The weight of a grown man pressed down on the body of a teenage girl.
Mo Chu didn’t yet have the strength and endurance she’d built over six brutal years in her previous life. She staggered instinctively under the burden—but still held tightly onto Li Chen.
Then the limp hands hanging weakly in front of her slowly lifted and grasped hers firmly.
Mo Chu turned around in surprise. “You’re awake.”
The blood splattered across Li Chen’s face made his complexion look even paler, but the moment he opened his eyes, the weakness seemed to vanish. He was still the same Li Chen—steady, powerful, impossible to ignore.
In a low voice, he said, “Put me down.”
Mo Chu obeyed almost immediately, carefully lowering him before tightening her grip around his arm to support him.
Li Chen was badly injured, yet somehow he stood perfectly steady.
Nearby, Chu Ming’s expression darkened abruptly.
But Li Chen didn’t spare him a glance. “Let’s go,” he said quietly.
Even though Mo Chu knew Li Chen wouldn’t die so easily, seeing him awake still made the knot in her chest loosen. A heavy stone seemed to lift from her heart.
She held onto him tightly and nodded hard.
The city streets were drenched in blood and piled with corpses, yet the backs of the young man and woman walking away together carried an almost strange sense of calm—one composed, one resolute.
Chu Ming watched them leave, and the sight felt unbearably harsh on his eyes.
The woman he wanted had chosen to follow a cripple.
In that instant, it felt as though he’d been dragged back into the past. Ever since childhood, everything he wanted in life had eventually become Li Chen’s. Everyone he struggled to get close to would gather around Li Chen instead. If Li Chen wanted first place, then Chu Ming could only ever be second.
It had always been that way.
But the apocalypse was wonderful, wasn’t it?
He had awakened an ability. In this world overrun by monsters, that made him one of the strong.
And Li Chen—strong as he once was—hadn’t awakened anything at all. Without powers, he was nothing but trash.
For the first time in his life, Chu Ming felt like he had finally stepped on Li Chen’s head.
But why?
Why could this useless cripple still look at him the same way he always had, as though Chu Ming were still that weak, incompetent person who could only rely on him?
Even now—even after being betrayed by someone he trusted, even while dying at Chu Ming’s hands—Li Chen still treated him like he was invisible, as though he had never once been worth noticing.
And the woman Chu Ming wanted would rather save a powerless man, rather leave with him, than stay behind.
As if Chu Ming were still the same useless nobody he used to be.
No!
He had awakened an ability. He was strong now!
The muscles in Chu Ming’s cheeks twitched violently. Staring at Li Chen’s back, he spat out viciously, “Li Chen, I’ll be waiting for news of your death.”
Li Chen paused.
Then he turned back and looked at him indifferently.
“We’ll meet again,” he said.
The words sounded almost like a curse.
Chu Ming sneered. His gaze shifted toward Mo Chu, feverish and possessive.
“A’Chu,” he said softly, voice sticky with obsession, “I’ll wait for the day you come begging me.”
Mo Chu instinctively wanted to turn around, but Li Chen lightly pressed a hand against her head.
The man who had once been no different from a “devil” in her previous life spoke in a calm voice.
“Don’t look. It’ll hurt your eyes.”
Mo Chu froze for a moment.
Then, unexpectedly, relief bubbled up inside her, so sudden it almost made her laugh.
She nodded softly. “Let’s go.”
Supporting each other, the young man and woman disappeared from everyone’s sight.
…
The moment Mo Chu decided to take Li Chen away, she had deliberately begun stalling for time, waiting until their car had driven far enough from the zombie-infested area.
She wanted to save Li Chen, but she certainly didn’t want to step out of the car only to die to zombies immediately afterward.
Fortunately, Chu Ming had been too enraged by her words to notice what she was doing.
Still, she didn’t dare gamble on whether he might change his mind halfway through and decide to hunt Li Chen down completely. So she relied on the city’s tangled streets and complicated terrain to escape their line of sight as quickly as possible.
The second they were out of view, Li Chen collapsed.
Only then did Mo Chu realize he had been forcing himself to stay conscious the entire time.
She didn’t dare treat him there. Supporting him carefully, she helped him sit down first before quickly checking their surroundings.
They were in a narrow alley flanked by tall buildings. Several windows above stood wide open. Any infected residents inside could catch the scent of blood and leap down at any moment.
It wasn’t safe.
As she surveyed the area, a zombie on the second floor of the building beside them suddenly poked its head out of a window, drawn by the smell of blood. Luckily, the security bars snagged it for a second. Mo Chu spotted it immediately and drove the dagger she’d found on Li Chen into its skull.
At this stage of the apocalypse, zombies were only stronger than ordinary humans. As long as they didn’t gather in groups, regular people could still kill them.
The problem was that most people’s first reaction upon seeing a zombie was fear. They ran—and became prey instead.
Once zombies evolved later on…
Ordinary people wouldn’t even have the chance to escape.
Mo Chu failed to find a crystal core inside that zombie’s head, but she didn’t care. After quickly studying the nearby terrain, she made her decision and helped Li Chen toward the mouth of the alley.
Across the street stood a large shopping mall. Behind it was a one-story storage warehouse connected to the mall by only a single door.
That was where she planned to go.
By the fifth day of the apocalypse, residential buildings once filled with families and office towers once crowded with white-collar workers had all become nests for zombies. Entering one of those buildings was no different from stepping into a monster’s lair—you never knew whether the door at the end of a hallway concealed living survivors or an entire pack of undead.
Under circumstances like these, isolated warehouses with fewer people were the safest choice.
Along the way, Mo Chu encountered at least five or six zombies, all drawn by the scent of blood coming from Li Chen’s wounds.
Her body still wasn’t particularly strong, but she had a weapon in hand—and six years of experience surviving the apocalypse.
So despite several close calls, she managed to make it through safely.
Out of the six zombies, she harvested one crystal core.
Staring at the translucent crystal in her palm, she knew this was the key to becoming stronger as quickly as possible.
At the start of the apocalypse, the first wave of ability users hadn’t even known crystal cores existed. It wasn’t until over half a month later that people gradually discovered their use. By then, crystal cores had become even more precious than food and water.
But as someone with a so-called “useless ability,” Mo Chu had never had access to such things before.
Now, however, zombies and corpses littered the streets.
This was her opportunity.
Healing-type ability users lacked effective offensive skills, but their physical abilities were still enhanced compared to ordinary people. With enough training, they weren’t completely helpless.
Like now.
Before awakening her ability, there was no way Mo Chu could have carried an unconscious man nearly one meter ninety tall and close to eighty kilograms all this distance.
But now, though barely, she had managed to bring Li Chen safely to the warehouse.
The warehouse doors stood open. It looked like scavengers had already swept through once before. Most of the food and water had been looted clean, leaving behind only puffed snacks, small treats too inconvenient to carry, unopened clothing packages, and random miscellaneous supplies.
Fortunately, there were no zombies inside.
Mo Chu wasn’t too disappointed.
She lowered Li Chen onto an unopened mattress and quickly checked his condition.
Before the apocalypse, Mo Chu had been a medical student. She could tell that although his external injuries looked severe, none had struck a major artery.
But a layer of gray had already begun spreading across his face.
A symptom of zombie infection.
Her heart sank heavily.
He hadn’t just been bitten once.
He had been surrounded by an entire horde.
The zombie virus spread terrifyingly fast—even the tiniest scratch from a zombie’s claws could infect someone. Looking at his wounds, if she didn’t already know that in her previous life he had not only survived but awakened an overwhelmingly powerful ability afterward, she would have believed his death was inevitable.
Injuries that would certainly kill anyone else…
What exactly had he endured to survive them?
It couldn’t have been anything worth remembering.
Taking a deep breath, she draped a coat over Li Chen before quickly shutting the warehouse doors. Then she found several unopened rolls of tape and sealed every window tightly, making sure not even a trace of blood scent could escape.
Early-stage zombies had no eyesight. They hunted entirely through sound and smell.
Under these circumstances, Mo Chu had to avoid attracting them at all costs.
After finishing, she searched the warehouse thoroughly but found neither medicine nor bandages.
Not unexpected.
Letting out a quiet sigh, she returned to Li Chen’s side, removed his bloodstained clothes, and began using her weak healing ability on his wounds.
The larger injuries were beyond her power to heal. The smaller ones made little difference even after treatment.
In the end, it was like pouring a cup of water onto a burning cart of firewood.
As long as the zombie virus remained inside him, everything she did was meaningless.
After more than ten minutes, Mo Chu finally had to stop. She could already feel her ability nearing exhaustion.
And in a situation like this, she absolutely could not afford to drain herself completely.
But perhaps her healing had still done something after all.
Because the moment she withdrew her hand, Li Chen slowly opened his eyes.
Joy flashed through her chest. She hurriedly grabbed the bottle of water she’d dug out from a forgotten corner and held it to his lips.
Li Chen turned his head away.
Mo Chu froze. “…Li Chen?”
He looked at her weakly and said in a voice barely above a whisper, “Don’t waste it on me.”
Mo Chu frowned. “How is this a waste?”
Li Chen didn’t answer immediately.
He looked like he was in tremendous pain. His brows remained tightly furrowed, and even his breathing was faint.
“You should leave,” he murmured. “I’m already infected.”
His voice was calm. Too calm.
As though he had already accepted that he would be abandoned.
In that instant, Mo Chu remembered her past life—remembered the version of herself who had followed Chu Ming and the others away.
She had spent years deliberately trying to forget those memories.
When she later heard that Li Chen had returned and slaughtered the special ops team Chu Ming belonged to, she had quietly waited for his revenge.
But it never came.
The moment she watched Li Chen get pushed down into the zombie horde and chose to compromise with his betrayers instead, that had been the first time she surrendered to fate.
But this time…
She didn’t want to surrender anymore.
And she didn’t want to abandon Li Chen either.
She pressed the bottle back against his lips.
“Drink.”
Li Chen looked at her for a long moment.
“…Why?”
Mo Chu wanted to say:
Because I want to thank you.
Thank you for saving me so many times.
Thank you for loving me.
But in the end, she only repeated softly, “Drink.”
Li Chen fell silent for a while before finally saying, “Find some rope. Tie me up. If I fully turn… kill me.”
Clenching her teeth, Mo Chu searched through the warehouse and found a thick hemp rope used for securing cargo. She tied Li Chen up tightly.
“If I become a zombie,” he said again, “kill me.”
“You’ll survive this!” Mo Chu insisted.
Li Chen said nothing more.
A moment later, he lost consciousness again.
That night, Li Chen’s fever began to rise.
