Song Chengyu spat out a mouthful of blood and phlegm. Beneath his black hair, his eyes looked like two pools of pitch-black ink, staring viciously at the leader of the punks in front of him.
That face, exceptionally favored by the creator, was bruised and scraped, yet it did not diminish his charm in the least; instead, it added a touch of unbridled rebellion to his demeanor.
The more Zheng Wu looked at him, the more displeased he became. He stepped forward and viciously grabbed Song Chengyu by the hair. “Do you still dare to fight over people with me?”
Song Chengyu said nothing, his gaze unblinkingly fixed on Zheng Wu, staring at him until a chill ran down Zheng Wu’s spine.
Seeming to fly into a rage out of shame over his own fear, Zheng Wu let go of his grip and took a few steps back. “Damn it, since you are so unappreciative, keep beating him! Beat him until he surrenders!”
Nearby, a lackey clutched his lower abdomen where he had just been kicked, bending over as he hissed through his teeth, “Damn it, this bastard hits really hard!” With a fierce look in his eyes, he raised his foot and kicked Song Chengyu in the knee.
The full-force blow caused a sharp pain in Song Chengyu’s left knee. His sharp, prominent brow furrowed as he dropped to a single knee on the ground. Clenching his teeth hard, he refused to let out a single cry despite the immense pain.
“Still got some backbone, huh?” The blond punk spat on the ground, laughing out of sheer anger.
You An hid behind a tree, observing the battle. This guy named Zheng Wu was the second cannon fodder to be killed after himself. Because his goddess had cast a favorable eye on Song Chengyu, Zheng Wu had brought people to teach him a lesson, coincidentally happening right as the apocalypse descended at six in the evening, directly getting his head lopped off by Song Chengyu, whose superpower had just awakened. If not for this, Zheng Wu would have also been a one-in-a-million superpower user.
You An knew this was a classic face-slapping plot point: the more miserable the protagonist was beforehand, the more satisfying the bloody massacre after awakening would be. But seeing such a bloody and violent scene with his own eyes still made him furrow his brows.
Twenty-four-year-old Song Chengyu was undoubtedly strong, but no matter how strong he was or how excellent his combat awareness, he could not beat sheer numbers. His martial arts techniques were still vulnerable to the fists of many.
“What, were you beaten into a mute?”
Only You An knew that Song Chengyu was waiting, waiting for his superpower to awaken so he could slaughter everyone.
“Keep beating him!”
“Haven’t you guys had enough?”
The sudden movement caused everyone present to freeze for a fraction of a second.
Hearing the familiar voice, Song Chengyu’s body stiffened, a flicker of disbelief crossing the depths of his eyes. His drooping bangs concealed all of his expressions.
You An stepped out from behind the tree. “Keep fighting and someone is going to die. You don’t want a murder on your hands, do you?”
Zheng Wu narrowed his eyes, sneered, and walked up with one hand in his pocket to give the model student a vicious shove. “Who the hell do you think you are, sticking your nose in my business?”
His strength was so great that it sent the teenager staggering, almost causing him to fall. However, You An managed to steady himself and raised his cell phone. “I have already recorded this. If you do not stop right now, I am going to call the police.”
“Hahahahaha.” The group of people around them burst into laughter, laughing so hard they were out of breath.
You An chuckled inwardly; he was giving them a chance to leave.
“Are you out of your mind? Stick your nose in this again and I will beat you up too!” Zheng Wu slapped You An’s phone away and grabbed him by the collar. With his bulging muscles, Zheng Wu lifted You An, who was not particularly thin, off the ground with his feet dangling.
The oxygen deprivation caused You An’s fair face to flush with an unnatural red, but his mist-filled eyes were fixed on the phone that had fallen to the ground.
On the glowing screen, the time ticked over to exactly 18:00.
The mutation happened in an instant. The weather, which could still be described as clear, turned an alarming, terrifying blood-red at a speed visible to the naked eye, looking precisely like a churning sea of blood.
In an instant, the skin of the lackies nearby turned a sickly cyan-black. Their fingers grew sharp black nails, and their mouths stretched open to a degree entirely impossible for ordinary humans, revealing long, foul-smelling fangs.
Howling, they pounced toward the living humans closest to them.
Seeing such a bizarre scene, Zheng Wu was scared out of his wits. Instinctively, he shoved You An, who was closest to him, out of the way and turned to run.
Damn it! Forced to face the zombies head-on, You An cursed under his breath. Even with mental preparation, he was still terrified by what was unfolding before him.
The zombie lunging at him had its eyeballs hanging loosely from their sockets, dangling by a thread. Being so close, he could even smell the exclusive, rotting stench of death emanating from it.
“Host, do you want to reload the save?” Yuanbao’s voice suddenly chimed in. Completing S-rank and above missions came with three save-reload opportunities, but to prevent the host from over-relying on reloading, it would only ask during critical moments of extreme danger.
“Let me think!” You An gritted his teeth and tilted his head to dodge the zombie’s bloody maw, still pondering the possibility of his lucky escape.
He desperately wanted to see how the protagonist was doing, but right now, he was hardly able to look after himself.
You An leaned back once more to dodge the scratching of sharp claws. Although the system had only stated that anyone bitten by a zombie would be infected, looking at those razor-sharp nails, he could easily guess that the consequences of getting scratched would not be pretty. He did not want to take that risk.
The top priority was to create some distance. If all else failed, he still had a folding knife in his pocket that might just save his life.
Splat!
A pitch-blue longsword pierced straight through the zombie’s brain. The zombie that had been attacking him a moment before fell limply to the ground with a heavy thud, swaying like a doll whose batteries had been pulled out.
You An’s heart skipped a beat as he turned his gaze to Song Chengyu.
The young man unhurriedly withdrew his longsword. Not far away lay the decapitated corpses of two other zombies, the smooth cross-sections of their severed necks looking as though they had been frozen by ice, without a single drop of blood splashing out.
Song Chengyu had always pursued clean kills with a single blow when dealing with zombies, and his movements could even be described as elegant. He glanced at the stunned You An, the emotions deep within his eyes unreadable.
Having tripped and fallen to the ground in a panic, Zheng Wu looked on in sheer horror at everything unfolding before him. With the tide turned, the tall, long-legged young man looked down at him from above, raising the sword in his hand.
The instinct for survival forced Zheng Wu to scramble up from the ground in a frantic mess. Roots suddenly sprouted from beneath his feet, attempting to block Song Chengyu as he walked toward him.
So it was a wood-type superpower, You An realized. This kind of superpower was exceptionally popular in the apocalypse, but unfortunately, Zheng Wu was destined to die today.
Song Chengyu leaped forward in a single bound, the sharp ice sword cutting a dazzling trajectory of death through the air. It was an explosive strike, completely clean and free of hesitation. Just as described in the original plot, Zheng Wu’s head instantly separated from his body, flying through the air in a parabolic arc before landing on the ground and rolling a few times to leave a trail of bright red. Those wide-open eyes were filled with absolute terror.
Witnessing all this, You An instinctively touched his own neck, suppressing the urge to vomit.
Unlike the deaths of the other three zombies, which he had already categorized as monsters in his mind, Zheng Wu had been a living, breathing human just a moment ago.
This was the first time he had ever seen the head of a living person.
The crystal-clear blade of the sword was coated with a layer of dark red light, which was absorbed entirely in a split second. As if gorged on blood, the ice sword grew even sharper.
He was not even sure if he would be the next one to die beneath that ice sword. Taking a deep breath, You An jogged toward Song Chengyu.
“Song Chengyu! Are you alright? What on earth is going on here?” You An looked at him with genuine concern, his words coming out in a jumbled mess. “Why is this world? How did it become like this? And where did the sword in your hand come from?”
If viewed from a third-person perspective, he might even applaud his own acting skills.
Song Chengyu stared at him fixedly. He had to admit that You An possessed a sufficiently gorgeous appearance; the blue-eyed teenager’s face was splattered with someone’s blood, setting off that normally fair face with a breathtaking, soul-stirring beauty.
The hand holding the sword tightened and tightened. “Get lost.”
His tone was icy, carrying an unyielding, bone-chilling coldness that could freeze a person’s blood with a single sentence.
You An hardened his heart and stepped in front of the young man. He parted his lips, a trace of pleading undertone in his voice. “What is wrong with you? You have been acting really strange since yesterday. Did I do something wrong?”
Song Chengyu looked down at him. The teenager before him stubbornly met his gaze, as if determined to get to the bottom of it, and the worried look in his eyes did not look fake.
Because the future had been pre-revealed in this lifetime, many things were different from his past life, and You An was the variable that made him feel the most out of control.
When You An was attacked by the zombie, his body had reacted faster than his brain, and he had actually stepped in to save his enemy.
Humans were complex creatures. Just as he could not understand why You An would block a blow for him, he likewise could not understand why the You An of five years later would betray him for a mere Tier 7 crystal core.
The gradually escalating, destructive emotions forced him to violently grab the throat of the person before him.
Bang!
“Ugh, ah!” The intense pain of his spine slamming into the tree trunk forced out a cry of agony. His entire body was choked by the throat and pinned against the tree, the bulk of his weight supported solely by Song Chengyu’s arm.
“Let go.” You An used both hands to desperately pry at the man’s palm, his overly forceful fingernails leaving several scratch marks on the other’s skin, yet that hand remained as immovable as a copper wall and iron fort.
As the grip tightened, the oxygen in his lungs was bit by bit exhausted. The suffocating pressure on his windpipe left him capable of only making vague, muffled whimpers. His limbs gradually grew limp and weak, losing even the strength to struggle.
Was he really going to be choked to death?
His slender, thick eyelashes shook off a few tears, and those water-slicked sapphire eyes slowly rolled upward.
“Host!” Yuanbao cried out in alarm, “I am turning on pain-masking mode for you right now!”
Lowering his gaze, Song Chengyu felt the life rapidly draining away beneath his palm. He suddenly noticed the hands weakly gripping his arm; a wrist as white as jade was encircled by a black bracelet, the pattern at the center of the bracelet glowing with a soft light.
Of course he knew what that was: a cubic space, exactly like his past life. You An had awakened the spatial superpower.
A flash of deep contemplation crossed his pitch-black, icy pupils, and the next moment, he released his grip.
“Cough, cough.”
Under the influence of gravity, You An slumped to the ground, his overly compressed lungs greedily gasping in mouthfuls of fresh air. Supporting his body with both arms, his brain remained in a state of chaos from the oxygen deprivation.
Song Chengyu looked down at the person prostrate on the ground. From his angle, he could only see the teenager’s slender neck, following the gracefully sculpted spine down into the collar of his shirt.
So fragile that he could kill him at any moment.
After a long while, a slightly hoarse male voice came from above his head. “If you do not want to die, follow me.”
Having mostly recovered, You An stood up with a pale face, leaning against the tree. To be honest, he did not know how he should act to make it seem more reasonable, but the smartest move right now was undoubtedly to keep silent.
“Master, are you okay?! Good thing he stopped; I was just about to trigger a save reload!” Yuanbao flew behind Song Chengyu, indignant, and tried to give him a few invisible swats with its little wings while making sure the other could not see.
You An was amused by it, easing his originally terrible mood.
“Thanks to you, it did not hurt too much.”
Though… You An checked his neck via Yuanbao’s electronic eye. A prominent, cherry-red bruise had already bloomed across his snow-white skin.
As expected of the protagonist; he really had a lot of strength.
“Then why did he suddenly let us go?” After all, anyone could tell that Song Chengyu’s initial move was clearly meant to kill him.
The beautiful teenager’s lips twitched upward in a microscopic arc. “I suppose it is because I still have utility value.”
“Do you remember if anyone in the squad we formed in my past life had a duplication superpower?”
“Ah! You mean!” Yuanbao’s wits suddenly clicked.
Spatial superpowers were extremely important in the early stages of the apocalypse. Song Chengyu did not share his knowledge of the plot; the only thing he could rely on was his memories of the past life. Letting him go was probably to have that teammate with the duplication ability copy his spatial superpower.
Actually, though, Song Chengyu did not need to worry at all, because later in the plot, a spatial superpower user of an even higher rank than You An would join his team.
“But this is actually a good thing for me. At the very least, I will be in a safe period until that duplication user copies my superpower.”
The place where they were was a hidden grove outside the university campus, a spot where punks often bullied students. You An followed carefully behind Song Chengyu, staying vigilant against zombies that could lurch out at any moment.
The sounds in his ears were a mix of zombie roars and the desperate shrieks and wails of humans, sounding as though they were right next to him yet seemingly miles away. Because of the prolonged exposure to such high-decibel noise, the only thing his ears could receive in the end was a sharp, seemingly endless ringing.
Glancing back inadvertently, You An caught sight of a landscape straight out of hell.
No, even hell itself could not possibly be more terrifying than the scene unfolding before his eyes.