Chapter 1: Reborn!

Year 3 of the Apocalypse. Sand City, Zone A.

The abandoned city lay in ruins, its landscape bleak and lifeless. Several cars, their paint corroded and peeling from acid rain, sat haphazardly across the middle of the road.

Qin Xi lay sprawled in the middle of the street. A gaping hole had been burned through her chest by a supernatural ability, and dark crimson blood seeped from the wound.

She had just led the base’s elite team of ability users to repel a sneak attack launched by a hostile base.

For half an hour, a relentless lightning storm had battered their position, but her protective barrier had held firm, keeping every attack at bay. Not a single member of her team had been injured!

Yet she had never expected that the moment the battle ended, her own teammates would collectively turn against her!

Chen Liang, Jiang Yaoyao, Wu Dashan…

Pain spread from her chest throughout her entire body. Qin Xi’s vision gradually blurred, until her gaze finally settled on the man standing before her, watching her with a crazed grin.

Zhao Yuhao!

He was her eldest brother’s closest friend, a man whom her brother had once dragged from beneath the feet of a horde of zombies, saving his life by the narrowest of margins.

Who would have thought that, out of jealousy over her brother becoming the leader of their base, he would join forces with others to attack her?

And perhaps he would even go after her brother next!

“Zhao Yu…hao!”

Qin Xi clawed at the ground, her fingernails scraping bloody marks into the pavement. Blood trickled from the corners of her mouth.

“If you… if you dare lay a hand on my eldest brother, I… I’ll never forgive you, even as a ghost!”

But her desperate threat, delivered in such a pitiful state, carried little weight in the eyes of the people surrounding her. Instead, it only earned her a round of unrestrained laughter.

“Hahahahahaha!”

Zhao Yuhao looked down at her smugly. He extended his hand, and a tiny flame began to gather in his palm. His voice was cold and sinister.

“Then you’d better hurry up and become a ghost! Don’t worry… Qin Song will be joining you soon enough!”

…

“Ah!!”

Qin Xi’s eyes flew open.

An overwhelming sense of dread sent her heart pounding violently. Before her eyes was a row of familiar-looking blue seats.

For a moment, she couldn’t tell whether what she was seeing was real or merely an illusion.

Her body trembled uncontrollably until someone gently patted her shoulder.

“Excuse me, are you alright?”

She jolted and turned around.

A handsome young man was looking at her with concern. His face seemed somewhat familiar.

She blinked.

Then, in an instant, every hair on her body stood on end!

Wasn’t this the scene from before the apocalypse, when she had taken the high-speed train back to school?

And the young man sitting beside her…

He would be bitten by an infected person hiding among the passengers on this very train, turning into a zombie. Eventually, in her previous life, he would become the most formidable Zombie King in all of Sand City!

Qin Xi still remembered how, in her previous life, Qin Song had used metal wires to pierce the young man’s head until it resembled a hedgehog.

Had she… been reborn?

Qin Xi abruptly sprang to her feet!

Her sudden movement immediately drew the attention of the surrounding passengers.

Her gaze swept past row after row of seats, taking in the quiet yet lively passengers throughout the carriage.

She gasped for breath. A delighted smile was just beginning to spread across her face when her eyes suddenly met another pair of lively eyes!

Jiang Yaoyao!

Qin Xi felt as though an explosion had gone off inside her head.

The woman’s smug voice from just ten minutes ago seemed to echo in her ears.

“Qin Xi! What exactly do you have to be so proud of?”

“I asked you for crystal cores, and you refused to give me any. I wanted to raise zombies to train my abilities, and you wouldn’t let me! You kept saying my abilities would backfire on me. Weren’t you just afraid I’d outshine you?”

“But look at you now! Didn’t you end up being controlled by my zombies and worn down until you died?”

One accusation after another, each dripping with resentment, still rang in her ears.

Qin Xi had always considered Jiang Yaoyao a friend. She had never realized just how deeply the woman resented her.

And now, as she watched Jiang Yaoyao rise from her seat and walk toward her with an innocent, delighted expression, a pitiful voice reached her ears.

“Xixi, what’s wrong? Does that mean you’ll agree to switch seats with me? Actually, that uncle seems like a nice person, but I’m just really scared!”

The moment Jiang Yaoyao finished speaking, Qin Xi suddenly remembered exactly what was happening.

Today was the day students were returning to school. It was also exactly three days before the apocalypse broke out.

On the high-speed train returning to school that day, she and Jiang Yaoyao had been seated in the same carriage.

Unfortunately, the middle-aged man sharing Jiang Yaoyao’s row had already been infected with the zombie virus. His eye sockets were dark, his eyeballs bloodshot, and his body would twitch from time to time. A foul stench seemed to emanate from him.

Frightened, Jiang Yaoyao had asked Qin Xi to switch seats with her.

But Qin Xi had been equally frightened by the man’s appearance, so she refused.

Still, she had offered to let Jiang Yaoyao take turns sitting in her seat with her.

When that didn’t get her what she wanted, Jiang Yaoyao became angry, accusing Qin Xi of being selfish and stingy.

Eventually, the stench coming from the middle-aged man grew unbearable. Unable to stand it any longer, Jiang Yaoyao approached Qin Xi’s seat.

But instead of asking Qin Xi again, she set her sights on the young man sitting beside her.

In the end, the young man agreed to switch seats with her.

What no one had expected was that just as the train was pulling into the station, the middle-aged man would complete his transformation into a zombie and sink his teeth into the unsuspecting young man’s neck!

At the thought of this, Qin Xi snapped back to the present.

Meeting Jiang Yaoyao’s expectant gaze, her expression instantly turned cold.

“No. I’m not switching seats. I’ve been sitting for too long, so I just stood up to stretch.”

Jiang Yaoyao’s expression stiffened.

“Qin Xi! Fine, you don’t want to switch seats. But what was that attitude for? Are you deliberately making fun of me?”

Qin Xi raised an eyebrow.

“No. I’m just telling the truth. Why would I make fun of you?”

As soon as she said that, several passengers who had been drawn to their commotion cast meaningful glances at Jiang Yaoyao.

Someone muttered under their breath,

“Exactly. If she can’t stand the smell coming from someone else, why doesn’t she go talk to the train attendant? Why keep pressuring other people to switch seats?”

“She’s got no sense of boundaries. Just because she’s scared doesn’t mean everyone else isn’t. Why should someone else always have to give up their seat for her?”

“That’s right! How many times has she made a scene about this already? The man is obviously unwell, and now she keeps loudly announcing that he smells bad and looks frightening. If I were in his position, I’d have given her a piece of my mind long ago!”

The surrounding passengers’ remarks made Jiang Yaoyao’s face turn deathly pale.

But there was no trace of a smile in Qin Xi’s eyes.

A few careless remarks from strangers were hardly enough.

Just then, the young man sitting beside her noticed that Jiang Yaoyao seemed ready to continue arguing. He had been holding back for quite some time, but apparently, he could no longer stand it and was about to speak up.

Suddenly, a slender hand came down firmly on his shoulder, pressing him straight back into his seat!

The hand was surprisingly strong!

He froze in astonishment and looked up, only to see the girl’s tightly set, emotionless jawline.