Turns Out You're Still Alive

Lunch was simple.

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

It might have looked plain.

But he liked food like this. It whetted his appetite.

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

Before eating,

he took out his phone, snapped some pictures, and arranged them in a nine-grid collage.

Caption:

[Is this standard of living good enough?]

He didn't mean anything by it. He was just in the habit of posting to his feed and recording the beautiful moments in his life.

The apocalypse was harsh and miserable, but no matter the circumstances, he should never neglect himself. No one else would care about him; only his own body would feel the consequences.

If he didn't listen, his body would let him know when something went wrong—and it would be because he'd neglected it.

He couldn't remember who had said that.

But it made sense.

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

The softness of the rice, the delicious vegetables, and the smooth soup satisfied his taste buds.

His screen lit up.

Someone had commented on his post. He picked up his phone to check.

He was a little curious.

[Autumn Blade Slashes Fish]: Screw you.

Uh.

Lin Fan hadn't expected that client to comment.

He thought about it. Being able to get in touch at a time like this was fate.

[Lin Fan]: Turns out you're still alive.

[Autumn Blade Slashes Fish]: Screw you.

Looking at the comment on his feed, he let out a long sigh. It was really hard to talk to unfriendly people. He was showing concern, but the other person was cursing him out.

Luckily, he had a good temper and could put up with the other guy's bad attitude. Back when he did design work, he'd gotten used to unreasonable clients.

That client's project had fallen through. His renovation budget had been a hundred thousand yuan. The previous boss had been a draftsman, and when a client like this came along—asking you to handle the renovation and draw up some plans for free—the boss had agreed in the end, figuring he'd make half the budget. That didn't seem unreasonable.

Lin Fan had been the one to deal with the client at the end.

Later, the client, Autumn Blade Slashes Fish, had actually asked Lin Fan to take him somewhere to unwind a little. It wasn't usually part of his job, but he had no choice. He took Autumn Blade Slashes Fish to an old, run-down foot massage parlor, where a woman in her fifties had massaged his feet.

After that, the deal fell through completely.

And the boss gave him a thorough tongue-lashing.

[Lin Fan]: The zombies outside are terrifying. Be careful. Do you need help?

After he replied,

a response came back soon.

[Autumn Blade Slashes Fish]: Help my ass. I'm living it up right now—beautiful women on both arms, surrounded by beauties. Even my Wangcai wouldn't eat those vegetables of yours. I'm eating delicacies, abalone and lobster. Go ahead and envy me.

Reading the reply, he smiled, genuinely happy that the other man was living such a good life.

[Lin Fan]: That's good. Hope will come. Let's work together to bring Huang City back to the way it was (smiley face).

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

Huang City, an apartment complex.

Inside a heavily industrial-style apartment, a fat, greasy-looking man chewed on a rock-hard piece of bread while playing with his phone.

"Damn it, what an idiot. This guy's such an idiot."

He still remembered how clueless that guy had been. He'd made himself perfectly clear, yet Lin Fan had still taken him to some old, run-down foot massage parlor. The hell with getting my feet massaged. And to top it off, he'd found me a masseuse in her fifties, old enough to be my mother. My dream of getting a freebie had been completely shattered. I'd even gotten a fright.

But enough about that.

When the apocalypse came, he'd had a miserable time. The first time he saw a zombie, he'd been a little excited. The things from the movies had actually appeared.

The kind of zombies he'd most hoped for were the slow, dull-witted sort. If they were really like that, then even with his body shape, he could grab a weapon and fight them for three hundred rounds.

But then he'd looked out the window and seen the zombies outside charging around like mad dogs, knocking people to the ground and tearing into them indiscriminately. He knew he was completely screwed.

All he could do was huddle at home, trembling, living on bread and cola.

Now he was almost out of food. If he couldn't find supplies, he was as good as dead.

So when he saw Lin Fan's post, he was furious. That damn bastard was actually eating fragrant rice and stir-fried vegetables. Why didn't he choke to death?

He went out onto the balcony and looked toward the second floor across the way. There was a survivor over there, a woman who looked pretty. She kept beckoning to him, as if to say... Come on, handsome. Come over here.

He'd never had a girlfriend in his life, apart from a certain kind of sword, so he found it hard to resist that kind of temptation. If he weren't afraid of the zombies outside, he'd have rushed over without a second thought.

But now, he was considering it.

If he kept hiding at home, he might really die.

Some people broke through when they reached the point of despair.

Others died in despair, completely consumed by it.

He was clearly the former.

Somewhere in the desert, in an underground base.

An old man in a white coat stood beside a sealed crystal.

"Is this what you recovered 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 certainly strange, but it was definitely a new discovery.

"Yes. This zombie was wandering in the desert, not too far from our base. The monitoring team saw that it might approach the base, so a member fired preemptively. The shot didn't kill it, but attracted its attention. They fired a second shot and killed it. They found this crystal inside its head," an officer reported.

The old man said, "Tell me exactly what happened."

"The member who fired the first shot was Xiang Nan. He used a CS/LR35 sniper rifle and hit the zombie in the head, but it was still able to move. It was running pretty fast, too. He fired a second shot, hit it in the head again, and killed it."

Hearing this,

the old man in the white coat fell into thought. The first shot had hit it in the head, yet it hadn't died. It was hard to believe. So far, every zombie they'd encountered had been killed with one shot. In fact, they could kill zombies without guns—even an ordinary iron rod thrust into the head was enough.

The crystal before him was beautiful. It was hard to imagine it had been taken from the filthy head of a zombie.

"Are the zombies really evolving? But why are they evolving like this, like demons?"

The professor sank into thought.

The apocalypse had only just begun. They hadn't given up on the idea of suppressing the zombies, but the infection had spread indiscriminately, and the first wave had reached a terrifying scale.

Zombies had appeared out of nowhere in every department. No one could have imagined it.

Even a sealed base buried deep underground like theirs had been infected. How could they stop it? How could they hold it back?

"Professor, I have an idea."

"Go ahead."

"I like reading novels. A lot of zombie novels describe crystals inside the zombies' heads. They're essential for evolution. When humans kill zombies and get the crystals, they can absorb the energy inside them and evolve into superhumans. I wonder if this crystal works the same way."

He stared at the crystal, his eyes burning with excitement. If they could absorb the energy inside it and become stronger, that would be incredible.

"Zombie novels?" The professor was baffled.

He never read novels and knew nothing about them, but he picked up on a few key points. Absorbing energy from crystals was something they needed to verify. Only rigorous experiments could determine whether it was true.

He had already contacted most of the bases in the country. Apart from Dragon Palace Base and Galaxy Base, he could no longer reach any of the others.

If they could uncover the secret of the zombies and wipe them out completely, the world might still be saved.

Otherwise, the consequences would be unthinkable.