Su Qing'an was being hunted.
He ran, the frigid wind rushing through his nose and mouth into his chest. The tearing sensation was like a knife, making his body, which had not exercised in years, issue a warning.
Every breath felt like he was overdrawing his life. He was like an old bellows, each rise and fall of his chest consuming its durability.
The muscles in his legs spasmed, and his feet felt ready to break. His stamina had long since reached its limit, but he could not stop.
The threat of life and death forced his will beyond its former limits.
Run, he told himself.
If he was caught, he would die. His brain had already understood this fact thoroughly.
An hour ago, he had been on the streets of Magic City in the dead of night, carrying a bag of cola out of a twenty-four-hour convenience store. He had been wondering whether he should adjust his biological clock for the sake of his health.
But in the briefest blink, he had inexplicably arrived in this unfamiliar place and was being hunted by monsters like the zombies in movies. The moment they saw him, they swarmed toward him like sharks that had smelled blood.
The monsters had hideous, ghostlike faces, and their rotted, hollow eye sockets stared at him as if he were already dead.
Caught off guard, Su Qing'an had already suffered a deep claw mark across his back. With no time to care for his body as he fled for his life, he strangely felt little pain—only a scorching sensation.
He had reached the fastest speed of his seventeen-year life, yet the monsters behind him remained less than five meters away.
The monsters' stamina was seemingly endless.
Unlike the clumsy zombies in ordinary movies, the monsters behind him were unnervingly agile. Their sheer numbers also robbed him of any desire to stop and fight them to the death.
Given Su Qing'an's speed and stamina, the only possible outcome was having all his flesh devoured and becoming a nameless skeleton in this foreign land.
But he could not stop. Perhaps death should not have been something that made him cut such a pathetic figure, yet his basic will to survive and his bewilderment drove him to keep struggling.
The stench of rot surrounded his nostrils. As his strength ran out, his speed inevitably slowed, and the monsters' breathing seemed to have already reached his back.
At the instant fear tightened around his heart like a noose, the world before him spun.
His ankle twisted on the uneven ground, and the young man naturally fell.
I'm done for.
As his brain conveyed this fact, Su Qing'an felt his body tilt downward.
A crack in some ruins? In that fleeting moment, he could only grasp this possibility.
Then his weight and the inertia from his fall sent him rolling without pause into the depths of the ruins.
His body slammed violently against the ground. He shielded his head with both hands, and the dense, raindrop-like pain striking his nerves felt like a blessing to Su Qing'an at that moment.
After roughly five seconds, he tumbled messily into the underground ruins. Faint sunlight shone through a crack. This place had probably once been an underground facility.
Su Qing'an breathed heavily, but the dust floating through the air made him cough.
"Cough, cough, cough-cough... I... survived." The young man's dazed muttering gradually fell in pitch at the end. He gazed at the world beyond the crack, his emotions complicated and confused.
"Who are you?" A faint yet unmistakably clear voice reached his ears.
The young man turned his head. 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 security.
This had originally been a shelter occupied only by her. The sudden appearance of a stranger had probably made her uneasy.
That was how Su Qing'an understood it. For some reason, the girl spoke Shenzhou's language, so he could understand her.
Then am I still in my original world?
The possibility of returning to a normal life dispelled much of the confusion and despair in his heart, while expectation and hope inevitably began to kindle within him.
He carefully studied her appearance. She was a very beautiful girl.
Although her condition was just as disheveled as his, her delicate features and eyes as clear as the blue sea were enough to show that she was exceptionally attractive.
She wore black stockings on her legs, but several tears from her escape exposed patches of fair skin. Black and white intertwined across her long, slender legs.
Combined with the girl's wary yet slightly fearful expression, it created an utterly pitiful atmosphere.
"...My name is Su Qing'an. This might sound strange, but do you know where this place is?" he asked somewhat nervously.
"...This is Canghai City." Seemingly finding the question strange, the girl glanced at Su Qing'an in surprise before answering.
Canghai City? I've never heard of it.
His heart sank, and the hope that had kindled within him was coldly extinguished by the name.
Have I really come to another world?
This city consisted only of ruined walls and monsters everywhere, like a scene from the aftermath of an apocalypse.
He could no longer deceive himself. This truly was not his original world.
His phone was still in his pocket. It seemed to be the only evidence connecting him to his former world.
The seventeen years of his life had already waved goodbye to him. What remained in this phone might be the final remnant of the past.
[This is the trial before God's Game begins. Do your best to survive.]
Yet when he opened the phone, which still had power, with complicated emotions, these black words appeared before his eyes.
God's Game? For fuck's sake, what is this supposed to be?
This extraordinary scene revealed the truth and reality.
It told him that the fact he could not return had already been sealed.
After a long silence, Su Qing'an calmed himself somewhat and asked the girl:
"What is your name?"
"...The world is already like this. A name doesn't matter at all."
The girl's jade-green eyes watched him warily. In her view, Su Qing'an was highly suspicious: the disaster had already happened, yet he did not even know the name of the city he was in.
In this space occupied by only the two of them, her wariness inevitably deepened. Hidden in her hand was a stone with a sharp, broken edge—the only thing that could give her genuine security.
"There may be only the two of us left alive in this city." A gray mist seemed to veil the girl's clear eyes. She murmured as if speaking to herself:
"Surviving in a world like this is difficult. You never know when you'll die beneath some inexplicable disaster."
"Whether it was the friends who studied hard or the parents who worked tirelessly, they all optimistically believed that humanity would surely overcome this disaster. Then their lives were senselessly cut short."
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 anything he had experienced.
If this city had once been as peaceful as his original world, then the girl had perhaps witnessed a living hell with her own eyes. She had truly watched everything she once possessed be annihilated by disaster, so the despair she faced was naturally far deeper.
And now, she had remained alone beneath these ruins for who knew how long. No one could possibly empathize with everything she had endured during that time.
"In a world like this, death is the only release."
In the silent surroundings, the girl's whisper reached his ears.
The atmosphere sank into dead silence. Only the two people's faint yet clear breathing remained in the space. For a moment, both the young man and the girl seemed completely overwhelmed by entirely different forms of despair.
"Before that happens, let's survive together." The young man looked directly at the girl as he spoke.
Hearing this, the girl raised her eyes toward the patches of sunlight and said:
"Why...?"
Interrupting the girl's timid voice, Su Qing'an said seriously:
"Do we need many reasons to survive together? The fact that you're still willing to live proves that you're just as afraid as I am, doesn't it? Fear of death is human instinct. In a world like this, death might count as release."
"But... I don't want to die." The young man's words were serious. He did not want to die—he hated death. Confusion and fear had long since grown and tangled around his heart, but his will to survive was genuine.
The girl raised her head and seriously observed this intruder for the first time. He was a young man who appeared to be around her age.
His clean-cut, pleasing features gave others a favorable impression.
At that moment, his ebony-black eyes stared directly at her, as if demanding an answer.
"...Okay." The girl's nod was almost imperceptible, and the words that left 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 their promises. That's my view, so I'll do my best to survive."
In this dim space illuminated by only a faint light, the young man's smile and words were like a ray of sunlight pouring into the girl's heart.
Dazzling beyond compare.
Before you continue