Yu Yao woke up on a soft, comfortable bed.
The instant she startled awake and sat up, a massive flood of information suddenly surged into her mind.
She hurriedly clutched her head, which felt like it was about to burst apart, gritting her teeth to keep herself from blacking out. Cold sweat slid down her bulging veins drop by drop, quickly soaking through her thin clothes.
Fortunately, the pain didn’t last long. Once all the information had been absorbed, she slowly recovered.
Only then did she realize—
She had transmigrated!
This body was also named Yu Yao, twenty years old, a student at Hai University, currently in her sophomore year.
As for the original owner of this body, her life had been just as rough.
She was born into an ordinary family in Hai City. Her parents were regular office workers. Because she had an older brother, her parents didn’t dote on her much, but they didn’t treat her badly either.
A very typical family dynamic.
In the second semester of her second year of high school, both of her parents were killed in a car accident.
Because she was still underage, her brother—Yu Zhao, who was serving in the Kyoto Military Region—took her to live with him. She thus began a life following the military, only returning to her hometown after she was admitted to the university she had always dreamed of, Hai University.
It was as if the word “lonely” was written into her fate. Just as her sophomore year of college was coming to an end, her brother Yu Zhao was killed in the line of duty.
This time, she truly became all alone in the world.
Three months later, the apocalypse arrived.
Yes—the apocalypse was imminent.
A post-apocalyptic wasteland that existed only in films, novels, and comics descended without warning. Zombies roamed rampant, mutated animals and plants invaded the world, and humanity struggled to survive.
The apocalypse came on an ordinary night. It was as if someone had suddenly pressed a pause button on the entire world—every living being fell into a deep sleep for three whole days.
After those three days, seventy percent of the global population turned into mindless creatures that only knew how to attack the living and feed—what people commonly called “zombies.”
Among those who didn’t turn, some awakened special abilities and became espers. But more than half of the survivors remained ordinary people.
The original Yu Yao was one of them.
In the apocalypse, rules were rewritten and humanity eroded. People were divided into strict hierarchies based on whether they had abilities and how strong those abilities were.
And the powerless original Yu Yao was at the very bottom of the food chain.
Worse still, she not only lacked any ability to protect herself, she was also a woman—a young and beautiful woman.
Women’s jealousy and men’s lust made her apocalyptic life even harder.
……
Fortunately, her brother had a group of comrades who had gone through life and death with him. Because the one person he worried about most was Yu Yao, those comrades naturally felt a strong urge to protect her.
Before Yu Zhao died, he constantly reminded Yu Yao that if anything ever happened, she must go to them. The original owner remembered this firmly.
Before the apocalypse in her previous life, the climate had become strange and various doomsday theories emerged one after another. People frantically hoarded supplies, panic spreading everywhere.
Terrified, the original Yu Yao ran to Kyoto in advance to look for her brother’s comrades. That was how she managed to cling to their protection and safely pass through the early stages of the apocalypse.
Even though she had backing early on, she was still just an ordinary person. Although she had learned a few combat moves from her brother, and had studied martial arts for a short time when she was younger due to certain circumstances, giving her some basic skills—
She still couldn’t keep up with the increasingly terrifying zombies and the brutal apocalyptic world.
In the end, she was a burden.
Worse than that, she uncontrollably fell in love with her brother’s captain.
That man—exceptional in both looks and ability, who treated her with particular kindness—Lin Fengmu.
Her love was intense and fanatical. She ignored the fact that he had a perfectly matched childhood sweetheart, ignored that he only regarded her as a younger sister to protect, and desperately clung to every scrap of warmth he gave her.
Over time, she became more and more paranoid and gloomy, constantly targeting Lin Fengmu’s partner—the woman everyone acknowledged as the future Mrs. Lin.
Because of her hostility, schemes, and instigation, she gradually became the foil to that woman.
She was a powerless burden without abilities, while the other was the queen of female soldiers—a powerful dual-element wind-and-fire esper who could always stand on her own.
She was useless in daily life, unable to even cook properly, while the other was a capable woman who excelled both publicly and domestically, praised by everyone.
She grew increasingly petty and temperamental, while the other remained gentle and magnanimous, always tolerating her flaws and tantrums like an older sister.
Before she fell for Lin Fengmu, that woman had been someone she deeply admired.
Yet somehow, she gradually became someone she no longer recognized.
Slowly, even her brother’s comrades began to grow dissatisfied with her.
Until one day, she was tricked out of the camp by one of that woman’s admirers and thrown into a horde of zombies—and not a single person came to look for her.
If another team of espers hadn’t happened to pass by at that moment, she would have long since become food for the zombies.
After being rescued, she finally woke up, realizing that in this world, she could rely on no one but herself.
She no longer wanted to return to Lin Fengmu’s side.
To avoid being treated as a plaything, she gritted her teeth and deliberately ruined her own face.
After countless hardships, she made her way to another base and became the lowest-ranking laborer, doing any dirty or exhausting work as long as it meant survival.
But the world had already gone mad.
Even after disfiguring herself and living in constant hardship to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, she was still frequently harassed at night by depraved men driven mad by desire.
Fortunately, while repairing city walls, she often found metal blades condensed by metal-type espers outside the walls, which allowed her to barely protect herself.
Though she was often beaten to the brink of death and suffered repeated concussions, she survived on sheer ferocity and struggled through more than eight years of the apocalypse.
In the tenth year, the Zombie King commanded a massive tide of zombies to attack the base. To divert their attention, the upper echelons ordered the inner city sealed off, abandoning all ordinary people in the outer city as sacrifices.
As for what happened to the inner city afterward, the original Yu Yao never found out.
Because after clinging to life for so many years, she ultimately died in the jaws of zombies.
Who would have thought that when she opened her eyes again, she would return to three months before the apocalypse—just after her brother had passed away?
When the original owner first returned, she believed it was all just a nightmare. But as events from her previous life replayed one by one, she realized—
The apocalypse would still come!
No one wants to relive a nightmare they’ve already endured, and she was no exception.
Given another chance, she was still an ordinary girl without abilities.
No overwhelming combat power. No space to hoard supplies. No capital.
Unless she told the country about the impending apocalypse and exchanged that knowledge for protection.
But she didn’t want to live as a useless person under others’ protection again—nor did she want anyone to know she had been reborn.
That would only push her into an even deeper abyss.
In her previous life, she clung stubbornly to survival just to see whether the apocalypse would ever end.
But ten long years without an end had ground her down into numbness.
A life without hope or a future—she didn’t want it anymore.
So when there were still fifty days left before the apocalypse, she decisively chose to commit suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills.
After ten years without a single good night’s sleep, even after returning, she only wanted to sleep well—forever, without ever waking up.
And then—
Yu Yao arrived.
After sorting through all of the original owner’s memories, Yu Yao clicked her tongue softly and sighed, “Silly child.”
Still, she had gained something—this healthy body.
Well… even though the massive overdose of sleeping pills had damaged it somewhat, it was still far better than the broken body from her previous life.
Besides, she wasn’t the original owner.
She wouldn’t resign herself to fate. Even without abilities, even without Lin Fengmu, she would still live well.
With just over fifty days until the apocalypse, she had gained the advantage of foresight. She could stockpile supplies and train her skills.
In this life, she would definitely live on—properly!
……
Ding—
A crisp notification sound suddenly rang out in her mind, startling Yu Yao, who had just set her resolve. Immediately after, a new stream of information unfolded in her consciousness.
Yu Yao’s clear, cool peach-blossom eyes widened. After a long moment, she suddenly laughed.
She had actually brought Defying Fate with her!