Chapter 001: Rebirth?

【Author's Note: This is my first story. I started writing it on a whim because I ran out of books to read, so it might not be very good.】

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Rumble!

The torrential rain poured down, and raindrops the size of beans smashed violently against him. Every drop seemed to carry a thousand pounds of force, causing a piercing pain.

Rainwater mixed with blood, creating a pungent, metallic stench that flowed across the ground, making one gag.

The vicious curses of several robbers rang in his ears. They were brazenly dividing the loot, as if the person they had thrown on the ground was nothing more than trash.

He had been stabbed over a dozen times. Every wound continuously seeped blood, staining the muddy water beneath him a deep red. He could clearly feel his life force slipping away from his body bit by bit, like sand in an hourglass that could not be grasped.

Gradually, his limbs became heavy and weak, and his fingers slowly lost sensation. Finally, this numbness spread throughout his entire body. The approach of death caused a surge of despair to rise in his heart.

The jade pendant he had been clutching tightly was also snatched away by the murderer.

At this moment, he felt so small and powerless.

He struggled to snatch it back, but he didn't even have the strength to make a sound.

In the end, he could only sink into the darkness with a heart full of resentment...

"Damn it, this crappy pendant looks like a piece of plastic. He fought so hard for it, I thought it was something valuable. What a jinx!"

A short, thin Middle-aged Man finished rummaging through Zhou Yang's small, worn-out bag. Hopping mad, he gave the lifeless corpse on the ground a vicious kick and casually tossed the stolen pendant back onto it.

"He doesn't have a drop of water on him, just half a bag of biscuit crumbs and one peanut candy. What a poor loser!"

"Isn't that your own fault? I told you to slit his throat, but you insisted on stabbing him. Fine, go ahead and stab him, but you even missed the mark!" another man with a large beard and a scar on his face sneered, mocking his accomplice.

"Who knew he'd be so alert? He dodged the first blow! And he resisted so fiercely—he even had a small knife hidden on him. I almost got stabbed by him instead."

"Alright, alright, hurry up, pack the stuff and let's go. There's too much blood; the Zombies will smell it and be here in a moment."

A Tattooed Man who looked like the leader glanced sideways at Zhou Yang's corpse, spat on the ground, and urged the others before turning to leave.

"Pah, a waste of effort. This little bit of stuff isn't even enough to trade for a cigarette, and I got blood all over me, wasting a set of clothes. Let's go, let's head back and find a woman to blow off some steam."

The short, thin man wiped his knife on the corpse's clothes before putting it away and following the Tattooed Man.

The others also packed their things and followed, discussing which beautiful new women had arrived in the Base's Red-Light District.

No one noticed that the jade pendant thrown onto the corpse was gradually emitting a faint glow, growing brighter and brighter until it swallowed Zhou Yang's entire body.

"Cough, cough!"

Zhou Yang was awakened by thirst. His throat felt as if it had been scraped by a knife, making him feel extremely uncomfortable and forcing him to wake from his slumber.

With his eyes half-open, he vaguely felt his body, but he couldn't feel any wounds or a single trace of pain. Zhou Yang's eyes instantly widened in surprise as he fully regained consciousness.

Wasn't he dead?

Hadn't he been stabbed dozens of times by those bandits and died?

How could there be no sensation and no wounds?

Zhou Yang suddenly sprang up from the bed, staring blankly and intently at the familiar yet strange starry sky ceiling above him. At this moment, his heart felt as if a storm had swept through it, creating turbulent waves.

Wasn't this his own room?

This starry sky ceiling was a starry totem his mother had specially designed for him. There was only one like it in the world; there was absolutely no mistaking it!

Zhou Yang stared blankly at his surroundings, his mind unable to process it for a moment.

His hand unconsciously felt around beside him, and his fingertips touched a hint of coolness. Looking down, it was the Yin-Yang talisman-shaped jade pendant his mother had given him, which had been stolen.

At this moment, it was also resting safely by his pillow.

He carefully put the jade pendant back around his neck, then picked up the phone on the nightstand to check the time.

4:19 AM, April 5, 2030—the Qingming Festival.

There were still three months left until the day the Apocalypse arrived in his memory.

Was he... reborn?

Zhou Yang was a bit unsure of the current situation.

The matter of rebirth was indeed a bit far-fetched... and how did he even get reborn? He didn't have any of those golden fingers from novels.

Could it be his ancestors showing their power? Or his parents in heaven protecting him?

It couldn't be because of this crappy jade around his neck, right? Hahaha... Sigh, maybe he just had a nightmare.

It was just that this dream felt a bit too real.

The Apocalypse descended, and the entire world fell into darkness and despair. The once prosperous and bustling cities had all become a playground for Zombies, with ruins and devastation everywhere. Every place was filled with the aura of death and decay, as if telling the tale of the end of human civilization.

Even more hair-raising was that those people who should have died "resurrected" in another terrifying way. Their faces were hideous, their bodies twisted and rotting, and they transformed into Zombies that fed on living people, frantically hunting and devouring other humans who were still alive.

The figures of Zombies and those nauseating, bloody images constantly appeared in his mind. Those bloody and cruel scenes, and the fear that penetrated his very marrow, kept haunting his heart, refusing to dissipate for a long time.

Since he couldn't sleep anyway, Zhou Yang simply got up, turned on his computer, and recorded the major events that had happened in his mind up until his death in the Apocalypse one by one.

Whether it was a dream or reality, he would record it first. If it were true, he could also take precautions.

However, the answer would soon be revealed.

He clearly remembered that on the Qingming Festival in his dream—which was today—a sensational event occurred in S City.

At 7:00 AM on this morning, a lonely old woman in her sixties, seeking justice for her dead family, went to the house of a rich second-generation heir. The heir had struck and killed her son's family of three but had a driver take the fall, ultimately paying only a few hundred thousand and walking free. There, she burned herself to death.

A little over an hour after it happened, the event went straight to the top of the social news and major websites, attracting everyone's attention. This forced the higher-ups to re-examine the case, eventually leading to the rich heir being sentenced to ten years in prison. But the family of four who died could never come back.

He wrote without realizing that dawn had broken, filling over a dozen pages of documentation.

When he sighingly typed the final paragraph about his own tragic death and saved the document, he realized it was already bright outside.

Zhou Yang made a copy of the document and transferred it to his phone. Then, he rubbed his stiff neck, stretched, and stood up.

Feeling his empty stomach, Zhou Yang washed up and then went to the kitchen to find something to eat and make breakfast.

Walking into the kitchen and looking at the familiar yet strange utensils, Zhou Yang dithered for a moment.

They should have been the most familiar things, yet it felt as if they hadn't been used in many years. Just like him in his memories, he hadn't touched kitchen utensils for over three years... Shaking his head to stop thinking about these things, Zhou Yang opened the refrigerator and first took a piece of toast to line his stomach. After checking the ingredients inside, he took out two eggs, two tomatoes, and a handful of green vegetables, then took a small pack of dried noodles from the cabinet.

He planned to make Tomato and Egg Noodles.

Since his parents died unexpectedly when he was seventeen, he had gradually learned to do housework himself. Now, he was very skilled at laundry and cooking.

Although a few relatives had popped up wanting to adopt him, he had refused them all. They weren't close to begin with, and it was all too clear why they wanted to adopt him. Besides, he was only a year away from being an adult, so there was really no need.

He first prepared the tomato and egg sauce, then started the pot to boil the noodles. Once the noodles were cooked, he drained them and rinsed them with cold water, then poured the tomato and egg sauce over them and sprinkled on a handful of chopped green onions.

A steaming bowl of Tomato and Egg Noodles was ready.

Just as he brought the noodles to the dining table and sat down, Zhou Yang couldn't help but take a large mouthful. As the hot noodles went down, his stomach was instantly warmed.

Perhaps influenced by the sense of hunger in his dream, he couldn't help but devour them as he ate. In a few minutes, he had finished the large bowl of noodles.

But he still didn't feel satisfied, so he had to go make another bowl. This time, he kept it simple and used ready-made scallion oil sauce to make scallion oil noodles, finishing them in just a few large bites.

This time, he was finally full.

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