Late at night.
A girls’ dormitory at a medical university.
Bai An’an was wrapped in her blanket, lying in bed and playing with her phone.
Her finger casually scrolled through the recommendations on Haitanghua, and at this moment, she had only one simple wish:
Find something worth reading, enjoy it for a while, then go to sleep.
As a medical student who had been tortured half to death by finals week, she needed to enrich her spiritual world a little.
“What kind of nonsense is this?” Bai An’an muttered under her breath.
Not a single recommendation on the homepage appealed to her.
She refreshed the page several times but still could not find anything worth reading.
Just as she was about to give up and go straight to sleep, her finger accidentally tapped on a book.
Apocalypse, exclusive love, two male leads, two powerful leads, HE.
The moment she saw these tags, Bai An’an was completely stunned.
Novels with this kind of theme were not currently on her reading list, but since she was already there, she decided to take a quick look at the synopsis.
Sure enough, it was the same old routine of fighting monsters and leveling up during the apocalypse, with two men conveniently falling in love along the way.
She was about to exit when the highly upvoted comments beneath the synopsis caught the corner of her eye.
“Fu Shen and Shen Hanzhou are absolutely incredible, especially that scene where they pin each other against the wall and kiss. Ahhhhhhh!”
Bai An’an sighed inwardly.
Child, eat something better.
This is Haitanghua, not Tomatoes. A kiss is hardly that big of a deal here.
“Forget it, forget it. I should just sleep. I still have to catch the high-speed train home tomorrow.” Bai An’an yawned and stuffed her phone under her pillow.
She turned over, pulled the blanket tighter around herself, and closed her eyes.
Sleepiness surged over her like a tide, and she quickly fell asleep.
Bai An’an was awakened by a gust of wind.
It was not the dry breeze carrying a faint smell of engine oil that came from the dormitory air conditioning.
Instead, it was damp and sticky, carrying a foul stench of decay.
She opened her eyes groggily and saw a grayish ceiling.
Strange. When had the dormitory ceiling become so high?
Bai An’an’s brain froze for three seconds.
No.
This was not her dormitory.
She suddenly sat up and looked around.
She was in the corner of a large supermarket.
More precisely, an abandoned large supermarket.
Shelves were lying crookedly everywhere. Various products were scattered across the floor, along with shattered glass and food that had been crushed underfoot.
Bai An’an sat there in a daze. The scene before her looked exactly like the looted supermarket she had seen in doomsday novels.
The apocalypse?
A novel?
She fiercely pinched her thigh, and the pain nearly made her cry out.
This was not a dream.
Could she really have transmigrated into that doomsday novel with two male leads that she had read before bed?
She hurriedly looked down at herself.
A simple hoodie, dark-colored pants, and sneakers.
These were not the clothes she had been wearing before going to sleep.
Suddenly,
A sharp pain shot through Bai An’an’s head, and a strange set of memories appeared in her mind.
The original Bai An’an had the same name as her. She was also twenty-two years old, a medical student whose parents had both died. She lived alone in a rented place outside the university.
More than three months had passed since the zombie virus outbreak. Relying on her hoarding habit, the original Bai An’an had stubbornly survived until all the food and supplies at home were exhausted before finally coming out to search for supplies.
Because she had not gone outside at all after the virus outbreak, she had become one of the few survivors in this area.
No one knew where the virus had originated. They only knew that it had taken less than a month to destroy the civilization and order that humanity had spent thousands of years building.
Perhaps Heaven had taken pity on humanity. In the second month after the virus outbreak, people with supernatural abilities began to appear among humans.
Although the probability of awakening an ability was extremely low, Bai An’an still instinctively clenched her fists, trying to summon a ball of fire or perhaps a bolt of lightning.
Nothing happened.
“Just as I thought,” she sighed. “You really can’t expect female characters in a two-male-lead novel to get any kind of major role.”
But this was actually a good thing.
According to the usual doomsday novel formula, the greater one’s ability, the greater one’s responsibility. As a fragile college student who even needed someone to run the 800-meter physical test for her, she was much better suited to hiding in the rear.
Two male leads? Fighting monsters and leveling up?
None of that had anything to do with her.
Wait.
Bai An’an suddenly remembered something.
There seemed to be more than one highly upvoted comment under that novel.
The first one was, “Fu Shen and Shen Hanzhou pinning each other against the wall and kissing.”
The second…
She had already been preparing to scroll away at the time, so she only had a vague impression of it. She had not seen it clearly at all.
“What did the second one say again?” Bai An’an frowned and tried hard to remember. “Something about… Bai something drugging someone? And getting written out early?”
Bai what?
Bai An’an.
Her movements froze.
Was it Bai Lianhua who drugged someone? Or Bai An’an?
A terrifying thought surfaced in her mind.
“No way,” she murmured. “Don’t tell me I’m that vicious female supporting character who dared to drug the male lead in a two-male-lead novel, then got cursed out by the readers in the top comments and had them begging for her to be written out?”
But she did not have time to keep overthinking it.
Right now, her top priority was to gather some supplies and return to her rented apartment so she could continue hiding out.
The moment Bai An’an stood up, a strange sound suddenly came from deep inside the supermarket.
It sounded like something dragging itself across the floor, accompanied by a low panting noise that was completely inhuman.
Bai An’an instantly froze.
She stiffly turned her head. Her gaze passed through the crooked shelves and landed on the place where the sound had come from.
At the other end of the supermarket, a dark figure was slowly getting to its feet.
Its body was hunched over. Its skin was a decaying grayish white, its eye sockets deeply sunken, and its cloudy white eyeballs stared blankly ahead. Its lips were turned outward, revealing dark red gums and several loose teeth.
Its clothes hung from its body in tatters. Purple-black veins covered the exposed skin, as though something had been corroding it from within.
A zombie.
A real, moving zombie.
Bai An’an had seen zombies in novels, seen them in movies, and fought them in games.
But when a zombie actually appeared in front of her, her mind went completely blank.
The zombie obviously had no intention of giving her any time to adjust. It seemed to have smelled the presence of a living person and suddenly turned toward Bai An’an.
A hoarse roar came from its throat before it lunged at her.
Her body’s primitive instincts immediately took over.
Bai An’an turned and ran.
She did not even have time to figure out which direction she was going. Her body had already made the decision before her mind could react.
Get away from that thing.
The farther, the better.
She was completely unfamiliar with the layout of the supermarket. On top of that, all kinds of objects were scattered across the floor.
Her foot stepped on something slippery.
She immediately lost her balance and fell forward.
The zombie suddenly sped up behind her. Bai An’an felt a foul, rancid breath sweep toward her from behind.
The pain she expected never came.
A strong arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her up in one swift motion.
The next moment, a wave of scorching heat swept past her side, accompanied by a sharp sound as it tore through the air.
Orange-red flames struck the lunging zombie with pinpoint accuracy, engulfing it completely.
The zombie let out a shrill scream. After struggling in the flames for a few moments, it turned into a charred black mass and crashed to the ground.
Bai An’an was still held tightly within that arm. She stared blankly at the burning remains, her mind still unable to process what had happened.
“Are you okay?”
A deep voice came from above her, carrying a reassuring strength.
Bai An’an slowly raised her head.
The man was wearing a black windbreaker with the collar slightly open. A bulging hiking backpack was strapped to his back. His brows were high, his features deep and well-defined, and his thin lips were slightly pursed. The firelight reflected in his dark eyes, flickering between light and shadow.
With looks like that, it would be a shame if he weren’t a male lead, Bai An’an thought.
Wait.
Male lead?
Could this be one of the two male leads?
The man looked down at Bai An’an in his arms. Seeing that she remained silent, he released her.
“Are you all right?” he asked again.
Bai An’an opened and closed her mouth, struggling to force out a complete sentence.
“Th… thank you.”
The man nodded slightly. His gaze passed over her and toward the depths of the supermarket, as though checking whether there were any other zombies nearby.
Bai An’an took the opportunity to secretly observe him.
There was something about this man’s bearing that did not seem ordinary.
His posture, his eyes, and even the way he was currently observing his surroundings for potential dangers.
He had either been a soldier or worked in some similar profession.
Just then, a gentle voice came from behind the door.
“Fu Shen, what’s the situation inside?”