So You're Still Alive

Lunch was simple.

A bowl of white rice, a serving of stir-fried greens, and a bowl of vegetable soup.

Though it looked humble.

He liked eating these things; they gave him an appetite.

Any fashionable young person, even in the apocalypse, had the habit of taking photos and sharing their life.

Before eating.

He took out his phone, snapped a photo, and arranged it into a grid of nine.

The caption.

[Is this standard of living okay?]

He didn't mean anything by it; it was just a habitual post to his social feed, recording a pleasant moment in life.

The apocalypse was bitter and terrible, but no matter the circumstances, one should never mistreat oneself. No one else would care; only your own body would feel the pain.

If you didn't listen to advice, your body would tell you that something had gone wrong, all because you had mistreated yourself.

He forgot who said that.

But it made a lot of sense.

A bite of greens, a bite of rice, a sip of soup.

The softness of the rice, the deliciousness of the greens, and the smoothness of the soup satisfied his taste buds.

The screen lit up.

Someone had commented, so he picked up his phone to check.

He felt a bit expectant.

[Autumn Blade Slashes Fish]: Screw your mother.

Huh.

Lin Fan hadn't expected that particular client to comment.

He thought about it; being able to stay in touch during times like these was a stroke of fate.

[Lin Fan]: So you're still alive.

[Autumn Blade Slashes Fish]: Screw your mother.

Looking at the comment on his feed, he let out a long sigh. Communicating with unfriendly people was truly difficult; he was showing concern for the other party, but the other party was hurling insults at him.

Fortunately, he had a good temper and could endure the other man's explosive personality. Back when he worked in design, he had grown accustomed to the unreasonable demands of clients.

The deal with this person hadn't gone through. The client's renovation budget was one hundred thousand. His former boss was a drafter who would encounter clients who wanted free designs while handing over the renovation work. The boss usually agreed, planning to make a fifty percent profit on the hundred thousand, which didn't seem excessive.

In the end, the person who handled the handover with the client was him, Lin Fan.

Later, this client, Autumn Blade Slashes Fish, actually wanted him to take him somewhere to relax. Originally, this wasn't his responsibility, but he had no choice; he had to take Autumn Blade Slashes Fish to an old foot massage parlor, where a woman in her fifties gave him a foot rub.

After that, the deal completely fell through.

And he was given a fierce tongue-lashing by his boss.

[Lin Fan]: The zombies outside are terrifying. You need to be careful. Do you need any help?

After he replied.

A response came quickly.

[Autumn Blade Slashes Fish]: Help my ass. I'm living quite happily right now, surrounded by beauties. Even my Wangcai wouldn't eat the food you're having. I'm eating delicacies, abalone, and lobster. Go ahead and be jealous.

Looking at the reply, he smiled, genuinely happy for the other man's comfortable life.

[Lin Fan]: That's good. Hope will come eventually. Let's work together to bring back the Huang City we once knew (smiley face).

[Autumn Blade Slashes Fish]: Get lost...

Huang City, a certain residential complex.

In a room with a heavy industrial aesthetic, a fat man with a greasy appearance was gnawing on a hard piece of bread while playing on his phone.

"Damn, what an idiot. This guy is a total moron."

He always remembered how clueless the guy was. He had already been so blunt, yet the guy still took him to an old foot massage parlor. Wash your sister's feet! If he had to get a wash, fine, but he found him a technician in her fifties who was old enough to be his mother. It completely shattered his hopes of getting a freebie and even left him traumatized.

But let's not talk about that for now.

Since the apocalypse arrived, he had been living miserably. When he first saw the zombies, he felt a bit excited; the stuff from the movies had actually appeared.

The kind of zombies he most hoped to see were the slow, dim-witted ones. If that were really the case, even with his physique, he could have fought those zombies for three hundred rounds with a weapon in hand.

It wasn't until he looked out the window and saw the zombies acting like mad dogs, pouncing on people and tearing them apart, that he knew he was completely screwed.

He could only huddle at home, shivering, living off bread and cola.

Now, he was running out of supplies. If he couldn't find more, he was a dead man.

Therefore, seeing Lin Fan's social media post, he was truly filled with rage. What a damn scoundrel, actually having fragrant rice and stir-fried dishes. Why didn't you choke to death on it?

He walked to the balcony and looked toward the second floor across the way. There was a survivor there, a woman who looked quite pretty, and she kept beckoning to him with her finger, as if to say... "Come on, handsome, come over here."

Having never had a girlfriend in his life—save for the occasional paid encounter—he found such temptation difficult to resist. If not for his fear of the zombies outside, he would have rushed over there without a second thought.

But now, he had an idea.

If he continued to hole up in his home, he might truly die.

When some people reach the point of despair, they erupt with potential.

But others, in that same despair, simply wither away and die.

He was clearly the former.

Somewhere in the desert, at an underground base.

An old man in a white lab coat stood around a sealed crystal.

"Is this what was obtained from the head of a mutated zombie?" The old man adjusted his glasses and examined it closely. A crystal growing inside a zombie's head was truly a strange phenomenon, but it was undoubtedly a new discovery.

"Yes. This zombie was wandering in the desert, not too far from our base. The surveillance team saw it potentially approaching the base and fired a shot to kill it, but they didn't succeed. It drew the zombie's attention, and they had to fire a second shot to kill it. We found this crystal inside its head," an officer reported.

The old man said, "Tell me the details."

"The team member who fired the first shot was Xiang Nan. He used a CS/LR35 sniper rifle. The first shot hit the zombie in the head, but it still retained its mobility and its running speed didn't slow down. He then fired a second shot, hitting the head again, and killed it."

Hearing this, the old man in the white coat fell into deep thought. The first shot hit the head, yet it didn't kill it—it was inconceivable. Up until now, based on all the zombies they had encountered, a single shot had always been fatal. Even without a gun, a simple iron rod thrust into the brain could kill a zombie.

The crystal before him was beautiful; it was hard to imagine it had been pulled from a filthy zombie's head.

"Are zombies really evolving? But why would they evolve like this? It's like something out of a nightmare."

The professor sank into contemplation.

When the apocalypse first descended, it wasn't as if they hadn't thought about suppressing the zombies, but the infection had spread without rules, and the number of people infected in the first wave reached a terrifying proportion.

Zombies had appeared inexplicably in every department; no one could have imagined it.

Even a base as enclosed and deeply buried as theirs had been infected. How could they stop it? How could they block it?

"Professor, I have an idea."

"Go ahead."

"I like reading novels. Many zombie novels describe how zombies have crystals in their heads, which are essential materials for evolution. Humans kill zombies to obtain these crystals and can absorb the energy within to evolve into something extraordinary. I wonder if this crystal works the same way."

He looked at the crystal with burning eyes. If they could really absorb energy from it and become stronger, that would be truly incredible.

"Zombie novels?" The professor was full of question marks.

He never read novels and knew nothing about them, but he grasped the key points: absorbing energy from the crystal. This situation required verification and rigorous experimentation before it could be confirmed.

He had contacted almost all the bases in the country, but apart from the Dragon Palace Base and the Galaxy Base, the others were no longer reachable.

If they could unlock the secrets of the zombies and completely eradicate them, perhaps this world could still be saved.

Otherwise, the consequences were unthinkable.