Awakening beneath the warmth of the sun, the air was surprisingly fresh.

Yang Mu didn’t open his eyes immediately. His body ached all over, and he longed to drift back into unconsciousness.

In just a few seconds, however, the memories of what had transpired before he blacked out came flooding back.

Suddenly, his eyes shot open, sunlight blinding him as he raised his hand to shield his face. He sat up abruptly, breathing heavily, like someone emerging from a nightmare.

It took only moments for him to steady himself, focusing his attention on his surroundings.

Not far from him, a girl, no older than ten, crouched on the ground.

She wore a sleeveless red dress, her silver hair falling to her shoulders, clearly a child of mixed heritage.

Her face was pure and innocent, her large eyes beautiful yet unusual— not black, but a shade of pale gold flecked with white.

Glancing around, Yang Mu realized he was on a rooftop, high above the city, in a spacious area with no one else in sight.

He struggled to stand, but his legs wouldn’t respond; they felt foreign to him. Looking down, he saw them covered in blood.

His movement finally caught the attention of the little girl in red.

She jumped up and ran toward him with surprising speed, falling to her knees a meter away from him.

Her sudden fall was startling. She slid forward from the momentum, her pale knees scraping against the ground, leaving skin peeled away.

Yang Mu found the scene unsettling and quickly reached out to help the girl to her feet.

“How did I end up on this roof? Did someone bring me here? It wasn’t you, was it?”

The girl flashed him a sweet smile but said nothing.

Yang Mu studied her smile; there was something oddly familiar about it, though he couldn’t place where he had seen it before.

“You can’t speak?”

The girl continued to smile at him, her nose twitching as if she were sniffing the air.

Yang Mu’s eyes narrowed.

He suddenly realized— it wasn’t the girl's face that felt familiar, but her smile and the way she sniffed the air.

Xiaoyao used to do the same thing, looking so pure and foolish, like a child.

But Xiaoyao was half-zombie, her intelligence dulled by her condition. This girl, though... she couldn’t be one of them, could she?

Her eyes, though not black, were normal. They had pupils.

Her teeth hadn’t grown sharp or menacing; her smile revealed a set of perfect, delicate, pearly whites. She looked innocent, even adorable.

“Adorable, sure... but what's the use? Your big brother here is gravely wounded, and all you do is smile.”

Yang Mu scanned the area again. His gear bag was gone. A shame, as it contained his weapons and supplies.

He had no choice but to assess his injuries.

Thankfully, it was only a leg wound, though the blood loss had numbed his legs and left him weak.

He tore his pants and tied off the wound.

What he needed now was food. Since childhood, no matter how badly he’d been injured, as long as he could eat, he would recover in a few days.

Living on the fringes of society teaches you the cold indifference of the world.

There was that one year he’d been hit by a car and left for dead. The driver fled the scene, and Yang Mu thought his time had come.

He lay on the street, and passersby tossed him scraps of food. The more he ate, the more food they threw at him.

After two weeks, he got back on his feet, once again the restless wanderer.

Perhaps it was that experience that prevented Yang Mu from becoming a complete beast, devoid of all compassion.

The first person to give him food was a middle-aged woman walking with a man.

"Look at this poor child. He’s badly hurt. Shouldn’t we take him to a hospital?"

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Leave him be! Most of these kids are scammers, controlled by criminals. They may seem pitiful, but helping them could get us into trouble."

"Is that really true?"

"Yes, Yang Ling. Let’s go. We still have lessons to prepare for school."

"Alright, but at least give him some food. The poor thing reminds me of the shepherd boys we saw when we went to teach in the Northwest."

"What made you think of them?"

"Ah, a group of children herding under the blue sky. Though they may seem young, they're not as small as they appear, yet they remain illiterate, oblivious to the vastness of the world. I can't tell whether this is their misfortune or a blessing, but it fills me with melancholy."

As the two spoke, they gradually disappeared into Han Ning Middle School.

Yang Mu looked at the food before him, struggling to crawl towards it, devouring it with ravenous desperation.

After eating, the woman’s words echoed in his mind.

Herding children?

He scoffed—he was far more wretched than those children. He was a drifter herded by the heavens.

At that time, Yang Mu had no name. A child abducted at the age of three—who would care enough to name him?

Recalling the woman who gave him food was called Yang Ling, and reflecting on his recent epiphany, he finally claimed a name for himself—Yang Mu.

Many years later, as he reminisced about this event, Yang Mu gave a faint smile, brushing the memories aside like fleeting clouds.

He crawled towards the wall, using it for support as he struggled to stand.

This place was high—easily over twenty floors up.

Below, there weren’t many zombies, but they were numerous enough, with no sign of any living souls.

After carefully observing his surroundings, Yang Mu roughly gauged where he was.

He wasn't far from the southern city subway station.

By his calculations, they had been traveling in the subway for about three minutes before arriving here, likely close to the South City Subway Station. That station had already been opened, connecting to Line 3. Technically, it had two levels: Line 3 ran on the lower level, while the yet-to-be-opened Line 8 was above.

It seemed that after the subway accident, someone had carried him out of the station and brought him to the rooftop of this building not far away.

But who could possibly have pulled him out from a horde of zombies underground?

Yang Mu sat down, turning to look at the little girl in the red dress, only to find that she had already run back to his side, smiling at him.

“What are you smiling at?”

“Well, you can't speak. But can you understand what I'm saying?”

“Not even that, huh? Since I've already named Xiao Yao, and you resemble her so much, I might as well name you too... How about ‘Hong Yi’?”

“Hong Yi? Hmm, no, it sounds a bit eerie. Let’s change it to... ‘Hong Yi’ with a different meaning.”

Hong Yi kept grinning, her silly, adorable expression unchanged.

Yang Mu knew he couldn’t rely on her, so he searched himself. Luckily, his phone was still in his pocket.

He quickly called Wen Sijia to ask what had happened.

“Thank goodness! You've been out of contact for three hours! I thought you were dead.”

“Everyone’s out of contact? No one made it back?”

“No one!”

“What on earth happened?”

“Someone planted explosives and collapsed the building above the subway. A giant appeared on the surface—eight meters tall! It stomped down with such force that the ground caved in, causing the subway to crash into the debris.”

“Damn, how shallow did they build this subway for a giant to collapse the ground with one step?”

“It’s mainly because there were too many explosives. Of course, the giant’s strength is terrifying too! But the real issue isn't the collapse—it's that there's a giant in the quarantine zone. And it seems like this giant has allies. They're probably intelligent humans, the ones who planted the explosives to stop the subway from escaping!”

Just as Wen Sijia was speaking, Yang Mu’s phone suddenly powered off. It was out of battery.

Yang Mu’s mind raced.

Where did this giant come from? Could it be that half-corpse giant, Da Kui? But if it was him, had his size doubled? That would make sense, given that he’s a monster, constantly feeding and growing. Perhaps all that food he consumed fueled his growth.

If it was Da Kui, then the one who set the explosives must be Liu Yang, that warm-hearted guy!

Yang Mu chuckled bitterly.

Not killing them last time was clearly a mistake.

In this apocalyptic world, where the rules no longer applied, he had to abandon his reluctance to kill—or it would be the death of him.

What now?

As soon as the question surfaced, Yang Mu knew the answer: find food first, recover as quickly as possible.

He scanned the rooftop, but there was no food in sight. So, he began crawling toward the stairwell.

Hong Yi immediately followed suit, crawling just like Yang Mu, clearly mimicking him.

Irritated but too weary to scold the silly girl, Yang Mu continued crawling. After a few minutes, he finally reached the stairwell.

Thankfully, there were actual stairs leading down. If it had been a vertical ladder, he wouldn’t have stood a chance.

He started to regain some sensation in his legs. It was just blood loss, after all, not a broken leg.

As he began moving again, his body’s functions slowly started to recover.

Still, Yang Mu remained weak, so he kept crawling down the stairs.

Upon reaching the lower level, he froze. Before him lay a corpse—Xiao Yao.

It took him a few moments to recognize her, as the body was shriveled, as if all her essence had been drained. She was nothing more than a desiccated corpse.

What could have caused this? It wasn’t shocking that Xiao Yao was dead, but the manner of her death was peculiar—why had she perished in such a bizarre way, right here?

Suddenly, Yang Mu shuddered.

He turned his gaze toward Hong Yi beside him!

Damn it...

The more he looked at Hong Yi, the more she resembled Xiao Yao. Not physically, of course, but in her movements and demeanor—they were almost identical!

Why was he on the rooftop in the first place? Logically, a little girl couldn’t possibly have carried him up there—unless she wasn’t what she seemed, something beyond human.

What was she really?

Was her appearance somehow connected to Xiao Yao’s death?

Could it be that she absorbed Xiao Yao’s soul and life force, which is why she acts so much like Xiao Yao and seems attached to him?

In the old world, Yang Mu wouldn’t have entertained such thoughts.

But in this post-apocalyptic reality, where everything had turned eerie and absurd, he had no choice but to consider every possibility.

And now, he began to suspect that Hong Yi might be a unique kind of half-corpse herself.

“Ah!”

A sudden, blood-curdling scream echoed from below, making Yang Mu’s body tremble.

He sat up, struggling to his feet.

He could stand, but barely—his weakness was overwhelming.

Gently, he opened the stairwell door. More stairs lay ahead. Yang Mu descended slowly, with Hong Yi quietly following, imitating his every move.

At the next landing, Yang Mu peeked through a crack in the door, catching sight of two men dressed in black, pacing the hallway with guns in hand.

He recognized the uniform—they were from the Thunder Special Forces.

Upon closer inspection, Yang Mu realized one of the men patrolling was none other than Little Puppy, Guan Dong.