixed in the song!”

Mu Yingying also heard it.

A woman’s voice, very small, mixed into the chorus.

“Please someone turn us off.”

Then a man’s voice, with a crying tone.

“I’m working overtime and won’t make it home.”

Then a child’s voice, light and crisp.

“Mom, I’m hungry.”

“Xiao Jun, your mom is calling you to dinner.”

“Ticket. Please show your transit code.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“Mom, I’ll be home soon.”

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Xiao Zhang, why haven’t you submitted that report yet?”

“I don’t want to live anymore.”

“Honey, I bought groceries today.”

“Sister, save me.”

Each sentence was one person’s voice, each was incomplete.

They were like radio cross-frequency, pressed under that melody, occasionally surfacing one or two phrases.

Mu Yingying took half a step back.

“My god, how many people are trapped in here?”

White Peace looked at that utility pole.

“When the doomsday came, everyone on this street must have been trapped.”

Little Frost was silent.

The wind blew again.

The singing grew a little louder.

This time, Mu Yingying heard a very familiar trailing sound.

“Xiao Jun—”

It was a woman’s voice, with a tremor in her throat.

Little Frost was also listening.

She heard a male voice.

“Mom, I’ll be home soon.”

She gripped the hammer handle tightly.

That wasn’t her son’s voice.

It couldn’t be.

But she couldn’t help listening.

She knew she shouldn’t listen, but she kept waiting for the next line.

There was no next line.

That male voice only repeated the line “Mom, I’ll be home soon.”

Once.

Again.

And again.

Mu Yingying asked: “Peace, can this thing be fought? Can we just take it out directly?”

White Peace: “Yes.”

“It’s not a true weirdness; it has no autonomous malicious intent.”

“Just the lingering thoughts of a few hundred dead, glued together by a shared memory, attached to the highest conductor in this area.”

“It itself has no consciousness, but if you listen too long, a person’s mind will be assimilated by it.”