Chapter 72: Chapter 69: Zhang Fei’s First Experience of Cloud and Rain (Part 2)
At this time, it was already close to midnight, most dorms had either gone to bed or turned off the lights.
Therefore, the angry guy’s piercing voice was extremely penetrating in the darkness, causing the lights in several dorms in the neighboring building to turn on.
Given how it affected surrounding students, it was even more of a shock for the roommates in the same dorm.
With this loud shout, Chang Licheng and another roommate were completely awakened.
Chang Licheng rubbed his eyes while yawning and asked:
"Leon, what’s going on? Something about cockroaches wandering...?"
As he spoke, he paused for a moment, having understood about three-quarters of Leon’s sentence, and realized:
"Oh, I get it, it’s Xu God’s cockroach bait working, right? Some cockroaches died?
Look at you being scared to bits by a couple of cockroaches, and they call you a Lu Dong guy. Do you think this is worthy of your Liangshan Hero ancestors?"
Upon hearing these words, Leon’s face showed a slightly peculiar expression:
"Class monitor, don’t bring up Water Margin, even Monkey Sun from Journey to the West wouldn’t know what to do. Do you know what’s going on outside?"
Before Chang Licheng could respond, Leon gestured a width with his hands and pointed to the corner of the dorm:
"Three meters wide passage, both sides near the walls are filled with cockroaches, damn it! They’re lined up like army ants from room 401 all the way to at least room 420. Think about what kind of scene this is!"
Chang Licheng was initially stunned and instinctively wanted to refute, since the image was too challenging to common sense:
"This doesn’t add up, let me ask you, when our dorm door is closed, there are no gaps below, so cockroaches can’t get in, I understand that.
But in those few seconds when you open the door? Don’t these things squeeze into any opening?
If as you said, the edges of the passage were all cockroaches, wouldn’t several sneak in during that short time?"
Leon opened his mouth, intending to say something but quickly realized he couldn’t explain Chang Licheng’s questions, reluctantly mumbling:
"But, they’re indeed all cockroaches, at least thousands or tens of thousands..."
"Class monitor, Old Leon seems to be telling the truth."
Just as Chang Licheng still wanted to say something, Fu Ming suddenly chimed in, raising his phone which showed the main page of the professional group:
"Look at your phone, everyone in the group is talking about it."
Upon hearing this, Chang Licheng hurriedly took out his phone.
As Fu Ming mentioned, at this moment, the small professional group of only a few dozen people was rapidly filling with messages.
There were also a few short video clips flashing by, practically all about cockroaches.
[Chen Xingyu]: "Holy crap, what’s outside? Biological crisis?????"
[Hu Qing]: "Don’t open the door, open it and bear the consequences!!!!!"
[Gao Yang]: "Literally stunned, our dorm sleeps late, the door was open and it took five minutes for cockroach groups to come in before we realized something was wrong..."
[Chen Xingyu]: "You think you’re unlucky? I just walked out to take out the trash, and the light at the door happened to be out. Walked a few steps and realized something was off, felt thousands of cockroaches crawling over your flip-flops? Now my roommates forced me to use detergent to scrub my feet T.T....."
As he continued, Chen Xingyu suddenly sent a video: "I took this when returning to the dorm, feel free to watch if you wish, and if you don’t believe, you’re welcome to open the door to verify ♪(´∪`●)ゝ"
[Jiang Biguo]: "... So you still have the mind to record a video?"
[Chen Xingyu]: "[Complicated emotions emoji] Well, it’s already dirty anyway, doesn’t matter now...-=͟͟͞͞=͟͟͞͞ﾍ(´Д`)ﾉ"
Chang Licheng first replied with ellipsis, then, somewhat intrigued, clicked on Chen Xingyu’s video.
The video was short, only around ten seconds, but the footage was quite shocking:
The phone was held at the height of an adult male’s neck. Despite a streetlight malfunction causing dim view, further away lights revealed densely packed cockroaches scurrying from the stair entrance towards the trash heap in the middle of the floor.
Even passing dorms with open doors, they did not detour inside.
Of course.
Not all cockroaches were heading to the trash heap.
Some cockroaches coming out from open dorms, perhaps affected by dorm’s bait, attracted many compatriots to start doing something embarrassing on the way.
An old saying goes.
If troops pass a thousand, there’s no border; if troops pass ten thousand, there’s no edge; if people pass ten thousand, they are boundless.
This saying applies to these cockroaches at present, making it difficult to estimate the count just from the video.
The video evidence set before him, coupled with the monkey-like screams outside, made Chang Licheng believe about ninety-eight percent.
As for the remaining two percent, it wasn’t disbelief, but rather a science student’s caution—after all, it hadn’t been seen with his own eyes.
While Chang Licheng watched the video, Fu Ming suddenly spotted something.
With a small exclamation, he quickly approached the balcony entrance, turning on the balcony light:
"Whoa, class monitor, look at the balcony!"
Chang Licheng responded and looked over.
Sure enough, at this very moment, there were over ten cockroaches gathered on the dorm’s balcony floor, stacking layer upon layer, doing something akin to acrobatic feats.
Seeing those cockroaches with wings raised, obviously in a mating frenzy, Chang Licheng suddenly understood some of Xu Yun’s advice:
Before sleeping, close the balcony doors and windows well, take in clothes beforehand if possible, apply bait near cockroach feces on the balcony, avoid dorm interiors...
"Right, Xu God!"
With Xu Yun’s name floating into his mind, Chang Licheng recalled this "mastermind."
Ignoring the lateness, he immediately dialed Xu Yun’s phone.
A moment later, Xu Yun’s voice came through:
"Hello, Licheng? Not sleeping this late?"
"It’s me, Xu God, what are you doing now?"
"Writing a paper, what’s up?"
"It seems the cockroach bait you gave is working..."
"Oh, that’s good news, after sleeping, you’ll probably wake up and see plenty of dead cockroaches."
Gulp.
Chang Licheng swallowed hard and added:
"Xu God, it seems we don’t need to wait until wake up, now... Um, to tell you straight, the whole hallway is filled with cockroaches, at least thousands if not tens of thousands."
On hearing this, Xu Yun was originally rushing his paper, but paused, putting down his pen:
"What do you mean?"
"I mean the whole hallway, from the stair entrance, cockroaches are moving like ants in line..."
Beside his desk, Xu Yun listened, eyes widening.
"... Wait, tell me, how much bait did you apply?"
Chang Licheng was silent for a few seconds:
"Xu God, you only mentioned the dorm balcony amount, didn’t specify the public area’s dose.
Old Ye saw the black mass of cockroach feces at the trash area, vastly more than the dorm, thought maybe a rice grain size wouldn’t suffice, coupled with what we read about Ci Insect Forest potentially having developed resistance, so we applied extra..."
Xu Yun suddenly felt a sense of unease at hearing Chang Licheng’s intermittent explanation.
Considering the inconvenience to dorms in the East District and multiple testing needs, Xu Yun deliberately had given Chang Licheng more bait—after all, this stuff is harmless and isn’t commercially viable, storing isn’t difficult:
"I gave you two tubes of 150 ml large syringe, right? How much did you guys use?"
".... Um, applied all over, covered half the wall....."
"... Damn it??!!"
....
Meanwhile, as Xu Yun was on the phone with Chang Licheng.
Fu Ming glanced at the comment section with constant requests for updates, feeling somewhat vexed:
"Today’s incident truly isn’t on me..."
Thinking and pondering, his eyes suddenly lit up.
He quickly scrolled up the group chat, found Chen Xingyu’s previously recorded video, and shared it via the ’Easter Chapter’ feature on Qidian Novels:
"Believe it or not, today I was startled silly by cockroaches..."
...