When Ban Xia woke up in her bed, heavy rain from last night was still drumming against the window.

Nanjing’s rain came suddenly and violently. It started with distinct drops, one per second hitting the window frame, then within half a minute, the frequency increased dramatically until it became a downpour. Eventually, you couldn’t hear individual drops any more – it was as if a high-pressure faucet had been turned on in the sky.

Usually, this weather wasn’t suitable for going out, but today she had to visit the Nanjing Library.

Ban Xia carried two white plastic buckets downstairs and placed them in the heavy rain in front of the building entrance. She placed two broken black umbrellas upside down over the bucket openings – with today’s rainfall, by the time she returned, both buckets would be full.

This was how Ban Xia got her daily water. Rainwater was cleaner than lake water, but it still needed purification. Her usual method was to add some alum to the buckets.

Next, she put on her backpack, raincoat, and sandals, took an umbrella, and set out with her bicycle.

Ban Xia sang loudly, turning a mournful love song into something powerful and resonant.

She had to sing. If you didn’t sing out loud, your voice would be suppressed by this world. Her teacher once said everyone had an AT field – Ban Xia didn’t understand what an AT field was, but she interpreted it as yang energy. Everyone had yang energy, some strong, some weak, and those with strong yang energy weren’t afraid of evil spirits and corruption.

For a while, Ban Xia firmly believed in this theory, so she looked everywhere for foods that could strengthen yang energy.

The rain was so heavy it created a white mist. Walking along Muxuyuan Street, looking into the distance, tall buildings stood under dark rain clouds, but not a single light showed. It was as if everyone had left overnight, but the city remained in place.

Ban Xia gradually stopped singing because walking became increasingly difficult.

The city quickly flooded, with water reaching ankle-deep on the roads. Muddy water rushed across the streets. The girl walked in sandals through the water, with the flow washing sand between her toes. She had to stop periodically to shake her shoes and clean off the mud.

When the wind picked up, she couldn’t use the umbrella anymore, so Ban Xia folded it and attached it to her bicycle’s rack. She relied on her plastic raincoat to endure the torrential rain, though its effectiveness was limited. Soon she was soaked through, the raincoat clinging to her arms and legs. Fortunately, she had worn a short-sleeve shirt and shorts, anticipating this situation.

She quietly thought that going naked might be better in this heavy rain.

She even seriously considered the feasibility of doing this – should she stop now and take off her clothes? She could wrap them in waterproof plastic and stuff them in her backpack, then she wouldn’t have to worry about the rain.

But she shook her head – that would be silly.

The Nanjing Library was about five kilometers from Meihua Mountain Manor, an hour’s walk, or double that in bad weather.

Her teacher had said to avoid going out in bad weather if possible – catching a cold could lead to fever, which could lead to pneumonia, and pneumonia was untreatable!

Suddenly Ban Xia’s foot slipped into space.

Before she could react, her body tilted and sank sharply. One moment her foot was on solid ground, the next it had plunged into bottomless water. Before she could cry out, the girl’s waist slammed hard against the edge of a manhole. Sharp pain radiated from the impact point, making her whimper weakly as her body reflexively curled up.

It hurt!

But before she could groan, murky water covered her mouth and nose. Most of her body plunged into the water with a “thunk!” She involuntarily swallowed several mouthfuls of dirty water before realizing she had stepped into a sewer manhole.

The flood had washed away the manhole cover, and the murky water had hidden the opening. The space below was already filled with water – it was a death trap.

Ban Xia nearly drowned in that hole. She instinctively grabbed the edge and desperately climbed out, collapsing on the road surface, and coughing violently.

Now she was completely covered in muddy water, both person and bag soaked through.

Ban Xia held her waist and smiled bitterly, the pain distorting her expression as rain streamed down her face.

After resting dejectedly in the downpour for a while, the girl got up to steady her bicycle and found the umbrella was missing.

“Where’s my umbrella? Where’s my umbrella?”

Ban Xia was stunned.

Had it fallen into the manhole?

She bent to look at the opening, but the manhole was pitch black, its bottom invisible.

Suddenly, there was a chorus of “squeak-squeak” from above. Ban Xia looked up – good heavens, the French Parasol trees’ dense canopy was full of monkeys!

A large group of monkeys was sheltering from the rain under the canopy, fighting over a blue folding umbrella.

“Give me back my umbrella!”

Ban Xia shouted angrily, drawing her bow.

“Don’t tear it! Don’t bite it! Don’t bite-!”

As the umbrella was passed around, Ban Xia couldn’t decide which monkey to aim at. Finally, a small gray monkey got hold of it and was playing with the frame when an arrow struck the tree trunk just below its bottom.

This terrified the monkey, and the umbrella fell from its hands into the greenery below.

Ban Xia went to pick up the umbrella, looking dejectedly at what was now just tattered cloth.

The monkeys above jumped back and forth, making faces and creating a racket at the girl below, but she couldn’t understand what they were saying.

The joys and sorrows of humans and monkeys don’t align – I just find the world noisy, she thought.

Oh well.

She didn’t bother getting angry with a group of monkeys. The girl silently picked up her bicycle, attached the broken umbrella to it, shouldered her soaked backpack, and walked away in the downpour, covered in mud.

Nanjing Library was at 189 East Zhongshan Road, one of the largest libraries in the country. Its main building was a seven-story glass-walled tower that, in some knowledge-worshipping alternate world, would qualify as a temple.

Ban Xia pushed her bicycle across the plaza in front of this temple. At the bottom of the library steps were huge marble blocks with gold-plated characters, uncleaned and covered in dried bird droppings.

The girl looked up at the deep blue glass walls, climbing the steps one by one like the last pilgrim to visit a temple.

The library’s main entrance remained open – the revolving door was smashed, but the side door could be freely accessed. The last person to leave hadn’t cared to lock it. Ban Xia passed through the glass doors into the hall, only to find this former sanctuary of books was empty except for scattered garbage.

The newspaper and periodicals section was on the third floor south side, but Ban Xia found nothing. She walked lonely through the dim hall, leaving a trail of dripping mud. The rows of bookshelves were covered in dust, with only scraps of waste paper to be found.

The sixth and seventh floors housed the document repository, but they too were empty.

After three hours of searching the building, Ban Xia concluded – she had come for nothing.

The library had been emptied. In the most turbulent early years, books, newspapers, and magazines had all become fuel, carried away in bundles by people to burn. Nothing remained.

The girl stood before the shelves. In the vast library, she finally found two books forgotten in a corner. She stood on tiptoe to take them down, brushing away thick dust to barely make out their covers.

“Death on… Mars?”

“Titan Without… Sound.”

Ban Xia didn’t know how they had escaped destruction – perhaps because they were non-combustible waste.

She silently went downstairs and made a fire in the rest area, using the two books she’d just found as kindling. Then she took off all her mud-soaked clothes and hung them on nearby chairs to dry.

The girl sat naked by the fire, which crackled on the floor as torrential rain fell outside the transparent glass walls. Listening to the rain, she buried her head in her knees, muddy water still dripping from her wet hair.

A deep exhaustion welled up from within.

Ban Xia was tired.

Too tired to say a single word.