Outside the window, Nan Leyou stood under the moonlight, looking up at that darkened window.
A wisp of green vine coiled around his fingertips, extending toward the ground and rooting deeply into the soil.
Through the plant root network, he could vaguely perceive the life pulse of the entire park: humans, animals, plants, and those existences wandering outside the walls.
Zombies.
Nan Leyou still remembered what the beginning of the apocalypse looked like. At that time, no one believed that something from novels would appear in real life.
A few days after the apocalypse descended, the first video spread wildly on social platforms late at night.
The footage shook violently, as if secretly recorded on a phone. Outside the emergency room of a downtown hospital, a man lay on the ground, his shoulder twitching abnormally. People around him screamed and backed away, while security guards approached cautiously with riot shields.
“Sir? Sir, do you need help?”
The man raised his head.
The camera zoomed in. His pupils were unfocused, the whites of his eyes filled with blood vessels, and muddy saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth. A “hehe” sound came from his throat, like a broken bellows.
Then he lunged at the nearest nurse.
He bit directly into her neck, blood spraying. The security guards rushed forward to pull him away. The man had enormous strength, throwing off two adult men and continuing to bite.
The video was cut off here.
The comment section exploded:
“Special effects, right? Fake, right? This blood plasma is too fake. By the way, a little ad—my family’s quality is good, everyone come buy from us.”
“Stupid advertiser, get lost!”
“Another marketing account creating panic! How could there be zombies in the world!”
“Did this guy take drugs?”
“@Ping’an Chengxi come manage this! Someone here is spreading panic! Arrest him!”
The official notice was released half an hour later: “Our city has had an incident of a mentally ill patient injuring someone. It has been brought under control. Please do not spread rumors or believe rumors.”
But similar videos began appearing in various cities. “Vagrants” pouncing on passengers in city subways, “drunks” chasing and biting passersby on food streets, “mentally ill people” gnawing raw meat in supermarkets…
Their initial name was not “zombies.” Officially, this situation was called the appearance of a “rabies variant strain” or “a new type of aggressive mental illness.”
The media was cautious, experts refuted rumors, and the government called for calm.
Nan Leyou was still at university at the time and was not very interested in this kind of news. In his heart there was only the botany competition project. To win the gold medal, he had worked hard for a long time.
Until the first infected person appeared at Nan Leyou’s university.
It was a third-year senior who had returned from an internship at a downtown hospital. That night he had a high fever in the dormitory. His roommate thought he had a cold and gave him fever medicine.
At one in the morning, screams tore through the entire floor.
When Nan Leyou was awakened, the corridor was already in chaos. He pushed open the dormitory door and saw that senior with a mouth full of blood, pinning a classmate against the wall and biting him.
Two more lay on the ground, their necks mangled with blood and flesh.
Someone called the police. The police came, wearing protective suits, and subdued the senior with a riot fork. The ambulance took away the injured, and the smell of disinfectant filled the entire building.
Then the next day the school suspended classes and the dormitory was locked down.
The broadcast repeated on loop: “A new type of infectious disease has recently appeared. Students, please stay in your dormitories and wait for testing.”
Nan Leyou lay by the window, watching more and more white coats and protective suits on campus. At that time he had not yet awakened his ability. He was just an ordinary botany student.
He watered the gardenia on the windowsill. Nan Leyou thought that there would not be many more times to water the flower. What was a pity was that he had not yet seen his gardenia bloom.
Nan Leyou called home. His mother answered, her voice tense but forcibly calm: “Xiao You, don’t worry. The TV says it’s just a more serious flu. Your dad has already stockpiled rice and canned food…”
From the other end came his father’s roar: “Why are you bothering with all that! Tell him to come home quickly! The west city highway is already jammed!”
In the background, the news broadcast could be faintly heard: “…Citizens, please try to avoid going to crowded places. If symptoms such as fever or aggressive behavior appear, isolate immediately and report…”
Nan Leyou held the phone and suddenly asked: “Mom, is the gardenia I brought back last time still okay?”
His mother was stunned for a moment. “It’s still blooming. It hasn’t wilted.”
“Okay.” Nan Leyou said. “Lock the doors and wait for me to come back.”
The call ended. When he called again, it was a busy tone.
Another day passed, and Nan Leyou saw with his own eyes how a person turned into a zombie.
A bitten classmate lay on a stretcher in the isolation ward and suddenly began convulsing.
Medical staff held him down and injected a sedative. But it was already useless. His eyes began to turn gray, his teeth became sharp, and he roared as he bit toward the nearest nurse.
The gun fired.
The hand of the police officer holding the gun was shaking. The bullet hit the shoulder, and the person only swayed before continuing to pounce and bite.
The second shot, a headshot.
The corpse fell to the ground, and black-red blood spread out.
The ward was dead silent. Then a nurse collapsed to the floor and began crying hysterically.
From that day on, the word zombie began to surface from the dark corners of the internet. No one refuted rumors anymore, because those who refuted rumors had also started fleeing for their lives.
Nan Leyou first hid in the dormitory for a few days, until no one brought food or water anymore. The dormitory building became a gradually dying body. The footsteps in the corridor went from dense to sparse, and in the end only the howling wind remained.
His roommates, one after another, could not bear it and chose to leave, never returning.
Without water and food, he could not survive either. Nan Leyou thought that if he was destined to die, at least he should not rot in the school.
His phone had no signal and could only loop a video.
A spokesperson in military uniform, with the capital’s landmark building behind him, spoke in a serious voice that could no longer hide exhaustion.
“…The country has activated a Level 1 emergency response. Shelters are being established in various places. Citizens, please maintain order and move according to guidance…”
The city had lost control.
Nan Leyou followed the collapsing flow of people running out of the city. The highway was jammed, private cars abandoned in the middle of the road, doors wide open, fuel tanks pried open and drained.
Some people dragged suitcases, some carried hiking backpacks, and more had empty hands, simply following the crowd blindly.
He saw the first complete zombie horde.
A scene of despair appeared before his eyes. From the fields on both sides of the highway, from the abandoned service areas, from the jammed traffic, people stood up one by one, swaying.
Some wore pajamas, some wore suits, some were covered in blood, some looked no different from living people. They turned their heads, revealing gray-white eyes and opening salivating mouths.
Screams.
Pushing.
Trampling.
Gunshots rang out sporadically, but were quickly drowned out by more roars.
Someone picked up a crowbar and fought back, smashing the skull of a zombie. Black blood and brain matter splattered all over them.
That person froze for a second, then vomited.
Nan Leyou hid under a bus. Through the gap in the chassis, he saw countless feet run past. Human sneakers, leather shoes, bare feet; zombies’ tattered shoes, exposed foot bones.
He smelled a mixed odor: blood, rot, gasoline, sweat, and the scent of human panic.
He hid under the bus for a day and a night.
Curled up, listening to the footsteps above his head coming and going. Once, a rotting hand reached into the gap in the chassis and groped around, only ten centimeters from his face. He held his breath and looked at that hand, which still wore a wedding ring, the diamond dim and lusterless in the filthy blood.
When he woke up, the world had already changed.
Gunshots were sparse. Human cries had become dying groans, and zombie roars had become background noise.
He crawled out from under the bus. The highway was like hell: severed limbs, internal organs, overturned vehicles, burning flames, and those corpses wandering aimlessly.
A little girl zombie in a floral dress, about seven or eight years old, missing half her face, was lying on a corpse gnawing at it.
She heard the noise and turned her head, her gray-white eyes staring at Nan Leyou.
Then she stood up and wobbled over.
Nan Leyou turned and ran. He ran past burning cars, jumped over sprawled corpses, climbed over the highway guardrail, and leaped into the wilderness beside it.
He walked in the wilderness for three days. He survived by drinking rainwater and eating wild fruit, until on the fourth day, he developed a high fever and collapsed in an abandoned farmhouse.
While unconscious, he had a dream.
He dreamed that he had become a tree, roots deeply embedded in the earth, able to hear the sound of water flowing deep in the soil, able to perceive insects crawling on his root hairs, able to taste the minerals of different soil layers.
When he woke up, the fever was gone.
He reached out, wanting to grab his water bottle, but the moment his fingertip touched the wild grass on the ground, the grass suddenly grew wildly.
Within just a few seconds, it sprouted new leaves and bloomed a small white flower.
Nan Leyou stared at his own hand. A faint green light glowed in his palm. That light spread along his arm, and wherever it reached, the soreness of the high fever disappeared, the burning hunger in his stomach weakened, and even those wounds healed at a speed visible to the naked eye.
That day, he awakened.
He awakened at the most regrettable time, because just the day before, zombies had attacked his residential compound.
Nan Leyou had no home anymore. He had nowhere to go.
Nan Leyou slowly withdrew the vine in his hand, retracting it into his sleeve, then turned and walked toward the temporary dormitory assigned to him. His back stretched long under the moonlight.
Let him see how long He Xu’s park could survive in the apocalypse.
Let him see whether this girl trying to rebuild rules could grow something different from this ruin.
Even if it was only one more day of life.
Even if it was only… one more day of blooming.
And in the distant north of the city, in the command room of Dawn Base, a report was slammed heavily onto the table.
“The locator signal has disappeared.” The officer’s expression was grave. “The last location was near the East District Agricultural Experiment Station. After that, the signal source completely vanished. Even the backup frequency band showed no response.”
The commander-in-chief stared at the red dot on the map that had flickered and then gone out, his gaze cold and sinister. His fingertip tapped the table, making a low knocking sound.
“Send people to investigate.” He said coldly. “If they’re alive, I want to see them. If they’re dead, I want to see the corpse. Also, that wood-type ability user must be brought back.”
“Yes!”
When the officer saluted and turned to leave, he did not see the commander take an encrypted file from the drawer.
On the cover photo was unmistakably Nan Leyou’s ID photo from his university days. A line of small text was marked in the side column of the file:
[Project Codename: Spring God]
[Status: Awakened, Not Contained]
[Danger Level: S (Potential Value: SS+)]
[Evaluation: Former Cheetah Captain, now defected. Recommend immediate execution.]