The Little Chef Stockpiles Supplies and Carries Her Whole Family

Autumn Equinox, before dawn, the fifth watch still in progress.

The frost stung like needles against any exposed skin.

Shen Zhihe crouched by her vegetable garden. The instant her fingertips pinched off a handful of greens, her brows suddenly furrowed.

Strange purple blotches tinged the edges of the leaves, as if they had been scorched and then soaked in poison.

She turned a leaf over. A fine layer of droplets had surfaced on the underside, cold and clammy to the touch.

In the old well not far away, wisps of something floated on the surface. They looked like cotton fluff, or perhaps rotting fungal threads, slowly swirling in the breeze.

She crouched down, lifted one corner of the straw mat, and pressed her palm straight against the soil.

The cold pierced to her bones.

“Something’s wrong... It’s too cold.” She muttered under her breath, her gaze tightening. “At this time of year, the soil temperature should still be at least twelve degrees. Now... it’s not even nine.”

She looked up at the sky.