IRDLZ Chapter 1

Chapter 1

She wondered if she was imagining things.

Lately, it felt as though something strange had been happening in her home.

A few days ago, she had ordered a large batch of vegetables and seafood through a delivery app and stocked everything in the fridge. Since she had no work scheduled for the next few days, she had planned to stay home, cook for herself, and watch movies.

But before she could settle in and relax, the director called. Some footage from several scenes had been damaged, and she needed to return to the set for reshoots. So she locked up the house and left town with her assistant driving.

Yet when she came home today, she noticed that three stalks of celery and two carrots were missing from the top shelf of the refrigerator. A few other items she distinctly remembered ordering had disappeared as well.

Among them, the can of yellow peaches she liked best seemed to have been moved—the words “preservatives added” were turned directly toward her.

“…?”

Three question marks practically popped up over Ming Qingqing’s head.

She reached into the fridge and searched through it. Aside from the missing vegetables, everything else—including face masks, eye cream, and other miscellaneous items—showed no signs of being touched.

She opened the freezer compartment below and found that the most expensive ingredients, such as sea cucumbers and lobsters, were still sitting there untouched.

“…”

Ming Qingqing lived alone in a six-story villa, complete with a basement and even an underground ski slope. Though the property was spacious and the neighboring houses were far apart, making it feel somewhat deserted, this mountainside villa community was actually one of the safest places a celebrity could live. Security patrols were frequent, and access control was exceptionally strict.

There were no signs of tampering with the fingerprint lock, either.

In other words, it was highly unlikely that a burglar had broken in just to steal a few carrots.

If it wasn’t a thief, then what was it?

Still holding the refrigerator door open, Ming Qingqing stood there in thought.

She was only twenty-five. Was her memory already starting to fail? Maybe she hadn’t bought that much food in the first place. Or perhaps she had eaten those things herself before leaving because she’d been hungry. But carrots and celery were ingredients, not snacks. She’d have to be out of her mind to stir-fry them together and eat them on a whim.

Ming Qingqing was at the peak of her career and under tremendous pressure. Between filming, commercial shoots, magazine covers, and various public appearances, she barely had a moment to herself. After years of chronic sleep deprivation, her memory had indeed worsened. It wasn’t the first time she had been certain she’d signed something, only to discover later that she hadn’t.

The order history on her phone had long since been deleted, so she rummaged through the shopping bags, hoping to find a receipt and confirm how much food she had purchased. After searching for quite a while without success, she finally gave up.

Suppressing the strange feeling in her chest, she decided to blame it on her failing memory.

This was bad.

She was only twenty-five, and her memory was already this unreliable. At this rate, how was she supposed to memorize her lines?

Ming Qingqing walked over to the sofa, sat down, poured herself a glass of water, and swallowed a few vitamins.

Her cat, which she had raised for several years, poked its head in from the balcony. After confirming it was her, it padded over and rubbed its head against her leg. Ming Qingqing bent down and stroked it a few times with her right hand.

With every stroke, a few strands of soft white fur came loose.

Ming Qingqing frowned.

Her cat was a long-haired breed that usually shed only in summer, rarely during winter. Yet this winter, it seemed to be shedding far more than usual.

After greeting her, the cat glanced around uneasily. The moment Ming Qingqing stood up, it became visibly startled. It suddenly dashed away on all fours, scrambling back to its little corner on the balcony before disappearing into its cat bed.

A strange sense of unease crept over her.

Setting down her glass, Ming Qingqing began inspecting the house.

Everything appeared normal. Aside from the excessive cat hair scattered across the sofa, there was nothing unusual.

She got to her feet, switched on every light in the villa from the master control panel, and began checking each room one by one.

Calling it a three-hundred-million-yuan mansion was no exaggeration. When Ming Qingqing had first purchased the property, her immediate impression was that it looked like a castle.

The architecture leaned toward a European style. Beyond the ornate wrought-iron gates stretched a vast green courtyard with a landscaped garden. The distance from the entrance gate to the front door was long enough to require a drive. Inside, aside from the underground ski slope and wine cellar on the first basement level, countless rooms filled the remaining floors, each decorated in a different style.

Living alone, Ming Qingqing had little use for so much space. Most of the time, she stayed on the third floor, rarely venturing beyond it.

What if—

Someone was hiding in the other rooms?

The thought surfaced suddenly, startling her as she stared at the shadow cast by the corridor lights onto the floor.

Although she rarely visited those parts of the villa, her agent arranged for professional cleaners to come every week and clean every room thoroughly. How could anyone possibly be hiding there?

Even so, her heartbeat quickened.

She continued opening doors one after another and checking each room herself.

Half an hour later, nothing unusual had happened.

She shut all the doors and windows, returned to the sofa beside the floor-to-ceiling windows on the third floor, hugged a cushion, and sank into it.

Only then did her heart finally settle.

She let out a long breath.

She must have watched too many horror movies and thrillers.

The villa’s central heating was running. Despite the late hour, the entire place remained brightly lit, and a fire crackled warmly in the fireplace.

Outside, however, rain poured relentlessly from the sky while icy winds howled through the darkness.

The heavy night pressed down over the mountains as flashes of lightning tore across the clouds.

A young figure clung to the roof of the windmill, doing his best to stay hidden.

He wore an oversized, wrinkled dark-blue hoodie with the hood pulled low over his head. Rain had soaked him through, and the wet fabric clung tightly to his face, making his already pale complexion appear even more unnatural.

The boy looked like an abandoned stray puppy caught in a storm.

Water dripped from his forehead, and his gray-blue eyes were filled with fear and unease.

He wouldn’t get caught… would he?

Xiao Fu regretted stealing Ming Qingqing’s food.

But he had been far too hungry.

He had spent a long time hiding and running, unable to find a reliable source of food.

The “people here” were utterly terrified of him. Once, he had rescued a chubby boy from a group of thugs in an alley. Yet the moment the child saw him, he became so frightened that he wet himself. The thugs were no better. After recovering from their shock, they scrambled backward and began throwing stones at him.

If it weren’t for his ability to teleport, he would have been battered and bruised.

The next day, his silhouette appeared in the news, with headlines claiming that a suspected zombie had appeared in Ling County, preying on humans. The article was accompanied by a gruesome movie still of a bleeding-mouthed creature that looked nothing like him, stirring up public panic.

Xiao Fu didn’t understand the meaning of the word “zombie,” but he knew well enough that whenever humans encountered something unfamiliar, fear always seemed to follow.

That was why he decided it was best to stay away from people.

He could control himself and avoid from harming these humans, but they on the other hand, seemed incapable of showing him the same restraint.

He had originally planned to return to the deep mountains. But after his profile appeared in the news, police patrols began searching the surrounding forests. With nowhere left to go, he wandered through several nearby cities, constantly hiding and moving from place to place.

It was the dead of winter. Although he had managed to find a few pieces of wearable clothing in discarded trash, they were far too thin to keep him warm. The cold left his face deathly pale.

To make matters worse, the environment here was completely different from the one he had grown up in. The gravity here was far strong so, his limbs constantly felt as though heavy weights were attached to them making his movements sluggish, his limbs uncoordinated, and he stumbled every few steps.

Whenever things became especially difficult, a familiar face would appear in his thoughts.

When Ming Qingqing was a child, she had rescued him in his juvenile form.

Perhaps Ming Qingqing had already forgotten that encounter, but Xiao Fu never did. From the moment he looked up and met her gaze, something like imprinting settled deep within his heart. Because of her, he once believed all humans were good—soft, fragrant, and radiant. Only after leaving the mountain did he realize how mistaken he was. Whenever people saw him, they screamed, called the police, and did everything they could to capture him.

He wasn’t sure if Ming Qingqing would send him off for research if she saw him. But right now, he truly had nowhere else to go.

Besides, Xiao Fu thought deep down—being sent off by her would still be better than being captured by someone else.

After sneaking into her house, he didn’t want to scare her, so he had been extremely careful, not touching anything in the house. He would rather drink rainwater than turn on her faucet, and when he slept, he curled up inside a cardboard box, taking up barely any space at all, determined not to cause her any trouble.

But winter had grown harsher, and there were fewer and fewer birds to catch. He hadn’t eaten in days, and hunger gnawed at him. The dew that sustained him during colder nights was no longer enough. When hunger became too severe, his strength weakened, making it even harder to practice walking under the heavy gravity of this world.

So, while Ming Qingqing was away, he couldn’t resist anymore and quietly nibbled on a few of her carrots.

Clearly, it had made her suspicious.

Xiao Fu felt a twinge of shame, embarrassed by his own thievery, but also a bit dejected and discouraged, if she discovered him, she would surely kick him out, wouldn’t she?

Xiao Fu crouched on the rooftop, lost in thought, drenched by the pouring rain for three hours, looking like a drowned rat.

After what felt like a long time, most of the lights inside the villa finally went out.

Ming Qingqing had finished reading a book and gone to sleep with her cat in her arms.

Xiao Fu’s hearing and eyesight were extraordinarily sharp, far surpassing those of an eagle.

Hearing Ming Qingqing enter her bedroom and close the door, he let out a breath of relief.

He looked down at his dripping black hair, his soaked jacket, and his waterlogged trousers, a troubled expression crossing his face. Clumsily, he lifted the hem of his pants and wrung out the water. But his clothes were completely soaked through, wringing them wouldn’t make much difference.

After a moment’s hesitation, Xiao Fu decided to teleport straight back to his hiding spot. Every night, after going out to forage, he would pick up a few things to bring back.

Many of them were objects he had never seen in the deep mountains—like an old radio that could still play music, discarded by some fickle human who had grown tired of it. Or a Rubik’s cube that could spin into various colors, or a silver spoon with a curved radian he had never seen on his home planet.

He was endlessly curious about all of them.

Some items, such as broken swings, he would quietly repair at night before teleporting them into the courtyards of orphanages. Other small items, he couldn’t bear to part with would always end up in his “home”—the little nest he had made inside Ming Qingqing’s villa.

Besides that, he had even collected washed fabric scraps and spread them inside the cardboard box so he could dry himself off without dripping water onto Ming Qingqing’s wooden floor.

Having spent some time around humans, Xiao Fu knew they really disliked having their wooden floors soaked.

For now, he just needed to get through the night.

If the sun was good tomorrow, he could carry his nest to a quiet spot on the mountaintop and let it dry.

Xiao Fu’s tense nerves finally relaxed, and he even let out a relieved smile.

Thinking this, after confirming that the empty room where he had placed his cardboard box was completely still, Xiao Fu focused his mind.

The next second, he teleported back.

But then—

Plop.

He lowered his head, and the raindrops from the ends of his hair splattered onto the wooden floor.

Xiao Fu realized with horror that the spot where he had placed his cardboard box was now completely empty.

Someone had taken his nest.

At the same time, Ming Qingqing, dressed in her pajamas and slippers, her long curly hair tied up, was squatting by her bedroom bed, curiously rummaging through the contents of a cardboard box. She had found it in an empty room while searching the house.

For a female celebrity like Ming Qingqing, clothes and bags alone could fill several rooms. After moving in, there had been a huge pile of empty cardboard boxes stacked in an unused room, nothing strange about that.

But what were these rags inside the box?

And a worn-out, paint-chipped radio, a bent spoon, and a broken Rubik’s cube—what were those supposed to be?

There was even a tattered copy of The Complete Book of Literacy.

All of them were hoarded like treasures.

Ming Qingqing picked up her cat from the bed and let it sniff the box. “Did you do this?”

Her cat was clearly uninterested, quickly wriggling free and running off.

Ming Qingqing frowned.

Given the size of the cardboard box, it wasn’t something a cat would like.

Could it be that some stray dog had made itself a nest in her house?