It was a little past six in the evening on a weekday. Most students were still in class, and their current vantage point gave them a clear view of the first comprehensive teaching building.
The few remaining survivors were scrambling in all directions. Desperate to escape a pursuing horde of zombies, one male student bolted blindly, vaulted over a railing, and plummeted onto the hard concrete pavement, losing all ability to run as he dragged his injured leg and tried to crawl forward.
The sound echoing from behind turned his face instantly deathly pale.
With several loud, shattering crashes, the dark green monsters chased the scent of the living, slamming relentlessly against the iron railing. Zombies lacked intelligence and had no concept of bypassing obstacles; their most terrifying attribute was stamina that seemed utterly inexhaustible. Under the ceaseless impact and destruction, the railing was thoroughly bent and deformed.
The boy dug his fingers desperately into the ground, dragging himself forward. The sheer force caused his fingernails to scrape across the hard surface, leaving behind a few startling, bloody streaks.
Without the barrier of the fence, the zombies tumbled down one after the other. They seemed impervious to pain, as though they could fall from a height of dozens of meters, splatter into a heap of mud, and simply sprout new limbs to stagger back out for a feed.
“Ahhhhh! Save me! Please, save me! Ahhhhh, I don’t want to turn into a monster!” He thrust his only intact right arm forward, pointing directly at You An.
His screams were abruptly cut short, followed immediately by the sickening sound of crunching and chewing, mixed with crisp snaps that left a vivid, horrifying image in one’s mind of muscles and bones being bitten clean through.
You An felt as though his heart had been squeezed tight. He did not know whether the boy had been calling out to him for help or merely engaging in an instinctive, dying struggle.
No, wait. That clothing is…
You An’s eyes widened abruptly.
He finally realized where that sense of familiarity came from. He had seen the owner of that outfit in the original host’s memories.
As it turned out, the dead student was a classmate of the original host—the guy who lived in the dorm next door and always invited them to play basketball.
Noticing the footsteps halting behind him, Song Chengyu turned around and saw You An staring blankly ahead, completely silent.
“What are you looking at?”
“Deng Wen… he’s dead.”
Following the direction of You An’s finger, that heap of torn and scattered limbs and flesh was no longer recognizable. Song Chengyu frowned slightly, feeling a long-absent trace of an emotion he couldn’t quite label as pity.
“Song Chengyu, tell me… what on earth happened?”
“As you can see, the world has turned into an apocalypse due to some unknown reason, just like in disaster movies. Those monsters—I call them zombies—have a weakness in their brains. Only by destroying the brain will they die completely.
“And humans bitten by the teeth of zombies will become their own kind.
“One of the reasons we are still standing here without turning into zombies is this.”
With that, Song Chengzu grabbed You An’s right wrist and lifted it up, then showed You An his own wristband.
“My ability is ice; I can manipulate the ice element. As for yours, based on my guess, it should be related to space. The wristband will tell you how to use it.”
This was the first time You An carefully examined the wristband on his own wrist. Sure enough, once his gaze shifted over it, a small virtual electronic screen floated into view, displaying his name, ability name, level, and instructions for use.
Ability Name: Spatial-type Ability
Level: Level 1, storage space, exclusively for storing inanimate objects.
Instructions for Use: Silently recite “use” to mentally store and retrieve items; silently recite “check” to view the current status.
He checked it in his mind, and a semi-open cube enclosed on three sides materialized in the air for a fraction of a second before quickly vanishing.
You An wanted to ask something more, but out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly caught sight of movement.
Looking closer, the door to the school security office was broken open from the inside. A zombie burst out amidst shattered wooden panels; judging from its tattered uniform, it was likely the security guard on duty.
“This isn’t the place to talk. Let’s go.”
Song Chengyu’s car was parked not far away. He took the driver’s seat while You An sat in the passenger seat, tasked with keeping watch and noting surrounding emergencies to avoid getting surrounded by zombies.
It was currently the evening rush hour, and even in this remote location, the roads were still filled with traffic. However, the traffic flow was now almost completely stagnant.
Vehicles were jammed haphazardly across the road. In the passenger seat of one car, a zombie had bitten through the driver’s neck, while fleeing survivors were grabbed and consumed one by one like mice toyed with by a cat.
“There’s a zombie rushing toward us from the rear right!” You An said in a low voice, keeping his eyes glued to that direction.
Hearing this, Song Chengyu glanced at the rearview mirror with his cold, starlight-like eyes, gripped the steering wheel to execute a drifting maneuver that dodged the malicious monster behind the car, and then slammed hard on the accelerator to plow directly into another zombie convulsing as it tried to rise ahead.
“Boom!”
The sudden, massive roar pierced the eardrums like a long, thin needle driving straight into the brain, followed by the teeth-gritting sound of tires rolling over flesh.
After violently jolting a few times, the car’s body stabilized. You An felt dizzy from the shaking, but the moment Song Chengyu parked at the entrance of a supermarket warehouse and he stepped out of the vehicle, he finally felt the reassuring firmness of the ground beneath his feet.
Fortunately, the solar-powered streetlights were still illuminated, allowing them to clearly assess the surrounding conditions. This was an independent warehouse deliberately chosen to be far from residential areas. Song Chengyu conjured a long sword in his hand, cleaved open the two doors, tossed a flashlight to You An with his free hand, and said, “Use your ability to gather some supplies.”
Inside the silent warehouse, cargo was neatly arranged. The only light sources were the crimson moonlight streaming through the skylight, the flashlight, and the ever-present threat of zombies breaking in from outside. In such an atmosphere, shadows shifting continuously with every movement were enough to startle him.
After what felt like an agonizingly long time, the beam of the flashlight swept across the words “compressed biscuits” printed on a cardboard box.
“There are compressed biscuits here.” After whispering his report, You An immediately activated his space to start hoarding supplies.
Judging by the packaging, there were about fifty packs in a box, each weighing one hundred grams. Given that escape required higher caloric intake, at a rate of two hundred grams per person per day, six boxes would be enough to sustain five adults for a month—plenty of time to tide them over until their next search for provisions.
The water supply was likely polluted and unsafe for consumption, so the scarce spatial capacity had to prioritize storing plenty of water.
The beam of the flashlight swept across him as Song Chengyu’s calm voice sounded, “The water is over here.”
Following the sound, You An walked around several shelves and repeated the process. Once they had loaded up on enough water, the two of them selected some easily transportable food rich in trace elements to ensure basic nutrition.
With everything properly prepared, You An followed closely behind Song Chengyu, ready to leave. He cautiously skirted around the damaged door, his eyes scanning nervously for the monsters lurking in the darkness, waiting for a chance to strike.
Rustle, rustle.
The sound was extremely faint—so light that he half-suspected it was a hallucination. Yet the next moment, Song Chengyu’s sharply narrowing pupils as he whirled around in alertness confirmed that he hadn’t heard wrong.
“You An!”
Realizing the danger, You An decisively lunged forward, but it was too late.
An arm shot out from behind, clamping firmly over the youth’s mouth. Suddenly losing his center of gravity, his body fell backward into the embrace of the person behind him, who dragged him rapidly back into the depths of the warehouse.
Upon seeing the assailant, Song Chengyu gave chase instantly.
“Don’t come any closer! Take another step and I’ll kill him!”
A cold, sharp blade pressed tightly against a slender, pale white neck. You An closed his eyes for a moment, thinking to himself that he really had terrible luck today—he had just escaped Song Chengyu’s death threat only to run straight into this scenario.
Song Chengyu looked at the faint trace of blood seeping out, frowned slightly, but ultimately stayed where he was.
“What do you want?” His cold voice lacked a single trace of warmth.
In the dim moonlight, the man’s appearance gradually became clear: a middle-aged man wearing glasses, slightly plump, and dressed in a suit—a typical office worker. Two vicious glares erupted from his narrow, squinted eyes. You An could feel the blade trembling slightly before pressing down harder, forcing him to tilt his head back in evasion.
“I—I just want to survive!”
Panting heavily, the man retreated a few more steps until his back hit a shelf, threatening them fiercely, “I saw everything when you guys were grabbing supplies! Hand over the wristband!”
You An’s heart skipped a beat as he instinctively looked at Song Chengyu’s expression.
The boy’s composure, far exceeding that of an ordinary person, gave him a shred of a safety net. Song Chengyu raised his arm. “You want this?”
“Cut the crap and give it to me! With this, I’ll have abilities too!”
“What a pity…” Those dark pupils carefully captured the man’s reaction. “This wristband is virtual. No one can take it away.”
“What did you say?” The man opened his turbid eyes in disbelief.
“If you don’t believe it, try it out—use the one on his hand.”
Driven close to madness, the man’s rough hands fumbled wildly around You An’s cuff. The dark-surfaced wristband was pierced right through the moment his fingers touched it; he felt nothing beneath his fingertips except the skin of the youth’s wrist.
How could this be… This was the path to survival he had worked so hard to find…
“Ahhhhh, why, why?!”
The near-desperate howl signaled that he had completely suffered a mental breakdown.
Now!
You An suddenly launched a counterattack, slamming his elbow violently backward. Taking advantage of the man’s pain, he used his other hand to grab the wrist holding the knife, controlling the direction of the blade.
Observing the movement all along, Song Chengyu seized this fleeting gap. Striding forward with his long legs, he reached You An’s side in two or three steps, thrusting his razor-sharp long sword straight ahead.
You An only saw a flash of cold light pass before his eyes. By the time he recovered his senses, the knife at his neck had already dropped to the ground as the man lost the strength to grip it.
“Ugh—”
With his mouth pierced through by the sharp sword, the man slid down the shelf and collapsed onto the floor. As the ice sword was pulled out, blocked blood gushed out onto the ground, filling the entire warehouse with the unique, heavy scent of fresh blood.
His drooping head never lifted again.
Still shaken, You An stared dazedly at the corpse until a pat on the shoulder from Song Chengyu snapped him back to reality.
“We need to go.”
Song Chengyu calmly glanced a few times at the prominent red marks and the fresh scratch lining the youth’s fair neck, finding them inexplicably grating to the eye.