Her sense of smell awakened before her sense of pain, and only then did the pain come.
No, that was not right. A fall from a building should happen in an instant, leaving no time to feel pain at all.
She sluggishly raised her hand. It was so swollen that it no longer looked like her own, purple-black and bloated, with split knuckles that resembled the flesh of a waterlogged corpse. A few strands of broken hair swayed lightly in her palm. They were Lin Yu’s hair, which she had just forcibly torn out.
Not far away, Lin Yu lay sprawled on the ground. Half of her face had already rotted, her cloudy eyeballs bulging outward, her lips curled back to expose grayish-white gums. Yet her body was still warm. Before a person completely lost control after turning into a zombie, they would briefly retain some body heat. When Lin Xi had held her, it had felt like embracing a piece of flesh that was already beginning to decay.
Lin Xi lowered her head and stared at her for a while. Then, for some reason, she suddenly thought that people were actually much more fragile than zombies, especially their necks.
She had jumped from the basement window while holding Lin Yu in her arms. It was the third floor, roughly ten meters high. Lin Yu had been screaming, her teeth sinking into Lin Xi’s shoulder, but Lin Xi had never let go.
If there was another life, she would protect him at all costs and make everyone pay for their blood debts.
The sound of the wind stopped.
A flash of light suddenly passed through her mind. Many years ago, there had been a door being knocked open. A young man had stood outside, his tall, slender figure silhouetted against the light.
“Lin Xi? Are you here?”
Brother Chengzhe. He had still been very young then, with clean, handsome features and even a voice that carried the warmth of sunlight. He had looked down at her without disgust, pity, or charity. He had simply looked at her as though he had finally found her, then reached out his hand.
“I’m here to take you home.”
That year, she had been so hungry that she could barely stand. When she threw herself into his arms, the impact had forced him back half a step, but he had not let go. Instead, he tightened his arms around her, placing a palm against the back of her head and pulling her completely into his embrace. Her chin had struck his collarbone and hurt badly, yet he had not even moved away. His hand had remained firmly around her, shielding her from the cold wind and screams behind him.
It had been the first time someone had held her like that, as though he had sincerely placed her in his heart.
“Sister? What are you staring at?”
The sweet, cloying voice suddenly dragged her back to reality.
Lin Xi opened her eyes. Sunlight poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, bleaching the entire room white. The air conditioner blew cool air while the fragrance of gardenias lingered in the room, and the cries of cicadas drifted in from outside. It was far too quiet, so quiet that it did not feel like the apocalypse at all.
She was standing in front of a full-length mirror, wearing a light blue dress with her hair still half-wet, clearly having just been brushed. Behind her in the mirror, Lin Yu tilted her head as she looked at her. She wore a pink silk nightdress, her makeup exquisite, a comb still in her hand, impatience evident between her brows.
“I’ve called you several times. Are you deaf? Are you going to the banquet tonight or not? Mom said that all the important people in Guangcheng will be there.”
Lin Xi did not answer immediately. She simply stared at the mirror.
The girl reflected in it was eighteen years old, pale and slender, with prominent collarbones and wrists so thin they looked as though they could snap with the slightest pressure. Her face was not breathtakingly beautiful, only clean and delicate, with a fragile appearance that easily inspired a desire to protect her.
This kind of appearance was perfect. People would instinctively assume she was harmless.
Lin Xi slowly curved her lips into a smile. The curve could not be too wide, or it would look deliberate. It was best not to look directly into someone’s eyes either, but to let her gaze rest somewhere near their chin. That would subconsciously make them soften their tone and even take the initiative to speak on her behalf. She was already very skilled at it.
“I’ll go,” she said softly, her voice carrying a slight hoarseness from just waking up. “I’ll go.”
Lin Yu rolled her eyes. “You’re wearing that dress? At a banquet like tonight’s, you’re not embarrassed to wear it, but I am embarrassed for you.”
Lin Xi lowered her eyes to the hem of her dress and gently pinched the fabric. “I think… it’s quite nice.” Her voice was so soft that she sounded genuinely embarrassed.
Lin Yu could not be bothered to say anything more. She turned and walked out. When she reached the door, she suddenly seemed to remember something and looked back.
“By the way, Mom told me to wear your jade pendant tonight. It’s the Lin family heirloom, after all, and it’ll look good in photos. You don’t mind, do you?”
Lin Xi raised her eyes.
The white jade pendant rested against the center of Lin Yu’s collarbone, smooth and lustrous. Her neck was pale, slender, and fragile. For a fleeting moment, Lin Xi wondered what the sound of a bone breaking would be like if she applied just a little force.
The thought disappeared in an instant. The next second, she had already curved her lips again, her expression soft and almost obedient.
“Of course I don’t mind,” she said quietly. “It was yours to begin with.”
Lin Yu gave a satisfied hum and laugh before leaving the room in her slippers.
As she walked down the hallway, she yawned and thought that her sister seemed especially dull today, though she was usually like this anyway. She was the sort of person who could disappear into a crowd and never be noticed.
The moment the door closed, the smile on Lin Xi’s face gradually faded.
The room fell silent again. She turned around and looked at the mirror once more. The girl reflected in it was still pale and fragile, but the eyes staring back no longer belonged to an eighteen-year-old.
They were too quiet, like ashes left behind after something had burned.
She stared at her reflection and softly repeated the name once.
“Lin Yu.”
It was as though she were becoming familiar with the name all over again.
In her previous life, Lin Yu had locked her in a basement for three years, more than a thousand days and nights. Sometimes she brought her food, sometimes a whip, and sometimes she simply stood there, smiling as she told her, “Brother Chengzhe called your name when he died, so I hate you. If you hadn’t been so useless, he wouldn’t have died.”
She had said it every day, as though she were repeatedly crushing Lin Xi’s bones.
But there was one thing she remembered particularly clearly. It happened sometime during the third year. Lin Yu had been drunk, sitting outside the cage with the jade pendant in her hand, swinging it back and forth beneath the light.
“Sister, do you know?” she had said with a laugh, her voice thick with alcohol. “There’s a storage space and a spiritual spring inside this jade pendant. Drinking it lets you level up quickly. I awakened my supernatural ability because of it.”
She had leaned closer to the cage, her breath reeking of alcohol as it washed over Lin Xi’s face.
“Liu Chen did too. We’ve been drinking it for two or three years. I’m already a Level Four supernatural ability user. What about you? You have nothing.”
She had laughed happily, as though she had finally found someone she could show off to.
Lin Xi had not answered. She had simply engraved those words into her bones one by one in the darkness.
Spiritual spring water. Storage space. Leveling up. Lin Yu and Liu Chen.
She had remembered all of it.
Lin Xi closed her eyes. When she opened them again, all her emotions had already been forced back into the depths of her pupils, leaving behind only that timid, gentle, harmless watery gaze.
She had been reborn on June 15, three months before the apocalypse.
Three months later, a meteorite would fall, radiation would contaminate the entire world, and most people would mutate into zombies after developing high fevers, while a small number would awaken supernatural abilities.
The jade pendant contained a storage space and spiritual spring water. As long as she drank the spiritual spring water beforehand, she could awaken her supernatural ability before the apocalypse.
The only problem was that she had to get the jade pendant back.
And then there was Brother Chengzhe.
He would come to Guangcheng on a business trip on July 20 and awaken a wind-type supernatural ability on the night the apocalypse broke out. In her previous life, he had taken her across three thousand kilometers of a sea of corpses, protecting her all the way from being utterly useless until they reached the Imperial Capital Base.
Then he had died in a trap that someone had deliberately set for him.
Lin Yu and Liu Chen had sabotaged his mission and lured ten Zombie Kings into surrounding him. He had killed seven of them before finally exhausting himself. The name he had called out before dying had been hers.
That would not happen in this life.
Lin Xi lowered her head and looked at her hands. These hands would kill many people in the future. But that did not matter. As long as he was alive, that was enough.
Anyone who would hurt him, she would deal with them in advance and wipe them out completely.
She walked to the table and picked up her phone. The lock screen displayed the date: June 15. There was also an unread WeChat message from Lin Yu.
“Sister, don’t wear that shabby dress to the banquet tonight. It’s so embarrassing.”
Lin Xi stared at it for two seconds before pressing delete.
There was no need to waste hatred on messages. Living people were worth dealing with.
She opened her contacts and stopped at a name: Chen Wan.
Her fingertip hovered for a moment before she finally pressed call.
The phone rang three times before it was answered.
“Xixi?”
A gentle female voice came from the other end. Lin Xi tightened her grip on the phone, her throat suddenly growing a little tight.
“Aunt Chen, is Brother Chengzhe… doing well lately?”
“He’s doing quite well.” Chen Wan laughed. “Isn’t he going to Guangcheng on a business trip next month? I’ll have him go see you when he gets there.”
July 20, just like in her previous life.
Lin Xi lowered her eyes.
“Auntie, I had a dream yesterday. I dreamed about so many monsters, and there was blood everywhere. I was a little scared.”
There was a brief silence on the other end.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Chen Wan’s voice softened. “Don’t be afraid. Dreams are the opposite of reality. If you’re really scared, just call Auntie.”
“Okay,” Lin Xi replied softly.
After ending the call, she lowered her eyes to the two characters on the screen that read “Chen Wan” and gently touched the name with her finger.
Then she turned off the screen.
The room was so quiet that the only sound was the air conditioner running.
Suddenly, she gave a very soft laugh.
This time, she had finally found him before he died.
She got up and walked into the bathroom. Cold water flowed between her fingers. In the mirror, the young girl’s face was pale, her eyelashes dotted with water droplets, yet her gaze was so calm that it was almost dangerous.
“Brother Chengzhe is a good man. So those people will make him suffer…”
She paused, then slowly curved her lips at her reflection.
“It’s better if they disappear early.”