Lin Mu was woken up by a strange, stifled whimpering.
Her cheek was pressed flat against the icy desk, leaving a few crisp keyboard impressions, and her drool had nearly soaked through the open project proposal underneath. Dazedly lifting her head, her cervical spine gave an overburdened crack. Overtime until dawn again—she had actually drifted off right at her workstation.
“What is that sound…” She rubbed her sleep-crusted eyes, muttering under her breath, “Which department is going crazy out in the hallway?”
Outside the window, the sky was frighteningly overcast—not the pitch-black of night, but a murky, suffocating iron-gray, thick with the gloom that precedes a violent storm. Underneath the dim sky, only a scattered few windows in the office building opposite still flickered with light.
The whimpering grew closer, mingled with a strange, indescribable scraping noise right outside the office doors.
Something was wrong.
Lin Mu’s sleepiness evaporated in an instant.
She reached for her phone. The screen was pitch black; pressing the power button repeatedly yielded zero response.
What was going on?
She glanced at her blacked-out computer monitor and pressed the restart button multiple times, but it was completely dead—even though the power outlet was clearly working. Dammit, she didn’t even know if the presentation she had just finished was saved.
The entire office was eerily quiet, save for her own accelerating heartbeat and the increasingly distinct, creepy noises beyond the door.
She stood up and walked over to the massive floor-to-ceiling window, looking down.
With just one glance, her entire body went rigid.
The street below, usually packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic, was now a complete disaster zone. Overturned cars blocked the roads, churning up thick columns of billowing black smoke. Countless staggering, contorted figures swayed across the pavement. Clad in tattered rags and stained with massive patches of dark crimson, they moved in a bizarre mix of sluggishness and sudden, jerky speed. Several of them were actively chasing and lunging to bite a handful of fleeing survivors.
Though she couldn’t hear the screams, the sheer pandemonium of the scene was painfully obvious.
Zombies?
A concept she had only ever encountered in movies and novels sent a cold sweat drenching her spine. Yet her logic and the reality playing out before her eyes kept tearing at each other.
Just then, with a deafening BOOM, something smashed violently against the heavy glass doors of the office. She spun her head around. Outside, a contorted, deformed face was pressed flat against the glass. Its eyes were milky and rotted, its mouth split wide to its ears, and its face smeared in thick, black-red bloodstains. It slammed its head repeatedly against the glass, making heavy, dull thud, thud noises.
It was someone she didn’t recognize—no, it wasn’t a person at all, it was a zombie!
Terror surged into her mind instantly. She clamped her hands tightly over her mouth to keep from letting out a shriek. Looking around, the vast open-plan office was utterly hollow; aside from rows of cubicles and computers, there was virtually nowhere to hide or block the entrance.
That glass door wasn’t going to hold for long.
Survival instinct instantly overwhelmed her panic. Her eyes frantically scanned the room and locked onto a tall, heavy metal filing cabinet placed against the wall a few steps away. Everyone used to complain about it endlessly, intending to replace it because it was so inconvenient to use.
They just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
Thud! Thud! Crack! Spiderweb-like fractures began spreading across the glass door.
Lin Mu hesitated no longer. Gathering every ounce of strength in her body, she shoved the filing cabinet forward with all her might. With a thunderous crash, the cabinet fell diagonally, blocking the crumbling glass door and temporarily delaying the impacts from outside. But this was clearly not a permanent fix. More growls and heavy footsteps were rapidly gathering in the corridor.
She had no other choice. Fortunately, the office had a second door. The space hadn’t originally been this vast; it was renovated by knocking through adjacent rooms, leaving an old, “abandoned” side door behind. Calling it abandoned simply meant it wasn’t used—it had never been demolished or sealed shut.
This door led straight into a partitioned hallway in the middle of the floor.
And the emergency stairwell was right at the end of that hallway. Maybe… she could find another way out. Even though the outside of the building was clearly crawling with zombies now, she had no idea what else to do—she just knew she couldn’t stay here and wait to die.
Driven by blind panic, her adrenaline gave her immense strength. She kicked open the lock of the abandoned door with one hard push, dragged a few loose items over to wedge the door behind her, and bolted out.
The emergency stairwell reeked of rust and dust. Green emergency lights flickered dimly, casting an eerie, unnerving glow over the empty space. From further down the stairwell came the sound of stomach-churning chewing and low, guttural snarls.
Go up.
Clenching her teeth, she lightened her footsteps and sprinted up the stairs step by step on tiptoe. Her heart thudded wildly in her chest, and her limbs felt numb and unresponsive. She didn’t dare look back, nor did she dare to stop.
Vaguely, she seemed to hear something chasing her from behind.
Stiffening her neck, she slammed her body against the heavy iron door leading to the rooftop and shoved it open. Thank God it isn’t locked, she thought.
Only a fleeting doubt flashed through her mind: Was the original rooftop door of the building really like this?
Clang!
The iron door slammed shut behind her. Deprived of all strength, she collapsed against the door, gasping desperately for air. The ragged inhalations made her chest ache, but finding no zombies on the rooftop allowed her frayed nerves to relax for a single brief moment.
The rooftop was empty yet cluttered, strewn with abandoned construction materials and various metal components of unknown purpose. She grabbed a nearby iron bar and jammed it firmly into the door handles, finally gaining a tiny sliver of security.
Stumbling over to the edge of the rooftop, she gripped the freezing metal railing and peered down. The hellish vision below was even clearer now. Firelight, black smoke, and densely packed swarms of zombies filled her heart with sheer despair.
Right at that moment, a violent impact rattled the iron door behind her!
Bang! Bang!
The iron bar emitted a nerve-racking metallic screech.
Wait, don’t people say zombies rely on smell and hearing? How could they follow me all the way to the roof? So there really WAS something chasing me just now!
Lin Mu turned deathly pale and stumbled backward step by step until her spine pressed hard against the cold steel railing. There was nowhere left to retreat.
It was over…
The instant that thought surfaced, a kaleidoscope of fond memories flashed across her mind like a revolving lantern. She was still so young; there were so many places she hadn’t visited, so much delicious food she hadn’t tasted, and even the last movie she watched had been a garbage film she was tricked into seeing by fake promos. She didn’t want to die!
A desperate, fierce urge to survive erupted inside her body like a volcano.
Suddenly, a strange sensation rushed through her entire frame, as if something dormant had been woken up. A warm current surged from the position of her heart, flowing along her bloodstream straight into the palm of her right hand.
The feeling was so unfamiliar yet so natural that, purely by instinct, she lifted her trembling right hand and aimed her palm at the empty concrete floor in front of her.
A soft, vibrant emerald-green light emerged from her palm, drifting slowly upward before floating down and settling gently on the concrete beneath her feet.
The moment the light touched the ground, it expanded rapidly.
Under Lin Mu’s astounded gaze, this green energy transformed into a tiny sapling about as tall as she was.
Though it was merely a small sapling, the moment it appeared, the suffocating air around her seemed to become noticeably fresher.
“What is… this?” Lin Mu stared blankly at the surreal scene, her mind a complete blank.
Suddenly, a sound rang out inside her mind, but before she could process it, a loud CRASH echoed behind her. The iron bar wedged through the door handles finally gave way under the strain and snapped. The iron door to the rooftop was thrown wide open, and three stiff, snarling zombies squeezed in, jostling against one another.
Their murky eyes instantly locked onto Lin Mu.
Help! How do these things have so much power?!
Scared out of her mind, Lin Mu instinctively tried to dodge to the side. However, as if sensing the threat, the little sapling shifted slightly and blocked the path in front of Lin Mu.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Three vines shot out wildly from the ground near the sapling’s root base. Moving at lightning speed, they left behind afterimages as they precisely wrapped around the ankles of the three zombies, coiling rapidly upward along their legs.
The zombies’ forward momentum ground to a sudden halt, tripping them up and sending them crashing heavily to the ground. They thrashed and snarled continuously, but the seemingly delicate vines proved exceptionally tough, binding them firmly in place no matter how frantically they twisted.
Lin Mu noticed a faint sizzling noise coming from where the vines contacted the zombies’ bodies. A warm, comfortable feeling swept over her, an influx of energy coming from an unknown source, though she instinctively understood that the vines were absorbing energy. The zombies’ struggles visibly weakened, and their snarls gradually faded to a faint whimper.
In just a short dozen seconds, the three zombies ceased all movement entirely, as though drained of every drop of vitality, leaving behind nothing but ruined shells wrapped in vines.
The crisis… was resolved?
Lin Mu stood frozen in place, her heart still pounding frantically and her eyes wide with utter disbelief at what she had just witnessed.
The little sapling still stood there quietly, glowing with flowing light, as if everything that had just happened was an illusion. The few vines slowly retracted, disappearing back into the ground. Silence returned to the rooftop, accompanied only by the sudden patter of rainfall tapping against the floor and the heavy sound of Lin Mu’s ragged breathing.
She rushed over to the iron door, pulled it shut again, and piled a stack of nearby debris against it to secure it tightly. Only then did she have the mind to examine the little sapling—the sapling she had somehow brought into existence.
Cautiously taking one step after another toward the sapling, she tentatively extended her hand and lightly brushed a finger against one of its leaves.
Immediately, the tiny leaf curled gently around her finger. An indescribable sense of relief washed over her body through her fingertip, dispelling a portion of her terror and fatigue.
This leaf could actually move!
And it seemed this little sapling could even soothe her emotions?
It was only now that she noticed a circular zone about one square meter wide centered around the little sapling. Inside this zone, the air was exceptionally fresh and the temperature pleasantly comfortable; even the rain falling onto the ground within it seemed noticeably cleaner.
Was this her golden finger?
In the middle of the apocalypse, she had summoned a tree?
At long last, she remembered the mysterious voice she had heard in her head earlier—a voice that had resonated directly within her mind, sounding somewhat like an AI.
She shook her head, trying to locate where the sound had come from. Since her current situation was already so wildly unscientific, her thoughts naturally gravitated toward unscientific explanations. Recalling the web novels she used to read, she focused her concentration and instantly found that she could see words hovering out of thin air. As an avid internet user, she immediately realized what it was: a system panel.
However, this system was extremely bare-bones, lacking any extra functions. It displayed nothing more than prompt information regarding the sapling—or rather, details about her own ability.
[Ability: Summon (Summoned)]
[Summon Level: Seedling Stage (3/1000)]
[Skills: Drain & Entangle (Beginner 3/100), Photosynthesis (Beginner 0/100), Purification (Beginner 1/100), Heal (Beginner 1/100)]
Though the shivers of surviving a near-death experience hadn’t fully settled, the clear information panel floating in her mind acted like a reassuring pill, slowly bringing her wildly thumping heart back down to earth.
No matter where she moved her gaze, the floating text remained crystal clear in her vision; she could even see it clearly if she closed her eyes.
It wasn’t a hallucination.
She had truly awakened a summoning ability in the middle of an apocalypse.
She carefully studied the brief lines of text.
“My experience points went up by 3 points… Is it because of those three zombies? That seems like the only logical explanation, otherwise there’s no telling where those 3 points came from,” she muttered under her breath. “Drain & Entangle was used once, but its proficiency increased by 3 points. Does it count as three uses because there were three zombies? Photosynthesis has no proficiency gain, but why do Purification and Heal have proficiency points too? Could the clean, comfortable air within this one-meter radius be the effect of the Purification skill?”
She paused to think.
“Little sapling, use Purification?” Lin Mu tried asking tentatively.
The little sapling remained completely motionless without the slightest reaction, merely tilting its topmost branch slightly, as if confused by what she was saying.
Great. It seemed her summoned creature only operated on instinct at its current stage and couldn’t really understand spoken words.
However, since it was her summoned creature, she ought to be able to control it. After thinking it over, she tried to concentrate her mind and sense the sapling mentally.
Instantly, a strange line of communication established itself between her and the sapling, and a skill bar for the sapling seemed to appear within her mind.
She then mentally “clicked” on the Purification skill.
There were no dazzling light effects, yet she could clearly feel the air within the one-square-meter “safe zone” around the sapling become noticeably fresher. Even the faint, lingering stench of decay that had drifted over from the surroundings vanished completely.
At the same time, the proficiency count for [Purification] ticked upward slightly, changing to (2/100).
This really was the effect of the Purification skill!