A year into the apocalypse, the world was like a wasteland.
When Lin Buyu arrived in the city, she passed by countless zombies.
Her biggest advantage was that the zombies had no interest in her.
After all, she was a zombie too.
As she leisurely wandered past the zombies, whenever she spotted one that moved particularly nimbly, she would pry open its skull to see if it had a crystal core inside.
As for the slow-moving ones, she had no interest in them. They were definitely useless zombies—the kind with nothing but an empty head.
She didn’t dare get too close to the areas where the ability users gathered because she currently had no crystal-core power.
The sheer number of zombies soon proved useful. Even among a bunch of useless ones, there were always a few that stood out.
The more agile zombies really did have something inside their heads, but they were all white crystal cores.
The lowest-grade zombie crystal cores.
Inside an abandoned hospital, she dug out and swallowed dozens of white crystal cores in succession. Only then did she finally notice a change in her body.
The bluish-green blood line around her severed neck had disappeared, and the hole in her skull had also healed.
Her clothes were torn and tattered, so Lin Buyu simply headed to a shopping mall.
Back when she was in the Special Forces, she had never worn a dress.
Now that she finally had the chance to experience a different kind of life, she decided to indulge her girlish side.
Pink, blue, green—throw them all away.
She wanted white.
She was going to be a pure, innocent little white-flower zombie.
After much searching, Lin Buyu finally dug out a pure white spaghetti-strap maxi dress from a pile of clothes.
Being the particular woman she was, Miss Lin Buyu even took the time to find somewhere to shower and wash herself clean.
Besides, she wasn’t afraid of catching some virus from the water. She was already the most poisonous zombie around. What was there left to be afraid of?
After showering, she looked in the mirror and noticed that the skin on her face and body had changed.
It was no longer deathly pale.
Although she was still very fair, it was now a healthy kind of white—smooth, radiant, and delicate, with a faint blush on her cheeks.
Seeing the exact same face she had possessed in the real world reflected in the mirror, Lin Buyu rested her chin in her hands and laughed.
Perfect.
At least it wasn’t someone else’s face.
She pressed against her eyeballs, afraid they might pop right out.
These eyeballs didn’t seem to be very secure.
Wearing her pretty little white dress and a pair of flip-flops, she hummed a tune as she ran downstairs, her flip-flops going slap, slap, slap against the floor.
She looked completely carefree.
After leaving the mall, Lin Buyu saw hundreds of zombies gathered in the plaza directly ahead.
They waved their hands wildly toward the sky, making loud growling noises.
“Roar! Roar! Roar!”
Lin Buyu froze.
What was going on?
She slowly raised her head.
A helicopter was gradually descending from the sky, its rotors producing a thunderous whirring sound.
Standing on the ladder at the helicopter’s open door was a man dressed in black tactical clothing.
Her eyesight was excellent. Even from a considerable distance, she could clearly make out his features.
It was the same man who had used lightning-based abilities on top of the skyscraper.
His eyes were as dark as midnight, his gaze sharp and cold, with a murderous glint hidden deep within them.
But what surprised Lin Buyu was his almost excessively exquisite face.
So someone really could be this handsome.
He looked like a breathtakingly beautiful man who had somehow broken through the barrier between dimensions.
There was an aloofness about him, as if he were completely isolated from the rest of the world.
He wore an earpiece, the microphone positioned perfectly near his beautiful lips.
Jiang Ran looked down at the ordinary zombies roaring below and spoke into his headset.
“A small zombie horde has appeared at the Rilie Shopping Mall. Should we eliminate them all?”
The voice on the other end replied, “The area around the mall is open, and there are no high-level zombies gathered nearby. You may eliminate them.”
“Roger.”
The moment he finished speaking, a cluster of lightning appeared in the man’s palm.
Purple lightning.
Lin Buyu felt an extremely powerful energy fluctuation from below.
Whoa.
That was some serious power.
She was just about to hide among the zombies and quietly slip away when the system in her head suddenly turned into a screaming chicken.
“AAAAAAH! Jiang Ran! Jiang Ran! The man up there is Jiang Ran! He’s the biggest villain in the novel! Host, hurry! Find a way to get close to him!”
Lin Buyu had already climbed to the entrance of the shopping mall and was preparing to hide inside when she suddenly paused.
“Hmm? That’s Jiang Ran?”
Holy crap.
The jackpot had come straight to her.
She immediately turned around.
“BOOM! BOOM—BOOM!”
The lightning crashed down.
Groups of zombies were blasted into the air, their bodies flying in every direction.
Even the ground erupted with sparks as thick smoke billowed across the entire plaza.
Lin Buyu covered her face with both hands.
She really hated this damn world.
She couldn’t stop herself from coughing.
Above her, the man stared at the rolling smoke below, the corners of his lips curling into a cruel smile.
His low, rich voice was pleasing to the ear.
“All zombies in Rilie Plaza have been eliminated.”
After saying that, his slender fingers touched the earpiece and switched it off.
From the helicopter’s cockpit came a hearty laugh.
“Brother Ran, even though there weren’t any mutated zombies here, you finished them way too quickly! Aren’t you going to have a little fun?”
Jiang Ran gave a cold snort.
“I don’t have a thing for playing with zombies.”
Lin Buyu’s coughing happened to reach both men’s ears at that moment.
Jiang Ran’s finger, still resting against his earpiece, paused almost imperceptibly.
His crimson lips curved slightly as he chuckled.
“Looks like one slipped through.”
A zombie that could cough and make humanlike sounds was at least a mutated zombie.
Nie Fei laughed.
“There’s actually a zombie that managed to escape from you, Brother Ran? That’s rare.”
Jiang Ran reminded him, “Three days ago, we barely escaped from a super-high-level zombie ourselves.”
Nie Fei gave an awkward laugh.
“That was only because we’d exhausted all our abilities!”
Jiang Ran didn’t bother arguing with him.
“Land.”
Nie Fei immediately replied, “Roger.”
He quickly lowered the helicopter.
The corpses scattered across the plaza became their landing platform.
After they touched down, the smoke had just begun to clear.
Hearing the noise, Lin Buyu raised her head and looked ahead.
A pair of black combat boots entered her line of sight first.
Then came the man’s long legs and handsome face.
He walked toward her one step at a time.
Their eyes met.
Lin Buyu frantically questioned the system in her mind.
“System, system, what do I do? It’s way too suspicious for me to be here. Jiang Ran will definitely think I’m a zombie and chop my head off!”
The system was getting anxious too.
After all, this was the villain who would eventually destroy the world.
“Host, don’t panic. The storyline hasn’t reached the point where he wants to destroy the world yet. The big villain still has a tiny bit of conscience left. He won’t kill humans for the time being.”
Lin Buyu became even more frantic.
“Did you forget that I’m a zombie?”
Even though she had a beautiful human appearance, she was still the zombie whose crystal core had been dug out.
The system comforted her.
“Don’t worry. I’ll help you avoid Jiang Ran’s detection. Host, all you need to do is find a way to follow him.”
After saying that, it went dormant again.
Lin Buyu called out to it several times, but there was no response.
Damn useless system.
Lin Buyu sat on the ground and tilted her head slightly upward, meeting Jiang Ran’s gaze as he stopped in front of her.
She had heard that men were more likely to soften when faced with a delicate, pitiful woman.
Lin Buyu knew how to bend when necessary and how to be tough when needed.
In an instant, tears filled her eyes.
“Please don’t kill me. I’m human.”
Jiang Ran looked at the woman sitting on the ground.
A clean white dress.
Snow-white skin.
Long, lustrous black hair.
Delicate features.
Tears trembling in her eyes.
A helpless, pitiful expression.
She was so clean and untouched by the dust of the apocalypse that she looked like an innocent little princess who knew nothing of the world.
But—
This was one year after the apocalypse.
A helpless little princess couldn’t possibly appear here and still remain this pristine.
As far as he remembered, this entire area had been crawling with zombies just one minute ago.
A dark glint flashed through Jiang Ran’s pitch-black eyes.
There was laughter in his gaze, yet his lips remained perfectly still.
He crouched down, reached out, and gripped her chin with one hand.
A hint of amusement and murderous intent appeared simultaneously in his eyes.
“You say you’re human?”