God's Gift

Yu Youyou stood at the door of the control room, looking down at the humans who were frozen like stone statues.

Where she passed, the humans who had swarmed to devour her flesh were still crowded together, continuing their feeding.

Yu Youyou lowered her eyes, then looked up at Jiang De, who was climbing the ladder to the side.

His face remained contorted in a grimace, his gaze fixed intently on the direction where Yu Youyou had been standing. Even though his movements had ceased, the unsteady grip of his hand betrayed his urgency.

Yu Youyou stared at Jiang De's face, which was filled with greed, and let out a long sigh.

As her sigh rang out, the frozen time began to flow again, and the humans who had been frozen in place resumed their movements.

Jiang De was still clinging to the ladder, desperately climbing down to snatch Yu Youyou's flesh and blood.

Suddenly a gust of wind blew by, causing Jiang De's body to sway. In his haste, his hand slipped, and he lost his support, falling downwards.

The feeling of weightlessness engulfed Jiang De. He stared wide-eyed at the increasingly distant sky, and before he could even let out a scream, he crashed heavily to the ground.

The loud noise roused the others from their daze, and they looked toward the source of the sound, only to see splattered blood.

The entire sea of ​​flowers came into view.

Fang Ziang, dragging the iron rod, stared blankly at the suddenly changed scene before him, his mind reeling. "Where...is this?"

"Where's Youyou?" Ye Li touched the still-warm blood on his cheek and looked blankly at the spot where Youyou had been standing.

"There she is!" Someone in the crowd spotted Yu Youyou first and shouted.

Yu Youyou stood there, looking down at Jiang De's twisted body as he fell to the ground, then turned her gaze away expressionlessly.

She leaned over and jumped off the control panel. The vines below grew rapidly, and huge green leaves formed steps that caught her below.

Everyone turned to look in Yu Youyou's direction.

Her body was light and agile; she jumped down from the leaf step by step and quickly returned to the ground.

Ye Li stared blankly at Yu Youyou's unharmed body, his chest heaving more slowly: "Youyou's wound... has healed."

The others noticed this too, and they watched Yu Youyou silently as she walked towards them.

Yu Youyou walked past the place where she had crawled, through the crowd that had devoured her, and step by step towards Lu Keming, who was still unconscious on the ground.

After she passed by, those humans who had consumed her flesh and blood suddenly began to age.

The continuous loss of subcutaneous fat made their torsos thin and weak, and their once straight backs bent like heavy ears of rice. Wrinkles appeared on their skin, and layers of skin sagged loosely on their faces like withered tree bark.

Brown patches covered their dry, flaky skin, and they looked in terror into the direction Yu Youyou had left with their cloudy, yellowish eyes.

Desperate cries for help emanated from their throats, but their hoarse, muffled voices were so weak and feeble, like the tolling of a decaying old bell, its sound unnoticed.

Yu Youyou did not turn around.

Her dark pupils revealed a hint of indifference, like an abyss that had never seen the sun, filled only with endless darkness and cold.

She will not abandon humanity, but they also need to pay a price for their mistakes.

-

Wildfires raged, and floods swept across the land.

The epidemic spread, and extreme cold descended.

It saw—

Pale, cold, stiff.

It heard—

Noise, wailing, silence.

Disaster has struck, and life has been tested.

—From "The Old Gods' Notebook: Disasters"]