1. Encounter with the Girl

Su Qing'an was being hunted.

He was running. The frigid wind poured into his chest through his nose and mouth, the knife-like tearing sensation serving as a warning from a body that rarely exercised.

Every breath felt like he was overdrawing his own life; he was like an old bellows, every rise and fall of his chest consuming the durability of his existence.

The muscles in his legs were spasming, his feet felt as if they were about to snap, and his stamina had long since reached its limit, but he could not stop.

The threat of life and death forced his willpower beyond its previous limits.

Run, he told himself.

If he were caught, he would die; his brain had already deeply understood this fact.

An hour ago, he had still been on the streets of the Magic City in the early morning, walking out of a 24-hour convenience store with a bag of cola, his mind occupied by whether he should adjust his biological clock for the sake of his health.

But in the blink of an eye, he had inexplicably arrived in this strange place, hunted by monsters that resembled zombies from a movie. The moment those monsters saw him, it was as if they had caught the scent of blood; they swarmed toward him like a tide.

The monsters' faces were as hideous as evil ghosts, and their rotting, hollow eye sockets looked toward him as if staring at a dead object.

Caught off guard, a deep scratch had already been carved into Su Qing'an's back. With no time to worry about his body and desperate to escape, he strangely felt little pain, only a burning sensation.

He had pushed himself to the fastest speed in his seventeen years of life, yet the monsters behind him remained suspended at a distance of less than five meters.

The monsters had endless stamina.

Unlike the clumsy zombies in typical movies, the monsters behind him were excessively agile, and their sheer numbers left him with no desire to stop and fight for his life.

Relying on Su Qing'an's speed and physical fitness, the final outcome could only be having all his flesh and blood devoured, turning into a nameless pile of bones in this foreign land.

But he could not stop. Perhaps death was not something that should make him look so pathetic, but his basic survival instinct and sense of bewilderment drove him to continue struggling.

The stench of rot surrounded his nose. His speed inevitably slowed as his stamina ran dry, and the monsters' breathing seemed to have already touched his back.

In the moment fear tightened around his heart like a noose, the world spun before his eyes.

His ankle twisted on the uneven ground, and the boy fell as one would expect.

I'm dead.

As his brain transmitted this thought, Su Qing'an felt his body tilting downward.

Is it a crack in some ruin? In the fleeting time he had, he could only manage to grasp this possibility.

Immediately, his weight and the inertia from the fall sent him rolling into the depths of the ruins without pause.

His body collided violently with the ground. He shielded his head with his hands, and the pain that rained down upon his nerves was, in this moment, considered by Su Qing'an to be a stroke of luck.

After about five seconds, he rolled clumsily into the underground ruin. A faint light shone in through the crack; this place must have once been an underground facility.

Su Qing'an breathed heavily, but the dust floating in the air made him cough.

"Cough, cough, cough... I... survived." The boy's stunned self-talk faded into a low murmur at the end. He looked at the world outside the crack, his mood complex and bewildered.

"Who are you?" It was a faint but clearly audible voice that reached his ear.

The boy turned to look. The owner of the voice was clearly wary; she shifted her petite, curled-up body backward, as if that could give her a little more sense of security.

It had been a shelter for her alone, and suddenly a stranger had appeared, so she must have felt uneasy.

Su Qing'an understood this. For some reason, this girl was speaking the language of Shenzhou, so he could understand her.

Then, was he still in his original world?

The possibility of returning to a normal life dispelled much of the bewilderment and despair in his heart, and at the same time, anticipation and hope inevitably ignited within him.

He looked closely at her appearance; she was a very beautiful girl.

Although she was as disheveled as he was, her delicate features and those clear, sea-blue eyes revealed that her appearance was quite exceptional.

She was wearing black pantyhose, but because they had been torn in several places during her escape, fair skin was exposed, the black and white colors intertwining on those long, slender legs.

Coupled with the girl's expression of wariness mixed with a hint of fear, it created an atmosphere of pitiable vulnerability.

"...My name is Su Qing'an. This might be a strange question, but do you know where this place is?" he asked nervously.

"...This is Canghai City." Seeming to think the question was strange, the girl glanced at Su Qing'an in surprise before answering.

Canghai City? A name he had never heard of.

His heart sank, the ignited hope coldly extinguished by this name.

Have I really come to another world?

This city held only ruins and monsters visible everywhere, like a scene after the apocalypse.

There was no way to continue deceiving himself; this was indeed not his original world.

The phone in his pocket was still there; it seemed to be the only evidence that could connect him to his previous world.

The life of the past seventeen years had already waved goodbye to him, and what remained in this phone might be the final lingering image.

[This is the trial before God's Game begins. Strive to survive.]

But when he opened the phone, which still had battery, with a complex heart, these black characters entered his sight.

God's Game? What the hell is this?

This unusual sight revealed the truth and reality.

Tell him that the fact he cannot return is already destined.

After a long silence, Su Qing'an calmed his emotions slightly and asked the girl:

"What is your name?"

"...The world is like this now, names and such aren't important at all."

The girl's emerald eyes watched him with vigilance. In her view, Su Qing'an, who didn't even know the name of the city he was in despite the disaster having already occurred, was truly suspicious.

In a space occupied by only the two of them, this vigilance only deepened. She hid a stone with a sharp, jagged edge in her hand; it was the only thing that could give her a true sense of security.

"There might only be the two of us left alive in this city," the girl murmured, her clear eyes seemingly veiled by a gray mist, as if she were talking to herself:

"It is very hard to survive in a world like this; you never know when you might die under some inexplicable calamity."

"Whether it was friends who studied hard or parents who worked diligently, they all optimistically believed that humanity would surely overcome this disaster, and then their lives were interrupted without reason."

The girl buried her head between her legs. Was she crying?

Su Qing'an could not understand, but he knew that this was a despair and pain far deeper than everything he had encountered.

If this city's past had been as peaceful as his original world, then this girl had perhaps witnessed a living hell unfold with her own eyes. She had truly watched everything she once possessed be annihilated by the disaster, so the despair she faced was naturally even more profound.

And now, she had been alone in the basement of these ruins for who knows how long; no one could possibly empathize with everything she had endured during this time.

"In a world like this, death is the only release, isn't it?"

In the quiet environment, the girl's whisper reached his ears.

The atmosphere fell into a deathly silence. Only the faint, clear sound of the two people breathing remained in the space. Both the youth and the girl seemed momentarily completely overwhelmed by their completely different despairs.

"Then, before that happens, let's live on together," the youth said, looking straight at the girl.

Hearing this, the girl looked up at the light spots cast by the sun and said:

"Why..."

Interrupting the girl's fragile voice, Su Qing'an said earnestly:

"Does living together need many reasons? The fact that you are still willing to live to now proves that you are just as afraid as I am. Fearing death is a human instinct; death might be a release in a world like this."

"But... I don't want to die." The youth's words were sincere. He did not want to die; he hated death. Confusion and fear had long since grown and coiled around his heart, but the will to live was real and true.

The girl looked up, observing this intruder's appearance seriously for the first time. He was a youth who should have been about the same age as her.

His delicate and pleasing features gave a good impression.

At this moment, his ebony-black eyes looked straight at her, as if demanding an answer.

"...Okay." The girl's nod was almost imperceptible, and the words that slipped from her lips were as soft as a mosquito's hum.

After hearing the girl's answer, Su Qing'an revealed the first smile he had shown since arriving in this world.

"Then it's a promise. I hate people who break promises—that's my view—so I will work hard to live on."

In this dim space with only faint light, the youth's beaming smile and the words he spoke were like a ray of sunlight pouring into the girl's heart.

Dazzlingly bright.