Wu Fang was already dead.
Her body lay on the cold floor of the mini-mart, her pupils dilated and her face ash-gray.
Her corpse was slowly cooling down, her blood thickening into a viscous, darkening fluid oozing from her chest wound—far from the vibrant crimson it used to be.
The infection progressed faster than expected—
It took barely ten-odd minutes for the mutant virus to spread entirely through a human body.
Kneeling beside his mother, Little Chubby looked entirely dazed, tears falling silently down his cheeks.
He couldn’t squeeze out a single sound.
On his arm, around the area where the mutant had bitten him, the grayish-black lines were receding at a speed visible to the naked eye—
Replaced by a soft, almost transparent shimmer.
That was the telltale sign of an ability awakening.
Standing two paces away, Xia Qing observed the changes in Little Chubby with a cold, analytical eye.
Children had weaker willpower, making them the easiest targets to control.
She filed this note away quietly in her mind.
If she ever needed to use her Charm ability on a minor in the future, the success rate would likely be significantly higher than on an adult.
The mutant carcass lay nearby, its black blood pooling across the floor.
Drawing her short blade, Xia Qing casually severed the creature’s head in a single fluid stroke.
The hideous head rolled across the floor with a wet thud, coming to a halt against a display shelf leg.
Its pair of pale, grayish eyes remained half-open, staring blankly into nothingness.
Xia Ran walked over from behind, casting a glance at Wu Fang on the floor before looking at Little Chubby, his brow furrowed tightly.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but his lips merely twitched, and he ultimately remained silent.
In the apocalypse, death was far too commonplace—so common that even grief became an affordable luxury.
Out on the street beyond the store, the skirmish was still underway.
It had to be said that Jin Chao’s team members were formidable fighters.
In a span of barely a few minutes, they had dispatched seven or eight mutants.
Some of those mutants had burst out from adjacent storefronts, while others were drawn from both ends of the street by the earlier screams.
Yet before Jin Chao and his crew, none of them lasted more than a few rounds.
Jin Chao wielded a long blade with fierce, razor-sharp precision, driving every strike into the mutants’ critical vulnerabilities—their necks, eyes, and joints.
The two teammates fighting alongside him—one named Qiao Xiao, the other Su Bai—were both well-trained veterans.
The three shared a seamless, tacit coordination, fighting independently while offering flawless mutual coverage.
One after another, they brought the mutants down, deftly cleaving open their skulls to retrieve the energy cores within.
Qiao Xiao pulled out a pale blue core, wiped the blood off on his tactical pants, and casually stuffed it into his pocket.
Su Bai extracted a dark red core, squinted at it briefly, and stowed it away as well.
Jin Chao cut down the final creature, dark blood dripping from his blade tip onto the drainage grate below. He cast a backward glance toward the mini-mart and called out: “Hurry it up!”
Xia Qing didn’t linger.
She darted out, picked a medium-sized mutant, and dispatched it cleanly. With practiced skill, she sliced open its skull and rummaged through the sticky brain tissue.
Her fingertips made contact with a hard object—pulling it out, she found a white energy core.
A pity.
Xia Qing’s brow knitted slightly.
This mutant was female; according to the rules she had just pieced together, her Charm ability couldn’t alter the core attribute of same-sex or juvenile targets.
What she needed were pink-attributed cores tailored for her Charm. White cores held zero value for her.
She silently summarized her current findings: minors possessed weak willpower and were easily controlled; same-sex mutants could not have their core attributes altered through Charm; adult male mutants were her true target.
That was the extent of it for now.
Whether future discoveries would emerge remained to be verified through more real-time combat experience.
As her ability grew stronger, the reach of her Charm would inevitably expand.
Lin Yao had been keeping a close eye on Xia Qing all along.
From the moment they stepped into the store, her eyes had remained glued to Xia Qing’s every move.
The moment Xia Qing extracted that white energy core from the mutant’s head, Lin Yao’s eyes lit up intensely, almost bursting with visible light.
She wanted nothing more than to rush forward and snatch it on the spot—a white core was the literal fuel required for spatial ability evolution!
In her previous life, she knew full well how much Xia Qing had suffered and how many mutants she had slaughtered just to gather enough white energy cores to expand her space.
Now, Xia Qing held one so casually in her hand; how could Lin Yao not burn with envy?
Yet Lin Yao reined herself in.
Taking a deep breath, she suppressed her greed and put her gentle, harmless demeanor back on.
Jin Chao scanned the battlefield and issued a decisive order: “Clear out immediately. The smell of blood will draw more mutants here, and we’ll be pinned down.”
Without unnecessary chatter, the group gathered their gear to move.
Little Chubby remained kneeling on the floor, refusing to budge, until Xia Ran walked over and hoisted the boy onto his shoulder.
The boy offered a feeble struggle, but his body—weakened by the ongoing ability awakening—ran out of strength almost immediately, leaving him to weep quietly over Xia Ran’s shoulder.
Wu Fang’s body was left behind inside the mini-mart.
No one suggested burying her, nor did anyone have the time to dig a grave.
Such was the reality of the apocalypse—the living had to keep moving, while the dead remained where they fell.
Misfortunes rarely came singly.
The weather suddenly turned.
Massive raindrops plummeted from the sky without warning, clattering against the asphalt.
Starting as a sparse drizzle, it transformed into a torrential downpour within minutes, creating a dense curtain of rain that obscured visibility beyond five meters.
“Dammit!” Qiao Xiao cursed, shielding his head with a hand, though it proved useless as the rain soaked his hair and uniform in seconds.
Continuing their march was out of the question.
Heavy rain made the roads slick and muddy, visibility was severely compromised, and prolonged exposure to rain could cause even awakened users to catch a cold or fever—and in an apocalyptic world stripped of medical supplies, a simple cold could prove fatal.
Making a split decision, Jin Chao raised his arm and pointed toward a nearby apartment tower: “Into that residential building to take shelter!”
The building stood over ten stories tall, its exterior tiles peeled and faded—clearly an older residential structure.
Closing his eyes, Jin Chao channeled his mental perception to sweep the building interior—no mutant life signs detected; the entire structure was deserted and safe for the time being.
Squeezing through the broken entryway door, they stepped into a pitch-black stairwell filled with a thick, musty odor.
Jin Chao led the team up to the fourth floor, testing the door handles house by house.
Most doors were locked shut, but one stood slightly ajar, swinging open with a light push.
It was a standard three-bedroom apartment.
The living room television still sat in its spot, a thin layer of dust covered the coffee table, and a framed family portrait hung on the wall, showing three smiling faces.
Where the owners had gone remained unknown—perhaps fled, perhaps dead.
Xia Ran placed Little Chubby down on the sofa.
The boy had stopped crying, but his eyes were hollow, resembling a lifeless doll.
Outside, the rain intensified, drumming heavily against the windowpanes and running down the glass in sheets, turning the world outside into a blurred wall of water.
Thunder rumbled from afar, punctuated by occasional flashes of lightning that illuminated the room in a ghastly white light.
Qiao Xiao walked over to the window.
Looking at the torrential downpour outside, he let out a sigh: “The weather is getting more unstable by the day. It was scorching hot a few days ago, and now we’re hit with a sudden downpour without any warning.”
There were no weather forecasts, and satellite data was unreliable.
The emergence of mutants had triggered drastic shifts in the planet’s magnetic field, throwing the global climate system into complete chaos.
Some experts predicted that the future might hold not just the mutant threat, but a succession of extreme natural disasters threatening human survival.
Furthermore, this wasn’t merely a conflict between different mutant factions—it was a battle for survival between Earth’s native biosphere and an invasive species.
Mutants were invaders, humans were the native inhabitants, and this was a zero-sum war of extinction between species.
The vast majority of cities across the nation had fallen, leaving only a handful of core metropolises clinging to survival.
Regions everywhere were racing to construct massive perimeter walls, using reinforced concrete and ability users to forge a final line of defense against mutant onslaughts.
The most commendable trait of the nation was its unified resolve; the government had not abandoned a single city.
Military forces and ability users were deployed to the most perilous frontlines—the state held the line, while the people fought with everything they had.
Qiao Xiao and his squad were well aware that situations in other countries were far worse.
Aside from a few small nations barely maintaining order, most countries had collapsed completely—governments paralyzed, armed forces dissolved, and survivors left to fend for themselves.
Jin Chao stood before the window, rain hitting the glass and casting mottled shadows across his face.
His expression was stern, his gaze resolute, standing motionlessly like a statue.
“We move once the rain eases up,” he turned and said to Qiao Xiao. “Qiao Xiao, try again—see if you can establish contact with the research facility personnel.”
“Understood.”
Qiao Xiao pulled an old radio device from his backpack and began tuning the frequencies, the static crackle sounding particularly harsh in the quiet room.
Sitting in a corner, Lin Yao’s eyes drifted toward Jin Chao from time to time.
The man was undeniably handsome, with sharp, deep-set features, standing over six feet tall with broad shoulders and a narrow waist—exuding a steady, intimidating presence.
Beyond his looks, his combat strength was even more formidable.
A mental-type ability user was a true rarity among the awakened population.
In her past life, Jin Chao had ultimately assumed the leadership of the North City Base, commanding tens of thousands of survivors as one of the most powerful figures in the apocalyptic world.
Lin Yao had once entertained the idea of using her Charm on Jin Chao…