Jiang Chuan watched their bewildered expressions through the rearview mirror, smiling without offering any explanation.
They knew nothing of Sister Xun’s true power.
One month ago, the apocalypse had arrived suddenly, and he was still a university student at the time. When the official team arrived to escort them to the base, his half-brother, an ability user, had humiliated and beaten him before locking him inside a classroom to fend for himself. By the time Jiang Chuan broke a window and jumped down from the building, the evacuation team had long since departed.
The university campus had become a zombie paradise.
As an ordinary person who had not awakened any abilities, Jiang Chuan lived in constant terror, facing a school teeming with zombies.
Two days later, disheveled and barely having made it out of the school, he spent over half a month living in misery, trying to catch up with the evacuated team, when he encountered Sister Xun, who was surrounded by a horde of zombies.
Jiang Chuan had known who Chu Zhaoxun was before the apocalypse: the granddaughter of Commander Chu, the biological younger sister of Chu Muhuan, and the fiancée of Lou Lihan.
However, the two of them were not close before this.
Zhaoxun was a “daughter of heaven,” and while his Jiang family had some wealth and connections, they could not compare to the Chu family in terms of power.
Seeing her in the middle of a zombie swarm, Jiang Chuan was shocked but dared not step forward to save her. He was certain that she would have her neck snapped by a zombie the very next second.
But to his astonishment, Zhaoxun performed a strange hand seal, and after a moment of stupor, the zombies stopped attacking her and instead began to slaughter each other.
Jiang Chuan had been stunned.
What kind of ability is this?
Control?
She can control zombies?!
So cool! So powerful!
Jiang Chuan hadn’t awakened an ability in over half a month, and he envied the ability users terribly. Seeing her preparing to leave, he immediately followed, wanting to cling to her metaphorical “thigh” to reach the central base. After all, the probability of an ordinary person surviving alone until they reached the base was virtually zero.
At that time, Sister Xun had looked at him, appraised him, and asked, “You have no abilities?”
The second sentence she said was, “I can give you an ability, but on the condition that you submit to me.”
When Jiang Chuan heard the first sentence, he thought she looked down on him, but after hearing the second, he had agreed without a second’s hesitation.
That was an ability! It was the foundation for survival in the apocalypse!
He had dreamed of awakening an ability every night for those past few days! Even if she asked him to be a servant, he would have accepted!
Later, she became Sister Xun.
And he became a metal-ability user, following Sister Xun’s side and obeying her commands. Sister Xun’s words were the imperial edict. After all, for the past ten days, as long as he followed the path she pointed out, the probability of encountering zombies was significantly lower.
Beyond that, Sister Xun had incredibly high standards for her quality of life. Inferior things couldn’t even catch her eye. But Jiang Chuan felt that a powerhouse like Sister Xun deserved the very best of everything.
Even the cat Sister Xun kept wasn’t an ordinary cat. Come to think of it, he was even a bit envious of that cat. When Sister Xun found it a week ago, it was half-dead and looked like it was about to take its last breath. Only a few days later, Sister Xun had raised it until its fur was sleek and shiny and it had grown plump.
Sigh, actually, I kind of want to be a cat, too.
Jiang Chuan pulled his thoughts back and continued driving forward.
Zhaoxun watched the abandoned buildings receding outside the window; this was a place entirely different from the Immortal Spirit Continent.
Zombies rampaged, species mutated, and wasteland stretched across the land. This was a world waiting to be saved, waiting for hope to be restored.
Zhaoxun had arrived in this world ten days ago.
She had originally been the young sect leader of the Immortal Spirit Continent’s number-one sect, the Lian Sect, but because news leaked that she possessed the sect’s supreme treasure, the Primordial Pearl, the various sects rose up, forcing her to hand it over.
However, the Primordial Pearl was bound to her soul; the moment she handed it over would be the moment of her death. To protect her, the entire sect fought the other sects to the death, with no one surviving.
Zhaoxun should have been devastated, but she simply and calmly refined the souls of everyone in her sect into a soul banner. This, too, was the wish of the sect members. In their words: “Our souls entering the soul banner will increase the banner’s power and allow us to continue protecting our young sect leader in the future.”
The Lian Sect could refine pills, weapons, people, souls, and everything in existence. After the sect fell, Zhaoxun sacrificed her body to the furnace, refining the experts of the various sects who had besieged her one by one, perishing with them.
When Zhaoxun opened her eyes again, she had arrived in Great Xia.
Zhaoxun surmised that the Primordial Pearl must have saved her, allowing her to be reborn. The original owner of this body was also named Zhaoxun, but with the surname Chu.
From the original owner’s memories, she learned that she had been schemed against on the way to the base, lost her newly opened spatial bracelet, was injured and poisoned, and then pushed into a horde of zombies, dying of exhaustion and grief.
After her rebirth, Zhaoxun received all of the original owner’s memories.
She was a somewhat willful pampered miss who hadn’t experienced many storms, but her heart wasn’t bad. Before she died, she had prayed to the gods in her heart, hoping that the people she loved could live well, hoping that the apocalypse would end, that prosperity and joy would return, and that the country would be safe and the people at peace.
Zhaoxun, having been reborn in her body, took on that karma.
The prayer of Chu Zhaoxun was answered by her.
It was only a pity that her soul was severely injured. Her cultivation had plummeted from the Profound Immortal stage to the Foundation Establishment stage, and she would have to start everything over from scratch. Furthermore, all her treasures were almost entirely destroyed. Inside her soul space sat the Primordial Pearl, the spirit tablets of the thirty thousand people of the Lian Sect, and a single soul banner.
Foundation Establishment cultivation.
Zhaoxun felt a bit helpless.
Born in the Immortal Spirit Continent, she was at the Golden Core stage from birth; she had never been this weak before.
This world’s apocalypse came too suddenly and strangely. There were two ways to end it.
First, to eliminate the zombies, clear out the mutant creatures and anomalies, let the trees grow, make the earth green again, and rebuild their home.
Second, to reverse time and return to the moment before the apocalypse arrived.
However, that would likely require the cultivation of an Immortal Emperor, mastering the laws of life, creation, and time. And there were only three Immortal Emperors in their cultivation world—the top powerhouses of the Immortal World living on a continent higher than the Immortal Spirit Continent.
Zhaoxun did not know how long she would need to cultivate in this apocalypse to achieve the cultivation of an Immortal Emperor. But regardless of which method she chose to end the apocalypse, she had to find the root cause of its arrival and resolve it. Otherwise, if the apocalypse descended again and again, all their previous efforts would have been in vain.
As Zhaoxun pondered, Jiang Chuan, who was driving, suddenly spoke.
“Sister Xun, you said someone would come to rescue us earlier; who is leading the team?”
Zhaoxun recalled for a moment. When the original owner could still communicate half a month ago, she had cried and pestered her fiancé, Lou Lihan, to come and pick her up personally.
And Lou Lihan had agreed.
Zhaoxun replied: “If there are no surprises, it should be Lou Lihan.”
But as she said this, she frowned, feeling a sense of unease.
A cultivator’s intuition was never without cause; she feared something had happened to Lou Lihan. In Chu Zhaoxun’s heart, apart from her grandfather and older brother, Lou Lihan was the most important person.
He could not die.
After all, Chu Zhaoxun’s wish was for them to live well.
Jiang Chuan’s eyes lit up upon hearing this.
“Lou Lihan, Sister Xun’s fiancé! I heard about him before—Lou Lihan has a powerful lightning ability. If he’s coming to rescue us, our journey back to the base will be even safer. But now that communications are cut, who knows when the rescue team will find us.”
On this journey, Sister Xun rarely made a move, almost always letting him fight the zombies, saying it was to train him. Jiang Chuan believed this implicitly, but he was truly exhausted on his own, so he hoped the rescue team would arrive soon.
Zhaoxun looked out the window: “It’s not that simple.”