【 Within ten days, people will fall ill with fever one after another. Ten days later the temperature will suddenly plunge, and a planet-wide superstorm will rage for a full day. After that, the Fog will appear, and all kinds of monsters will pour out of it. 】
On the Third Continent’s largest forum, this warning post had suddenly cropped up, an “apocalypse” alert with no beginning and no end.
2L 【 At least put some effort into your fanfic. This is the 33rd “the world is ending” post I’ve seen, and the laziest one yet. 】
3L 【 An apocalypse, nice. I’ve wanted to die for ages. Next life I don’t want to be a Third Continent slum-dweller, I’d rather be a dog on the First Continent. 】
4L 【 If the apocalypse really comes, I’m gonna go blow up all those rich people in District 1! 】
5L 【 Are you out of your mind? If you’ve got the guts, go blow up the rich on the other two continents. Do poor people only ever take it out on poor people? 】
6L 【 Lord Monoru protect me, I didn’t mean to click into this thread. Disaster begone, shoo, shoo, shoo! 】
【 ……. 】
Shan Ran glanced over the replies, then closed the page. Spotting a garbage truck by the roadside, she tossed the burner phone in.
The fevers had started yesterday, out of nowhere, people’s temperatures shot straight up to forty-one degrees, and the feverish would faint without warning, sometimes simply collapsing mid-stride on the street.
Today was the second day. A fresh wave of people had come down with fever, throwing the entire continent’s rhythm of work and life into disarray, and for some, it was lethal.
The world had come unglued, especially on Shan Ran’s Third Continent, the most backward and impoverished of the three, riddled with slums and chronically high unemployment. Once unrest broke out, it also produced the most people fishing in troubled waters and going in for a bit of “zero-yuan shopping”.
The Third Continent had five Districts in all, and Shan Ran lived in District 1. Because of an inter-school competition, a week ago she and a group of classmates and teachers had come to Yefei University in District 4 to compete.
And it was exactly a week ago, after Shan Ran boarded the flight to District 4, that she had begun to receive stray, inexplicable memories in fits and starts, her mind hazy, the memories drilling into her skull like needles.
Until today, when she had finally, fully woken up.
It turned out she had transmigrated into an apocalypse restricted novel, a book titled ‘The Apocalypse Came, and the Filthy 【Redacted】 Between Me and 365 【Redacted】’, and she had become a minor female character in it, losing all sense of self and living out an entire lifetime inside the story.
Back then it had been that shameless title that hooked her, so she’d read it through one chapter at a time, only for the book to remain unfinished when she got pulled inside. Maybe it was simply too long ago: her memories of the real world had gone blurry. What was vivid, by contrast, was the death and pain of that last life, so real that even now, recalling it, her teeth itched with hatred.
Within ten days, the feverish would fall into a coma, three or four days for some, six or seven for others, and on waking they would gain esper abilities.
Ten days later, the things written in the forum post she’d read would come to pass.
Wind. Fog. Monsters.
Last life, people had called these abruptly-appearing creatures ‘nightmare beasts’.
The world fell.
But it had also become an opportunity for many, especially for the people of the Third Continent, the ones forever branded as lower-class.
The world order was reshuffled.
Even so, half the population never got any ability at all, and last life the luckless Shan Ran had been one of them.
To be precise, her ability simply hadn’t been unlocked, and the way to unlock it was very much on-brand for a restricted novel:
After exchanging ‘bodily fluids’ with an esper, she would gain that esper’s ability.
The book’s heroine was named Rong Shuyao, sweet-faced, with a light-element ability that came with purification. She could not only heal bodily injuries but also cleanse the contamination espers took on from devouring nightmare beasts’ crystal cores to level up. Healing required physical contact with the other person, and the greater the area of contact, the more efficient the healing.
Yeah. Very restricted-novel.
But Shan Ran was only a side character, why was ‘her’ ability so… restricted-novel too?
And with a setup like that, didn’t it mean she could acquire an unlimited number of abilities?
Because, you see, most people woke with only a single ability. Only a few had dual-element abilities, tri-element abilities were exceedingly rare, and those who had them, barring an early death, became famous powerhouses without exception.
Probably it was precisely because the setup was so broken that the author had killed this side character off.
Last life, the moment Shan Ran’s ability was exposed, the protagonist squad had wiped her out in short order.
Any ambitious person, if they couldn’t bring an esper with such an ability under their own banner, would strangle her in the cradle.
Right now it was the second day of the fevers.
Shan Ran’s own temperature wasn’t quite normal, a low-grade fever hovering between thirty-seven and thirty-eight degrees, never enough to make her faint. So last life she’d taken some medicine and thought nothing of it.
At this point, the policy handed down by the three continents’ executives was to isolate the feverish all together, for fear an unknown virus was spreading.
Last life, Shan Ran had assumed it was just an epidemic that would pass in time, so she’d stayed obediently at her hotel.
She never expected that as more and more people fell feverish, and as some began waking with abilities, the world would grow more chaotic, and the road home harder and harder.
After the nightmare beasts appeared, she and the teachers and students had found a bus and set out on the journey back.
Fortunately, Shan Ran had practiced fighting and combat since childhood and had a little ability to protect herself, after a harrowing month, more than half of them dead, she had finally made it back to District 1.
When Shan Ran trudged home to her villa, she found the place utterly transformed.
There were a fair number of people inside, Rong Shuyao, leading the early protagonist squad, had moved into her home like a turtledove seizing a magpie’s nest.
Shan Ran and Rong Shuyao were classmates. Shan Ran usually kept to herself, only the sweet, sunny Rong Shuyao had doggedly kept trying to get close to her, making her about the closest thing to a “friend” Shan Ran had at school.
When the apocalypse came, the residential district where Rong Shuyao lived was swallowed by a bank of Fog, and nightmare beasts appeared in droves.
They charged the crowds, and many residents were killed before they could even react.
After Rong Shuyao escaped, she linked up with a few people she was close to, and they searched together for a safe place to stay, arriving at last at the villa district where Shan Ran lived.
Shan Ran wasn’t home, so they smashed the glass and let themselves in.
There was no Fog bank near the villa district, on top of that, the area was open and sprawling, and Shan Ran’s place was stocked with plenty of supplies she’d laid in beforehand. So they settled in there with their minds at ease, and it became the protagonist squad’s earliest base.
After Shan Ran came to her senses, she got ready to head home.
She ordered an SUV and had it driven straight to the hotel, then rented a bus on top of that.
She drove the SUV herself, the bus was driven by that same driver from last life, the one with no ability.
It took quite a bit of talking to persuade the District 1 teachers and students to go back, but in the end they all agreed.
Even though she’d had little contact with them this life, in that month-plus last life they’d weathered hardship side by side, that made them friends bonded through life and death, across a whole lifetime.
After watching the last feverish student get carried onto the bus, Shan Ran let out a breath and waved them off.
By the time all that was sorted, it was already seven in the evening.
Shan Ran’s hotel was right next to the university, and it wasn’t the only campus around, the area was packed with a food street and shopping centers. Normally at this hour the streets would be jammed with traffic, bustling with people coming and going.
District 4 ranked second from the bottom, and crowded places tended to be safer.
The worst District, District 5, was the dumping ground for the First and Second Continents: vast quantities of trash were compacted and shipped there for processing, which made it home to the most slums and the most heavily polluted land. So even in busy areas, there could be muggings right out in the street.
Since yesterday, far fewer people were out and about, and the streets felt deserted.
Shan Ran waited outside the hotel for her cars to arrive. As she looked down at her phone, a shadow fell across the once-bright pool of lamplight.
She lifted her head. A young man was standing in front of her.
He wore a plain white tee and dark straight-leg jeans, tall, with a slim build, his black hair neat and soft, the bridge of his nose high and straight. His eyes were on the rounder side, which made him look very docile, and there was a red mole at the corner of one eye. The whole of him seemed utterly harmless.
His was a clean, fresh sort of face, the standout features slightly blurred by the backlight.
Seeing Shan Ran staring blankly at him, his face went redder and redder, he gave a shy little smile and lifted a hand to say hello.
“H-hihh—”
He’d barely gotten the word started, only half a syllable out, when the young man’s eyes rolled back and he dropped straight to the ground.
Shan Ran: ………?
She stood frozen with her phone in hand for a moment before bending down to check on him.
What rotten luck, the direction he’d fallen happened to put a utility pole right there, and his head had cracked against it, blood gushing out.
Shan Ran crouched to take a look and realized he’d fainted from fever.
Plenty of people were staying home precisely because they were afraid of fainting and getting hurt. This guy, though, he’d keeled over the instant he walked up to her.
If it weren’t for these extraordinary times, Shan Ran wouldn’t have doubted he was running a porcelain-scam.
Shan Ran studied him a while, then remembered he was the part-time student who worked at the café across from the hotel. A few days ago, when she’d gone to buy coffee, her head throbbing because she’d just started receiving those memories, she’d accidentally spilled the whole cup down his front, and afterward had bought him a new set of clothes to make up for it.
After a moment’s thought, Shan Ran crossed the street to the café.
Inside, there was only a single attendant lounging in a recliner.
From him she learned that the young man was an orphan, slum-born, living off scholarships and part-time work. Normally he stayed at the school, but with more and more people falling feverish, classes had already been suspended.
Having learned the young man was named Meng Xinye, Shan Ran finally went back out and returned to where she’d been standing.
Meng Xinye……
Meng Xinye?
Shan Ran’s eyes lit up. This person on the ground was a big shot who’d appeared in the book.
In the original, Meng Xinye carried both water-element and agility-element abilities, a rare dual-element esper, and later founded his own base.
‘Live a life over again, and a future big shot faints right in front of me.’
Just then, the car Shan Ran had booked arrived.
A dark-skinned driver climbed out, took one look at the bleeding, unconscious Meng Xinye on the ground, and fell silent for a moment.
“These past couple days, lots of folks on the road like this.”
Shan Ran glanced at him. “Then you’ve still got the nerve to drive out, boss?”
The driver heaved a helpless sigh. “Gotta eat, don’t I. Fares are double these days. Can only pray the Lord Ariel watches over me and I don’t pass out halfway, heh.”
Once they’d settled the arrangements for the car, the driver ambled off.
Shan Ran wrestled with it for a while, then decided to take Meng Xinye home.
She first went to a nearby pharmacy for the necessary supplies, gave his injury a quick treatment and bandaged up his head, then carried him into the car and strapped him in with the seatbelt.
That done, Shan Ran muttered to herself:
Please don’t let this trigger some melodramatic “picked up a stray man off the roadside” plotline.