Chapter 85 - 35: "Isolated Island

Chapter 85: Chapter 35: "Isolated Island

The chaotic clamor pierced through the heavy rain, perfectly audible and punctuated by the sharp wail of police sirens.

What was going on?

Yu Xian’s heart tightened. He wondered if the floodwaters had backed up, or if some accident had happened on campus. He didn’t want to play the rubbernecker; at a time like this, any minor incident could trigger uncontrollable consequences.

Lowering the brim of his umbrella, he carefully skirted the crowd and cut through a small side path. As he bypassed the group, he faintly caught the sound of people shouting slogans.

"Let us in!"

They sounded like evacuees demanding shelter inside the campus. But their voices were steeped in anger and hostility, resembling powder kegs ready to blow at any moment. Yu Xian didn’t linger, quickening his pace into the subway station.

There were far fewer people in the subway than the day before. Most had chosen to stay home to wait out the crisis, leaving the train cars practically empty. Pushing open the door to his cousin’s house, the long-lost quiet and dryness of the apartment made him heave a long sigh of relief.

The first thing he did was connect to the WiFi.

His phone began vibrating incessantly as messages flooded in like the rainstorm raging outside his window. First was his department’s grade-wide group chat. The student advisor had posted a class cancellation notice in the class chat, but only a handful of students had replied with "Received." With the campus network and data signals paralyzed, most students were still offline and entirely unaware of the announcement.

Right below the class cancellation were a few even more urgent messages:

"Urgent Notice: All School of Physics students must remain in their dormitories. Do not approach the School of Physics’s main building or the laboratory areas! Do not spectate the crowds gathered at the school gates!"

"Reiterating: Bringing outsiders onto the campus is strictly prohibited! If you spot any suspicious individuals, report them to your advisor or the security office immediately!"

The School of Physics main building? The laboratory areas?

Yu Xian frowned. The academic buildings were mostly clustered in the East District, a considerable distance away from the South Gate. Furthermore, considering the torrential downpour, why would they specifically emphasize staying away from the School of Physics main building and laboratories?

Unable to figure it out, he opened a social media app. Sitting at the top of the trending list was the same glaring headline from before:

"Northern Hemisphere Rainstorm Suspected to Be Man-made."

Following closely behind it were a few new trending tags, each exuding a deeply unsettling aura: "Research Institutes Across Multiple Regions Upgrade Security," "Public Questions Safety of Experiments," and "We Need an Explanation."

He casually tapped into a video. The footage was incredibly shaky, set against a backdrop of pouring rain. Through the dim lens, a dense mass of black umbrellas clustered together, undulating like a surging dark tide.

"Stop the experiments!"

The sounds of rain, shouting voices, and megaphones blurred together into an emotional frenzy. A laboratory’s retractable security gate was tightly shut, with nervous-looking security guards in raincoats standing guard on the inside. Even through the screen, the volatile, hair-trigger tension of the standoff was palpable.

The comment section was a floodgate of vented emotions:

"Finally, someone stood up! Who knows how long this rain is going to last?"

"My shop has taken in so much water it’s completely ruined!"

Reading these comments left Yu Xian feeling utterly drained. This was the exact Ragtag Army described by Le Pen. "Crowds are not good at rational thinking, but they are very adept at taking action."

This rainstorm had not only flooded the city, it had drowned out reason.

Yu Xian recalled the people at the school gates and the blaring police sirens. So, they weren’t there seeking shelter at all. As a top-tier institution, JCU’s key laboratories naturally became the focal point of the rampant rumors. No wonder the department had issued such an urgent notice.

Yu Xian’s heart skipped a beat as he suddenly thought of someone.

Yang Yiyi.

Could she have gone to the lab? Just yesterday, she had mentioned wanting to use the laboratory equipment to help him analyze that audio clip. Even though she was in the School of Life Sciences and had nothing to do with the "physics experiments" targeted in the article, the mob outside, swept up in the rampant rumors, wouldn’t care to differentiate between physics and life sciences.

Thinking of this, he quickly texted Yang Yiyi:

"Where are you? You didn’t go to the lab, did you? Please, absolutely do not go there."

The message went through, but there was no reply. When he tried calling her, an automated voice said the number was out of the service area, most likely due to the ongoing signal issues. Yu Xian’s heart sank. If she happened to be in the lab right now, the consequences would be unimaginable.

Yu Xian then thought of Wen Xiao.

She was in the North Campus, which housed the dormitories for doctoral and graduate students as well as many of the university’s high-end laboratories. Would that area fall under attack as well?

Even though the North Campus dormitories were more enclosed and boasted better security measures, any line of defense was pathetically fragile in the face of this crazed mob mentality. He tried messaging Wen Xiao, but received the exact same lack of response.

It seemed that it wasn’t just the South District; the signal in the North Campus had been completely severed too. The entirety of JCU was now an isolated island.

And outside this island were surging floodwaters, and something far more terrifying than the flood—the darkness of the human heart.