The seventh day of the apocalypse. The weather was clear.
It was early autumn, and the air had begun to cool. With a cigarette hanging from his lips, Qi Yue stood before the bathroom mirror. Smoke swirled around him. Before the end of the world, Qi Yue had been a homebody with a serious smoking habit pulling all-nighters to rush manuscripts or play games, cigarettes were a constant companion. After the apocalypse and countless cycles of rebirth, that addiction had faded; he could take it or leave it. But somehow, in this lifetime, the craving had returned. Whenever he was quiet, he wanted a few drags.
He wiped the fog on the mirror, staring at his own reflection. Even before the end, Qi Yue knew he looked good. People would sneak glances at him in the street, and when he was in school, he’d often receive love notes from girls. After so many rebirths, his appearance seemed to grow even more flawless. His skin was smoother than a woman’s, and at twenty-five, he looked no older than fifteen or sixteen. In nearly every lifetime, both men and women of all kinds had confessed to him. He had rejected them all. The wounds they left, resentment, not love were what truly lingered.
Yes, resentment. That first rebirth taught him what hatred really was. In that lifetime, he awakened to dual abilities: lightning and plant control, an incredibly rare occurrence, one in a million. It was his most ambitious life. He thought he had prepared for everything. But in the end, he still fell at the hands of a woman.
Liu Yue. A survivor he rescued on the way to the S Base, in a place called Licheng. To help her find her relatives at the distant L Base, he gave up heading for the nearby S Base and detoured thousands of miles instead. At first, she hadn’t even awakened any ability. God, he wanted to stab his past self in the eyes. How stupid must he have been to think she was “gentle” and “kind”? She had been using him all along, just so he’d escort her to the L Base. And only he had failed to see it.
Along the journey, they joined teams, and he always took care of her, protected her, and comforted her. When she developed a fever from awakening her healing ability, he risked his life to get medicine from a relief station, almost dying in the hands of a Level 4 zombie. After she awakened, she slowly distanced herself, flirting with their team leader behind his back. In front of others, she tripped the leader’s fiancée up, and he, fool that he was, still defended her.
That wasn’t the end of it. On their second day at L Base, she set him up, crippled his right hand, and delivered him straight to Feng Zhe, the leader of the base. Feng Zhe, Liu Yue’s cousin, was infamous for his taste in beautiful men. He was especially obsessed with ability users like Qi Yue.
Pressing down a dual-ability user heightened Feng Zhe’s excitement. He tormented Qi Yue endlessly, and when he grew bored, handed him off to his subordinates.
Lin Yuze, he was the only warmth in those hundred days of agony. A low-ranking subordinate of Feng Zhe’s, he had joined to secure a place of safety for his grandmother, who’d raised him. A mere Level 1 wind ability user, he would sneak food to Qi Yue whenever he could.
And in the end, Qi Yue failed him. Lin Yuze had risked everything to help him escape. They were caught, Lin Yuze was beaten to death. He had been the only one who truly cared, the only one who gave his life for him.
As for Liu Yue, she later married a powerful man who replaced Feng Zhe as the L Base leader, a dual-ability user strong enough to challenge the government itself. Qi Yue had seen that man once, from afar: tall, sharp-featured, a former underworld boss, with countless devoted subordinates. He was cold to everyone but Liu Yue, to whom he was endlessly gentle.
So many times, Qi Yue had wanted revenge. But the chance never came. She was always too well protected. Guards with high-level powers surrounded her. After so many futile rebirths, despair and bitterness became habit. His enemies lived well, while he died over and over.
It wasn’t until he met his biological mother that he regained some drive, only to be betrayed again, stabbed through the heart under the guise of maternal affection.
Thinking of it now, he slammed his fist into the mirror. Shards bit into his knuckles, and the sting only deepened his resolve. Eyes red, he swore silently:
Those who treat me well, I will repay tenfold. Those who betray me, I’ll make them pay a hundred times over.
Anyone who awakened an ability gained physical strength and speed, along with some level of mental awareness, the ability to sense danger. Those who awakened spiritual abilities could detect environmental changes and threats more acutely.
Zombies still followed their usual pattern: hiding by day, active at night. They hadn’t evolved yet. The building was quiet, too quiet. It seemed only a few families remained. No zombies in the stairwell yet, which meant the iron gate downstairs was still holding. For now.
Through the bathroom window, he could see the building across the street. A few silhouettes moved inside some apartments, he couldn’t tell if they were zombies or survivors.
The past few days, some people still went out for supplies. The braver ones had already left earlier. The ones remaining were those clinging to hope that the military would come.
He sneered. “The military? They’re never coming.”
If anyone came, it’d be to scavenge, not to save.
Just then, the screech of tires shattered the quiet. The sound of rubber burning against concrete made him wince. “D*mn it, what kind of idiot is that?”
A minivan came barreling toward his building, dozens of zombies chasing behind it.
Bang!
The van crashed into the iron gate with a deafening clang. The gate collapsed instantly, the van wedged in the doorway.
“Sh*t—sh*t!” Qi Yue cursed under his breath. “Just my luck. I could’ve lasted weeks, and now this.” The gate was gone, staying here was no longer safe.
From the shattered rear window of the van, several young people climbed out, boys and girls, probably university students.
“Tang Ke! Behind you!” someone shouted.
A young man in a baseball cap and jacket turned sharply, swinging a half-meter machete. One clean stroke, he decapitated the zombie nearest him. Others wielded bats, metal rods, and various abilities: wind, lightning, water, earth, all bursting chaotically together.
After taking down over ten zombies, they clambered through the van roof and into Qi Yue’s building. The last of them, an earth ability user, raised a wall of soil over the shattered entrance.
But the horde was closing in: dozens, maybe hundreds. Qi Yue’s scalp prickled. “D*mn it. Speak of the devil.”
Thud, thud, thud! Footsteps echoed up the stairwell until they stopped at his door. Loud kicks followed, and voices, urgent, panicked. The sound was deafening in the otherwise silent building, and soon it drew a chorus of low, chilling moans from the zombies below.
Another bang, a door across the hall gave way.
That apartment used to belong to an elderly couple. The husband had died early last year, and their daughter had taken the widow to the provincial capital. The place had sat empty since. The old folks were frugal, they hadn’t even installed a security door.
Tang Ke, twenty-one, a student at nearby S University. Two years ago, he had begun to make a name for himself in show business: acting, singing, everything came easily. Handsome, charming, always with that half-smile that made people’s hearts flutter. Normally, he wasn’t even on campus, but he’d come to pick up study materials. After a night of partying and drinking, he decided to crash at school. When he woke up the next morning, the world was already chaos, people eating people. He and a few classmates had hidden in the campus cafeteria, surviving there for days. During that time, he awakened an ice ability.
There were a total of nine people: seven students: five men and two women and two security guards from the school. Especially those two: in the morning, when they were prying open car doors in the school parking lot, the guards had crawled out of the security room. Although both of them had awakened abilities, they looked sneaky and unreliable. Tang Ke had voiced his opinion at the time, saying he didn’t agree with bringing them along, but was immediately met with unanimous criticism from the others especially Liao Feifan’s girlfriend, Cao Xiner, who accused Tang Ke in a righteous, scolding tone of being cold-blooded and heartless. Who knew what set this “heroine” off; she kept targeting him at every turn. Wasn’t it just that he dumped her? She already found her next man, was this what people meant by “love turning to hate”?
After they finished resting, the boys prepared to go upstairs to search the rooms for supplies, when Liao Feifan stopped Tang Ke: “It’s the apocalypse. We should be helping each other, not abandoning our companions.” Seeing the eager look in the others’ eyes, he brightened, raised his voice, and continued, “As long as everyone works together, we can definitely make it safely to S Base and survive.”
Tang Ke arched a brow, his amber eyes staring straight at Liao Feifan. His well-shaped thin lips pressed tightly together, saying nothing. Other than his roommate Sun Ling, who he had some genuine friendship with, Tang Ke couldn’t even be bothered to spare the others a glance. This scene set off Cao Xiner again: “Tang Ke, you’re just scared of dying! Let me tell you, wipe that look off your face! You’re no longer the rich young master you used to be, your family’s money is all worthless now!”
She hated that lofty attitude Tang Ke always carried. Coming from an ordinary family, Cao Xiner had fallen for him at first sight: rich family, handsome face, a celebrity, generous with his money, everything about him tugged at her heart. She worked extremely hard just to make Tang Ke pursue her instead. When he finally asked her to be his girlfriend, she was so excited she couldn’t sleep all night, making all sorts of plans about becoming a rich wife after graduation. But she never expected that less than two weeks into dating, Tang Ke would dump her. Even though she later chose the slightly poorer student council president Liao Feifan as her boyfriend, she still kept that resentment bottled up.
Now that the apocalypse had come, everyone was supposedly equal. She had even awakened an indispensable water ability, and she had a boyfriend who constantly catered to her. Although Liao Feifan wasn’t quite as outstanding as Tang Ke, he was still sunny and handsome. In her eyes, what was Tang Ke anyway? Just an empty-shell rich second-generation.
“Ah, Xiner, stop it. Look, we escaped all the way here from the city and everyone’s fine, right? Plus, we’ve got abilities now.” Another girl, Du Mengyao, smiled cheerfully as she smoothed things over, pulling Cao Xiner back into the room.
Sun Ling, grinning like a rascal, pushed Tang Ke toward the stairs. The whole conversation ended in an unpleasant mess.
