Magic Space: Struggling to Survive in the Apocalypse Chapter 40: High Temperature, Snake Plague 4

Just as Evelyn Ford had told Officer Graham before, snakes were a very vindictive species. Not only did they like to claim territory, but they also tended to operate within a fixed area. Most snakes lived in groups, like king cobras, but they also had the tendency to cannibalize their own kind—large snakes eating small ones.

So when Evelyn Ford pulled back the curtains again and saw yesterday’s Blue-ringed Sea Snake coiled outside the window, its head held high, her mindset shifted dramatically. It wasn’t fear, but a strange urge to conquer and hunt it that surged within her.

Snakes are cold-blooded animals; their body temperature changes with their environnt. Books said that snake blood was fishy and astringent. According to folk redies, snake blood was a powerful tonic, believed to enhance virility and invigorate the kidneys.

While Evelyn Ford was plotting how to kill it quickly, the snake was also warily observing her.

At that mont, human and snake, separated by the glass, were sizing each other up.

Evelyn Ford needed to protect her ho; it was her only safe zone. She had to drive away the "robber" attempting to invade. For the snake to claim this territory, it had to kill the original inhabitant. This was a battle to defend her ho. Under the snake’s gaze, Evelyn Ford took a piece of fresh at from her storage space. She had already coated her combat knife and Crossbow Arrows with a homade poison. Placing the at on the windowsill, Evelyn Ford carefully slid the window open, creating a five-centiter gap.

Luring a snake required speed, precision, and ruthlessness. Evelyn Ford held her breath, sinking slightly into her knees. The muggy air from outside, mixed with a fishy, foul stench, filled her nostrils. She blocked out all other distractions, her focus locked on the slowly approaching Blue-ringed Sea Snake.

Perhaps it sensed the danger, as it didn’t advance recklessly. Instead, it began a contest of patience with Evelyn Ford. ’How could I possibly lose to it?’ Today, she would show this snake what a true apex predator was.

Sudden strikes were a snake’s signature hunting tactic. It would only take a second. If she could sever its head the mont it lunged, Evelyn Ford would win. All she had to do now was wait for the perfect opportunity.

Evelyn Ford slightly adjusted her stance. A new thought had occurred to her. ’If the snake’s blood sprays onto my face, that warm, stinking liquid will plaster my skin. If I accidentally lick any of it, I probably won’t have an appetite for a month.’

The devil is in the details—a fundantal quality for any hunter. Clearly, Evelyn Ford was more patient than the snake. The fresh at was right there on the windowsill, its allure as irresistible as an opiate. It couldn’t hold back any longer.

Evelyn Ford raised an eyebrow slightly, but she didn’t get cocky or lower her guard. Her own life was balanced on the tip of her blade. If she was slow for even a second—no, not even a second—if she hesitated for a fraction of a mont, she would be the one to die. In that instant, Evelyn Ford was using the Blue-ringed Sea Snake as a tool to hone her speed, completely unaware of just how crazed she had beco.

"HISS HISS..."

The instant the snake opened its mouth to bite the fresh at, its body arched, scales shimring in the sunlight. The knife in Evelyn Ford’s hand flashed down. In a single second, its head was severed from its body.

Blood sprayed across the windowsill and the curtains. Just as Evelyn Ford had predicted, it had still gone for a sudden strike. Only in the instant her blade fell did she finally let out a heavy sigh of relief.

She had won.

The upper half of its body hung precariously from the windowsill, twitching. Its head had already rolled off into the filthy, steaming floodwaters below. Evelyn Ford could even hear the SPLASH.

After closing the window, Evelyn Ford carried the snake’s body into the kitchen and tossed it into a stainless-steel basin, looking down on it like a conqueror.

’So this kind of fear can be overco and eliminated.’ The mont she killed it, the snake beca no different in her eyes than the venomous moths and toads she had dealt with before.

She returned to the windowsill and wiped away all the splattered blood. As for the curtains, Evelyn Ford simply took them down and replaced them with a new set. To mask the sll of snake blood, she lit a few sticks of mugwort incense and added a drop of dicated oil to the air.

Butchering the snake was not a simple task. First, it had to be skinned. Then, she slit open its belly and removed all the internal organs. A snake’s five main viscera were its gallbladder, heart, lungs, liver, and intestines. She kept the gallbladder and threw the rest in the trash.

For Evelyn Ford, eating the snake at was the biggest challenge. She set aside enough for one al, which she prepared as a red-braised dish, and stored the rest in her storage space. This Blue-ringed Sea Snake had been two ters long with a considerable weight. However, snake at contains a large number of bacteria and parasites, so it should only be eaten occasionally.

Evelyn Ford took a bite. The flavor was actually quite good—the at was tender and delicate, not tough or dry at all.

That night, Evelyn Ford washed her hands with white liquor, soaking them until they were red before she finally stopped.

In the days that followed, every snake that dared to challenge Evelyn Ford’s dominion—be it large or small, venomous or not—was systematically eliminated. She left none alive.

One day, Evelyn Ford dared to poke her head out the window. She saw that the floodwaters had receded to the seventh floor, but before she could feel a shred of joy, the sight of the water below struck her speechless. It was a dense, writhing mass of snakes.

On the walls, in the water, on floating planks of wood, on abandoned assault boats, on the skeletons of unidentifiable creatures, on the balconies and railings of the building opposite hers... There wasn’t a single empty space to be seen.

Evelyn Ford slamd the window shut. She felt that even closed wasn’t safe enough. Gasping for breath, she pressed her hands against the thick, bulletproof glass, as if the mont she let go, the snakes outside would swarm up and break into her ho.

Evelyn Ford chugged a glass of ice water, and the horrifying image in her mind finally began to recede.

A burst of hurried footsteps sounded from upstairs. A flicker of light entered Evelyn Ford’s eyes. ’Looks like soone else is still alive in the building.’

A long ti ago, Evelyn Ford had read a forum post titled, "If the world were to be completely reset, could humanity ever reclaim its position as the dominant species?"

The replies to the post were varied, but the comnt that had stuck with her the most was the one with the highest number of upvotes.

"If the world were to be reset, humanity would first face a crisis of survival of the fittest. The fit: Intelligence, physical strength, and financial resources—all are indispensable. The unfit: The disabled, the elderly, the weak, the reckless, the impulsive, the arrogant. Possessing even one of these traits would lead to swift elimination. A reset also ans humanity would have to contend with nature and compete with other organisms. Humanity’s greatest strength is its resilience, not its power. Barring a miracle, humans might just beco the next ’extinct dinosaurs.’"

Under the two-pronged assault of insurmountable natural disasters and other species, did humanity still have a place in this world?

Or rather, how much longer could they hold on?

The fan and humidifier in the living room ran in tandem. Amid their WHIRRING, Evelyn Ford lay on her folding cot and, utterly exhausted, fell into a deep sleep.

A giant python swam lazily through the water. Its forked, scarlet tongue flicked out, and it swiftly coiled around a smaller snake, swallowing it whole. The weak not only lack the ability to resist; even at the hands of their own kind, they cannot escape the fate of being slaughtered.