The sky was growing dark, and streetlights began to flicker on along both sides of the street.
Wu Xiaolan walked heavily alone on the pavement, dragging a slightly distorted shadow behind her.
She had just been fired.
Just a moment ago.
A phone call from her stepmother had completely blacklisted her from the entire industry.
“It’s always like this,” she murmured softly.
When she was eight years old, an accident took the life of her mother, Wu Xuerou.
Less than three days later, her exploitative father, Chen Tao, couldn’t wait to bring his mistress outside, Lin Yue’e, into their home, along with twin younger siblings who were only three months younger than her.
At first, things were alright. With her grandfather protecting her, her stepmother didn’t dare to mistreat her openly.
But as soon as her grandfather passed away, that family immediately ripped off their hypocritical masks and bared their greedy, vicious fangs at her.
From then on, unprovoked mistreatment, beatings, cold shoulders, and bullying accompanied her through her entire high school career.
Hardly dragging herself to high school graduation, Wu Xiaolan was accepted into her dream university.
Thinking she had finally escaped her original family, she ultimately couldn’t escape the maliciousness of that family clinging to her like a dog-skin plaster.
It all started with an arranged marriage.
That was something Wu Xiaolan’s mother had arranged for her before she passed away.
The sole heir of the newly minted City A richest family, the Lu family, Lu Yuxuan.
Naturally, Chen Tao didn’t want to let go of such a good marriage opportunity.
However, the daughter he wanted to marry off wasn’t his eldest daughter Wu Xiaolan, but rather Chen Yue, the younger daughter born to Lin Yue’e.
Making a big fuss today to force Wu Xiaolan back home was simply to make her give up the engagement and sell off her company shares at a low price, completely sweeping her out the door.
“Why should I?”
Wu Xiaolan clenched the straps of her shoulder bag tightly, a deep sense of despair and unwillingness burning in the depths of her eyes.
Inside her bag, she had bought a knife and a small bottle of pesticide in advance.
Since you won’t let me live, let’s all go to hell together.
The exact moment this thought reached its peak…
An inexplicable electronic sound abruptly exploded inside Wu Xiaolan’s mind.
[Ding! Detected strong desire for revenge from the host. Conditions for binding met.]
[Omnipotent Spatial System is activating…]
Wu Xiaolan abruptly stopped in her tracks, looking around the surroundings with suspicion and unease.
The bustling crowd of off-work pedestrians rushed along the streets. Everything was just as normal, as if the voice just then was merely auditory hallucinations caused by excessive stress.
[Ding! The system detects that Space-Time World No. 0 where the host is located is about to erupt with a zombie crisis.]
[Based on your current location, you have one month of preparation time.]
Now issuing initial missions:
[Mission 1: Quickly acquire at least twenty million in apocalypse startup capital.]
[Mission 2: Establish or acquire a shelter with basic defensive capabilities.]
Zombies? Apocalypse? System?
The massive influx of information battered Wu Xiaolan’s brain.
“Why choose me?”
Wu Xiaolan considered herself an ordinary person.
No family, no money, no stable job. Although her appearance inherited all the advantages of her mother, it could hardly be called stunning.
She possessed company shares left behind before her grandfather passed away, but due to Chen Tao’s suppression, she couldn’t cash them out. Currently, she rented a tiny pigeon-hole room downtown all by herself.
Why would a tragic NPC like her, who struggled just to live a normal life, receive the favor of the system?
[The system detects your survival potential and adaptability to adversity in the apocalypse. By completing system missions, you will not only survive, but also have the opportunity to touch the higher-dimensional Light Domain world.]
Light Domain?
Wu Xiaolan had never even heard of such a place.
The place she wanted to go to most in this lifetime was heaven, and that vicious family should all go straight to hell.
Before Wu Xiaolan could fully digest everything the system just said…
[Warm reminder: The host must not refuse the main missions issued by the system, otherwise elimination will be executed.]
Wu Xiaolan’s heart sank heavily.
Compared to that flesh-and-blood-devouring home, the system was simply a sharp blade.
A blade that might allow her to survive the apocalypse and take revenge on that family!
Thinking about it now, dying together? That let them off too easy.
She wanted to live well.
She wanted to use the system to hoard supplies, build her own safe house, and then watch coldly as that family struggled to survive in the apocalypse.
Stepping forward once more, she walked toward that sickening home, taking steps completely different from before.
Of course, this apocalypse startup capital had to come from them.
Half an hour later, Wu Xiaolan stood at the entrance of Chen Tao’s villa.
In the past, this door represented oppression and humiliation, but today, it would become her first battlefield.
[Ding! Congratulations to the host for acquiring the novice protection period random reward skill: “Piā, piā, piā.”]
Before Wu Xiaolan could figure out how to use the reward, the gate was opened from the inside by a servant.
Beneath the luxurious crystal chandelier, that family of four was sitting happily together in the living room.
“Yo, the busybody finally knows how to come back?” Lin Yue’e spoke up first. “I thought you grew wings and would never step foot into this house again.”
She wore a tight-fitting qipao, dripping with jewelry, and looked Wu Xiaolan up and down with a critical gaze.
Finally, she didn’t forget to add, “Unpresentable, far worse compared to my Yue’e.”
At that moment, her good-for-nothing younger brother Chen Chen was curled up on the sofa playing video games. Too lazy to even lift his head, he let out a sneer, “I heard you got fired from your company? Truly cause for celebration.”
Chen Tao, sitting squarely in the master seat wearing expensive loungewear and sipping red wine, completely ignored the malicious attitude of the others toward Wu Xiaolan, as if the person being degraded wasn’t his own biological daughter.
“Since you’re back, I’ll spell it out first. Your mother passed away over a decade ago. This family now is something your Aunt Lin and I worked hard for—there’s no share for you.”
“But considering we’re father and daughter, I’ll give you 100,000 yuan as a dowry. In the future, whether you marry a cripple or a beggar, just don’t set your sights on the Lu family.”
Wu Xiaolan’s expression was indifferent. Looking at the ugly faces in this room, she felt only coldness in her heart.
These people clung like leeches to the Wu family, sucked the last drop of blood, and now wanted to sweep her out the door with a mere 100,000 yuan?
In your dreams!
She raised her eyes, staring fixedly at Chen Tao, meeting his gaze without a shred of fear.
That face of hers, which shared a seventy percent resemblance with Wu Xuerou, looked somewhat chilling under the lights.
“Chen Tao, since you’re so heartless, I’ll go straight to the media right now and let everyone judge how President Chen ate up his late wife’s estate and abused his biological daughter!”
Chen Tao felt his heart skip a beat under Wu Xiaolan’s hateful gaze, as if his deceased wife was glaring at him from hell.
He recalled that ever since high school, Wu Xiaolan had gradually slipped out of his control.
He could only rely on Lin Yue’e to constantly suppress her, withhold her living expenses, and connive with Chen Chen to bully her at school, crushing her self-confidence so she wouldn’t have any chance of rising up.
Yet he never expected that years of suppression wouldn’t make her yield; instead, it made her increasingly difficult to deal with.
Especially the company shares—no matter what soft or hard tactics he tried, he couldn’t get them out of her.
Had he known, he shouldn’t have let this dead girl finish college safely.
If this dead girl continued to be this tough, then he couldn’t be blamed for truly disregarding father-daughter ties.
Thinking of this, Chen Tao slammed the table and stood up, trying to use his volume to cover up his guilty conscience.
“Wu Xiaolan! Where is your upbringing? I am your father!”
With that, he rushed over, raising his hand to slap Wu Xiaolan across the face.
“Today, I must teach you dead girl a lesson.”
Wu Xiaolan reacted quickly, instinctively dodging and denying Chen Tao any chance to lay hands on her.
Who would have thought that the very next second, her body would move completely out of her control?
First, she made an abstract head-toss, precisely dodging the slap, while her other hand inexplicably rose on its own, grabbing Chen Tao tightly by the collar and landing a ferocious string of slaps across his face.
“Slap, slap, slap!” Three crisp sounds.
The entire living room fell into dead silence.
Chen Tao was stunned from the beating, looking at Wu Xiaolan in absolute disbelief.
“You… dare hit me?”
Seeing this, Lin Yue’e rushed over to grab and pull her: “Little slut, you’ve completely rebelled!”
Wu Xiaolan’s body once again moved independently, grabbing Lin Yue’e by the collar as well, and another three resounding slaps—”Slap, slap, slap.”
Lin Yue’e saw stars from the blows and was left completely speechless.
Wu Xiaolan looked at her own hands in disbelief, seemingly realizing what the system’s reward “piā, piā, piā” actually was.
[Ding! Host skill execution completed. In the future, when encountering enemies attempting to slap the host, it will randomly trigger and take effect.]
This was too satisfying.
Wu Xiaolan finally understood the protagonists with golden fingers in novels.
But what should she do right now?
Wu Xiaolan only felt excited for three seconds before realizing how terrible the reality was.
She was here to negotiate, not to fight.
If she really angered Chen Tao to the extreme, her fate would be miserable.
Thinking of this, she hurriedly pulled a dagger from her bag for self-defense.
“If any of you dare lay a finger on me today, I’ll blow this matter wide open. When that time comes, forget about marrying into the Lu family—not a single person in all of City A will hear the end of it!”
Nearby, Chen Yue, who had just finished putting on her makeup and was about to go out on a date, exploded when she saw her parents get beaten.
She rushed over furiously, but stopped three meters away from the tip of Wu Xiaolan’s dagger.
She gave a look to Chen Chen.
Chen Chen pretended to be too engrossed in his mobile game and acted like he saw nothing.
Whenever he bullied Wu Xiaolan in the past, he always made the lackeys following him at school do the dirty work.
For example, dropping dead mice in Wu Xiaolan’s school bag to scare her, locking her in the girls’ restroom so she couldn’t go home, or messing with her on rainy days on her way home from school and having cars splash muddy water all over her.
He didn’t dare get close to Wu Xiaolan alone; this woman fought like a desperate lunatic when she hit him.
Yet the worst part was that he couldn’t kill her, because in the eyes of his father Chen Tao, this woman was a golden nugget wrapped in shit.
Seeing Chen Chen do nothing, and with Chen Tao clutching his face looking completely devoid of any counter-attacking intent, Chen Yue could only vent her powerless rage at Wu Xiaolan: “Bitch, don’t toast only to be forced to drink a forfeit! Dad giving you 100,000 is out of pity! With your virtue of beating your parents, do you even deserve to marry into high society?”
“Whether I deserve it or not is not for you to decide.” Wu Xiaolan’s tone carried a hint of provocation: “Please recognize reality—the one engaged to Lu Yuxuan is me, Wu Xiaolan. If you don’t satisfy me today, I’ll immediately go cry in front of the media and company shareholders.”
Chen Yue turned pale with fright, hurriedly grabbing Chen Tao’s arm and shaking it: “Dad! You can’t let her go! I love Brother Yuxuan, you can’t let her slander me.”
Chen Tao spat out a tooth from his mouth, looking at the cold-glinting dagger before him with a fierce expression.
Wu Xiaolan put on a brave front, her mind completely filled with self-defense tips taught by the Douyin app.
[“Ding! Detected that the host’s fear value is rising. The host does not need to be afraid; targets hit by the skill will experience deterrence and fear, and will not harm the host in a short time.”]
Wu Xiaolan finally felt reassured.
No wonder Chen Tao didn’t fight back immediately; it turned out he was controlled by the system.
Chen Tao probably wanted to kill Wu Xiaolan right then and there, but he couldn’t. Whenever the thought of teaching Wu Xiaolan a lesson crossed his mind, he felt a severe bout of dizziness.
He suspected he had been beaten into a concussion.
However, one thing was more important than teaching this unfilial daughter a lesson: the company was at a critical juncture, and it must never fall into a public relations crisis.
As for who Chen Yue loved? What did that have to do with him?
He only cared about how much profit the marriage alliance could bring.
If Wu Xiaolan married into the Lu family, she would definitely break out of his control, and might even bite back, using her leverage to suppress the Chen family.
Chen Yue was different; she was a marriage alliance tool carefully nurtured since childhood, designed precisely to marry into high society and pull investments for the Chen family.
Yet right now, Wu Xiaolan was a stumbling block openly determined to ruin his plans. The more tangled up they got, the harder things would become, so he had to make a clean break today.
“Put down the knife and tell me: what exactly do you want?”
Wu Xiaolan sneered inwardly.
She wanted anything except Lu Yuxuan.
That guy was rotten goods, full of scandal, and rumored to even have an illegitimate child.
Only a brainless love-fool like Chen Yue would like him.
What she truly wanted was to cash out those meager shares in her hands as quickly as possible.
When the apocalypse arrived, these paper fortunes would become worthless. It was better to trade them now for solid survival startup capital for the end times.
“I want 100 million in cash,” she said firmly.
“Little bitch, keep dreaming!” Lin Yue’e covered her face and cursed wildly.
Wu Xiaolan completely ignored her.
Chen Tao was a chauvinist; big decisions in this household never fell to Lin Yue’e to call the shots.
She only looked at Chen Tao: “If you guys refuse, then I’ll sell these shares to my maternal cousin Wu Zhigang. He’s been eyeing them for a very long time.”
“When that time comes, I’ll also throw in a fascinating story—the history of a live-in son-in-law’s struggle. As for the specific details of the story, there’s no need to tell you.”
“I guess he’ll find it very interesting.”
Wu Xiaolan hadn’t sold her shares to Wu Zhigang earlier because Wu Zhigang wasn’t a good person either.
Just like Chen Tao, Wu Zhigang also coveted the inheritance left behind by Wu Xiaolan’s grandfather, including the shares in Wu Xiaolan’s hands.
No matter who she sold her shares to, she would face retaliation from the other party later on.
And not a single cent of the cashed-out money would she be able to spend safely.
Fortunately, after entering university, Wu Xiaolan’s thinking had broadened.
She had gone ahead of time to complete an inheritance notarization; once anything happened to her, all assets under her name, including the shares, would be handed over entirely to the state.
Both the Chen family and the remaining relatives of the Wu family knew about this.
Everyone wanted to acquire the company shares at a low price while she was still alive, which was the only reason she had managed to live safely until today.
Now that she urgently needed money to purchase supplies, to avoid complications and the time-wasting process of finding a lawyer, drafting contracts, and going through approvals, she chose to cooperate with Chen Tao and sell him the shares at the lowest price.
Once the money was in hand, as for future retaliation, they could go argue with the horde of zombies.
Sure enough, upon hearing that Wu Xiaolan wanted to sell her shares to Wu Zhigang, Chen Tao’s expression changed on the spot, and he shouted sternly: “Wu Xiaolan, how dare you!”
Over the years, the thing he hated most was anyone mentioning his past as a live-in son-in-law.
And Wu Xiaolan’s face, increasingly resembling his deceased wife Wu Xuerou, now looked even more like a mirror reflecting all his sordidness.
The Wu family had always looked down on him, especially that Wu Zhigang, who opposed him everywhere in the company.
If Wu Zhigang got his hands on the company shares, how could he ever become the power-holder of the company?
Having figured this out, Chen Tao suppressed his anger and put on a troubled facade: “The family is facing cash flow difficulties right now; I can scrape together at most 50 million in cash.”
Then, his tone shifted, a trace of cunning flashing in the depths of his eyes: “As for the remaining 50 million, I have a six-story villa in the Songshan suburbs. Although the location is a bit remote, the area is large enough, and I’ll use it to offset the balance.”
“The premise is that you must sign an agreement to completely sever ties with this family and yield the Lu family engagement to Yue’e.”
Wu Xiaolan wasn’t a fool; she knew Chen Tao’s style of doing things far too well.
The Songshan suburbs? What kind of bird-forsaken place was that?
The crematorium was located in that exact region.
That so-called villa was probably just a half-built abandoned skeleton building, right?
She decisively refused: “No way! I only want 100 million cash!”
“Then go ahead and wait,” Chen Tao prepared to drag things out with Wu Xiaolan timewise to force her into a compromise: “Wait until next year when funds are looser, and I’ll give it to you then.”
The shrewd glint in his eyes was unmasked.
That broken suburban villa belonged to a self-built rural house; although large and spacious, it wasn’t within the city’s key development planning areas, making it even worse than the countryside.
Forget 50 million—it wasn’t even worth 500,000. Giving it to this silly girl Wu Xiaolan was just right.
Besides, that place was desolate and uninhabited. For a young girl living there, anything could happen.
Next year? Wu Xiaolan’s heart tightened.
What she lacked right now was time.
Entangling herself with a scoundrel like Chen Tao meant nightmares would arise from prolonged delays.
Although the suburban villa wasn’t worth much, signing it over would at least secure 50 million in cash.
Thinking of all this.
Her face appropriately displayed struggle and reluctance, which finally turned into a trace of helpless compromise as she gritted her teeth and said: “Fine, transfer the 50 million right now, and transfer the villa deed to my name, and then I’ll sign the agreement.”
Chen Tao had long anticipated that Wu Xiaolan couldn’t hold her ground and immediately instructed someone to prepare the agreement and transfer paperwork.
Tonight was the most profitable deal he had ever made since going into business.
No matter how fierce a little sparrow is, it can never beat an old house-thief.
Before long, Wu Xiaolan’s phone received a bank arrival notification.
It was just that the real estate registry office was already closed for the day, so they could only agree to handle the title transfer tomorrow.
Chen Tao threw the severance agreement toward Wu Xiaolan, his tone full of threats: “The share transfer still requires some approval procedures, so remember to cooperate well and come whenever called, otherwise you know the consequences.”
Wu Xiaolan remained silent, carefully reading through the severance agreement filled with cold clauses. Confirming there were no errors, she resolutely signed her name.
From this moment on, she was finally free.
Staying even a second longer in this den of demons called “home” made her feel a suffocating disgust.
She picked up her copy of the agreement, ignored the victorious and complacent gazes of that family behind her, and walked out of the villa without turning back.
Now, she needed to go check out that suburban villa and see if it had any potential to become her sanctuary in the apocalypse.
Author’s Note:
Writing an apocalypse novel for the first time, I hope everyone gives it lots of support, haha. Thanks for reading.