A sharp click echoed through the warehouse.
Mo Chu froze instantly, holding her breath.
A moment later, faint scratching noises came from outside the door—soft, rapid, incessant. Something sharp was scraping against the metal surface.
The sound was painfully familiar to her.
It was the sound of a zombie’s claws dragging across something hard.
There was a zombie outside.
But it probably hadn’t realized anyone was inside the warehouse yet. If it had sensed living people, it wouldn’t just be mindlessly scratching at the door—it would already be trying to break in.
Maybe the noise was accidental.
But Mo Chu couldn’t afford to let it continue.
In the deathly silence of the night, even the smallest sound could attract zombies whose hunger was at its peak during the early days of the apocalypse. One zombie could easily draw in an entire horde, and once a horde gathered without outside interference, they wouldn’t leave on their own.
If she let this continue, it wouldn’t be long before the warehouse was surrounded.
And then she—a mere first-tier healing-type ability user—and Li Chen, who was still hovering between life and death, would be trapped inside with no way out.
Between facing one zombie and facing a horde, the choice was obvious.
Mo Chu glanced at Li Chen once more. Silently, she picked up the dagger she had set aside earlier, then grabbed the remaining rope she had used to tie him up. She fastened one end around her waist, climbed the folding ladder leaning against the wall, and pushed open the small window near the ceiling—barely large enough for one person to squeeze through. She secured the other end of the rope to the window frame.
Her movements had already caught the zombie’s attention outside.
But Mo Chu didn’t give it the chance to howl and summon more of its kind.
She jumped directly from the two-meter-high window, driving her knee into the zombie’s throat as she landed. Before it could struggle, her dagger plunged straight through its skull.
The blade struck something hard.
With a twist of her wrist, she pried a translucent crystal core from the back of the zombie’s head.
Looks like her luck wasn’t bad this time.
She pocketed the crystal core and stood up from the corpse—only to stumble immediately afterward.
A sharp pain shot through her knee.
Pulling up her pant leg, she saw the skin around the knee she’d used to pin the zombie down was already bright red, swelling from the impact.
A bitter smile tugged at her lips.
She had returned from the sixth year of the apocalypse, long accustomed to the physical strength and endurance of a sixth-tier ability user. Her combat instincts remained, but this body couldn’t keep up.
With her old body, pinning down a first-tier zombie would have snapped its neck instantly.
With her current body, she ended up injuring herself and still needed an extra stab to finish the zombie off.
Mo Chu let her pant leg fall back into place, patted the dust from her clothes, then climbed back up the rope and shut the window behind her.
In the short time she’d been gone, Li Chen’s condition had worsened again.
A bluish-gray tint spread beneath his skin, frighteningly close to the complexion of the undead. His fingernails had grown longer too, the healthy color fading into a dull gray that looked more and more like a zombie’s claws.
Almost instinctively, Mo Chu activated her ability.
A faint blue glow gathered in her palm before she pressed it against Li Chen’s body.
But the energy vanished without a trace, swallowed like a stone sinking into the sea.
Only then did she remember—
She was no longer the “Doctor Mo” who could save lives with a wave of her hand.
Right now, she was just Mo Chu with a useless ability.
Slowly, she lowered her hand.
Even in her previous life, Li Chen had survived this alone. Back then, what he endured must have been even worse than what she was witnessing now.
So he would survive.
He had to.
Closing her eyes briefly, she took out the two crystal cores she had collected and stared at them.
Absorbing zombie crystal cores was the key to advancing abilities.
There had once been a theory in the apocalypse: both ability users and zombies were infected. The difference was that zombies lost to the virus, while ability users overcame it.
Zombies evolved by devouring flesh—even their own kind.
Ability users evolved by absorbing crystal cores.
In essence, perhaps there wasn’t much difference at all.
Whether the theory was true or not, one fact remained: crystal cores were the only path to becoming stronger.
In the early days of the apocalypse, advancing from first-tier to second-tier was considered relatively easy. Four to six first-tier crystal cores were enough to push an ability user to the threshold of advancement.
But “easy” was relative.
Veteran survivors who had fought through years of bloodshed thought it was easy. Ordinary people in the early apocalypse—people whose first instinct upon seeing a zombie was to run—did not.
And not every first-tier zombie carried a crystal core.
There was also the risk of being infected all over again during absorption.
In her previous life, Mo Chu hadn’t obtained her first crystal core until half a year after the apocalypse began.
This time, she could move much faster.
With six extra years of experience, she could seize every opportunity to reach third-tier as quickly as possible. She could avoid repeating the vicious cycle of her last life.
Even if her ability was still considered “useless,” she could still become a fighter.
Determination hardened in her eyes.
She raised one crystal core and absorbed it.
An icy energy seeped into her body through her palm, so cold it felt as though her blood itself was freezing solid. Frost formed across her skin.
Something strange stirred within her.
She could feel herself growing stronger—
But at the same time, another sensation rose from deep inside her body, dark and terrifying, as if something dormant was beginning to awaken. If she surrendered herself to the intoxication of power, it would burst free from its restraints, consume her body, and erase her soul.
The feeling was familiar to Mo Chu.
But unfamiliar to this body.
She tried to pull herself back to her senses, yet the power flooding through her was like an endless abyss whispering seductively in her ear.
Jump.
Jump, and you can have limitless power.
Jump.
Jump.
But Mo Chu knew exactly what waited beneath that abyss.
Once you fell, there was no coming back.
She struggled desperately to wrench her mind free from the temptation. By the time she finally opened her eyes, her body was ice-cold, yet drenched in sweat.
She glanced toward the clock hanging in the warehouse.
What had felt like mere seconds inside her consciousness had actually lasted half an hour.
No wonder people said that absorbing a crystal core for the first time felt like being infected all over again.
In her previous life, she had already reached sixth-tier. She was deeply familiar with the process of absorbing crystal cores.
And yet even now, she had almost lost herself.
Back then, when she absorbed her first core, she had been cornered with nowhere left to run. She’d blacked out immediately afterward and never even knew how she survived it.
So this was what it had truly been like.
Taking a deep breath, she stored away the second crystal core.
One was already this body’s limit for today. If she absorbed another, Li Chen might not survive—
but neither would she.
Mo Chu stayed beside him until dawn, resting only briefly in between.
By morning, Li Chen’s fever still hadn’t broken.
That was already far beyond the normal time needed for an infected person to awaken an ability. Most people either awakened overnight or turned into zombies by morning.
But Li Chen’s condition continued to fluctuate violently.
The zombie-like symptoms would appear, then recede, over and over again.
At his worst, his entire body had turned a ghastly blue-gray, almost indistinguishable from the undead.
And then, moments later, his normal skin tone would fight its way back.
Watching the changes ripple through him again and again, Mo Chu could almost see him struggling at the edge of an abyss.
After sunrise, she fed Li Chen the remaining half bottle of water they’d found in the warehouse.
His teeth were clenched tightly from the pain, making it difficult to get any water into his mouth. Yet somehow, even unconscious, he seemed to be suppressing himself deliberately. No matter how much pain he was in, he never made a sound—as though even in his fevered state, he instinctively feared attracting zombies.
At first, she couldn’t get him to drink at all.
But the moment the water touched his lips, he slowly opened his mouth on his own.
Only then did Mo Chu relax slightly.
As long as he still wanted to live, there was hope.
What she feared most were people who had already given up on surviving.
But after feeding him the last of the water, they were truly out of supplies.
When they abandoned Chu Ming’s car, they hadn’t brought anything with them. The warehouse contained little besides a few bags of stale snacks and that half bottle of water—which was now gone.
If Li Chen still didn’t improve today, staying here would only mean the two of them starving and dying of thirst together.
Mo Chu thought for two minutes before pulling a thin blanket over him, covering him carefully from head to toe. Then she picked up the dagger from the floor and prepared to leave in search of supplies.
She didn’t want to leave Li Chen alone.
But if she stayed, they would both die here before he recovered.
She could only move quickly and come back as soon as possible.
The longer she delayed, the more dangerous things would become.
But just as she turned around, a hand suddenly grabbed her wrist from behind.
Tightly.
Mo Chu startled and spun around immediately, joy flashing across her face.
“Li Chen?”
But he didn’t respond.
When she pulled down the blanket covering his face, his brows were still tightly furrowed. He showed no sign of waking.
She tried moving the wrist he held.
His grip tightened instantly.
She looked at him again.
Still unconscious.
Carefully, Mo Chu attempted to pry his fingers loose, but Li Chen reacted with surprising force. Despite how weak he was, he clung to her stubbornly, refusing to let go.
Mo Chu stared blankly at the large hand wrapped around her wrist, utterly confused.
Then, after a moment, something seemed to occur to her.
Tentatively, she placed her other hand over his and said softly,
“Li Chen… I’m just going out to look for food. I’ll come back soon.”
Immediately, she felt his grip loosen slightly.
The stubborn force behind it weakened.
Mo Chu hesitated before lowering her voice even further.
“I won’t leave you behind.”
The words were quiet, but unwavering.
And after she said them, Li Chen slowly—little by little—released her hand.
But Mo Chu didn’t move.
She lowered her gaze to look at him, something complicated flickering in her eyes—something even she herself hadn’t noticed yet.
Then, softly, she swallowed back a sigh.
