“Ah!”
A terrified scream broke the tranquility of the morning, and also woke up Ye Xuan who was sleeping on the sofa. He rubbed his eyes and walked to the window hearing a series of screams. He opened a small crack in the closed window.
The cold wind mixed with the smell of blood and corpses was blowing head on, and his strengthened mental power made it easy for him to hear the screams one after another from the surrounding houses and the streets of the community. He even heard the sound of zombies biting humans.
Extreme weather, man-eating zombies and desperate humans.
Ye Xuan thought indifferently: After a month, he had seen this familiar apocalypse again.
He closed the window and looked at the mark on his left hand. He took out a watermelon seed from the space with a thought, and skillfully injected his ability into it. Soon, the seed sprouted and turned into a dry watermelon seedling. It seemed that there was no way to save it again.
Ye Xuan looked at the watermelon seedling with joy and anger. He was happy that the power that had accompanied him for ten years was still there, and he was angry that the level of this familiar power was really weak.
He didn’t know when the vines that ran out to enjoy the breeze suddenly rushed over. It wrapped itself around Ye Xuan’s left arm, and swept the watermelon seedling in Ye Xuan’s palm to the ground with a very natural movement.
Ye Xuan didn’t even look at the watermelon seedlings. He closed his eyes and felt the state of the vines. Although they were not completely connected, Ye Xuan could still feel that the vines were a lot more active in the energy-rich place of the apocalypse, and had begun to gradually regain its previous strength.
He had a vine that was far stronger than the current zombies and humans as a guarantee, and it made Ye Xuan’s anxiety due to the apocalypse calm down a lot. After reconfirming that the window was closed, he turned around and returned to the living room. He planned on turning on the TV to see the current situation and making a meal while the water and electricity were not cut off yet, before deciding what to do today.
Of course, he hadn’t forgotten another thing – “Throw the watermelon seedling on the ground into the trash can. How can you be jealous of a mutant plant and a dead ordinary plant? After following me in this rebirth, you’ve learnt a lot of bad behaviours. You’ve have watched a lot of TV dramas, haven’t you?”
Vine: …..
The signal of the TV station was very poor with the picture and sound being intermittent. Ye Xuan found a relatively stable station and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. Before that, he also charged his mobile phone once. Although the phone turned on without any problem, the functions of calling and surfing the Internet were completely useless.
When he came out with the homemade sandwich, the signal was stable, and the TV host said quickly: “According to the latest news from our reporter, the zombies mentioned in the mysterious letter have already appeared in the whole of city C. We still don’t know the situation in other cities at home and abroad, and we don’t know what caused this disaster. The only thing we can be sure of is that people are turning into zombies, and zombies can eat people!”
The scene cut to the live line on the street. The street was full of monsters with terrifying appearance and stiff limbs. Some of them were chasing the crowd, some were biting into the corpses on the ground, and some were even biting people right in front of the camera.
This was hell on earth.
Ye Xuan switched stations one by one, some were local stations and others were satellite stations. All the TV stations had poor signal and were sending a message that the end of the world was coming.
He focused on the current situation in City C. Although some people believed his announcement and chose to find a place to hide, others didn’t believe it or doubted him. Without luck, they drove to their destination in the last few minutes, so there were quite a lot of cars blocked on the road. There were also a lot of vehicles that had been involved in accidents. Whether it was a survivor in a car trying to get out, or someone trying to drive across the city, moving would be extremely difficult.
Well, Ye Xuan admitted that he just wanted to make sure that he had the possibility of going across City C to find Ling Jiaze.
Unfortunately, from the current situation, the risk of going to C University to find Ling Jiaze was too great. If Ye Xuan was still a high-level power user like in his previous life, then the fragile A-rank zombies in the city would not be a threat to him. He could also ride a motorcycle, but his power was still a bit too weak.
Ye Xuan was still reluctant to take risks with his life. After all, to put it bluntly, Ling Jiaze was just a suspected admirer of his. It was okay to save others, but it was too much to put yourself at risk in a dangerous environment.
—
After breakfast, the signal of the TV station was almost gone, only a few words and some images that were too blurred could be seen. Ye Xuan had a general understanding of the situation outside, and felt it was a bit too noisy, so he simply turned off the TV.
According to his schedule, he had to get gasoline and diesel, some drugs that required a prescription, and weapons. All these things that were not easy to buy with money before the apocalypse were on his collection list.
But Ye Xuan was not ready to go out yet. There was chaos and panic outside. Many people had not realized or accepted the fact that the end of the world had come. No one had also revealed that they had supernatural powers. It would be too conspicuous for him to take a knife to the street to kill zombies and collect supplies. It was better to wait patiently at home for another day or two. He could take this opportunity to improve his ability level.
Ability users were graded like zombies, and each grade was worlds apart.
There were two ways to improve the strength of an ability user. One was to use the ability multiple times. It would be better if the process of exhaustion and recovery could be repeated. The other simpler way was to absorb the crystal core in a zombie’s brain. When the power level reached a certain level, the ability user would have an opportunity to break through. If the breakthrough was successful, the strength will rise by a large level. Many people however died on the spot.
If Ye Xuan had to describe it, an ability user was a bit like cultivators in novels. Either he or she worked hard to make breakthroughs, or simply used medicine pills (crystal cores), there was always a way to break through.
However, based on Ye Xuan’s own experience, the combination of training and absorbing crystal cores should be the best way to improve his abilities. First lay the foundation through a lot of practice, and then fill in the energy vacancies by absorbing crystal nuclei.
Unlike ability users who had a clear breakthrough process, the advancement of zombies was silent. After they had absorbed enough energy, they would advance. Except for the gap in strength, speed and other strengths, the biggest difference was in their minds, that is the nuclei size.
The brain of the zombie was different from that of the human after mutating. A water drop-shaped hard object would appear in the center of their brain, which humans called the nucleus. The higher the level of zombies, the larger the crystal nucleus in the brain, and the more energy it could provide to humans.
In a sense, zombies killed and ate people to advance, while humans also killed zombies and took the crystal nuclei in their brains to advance. For each other, the stronger they were, the more energy they got. It could be regarded as a weird kind of balance.
—
Ye Xuan wanted to stay at home to stabilize his ability before going out but it didn’t mean that others wouldn’t come to him.
He was the only one in his family. If he was safe, he would not be injured by zombies, and he would not be killed immediately if he became a zombie. But other people in the community were different. There were zombies, ability users, and people with no changes at all. There were all kinds of combinations present.
Their relatives and friends woke up and turned into monsters that could only eat people. Most doubted Ye Xuan’s previous notice. It was easy to find tools nearby to kill the zombies, but many people were hesitant thought about it. These zombies were previously their relatives and loved ones. Thus, they became food for zombies immediately, and there was no chance for them to mutate.
Of course, there were some people who went to others for help since they were afraid or unwilling to harm their relatives.
Ye Xuan heard someone banging on the door and shouting his name. He put on his coat and glanced down from the balcony on the second floor. He saw a mother and son standing outside his yard. The mother was standing in front, and the son was shaking, standing behind with a baseball bat.
He didn’t have a deep impression of these two people. He probably knew which building the other lived in but he didn’t necessarily say hello when they met. Now that he saw them coming to him, it was neither expected nor too unexpected.
The walls of Ye Xuan’s house were high, and the door was solid, so they couldn’t see each other. He felt lazy to go downstairs to open the door for the two of them, so he simply pushed open the balcony window and asked, “It’s full of zombies outside, what are you two doing at my house?”
There were few people in the villa area, so there were usually not too many people on the streets. In addition, since the apocalypse happened in the morning, there were even fewer people. There were not many zombies wandering around in the whole community.
However, with their trembling appearance, Ye Xuan really doubted whether they would dare to do anything when they met a zombie.
His voice scared the mother and son. They searched for a long time before they realized what Ye Xuan was talking while standing upstairs. The mother quickly said, “Brother Ye, it’s great that you’re okay. My husband has turned into a zombie and I can’t stay at home anymore. Since you are alone in your home, can you…”
Ye Xuan interrupted her before she even finished saying what she wanted ask: “No, please go back.”
The pampered lady didn’t expect Ye Xuan to interrupt her so abruptly. Stunned, she asked, “Then can you help us kill him?”
“No,” Ye Xuan looked down at the two of them, pointed at the boy standing beside her, and said, “He’s a young guy and he has a bat in his hand. How can he be afraid of a stiff zombie?”
The boy shouted angrily, “That’s my dad!”
“Then go back and live with him and see if he still recognizes you as his son. Let me remind you that zombies are zombies, and people are people. If you can’t do it, he will definitely be able to do it when he eats you.” Ye Xuan said indifferently: “The end of the world is coming. If you want to live, you can save yourself. If you don’t want to live, you can die. What does it have to do with me?”
The boy seemed to be frightened by Ye Xuan’s words, and asked in horror, “Why are you so selfish and cruel?!”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I am so can you go back?” After speaking, Ye Xuan ignored his yelling, and simply closed the balcony window neatly. He went back to the living room to practice his abilities.
When he was going down the stairs, he also criticized himself who foolishly risked his life to kill zombies for people in his past life, but was accused of killing their family members by the survivors who were crying and screaming.
So stupid.
Everyone sweeps the snow in front of their own door, and doesn’t care about the frost on other people’s tiles. This sentence was really an essential principle during the apocalypse.
