Apocalyptic Hoarding Diary

Chapter 463 Military Intervention

The darkness lasted for about ten minutes, or possibly longer.

When you can't see anything and can only hear sounds, your perception of time completely fails.

Xu Xiaoyan once read in a psychology magazine that humans judge time based on visual cues and changes in the environment, and when both disappear, the brain becomes confused.

Ten minutes can be stretched into an hour, and an hour can be compressed into a few seconds in some extreme cases.

She is now experiencing this sense of disorientation firsthand.

Lan Yue didn't speak again, but her breathing became more rapid than usual. Xu Xiaoyan could feel that Lan Yue involuntarily tensed her shoulders with each sudden scream.

Some people bumped into each other in the darkness, some were fighting over something, and some were shouting the names of their family members, their voices trembling with sobs.

Xu Xiaoyan closed her eyes and opened them again, only to find that there was no difference.

Just as things were spiraling out of control, a voice came from the main passageway of Bunker 7.

The sound of orderly footsteps grew closer and louder, and Xu Xiaoyan felt the ground beneath her feet tremble slightly.

She turned her head to look in Lan Yue's direction, but of course she couldn't see anything. However, she could feel that Lan Yue's breathing rhythm had changed, from rapid panting to a kind of breathless stillness.

Then, at a certain moment, more than a dozen powerful flashlight beams lit up simultaneously.

The light came so suddenly that Xu Xiaoyan instinctively closed her eyes. She could still feel the glaring bright red behind her eyelids. Several seconds later, she dared to slowly open them. Her vision was filled with floating light spots and afterimages.

The beams of light swept through the crowd, illuminating the figures that were previously entangled together.

Someone was grabbing another person's collar, their knuckles turning white from the force. The person being grabbed was tilting their head back, the veins on their neck bulging. Both of them had an almost beastly expression on their faces.

Someone was squatting on the ground, holding their head, their shoulders trembling violently, their lips moving rapidly as if muttering something.

Someone was shouting something with their mouth wide open, the muscles on their face contorted with extreme fear.

Those who were touched by the light reacted in different ways. Some immediately released their grip on others' collars, some reflexively raised their hands, and some crouched down to shield their eyes with their arms. Everyone knew one thing: military forces had intervened.

"Everyone!" a man's voice blared from the loudspeaker. "Squat down where you are, put your hands behind your head, and do not make a sound."

Xu Xiaoyan squatted down almost reflexively, her knees bending so quickly that she didn't even realize it; her body made the decision before her brain.

Lan Yue followed suit, and the two of them leaned against the wall side by side, holding the back of their heads with their hands, fingers running through their hair, elbows tucked together—a standard emergency posture.

This posture reminded Xu Xiaoyan of the emergency drills she had done at school before the apocalypse, where teachers would blow whistles in the corridors and shout, "Don't panic, evacuate in an orderly manner."

Back then, I thought those drills were just boring procedures to pass inspections, but now I realize that some things are ingrained in our bones, and the body reacts much faster than the brain.

Most people calmed down after the order was given, but some still did not obey.

In the southwest corner, about forty or fifty meters away from Xu Xiaoyan and the others, the man who had shouted "I'll beat you to death or I'm not a Wang" was still standing there.

He was probably furious after his tent was trampled and had nowhere to vent his anger, so he kept shouting even after the army appeared.

His voice came from a dark corner, carrying a sense of arrogance and unreasonableness: "Why should we squat? They won't even turn on the lights, and you expect us to squat? You should at least turn on the electricity first." His voice was interrupted in a direct manner before he could finish speaking.

Xu Xiaoyan heard the sound of military boots pounding the ground rapidly, dense and urgent, indicating that at least three people were moving at the same time.

Then came the sound of clothes being suddenly grabbed, the rough fabric creating tremendous friction between fingers.

The man's body was forced to the ground, his knees hitting the concrete with a dull thud, followed by the crisp, precise click of the metal handcuffs fastening.

Then everything went quiet.

"Anyone who makes a disturbance will be dealt with in the same way," the voice from the loudspeaker rang out again, its tone unchanged, as if subduing a grown man to the ground in three seconds was nothing special.

But it is this calm that is more powerful than any threat.

If he had said this in an angry tone, people would have thought he was bluffing, but he deliberately used a statement of fact.

This time, the hall was quiet. People crouched in the darkness, not daring to breathe. Only the sound of their breathing proved that there were still living people here.

Soon, footsteps sounded again, but this time they didn't move quickly; instead, they dispersed.

Xu Xiaoyan felt the beams of light moving overhead, sweeping systematically across every corner of the hall.

She could hear people talking in hushed tones, using short, technical phrases like "East District covered," "Scattered items in the central area," and "Reinforcements needed in the southwest corner." She couldn't make out the specifics, but the rhythm was familiar.

It is a unique communication method used by soldiers when carrying out missions. Every word is concise, every sentence has a clear purpose, and there is no nonsense.

About a minute or two later, the loudspeaker went off again.

"Now, everyone stay in the squatting position. We will turn on the emergency lights in different areas. After the lights are on, no one is allowed to stand, move, or talk. Personnel will be checked in each area in turn. Those who do not cooperate will be dealt with according to wartime discipline."

The words "wartime discipline" elicited a visible reaction from the crowd, and she could feel Lan Yue's breathing tighten for a moment beside her.

Everyone knows what "wartime discipline" means, and no one wants to test that boundary.

A few seconds later, the first light came on.

It is a yellowish emergency light, the light is not dazzling, and can even be described as somewhat soft, but it is enough to illuminate an area of ​​twenty or thirty meters around.

The lights came on from the far east corner of the hall, then the second, the third, the fourth, one after another.

There aren't many emergency lights, about one every thirty or forty meters. The area where the lights overlap is limited, and some places are still shrouded in shadow, but it's enough for people to see their surroundings.

Scattered on the ground were all sorts of things: shoes, lunchboxes, water cups, pillows, torn clothes, a crushed tent, and a glove that no one knew who had dropped.

Several other tents collapsed completely, the canvas lay sprawled on the ground, the tent poles snapped in the middle, and the white fibers were exposed.