Lu Yun woke up much earlier than Li Yingxue that morning.
Before dawn even broke, he had silently gotten up and gone out to scout the surrounding area. The result, unsurprisingly, was empty-handed—the region had already been thoroughly stripped clean by the previous shadow.
Taking advantage of being unseen, he used a short-range teleportation item and instantly appeared on the rooftop of the tallest building in the city.
The cold wind howled, whipping at the hem of his clothes. With his awakened supernatural ability, he could clearly “see” the current state of the entire city.
The city was not truly dead.
Beyond the invisible safety boundary he had roughly identified around the hospital, the outside world was anything but quiet.
There were slow-moving zombies wandering aimlessly. There were mutated animals emitting bloodthirsty roars. And there were even more deceptively ordinary-looking but deadly Mutated Plants. Together, they formed a brutal post-apocalyptic ecosystem.
One strange phenomenon also caught his attention.
Centered on the hospital where they were located, it looked as if something enormous had violently burrowed up from underground. The surrounding ground was covered in jagged cracks, radiating outward in all directions from the hospital like a spiderweb, carrying an eerie and unnatural aura.
After grasping the general situation, Lu Yun returned to the laboratory, timing it perfectly—just as Li Yingxue slowly woke up.
Li Yingxue sat quietly on the folding bed. The daytime temperature was slightly higher than at night, so he no longer needed to constantly cling to Lu Yun for warmth.
Since he could not see, he simply sat obediently in place, listening to the sounds of Lu Yun packing, waiting patiently.
Lu Yun worked efficiently. He found a relatively sturdy backpack and packed in the canned food and two insulated bottles. Everything else was unnecessary in this apocalypse and could not be taken.
Li Yingxue heard the crisp sound of a zipper closing. He pushed himself up slowly with his hands and stood, asking softly, “Are we leaving now?”
Lu Yun slung the backpack over his shoulder and gave a simple “mm” in response.
Li Yingxue reached out toward Lu Yun’s general direction and waited quietly.
After a two-second pause, Lu Yun walked over, letting the slender fingers of Li Yingxue hook onto his arm before guiding him out of the laboratory.
The moment they left the relatively sealed lab and entered the corridor, Li Yingxue once again heard those faint, unknown rustling sounds—like something rubbing and writhing in the distance.
It was not an illusion. His hearing and sense of smell had indeed become far sharper than before his hibernation.
And once they stepped outside the building, the air itself became an assault of mixed scents.
Thick dust, a faint metallic rust smell, an indescribable rotting stench, and countless other nauseating odors blended together.
Li Yingxue frowned tightly, his stomach churning, though he could still endure it. He held onto Lu Yun’s arm more firmly for support.
At that moment, Lu Yun spoke.
“There are no usable cars nearby. We’ll need to walk a bit farther to find one.”
And even if they did find one, whether it could still start after half a year of abandonment was another question entirely.
Li Yingxue’s face remained pale. He nodded slightly to show understanding.
But even he did not expect his body to be so weak.
They had not gone far when his legs suddenly felt heavy and weak. He struggled to breathe, and darkness flickered at the edges of his vision—even though he already could not see anything.
He abruptly grabbed onto Lu Yun’s sleeve. Cold sweat instantly broke out on his temples and neck. Without warning, he bent over in pain, biting his lip as he gasped for air.
Lu Yun reacted quickly, immediately catching his collapsing body with one arm while bending down to check on him.
“What’s wrong?”
This NPC was far too fragile.
Li Yingxue could not answer. His pale lips were bitten until they bled. The bright red stain looked especially striking against his snow-like complexion.
Unable to see, the dizziness and suffocation felt even more terrifying. It was as if he were falling endlessly into a pitch-black abyss, sinking deeper and deeper, trapped and crushed by something invisible—helpless and desperate.
His body truly was too weak. Half a year of hibernation had not improved it; if anything, it seemed to have made things worse.
Lu Yun had not expected him to be so weak that even a few steps would bring him to this state.
In truth, he could have simply stayed in the relatively safe laboratory with Li Yingxue until the six-month period ended, clearing the instance naturally.
But the thought of spending half a year playing caretaker in this sticky, troublesome “couple game” with a delicate NPC made Lu Yun deeply uncomfortable.
His original plan had been to quickly find a human safe zone, settle Li Yingxue there, and then use excuses like searching for supplies or performing missions to avoid constantly playing the role of a devoted boyfriend.
But now it seemed that even if he had no intention of leaving today, Li Yingxue’s condition would only continue to worsen due to environment and lack of resources. Eventually, under the constraints of his “deeply in love boyfriend” role, Lu Yun would be forced to take him out anyway to find better survival conditions.
Feeling the weight in his arms growing heavier and more limp, clearly on the verge of fainting, Lu Yun quickly opened the system shop interface and scrolled through it.
He swiftly exchanged points for an item.
The next second, a spatial fluctuation appeared, and a sturdy-looking off-road vehicle—mud-stained but fully functional—suddenly materialized in the empty space beside them.
Lu Yun bent down, scooped up the nearly unconscious Li Yingxue in his arms, and quickly opened the door, laying him flat on the back seat.
He had just thrown his backpack inside and closed the door when, before he could even reach the driver’s seat, he caught a sound from afar.
Lu Yun turned his head.
From every corner of the streets, dense hordes of zombies were surging toward them like hyenas that had caught the scent of blood—howling, staggering, yet moving with terrifying speed.
Their numbers far exceeded the scattered wanderers he had detected earlier that morning.