Perfect Stem Cells

The girl in the mirror looked no more than seventeen or eighteen. Her features were stunning, and her palm-sized oval face was flawless.

Her features had always been beautiful. She had simply been too dark-skinned and thin, looking like a scruffy little girl.

Jiang You tilted her head slightly, and the girl in the mirror tilted her head slightly as well.

Her smooth, jet-black shoulder-length hair flowed like the finest silk.

As if remembering something, Jiang You took a fruit knife from her space and slashed her palm. Blood immediately began to pour out.

Yet in less than a minute,

the freshly opened wound began healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The corners of Jiang You's mouth curled upward wildly, and a faintly manic light flashed in her eyes.

She kept muttering,

"It actually worked."

"...That damned old man actually did it..."

She raised the knife and brought it down. A section of her little finger, trailing blood, rolled into the sink.

At the severed end, pale bone fragments amid the bright-red flesh looked especially horrifying.

Jiang You waited patiently. Time passed second by second as blood dripped down, the flow gradually slowing.

More than an hour later, a mass of red blood vessels writhed at the stump of her finger, and new flesh began to grow.

Just like a lizard regrowing its tail, a new finger grew back.

After a long silence, Jiang You murmured,

"This is... the Doctor's genetic modification... Did it succeed?"

What was going on? She had been reborn. Shouldn't she have returned to before everything began?

How had this happened?

A moment later, arrogant laughter erupted from the bathroom.

"Hahahaha, it worked!

That damned old man killed tens of thousands of ability users, and never completed this thing before he died, but it actually worked!

Hahahahaha!!!!"

She covered her face, crying and laughing at the same time, looking as though she had split personality disorder.

It worked!

She wasn't certain, but Jiang You guessed that her rebirth had probably disrupted some so-called genetic sequence, causing the Doctor's genetic experiment to succeed.

So...

Tears and blood mixed on Jiang You's face, making her look rather tragic as she stared at her blood-covered hand.

The newly regrown little finger was perfectly intact, its skin as soft and smooth as a baby's.

She should have been happy. What an incredible cheat ability.

With such tenacious vitality, as long as she didn't court death, she basically couldn't die.

But for some reason, aside from happiness,

she also felt an urge to destroy everything.

This abnormal regenerative ability had come from countless days and nights when she had been bound to an operating table like livestock.

The blood in her body had been drained again and again, her flesh sliced away piece by piece. The research institute had obtained its results through countless moments when she would have been better off dead.

Some high-ranking officials had even learned about her special constitution and personally gone to Forbidden Island to watch the researchers slice off her flesh and place it on plates.

They elegantly enjoyed the freshest ingredients with knives and forks, even as the ingredients themselves glared at them with hatred.

Every part of her body had been removed at some point.

Limbs, skin, flesh, even her internal organs...

The Doctor's research had succeeded. No, it hadn't completely succeeded.

It was still far from the planarian constitution he had dreamed of. Planarians could grow as many bodies as they were cut into pieces.

She looked at the severed finger in the sink.

In less than an hour, that severed finger had melted into a pool of blood and been washed away.

Bone and flesh separated from the main body would rapidly decay. They couldn't regenerate into independent individuals like planarians.

So she still wasn't the perfect gene the Doctor had longed for.

Jiang You cried and laughed at the same time.

At last, she washed her face and looked at herself in the mirror.

Her originally dry, yellow hair was now black and smooth. Her dark, sallow skin was now fair and delicate. This exquisite little face...

How beautiful.

Yet when she thought of the blood vessels writhing in her wound, she felt somewhat nauseated.

Rebirth couldn't return her to before everything began after all.

In the end, she was still that monster from the Forbidden Tower...

"Hello, Monster Jiang You."

The girl in the mirror tilted her head and raised a brilliant smile.

"Crash~"

Then she punched the mirror. The bathroom mirror shattered with a sharp crack, and fragments fell all over the floor.

After getting up in the morning, Jiang You habitually walked to the balcony and looked down. The water had completely receded.

The roads were covered in dried mud, and zombies wandered all over the streets.

The buildings that had been submerged had clear waterlines above and below.

There were no screams and no traffic. The city was as quiet as death.

Only the zombies' repeated roars remained.

She opened the window and let several big-headed flies into the room.

By then, the flies had mutated. Each one was the size of a thumb, and they flew much faster than ordinary flies.

Their buzzing filled the room without end.

Jiang You ate a popsicle while using those flies to practice her ability.

After all, she had experience. Her progress was very fast once she began practicing again.

From a large area of faint wind at the beginning, to condensing it into a mass and compressing it into wind blades, it took only two days.

She could already use wind blades to precisely slice the heads off randomly flying greenbottle flies.

One by one, the flies' round heads fell to the ground. How had their emerald-green eyes somehow made Jiang You find them rather attractive?

Although she had mastered her precision, her ability level limited how many times she could use it. Its range also couldn't exceed ten meters, so she could only attack at close range.

But for an initial-stage evolutionist, this was already the limit.

Although the apocalypse had erupted, that didn't mean humanity would become extinct.

Living things would seek their own means of survival.

When zombies appeared, even small animals like flies and rats could mutate, let alone humans.

Some humans also awakened all kinds of superpowers beyond ordinary people. Those with abilities were called ability users.

Abilities were mainly divided into four types.

The first was physical enhancement, including enhanced strength and speed, enhanced five senses such as smell, hearing, and sight, as well as bodily and vocal enhancement.

Enhancement abilities were also the most common.

The second type was elemental abilities, including metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.

The third type was natural abilities: wind, thunder, lightning, and ice.

The fourth type was unclassified abilities. These had no sequence or rules and awakened entirely at random.

They were also extremely rare.

The unclassified abilities known in the previous life included mental abilities, healing abilities, invisibility, Space Ability, and so on.

Ability levels were divided into six realms and three grades.

F was the initial level, with the grades progressing upward. A-rank was the highest realm.

There might be ability users beyond A-rank, but she had never seen one.

When Jiang You died, she had been an A3 ability user.

In a small base, having an A3 ability user stationed there was already enough.

While she practiced her ability, plenty had already happened outside.

Some people had been braver than other survivors from the very beginning. Once the water receded, they took weapons and left home to fight the zombies to the death.

They then discovered that these monsters weren't so frightening at the early stage. As long as one was brave and careful, they could still be dealt with.

So they risked going out to search for supplies. These people moved at the forefront and held the advantage of being first in finding resources.

Others hid at home until their ammunition and food ran out before finally summoning the courage to face the monsters.

But by then, it was too late. The edible and easily found supplies had long since been taken by others.

More and more people overcame their initial fear and sought ways to survive.

Because of the earlier torrential rain and flooding, many supplies had already been ruined.

Most exposed food had been soaked rotten.

Only food with intact packaging, along with canned goods and drinks, had survived.

But at such a time, as long as it was food, even moldy or rotten supplies could be eaten when one was starving enough.

City A had a population of several million. Even if half became zombies, the remaining population was still a frightening number.

With too many wolves and too little meat, the conflicts naturally became even more brutal.

Every corner of the city constantly witnessed scenes of killing or being killed.

Some were family members, some were friends, and some were strangers.

Whether they had been white-collar workers, tycoons, laborers, or bosses, nobody mentioned assets anymore.

The only thing that mattered was the weapon in one's hand.

Whoever had the bigger fists got to speak.

Between life and death, couples turned against each other, brothers slaughtered one another, and sisters became enemies. Such scenes unfolded constantly.

Trust between people had already fallen to rock bottom.

Jiang You wasn't in a hurry to leave. She had stockpiled supplies herself, and she had also collected the warehouse of the largest foreign supermarket chain in the city earlier. The supplies in her space were enough to feed her alone for several lifetimes without running out.

As for the zombies,

the zombies at present probably hadn't grown crystal cores in their brains yet, so there was no need to act immediately.

A crystal core was a form of energy in a zombie's brain.

It wasn't limited to zombies. Mutated beasts, mutated plants, and even ability users had them.

As long as a living thing had evolved, it would possess such an energy crystal in its brain.

It was the tangible manifestation of gathered ability energy.

Absorbing crystal cores benefited every living thing.

Ability users could advance by absorbing crystal cores. Mutated plants, animals, and zombies could evolve faster by devouring them.

Even ordinary people could potentially awaken abilities by consuming and absorbing crystal cores. However, ordinary bodies couldn't withstand the cores' power, so doing this could only lead to three outcomes.

First, they could break through their limits between life and death, awaken an ability, and become an ability user.

Second, their bodies could explode and they could die.

Third, they could become infected and turn into zombies or other monsters.

Compared with the latter outcomes, the chance of becoming an ability user was less than five percent.

But even that five-percent chance was enough to drive people mad.

After all, in the apocalypse, strength was everything.