Chapter 6: The Onset of the Cataclysm

Bai Chen Zhu went to the supermarket and bought a large bag of food, then carried it back home.

The residential area had houses that everyone envied twenty years ago, but now they couldn’t keep up with the times. There was no electronic door downstairs, no elevator either; people had to climb the stairs on foot. Fortunately, the entire building was no more than six stories high.

Advertisements were plastered densely on the concrete stairwell. Due to issues with the building materials, the stairwell felt cold, carrying a chill.

Bai Chen Zhu lived on the third floor. When he reached the landing between the second and third floors, he unexpectedly spotted a dazed middle-aged woman hugging her legs as she sat on the stairs.

She was a resident from the second floor.

Bai Chen Zhu pretended not to see her and lifted his leg to step past, but the woman suddenly reached out. Bai Chen Zhu reacted extremely quickly and swiftly retreated back to the stairwell.

The two eyed each other warily, and Bai Chen Zhu gripped the handle of his shopping bag tightly.

The woman suddenly chuckled and greeted him cheerfully, “Kid, you’re back from school? How come you’re home so early today?”

Another ‘acquaintance’. Bai Chen Zhu wasn’t sure about the relationship between the woman and the original owner, so he didn’t make a sound.

The woman sat there in a daze. She looked to be in her forties or fifties, but her vacant expression was like that of a senile old person in their seventies or eighties. She weirdly tugged up the corners of her mouth. “Kid, what yummy things did you buy? You smell so good.”

She slowly twitched her nose, her expression intoxicated.

Bai Chen Zhu reflexively lifted his hand to sniff his clothes but didn’t smell anything.

The unfamiliar middle-aged woman in front of him wobbled to her feet like a stubborn roly-poly toy and descended two steps, which looked precarious just to watch.

Bai Chen Zhu vaguely sensed some kind of danger and became alert.

In the next instant, the staggering woman leaped up like a frog, her five fingers hooked into claws as she lunged at him, her posture terrifying.

Bai Chen Zhu dodged to the side, and she missed, slamming face-first into the wall before rebounding onto the cold concrete floor. She tumbled head over heels down the stairs, letting out a shrill scream.

The sudden attack made his heart pound so fiercely it felt like it would burst from his throat. Bai Chen Zhu unconsciously took several deep breaths and sidled up to the stair railing to look down.

The woman had rolled to the second floor.

Just as Bai Chen Zhu hesitated over whether to go down and check, the woman climbed to her feet as if nothing had happened and stood fixed in place. She muttered ‘kid’s home from school’ and headed to the first floor, her movements and appearance basically indistinguishable from a normal person’s.

—Except for how excessively sluggish she seemed.

Zombification had already begun. The unease in Bai Chen Zhu’s heart grew stronger.

He went up to the third floor, put away his things, and left again. He didn’t return until evening, laden with a bunch of supplies and medicine, then locked the door behind him.

The apartment was a three-bedroom with a living room. He occupied one bedroom, and the other two were storage rooms. Bai Chen Zhu had used all his money to buy enough food to fill every space.

The internet was still as peaceful as ever.

Bai Chen Zhu skimmed through the online news at a glance. There were plenty of discussions about the new infectious disease, but the official statement only called it a novel rabies strain. No one had died from novel rabies yet, so they just needed symptomatic treatment with medicine.

Bai Chen Zhu hesitated for a moment, then his fingers tapped on the screen a few times.

Less than three seconds after sending the message, he received a red warning: Your account has been muted for 72 hours for spreading false information. Please wait patiently.

Tch, whatever.

Bai Chen Zhu turned off his phone and went straight to sleep. He could barely take care of himself; he had no extra energy for anything else. Saving the world was someone else’s job.

Ever since returning from the hospital that day, Bai Chen Zhu only woke from his dreams for basic physiological needs; otherwise, he remained in a deep slumber.

His physical exam hadn’t shown any major issues, but his frail body was completely out of his control. Opening or closing his eyes, the whole world felt pitch black.

He was like a fish dying of thirst; without sleep, he couldn’t survive.

He didn’t know how many days passed like this before Bai Chen Zhu finally ‘woke’.

He didn’t open his eyes. His soul floated in midair, swaying like he was drunk, and he could vaguely make out the outlines of objects in the room—including this body.

Through the thick ceiling, Bai Chen Zhu heard noise from upstairs, screams, and finally silence.

He wanted to go up and take a look.

The thought flashed through, and Bai Chen Zhu felt his ‘soul’ effortlessly pass through the reinforced concrete ceiling to ‘see’ the scene above.

A family of three lived on the fourth floor. The lady of the house loved flowers and had filled the balcony with pink-and-white climbing roses cascading down like a waterfall, stopping just above the third-floor windows. It was very romantic and had once become a social media hotspot, drawing passersby to stop and take photos.

But now, those beautiful roses had climbed from the balcony into the fourth-floor apartment, writhing like snakes and densely covering the entire interior, treating it as their ‘nest’.

The family’s corpses were pierced through by the vines, blood splattered across the parquet floor.

They were bound tightly and hidden deep in the ‘nest’. Countless vines stabbed into the corpses, wriggling and gulping like snakes as they devoured something inside. The bodies gradually deflated like wrinkled human-skin balloons.

The lady of the house stared wide-eyed at the balcony outside, her pupils dilated, her face shriveled and ashen. It seemed like she was pleading for help, her eyes still holding the terror and despair from before death.

Bai Chen Zhu unexpectedly ‘met’ those lifeless eyes. The black vortices threatened to drag him into the abyss. He jolted violently and struggled awake on the bed, clutching his swollen, aching forehead as he gasped for breath one gulp after another.

What kind of monster was that? Bai Chen Zhu clutched his chest, panting rapidly. Once he recovered a bit, he bit down hard on his index finger. The bloody tooth mark and stinging pain told him this wasn’t just another dream within a dream.

“That was close, just a dream.” Bai Chen Zhu comforted himself.

His stomach rumbled. Bai Chen Zhu thought of the food still in the apartment. His feet had just touched the floor when his legs gave out, and he thudded to his knees.

He froze, staring in surprise at his lower body. After a moment, he caught his breath, gripped the bed edge, and stood up. For some reason, after waking, this body felt even more useless.

Bai Chen Zhu washed up simply, dragged on his slippers, and shuffled to the living room for food. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed numerous emerald green rose vines hanging outside the window, their leaves rustling as if waving hello.

The scene from his dream flashed before his eyes, and Bai Chen Zhu’s heart nearly leaped from his throat. He rushed forward to close the glass window and sealed it tight with tape. While wolfing down some biscuits, he checked his phone.

Nearly half a month had passed since the hospital visit.

He had slept unconscious for almost half a month. Bai Chen Zhu didn’t know whether to be glad that he had woken from hunger during that time and managed to crawl up for a couple bites, or else the grass on his grave would be sky-high by now.

Something occurred to him, and he glanced at his arm. The scratches from that day were completely gone.

His phone was flooded with messages: from school teachers, classmates, friends, and Tang Zhao.

Tang Zhao’s latest message was from a few days ago—a wall of text that made Bai Chen Zhu’s eyes blur. He only caught the first line: Teacher, the apocalypse is really here! What do we do! What do we do…

What to do? Just deal with it.

Bai Chen Zhu silently munched on the dry biscuits. Outside the taped window, he could vaguely see the shadows of wriggling vines.

The internet was abuzz with discussions of this rampant acute illness. People no longer believed it was just ‘novel rabies’. Rabies didn’t make people lose their minds or gain superhuman strength, biting everything in sight, especially preferring to chase living humans.

Zombies! This is zombies! Countless people shared the same realization.

These were just the first-generation zombies. Bai Chen Zhu’s mood grew heavy as his fingertip slid across the screen, browsing pages. Perhaps everyone in reality was facing trouble; fewer people were online, and messages lagged badly.

The official announcement blazed red at the top of every page, urging everyone to stay home as much as possible, reduce outings, and guard against infection.

In this mutation, ability users, ordinary people, and zombies formed a pyramid in numbers. The vast disparity created dangers everywhere in reality.

In his ‘previous life’, Bai Chen Zhu had been swamped with work and dealing with family deaths. If not for overhearing colleagues mention a side character sharing his name, he wouldn’t have even skimmed that multi-million-word book.

So Bai Chen Zhu only remembered the gist: ability users and zombies were, to some extent, opposite extreme mutations.

Zombies gained cockroach-like indestructible, incredibly tough bodies, but their human minds vanished entirely, leaving only animal instincts. They became walking corpses driven solely by hunger.

Ability users were the opposite: not only retaining human reason, but also gaining immense enhancements in physique and spirit.

As for how they enhanced, Bai Chen Zhu couldn’t say precisely. From his memories, he recalled one clue: in the later stages, Jiang Ye’s senses were terrifyingly sharp; he could survive falling from great heights.

Well… after all, he was this world’s male protagonist.

But there were so many ability users, yet it seemed like one more wouldn’t make a difference. Bai Chen Zhu clenched his pale palm, feeling profound powerlessness once again.

He was even weaker than before the bite.

But no matter. According to general patterns, as long as he hunkered down at home without going anywhere, plus the supplies he’d stockpiled ahead, surviving for a while was no problem. Bai Chen Zhu thought confidently.

A tapping sound came from outside the window. Bai Chen Zhu looked up to see bloodstained flower vines poking at the glass playfully. Soft, beautiful, massive pink roses reached over, ‘looking’ at him through the window.

Roses?

How was it like the ones in the dream… No! That wasn’t a dream! Bai Chen Zhu realized, staring fixedly at the rose. His body went rigid, his back chilled.

How had it come down here!

As if sensing his gaze, more and more flower vines slowly ‘swam’ down, their tips dangling silently at the window like a massive cluster of snakes, bodies inverted as they all stared at him.

They swayed, conveying a message: hungry.

Besides humans, virus-infected plants and animals could also end up like this. Panic churned in Bai Chen Zhu’s heart, but his face remained calm as he ‘met’ the flower vines outside the window.

Or rather, his mind had short-circuited.

He was in pajamas, cotton slippers on his feet, without even time to prepare. Bai Chen Zhu grabbed a jacket, pulled it on, and moved toward the door while stuffing as much food as possible into his pockets.

No choice. He’d thought stocking up at home would let him hide for a bit, but the monsters had come knocking. Staying longer, he’d end up as a dried-up corpse.

When it’s time to cut ties, do it!

Perhaps his movements seemed too slow and sluggish, because it wasn’t until Bai Chen Zhu yanked open the door and fled that the low-intelligence flower vines realized this piping-hot ‘food’ was trying to escape.

The glass shattered with a crisp sound as vines pierced through, scattering glittering shards everywhere.

The eagerly surging vines were blocked by the slammed living room iron door. Reluctantly, they crawled densely around it, seeking any gap to slip through.

Bai Chen Zhu hurried down the concrete stairs. The second-floor landing was awash in blood, slick underfoot. His slippers hit it, and he slipped unexpectedly, crashing onto the concrete. His palms and back were smeared with large patches of blood. Bai Chen Zhu’s mind blanked for an instant, but the pain in his tailbone felt all too real.

The second-floor iron door stood wide open. Bai Chen Zhu bit back a cry of alarm, his eyelids twitching. He carefully got up and limped around the corner.

Rustling sounds came from inside that apartment. Thinking of the dazed middle-aged woman he’d encountered not long ago, Bai Chen Zhu swallowed and lightened his steps as he headed to the first floor.

Just around the corner, his movements froze. His face paled, cold sweat beading on his forehead.

Before him stood a pink-and-white rose the size of a human’s upper body. The monstrous flower bloomed layer by layer, revealing needle-sharp stamens inside, meeting his gaze.

As if deliberately waiting here for food to deliver itself.

It slowly fanned its layers of beautiful petals.

—So fragrant.

Bai Chen Zhu faintly sensed the mutated flower vine’s thoughts. Suspecting he’d hallucinated, he hesitated and took half a step back.

—Want to eat.

Hearing the ‘voice’ again, Bai Chen Zhu felt his hair stand on end. Cold sweat trickled down from his temple. He quietly took another half step back.

His heel hit the stair edge. The bloodied slipper sole was slippery, and that half step didn’t land solidly.

The vine with its giant flower shot toward him like an arrow. Bai Chen Zhu slipped backward onto the stairs, his tailbone slamming the concrete—accidentally dodging the giant flower’s gaping maw.

“Hiss!” After two falls, Bai Chen Zhu inhaled sharply in pain. Reacting quickly, he turned and scrambled up two steps. The monstrous flower, having missed once, dove at his back again.