Rebirth

"This..."

Jiang Nian instinctively raised a hand to his mouth:

"Holy shit!"

At the same time, memories came flooding into his mind:

A prolonged drought, his mother's death, poisonous rain, a virus, zombies... the apocalypse!

Jiang Nian pinched himself hard several times, grimacing in pain.

"Hiss-"

Even though the air conditioner in the room was set to its lowest temperature, a fine layer of sweat broke out on his forehead, and his cheeks flushed from the indescribable rush of emotions.

Without stopping to put on shoes, Jiang Nian jumped out of bed, went to the window, pulled back the curtains, and opened it:

Outside, the sun shone brightly in a cloudless sky. The air was hot, dry, and fresh, with the faintest hint of flowers.

There were no dark clouds and smog blanketing the sky, no wasteland strewn with severed limbs, no soil blackened and turned to sand by viral contamination, and certainly no terrifying, putrid zombies...

There was no sign of the apocalypse. Everything felt like a dream, and it finally convinced Jiang Nian:

He had been reborn!

According to the calendar, he had been reborn half a month before the poisonous rain of the apocalypse, on the tenth day after his mother's funeral.

His mother was gone after a two-year struggle with stomach cancer.

Over those two years, the cost of her treatment had left them deeply in debt, reducing their once comfortably middle-class life to that, and his relationships with relatives and friends had become worse than those between strangers.

While his mother was alive, she would rather have given up treatment than let him sell the apartment. She said she wanted to leave it to him, so he wouldn't lose both her and his money.

But he wanted his mother. Even though he knew the outcome wouldn't change, he still wanted to keep her alive one more day whenever he could.

So he went around begging everyone he could for loans, promising to sell the apartment and repay them after his mother passed away. That was how they had held on for two years.

As soon as his mother's funeral was over, his relatives came to his door together to urge him to sell the apartment, afraid he wouldn't keep his word.

He felt no resentment or dissatisfaction. Paying back what he owed was only right, and he had to do what he had promised. Nobody's money grew on trees.

Besides, lending him money had been an act of kindness, not an obligation. Since they had lent it to him, he should be grateful and do his best to repay them.

Because he was in such a hurry, he sold the apartment at a low price. Fortunately, it was still enough to pay off his debts.

After he had taken care of everything, he had less than ten thousand yuan left in his bank account.

He dragged his exhausted body to a temporary rental, only to fall ill as soon as he settled in. He took some medicine and slept in a daze for two days...

Jiang Nian remembered it clearly. According to the records of major historical events from his previous life, in March 2036, a prolonged drought had swept across the globe without warning and lasted for more than five months. Near the end of August, the weather station forecast heavy rain after the long drought.

The forecast was accurate, but the rain brought humanity a devastating calamity.

On August 27, 2036, the drought ended with a poisonous rain, as people called it after the apocalypse. Anyone caught in it would contract an unknown virus and die.

On September 1, those who had died after contracting the poisonous rain virus began to come back to life as zombies.

Driven by their instinct to feed, the zombies attacked humans. Those who were scratched or bitten would also become infected and mutate. With that, the apocalypse descended.

This unprecedented catastrophe soon swept across the globe like a hurricane.

To combat this devastating calamity, humans under extreme pressure underwent a special evolution and became ability users.

But aside from zombies, the apocalypse also brought all kinds of natural disasters:

Extreme cold, scorching heat, storms, earthquakes, plagues, and contaminated floods... They ravaged the devastated land one after another.

Humanity struggled to survive while rebuilding its home.

It wasn't until more than two years after the apocalypse began that the Base S research institute made a breakthrough in its research into a zombie antiserum.

Experts from the various bases gathered at Base S for a meeting, after which they announced:

It would take another year to produce the antiserum. Infected people could be saved as long as they hadn't completely lost their minds.

Afterward, Base S extended an invitation to recruit talented and capable people from all walks of life. It planned to begin purifying the environment and reclaiming the contaminated land once the antiserum was ready.

People with strength and power gradually began gathering at Base S. The small bases were the first to empty out in particular, and the family who had abandoned him in his previous life had done the same.

Jiang Nian had survived for more than two years in the apocalypse, spending nearly two of them locked in a basement at Base Z.

Whether good news or bad, he heard it all from those people, until he was abandoned and left to die...

"Sob..."

Tears welled up and spilled over. Jiang Nian lowered his head and buried his face in the quilt, his quiet sobs turning into loud wails as he vented all his grievances, unwillingness, fear, helplessness, and resentment in the most direct way.

At the same time, he recalled what had happened at this point in his previous life:

It was summer vacation now. He would be starting his fourth year of university when classes resumed, and he had spent the entire break caring for his gravely ill mother.

After his mother died and he recovered from his illness, he went to the southern district of the city to find his father.

Although the whole family lived in the same city, his parents had divorced when he was very young, and he had stayed with his mother.

Because of an agreement they had made at the time, his father hadn't paid them child support. He only brought them things occasionally, and whenever father and son met, they were practically strangers.

He wouldn't comment on the adults' past. If his mother could accept it, so could he. Feelings were complicated, after all.

When his mother was gravely ill, his father had lent him twenty thousand yuan and told him to pay it back when he had the money. With nowhere else to go, he temporarily stayed with his father while waiting for classes to start, until the apocalypse arrived.

Back then, his father had divorced and started a new family. Although he had married into his new wife's family, he had built a successful career as a result, and he also had a pair of twins, a son and a daughter, who were only two years younger than Jiang Nian: Chen Yue and Chen Lin.

After the apocalypse arrived, it was in that "home" that he fell into hell.

In his previous life, he had inexplicably developed a high fever the day after the poisonous rain. After three days of fever, zombies appeared, and he awakened an ability.

Soon, satellite broadcasts also began reporting news of ability users appearing in various places.

Naturally, he told his family that he had awakened an ability.

Unfortunately, compared with offensive abilities, his Purification Ability didn't seem very useful at the time. It was just a minor surprise of questionable value.

Later, on their way to the base in a vehicle following a rescue team, they were attacked by a horde of zombies, and Chen Yue was accidentally scratched.

To save Chen Yue, he used his Purification Ability on the wound, hoping it might work. Although it didn't heal the wound, it miraculously slowed the spread of the zombie virus.

From then on, he became Chen Yue's protective talisman.

With the help of Chen Yue's girlfriend, Xia Weiwei, the family brought Chen Yue into the central district of Base Z, bypassing the base's health screening.

To keep Chen Yue safe, they didn't report to the base that Jiang Nian was an ability user.

Xia Weiwei also used her connections to find Chen Yue a private medical team. Behind the research institute's back, they studied Jiang Nian's ability and prepared medication for Chen Yue.

At first, he cooperated willingly. Chen Yue was his younger half-brother, after all. By the time he gradually realized something was wrong, it was already too late.

With his father and stepmother's tacit consent and the Xia Family's encouragement, he became Chen Yue's personal test subject, imprisoned in the basement:

Blood draws, drug trials, injections, tissue samples...

Eventually, an experiment to transplant and transfer an ability user's crystal core succeeded, and Base S made a breakthrough in its antiserum research.

Only then was his ability crystal core privately removed and given to Chen Yue. Afterward, he was discarded like garbage.