Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Death The world was bleak and desolate, zombies surrounded the base of a large building. On a fifth-floor balcony, Li Wanqing was carefully observing the situation below. Her group had already been trapped in the building for half a month. If they did not find a way to leave the city soon, they would all end up like the living dead below, who knew nothing but how to eat raw flesh. Li Wanqing sighed softly. “Ah... When will these days of fleeing ever end?” She was so deep in thought that she failed to notice a figure slowly approaching from behind. Just as she was about to turn and return to the room, someone suddenly shoved her from behind. She stumbled and plunged from the balcony toward the ground below... After three years in the apocalypse, her instincts kept her from screaming aloud. Turning her head, she saw her dear little half-sister, Li Fang, watching her with a smug expression. Li Fang spat out each word with hatred. “Go... die!” The cold wind tossed Li Wanqing's hair into disarray. A cold, wicked smile curled across her lips. With venom in her eyes, she cast Li Fang an almost casual glance, making her half-sister shiver involuntarily. Before Li Fang could react, a green vine wrapped around her waist. She stumbled and went tumbling toward the ground below, dragged along by the vine. Terrified, she screamed, “Ah... Help!” At that moment, Li Wanqing's loud laughter rang out from below. “Even if I die, I'm taking you down with me...” As soon as she finished speaking, she gathered all the wood-element energy in her body and directed it toward the crystal core in her head. A blinding white light burst forth. The crystal core shattered piece by piece, and violent spiritual energy exploded with a deafening boom. Even if she had to detonate her own crystal core, she would drag Li Fang and the zombies below down to hell with her! That would also give the companions who had traveled with her a better chance of surviving. After all, without their help during the three years of the apocalypse, she might have died long ago. In the second before the explosion, she heard Li Fang shriek, “Li Wanqing, you bitch! I won't let you off, even if I become a ghost! Ah!” Boom! The tremendous explosion shook the surrounding area. White light erupted, and pieces of zombies flew everywhere. At the center of the blast, nothing remained of Li Wanqing or Li Fang. Li Wanqing watched as her body turned transparent and floated in the air. She let out a soft laugh. I wasn't afraid of you when you were human. Why would I be afraid of a little ghost like you? In her view, grudges were not something to carry into the next day. If someone wronged her, she settled the score on the spot. If she could not get her revenge immediately, she would at least collect a little interest. She really could not understand why her younger sister hated her so much. Although they had different mothers, there had never been any deadly feud between them. When Li Wanqing was three, her mother died in a car accident. Her father remarried less than a year later, and the following year, her half-sister was born. She had little contact with this half-sister. Her maternal grandparents had raised her from childhood. As for her biological father, not only had he never raised her, he had barely even paid child support. When she was in university, her maternal grandparents died of illness one after the other. Her mother had been their only daughter, so Li Wanqing inherited the house and all the savings they left behind. Less than half a year after her grandparents' deaths, her father suddenly remembered that he had another daughter and came looking for her. He invited her to stay with his family during the holidays, explaining that he had been so busy in the past that he had never had time to look after her. He promised to make it up to her. She did not particularly need him to, but she had never known a father's love growing up, and deep down, she still held on to a little hope. So she went. She found his family enjoying their happy life together, while she felt like an audience member watching them perform. No matter what she did, she could not fit in. After that, her sister kept finding fault with her and targeting her at every turn. Li Wanqing gradually stopped visiting. On the rare occasions she did go, she would eat a meal and leave. Once, she happened to overhear her father speaking to Li Fang. “Your older sister's maternal grandparents left her a house worth two million yuan. Be a little nicer to her. When the time comes, I'll sweet-talk her and get more than a million out of her. Won't all that money end up being yours? I'm her only relative now. As long as I'm nice to her on the surface, getting some money out of her will be a piece of cake.” From then on, the last trace of father-daughter affection she had for him vanished completely. After graduating from university, she had planned to sell the house and move to another city to build a career. She never expected the world itself to change. Overnight, most of humanity turned into zombies. Some animals mutated; others became zombie animals. Plants mutated too. She had fled with more than twenty classmates, but in the end, only a handful of companions remained. Six months into their escape, she unexpectedly activated the storage space within the jade pendant her grandmother had left her. It was not large—only a little over fifty square meters—and it could not hold living things. But time stood still inside, so anything stored there would not spoil. Two months earlier, while fleeing from zombies, her group had run into a forest and rescued Li Fang and several of her classmates. Li Wanqing was accidentally caught by a vine. During a desperate struggle for survival, she subdued the vine and unexpectedly awakened a wood-element ability. The misfortune had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. At first, however, her new ability was very weak. All she could do was make seeds sprout and flowers bloom, so she rarely used her wood-element power. The others believed she had only a spatial ability. Recently, she and the little vine had gradually begun to merge. She had only just learned to wield the vine like a whip, and she had not even had time to test it on zombies before using it on her sister instead. Judging by the results, it seemed to work quite well... A flash of white light appeared, and Li Wanqing's consciousness sank into darkness. When she awoke again, she was floating beside a little girl. The little girl was simple-minded, and a group of children had surrounded her beside a river. A chubby boy pointed at her and laughed. “Little fool, you're a stupid little idiot nobody loves. You're a worthless little burden—nothing but a waste of money. No one would want you even if they tried to sell you...” The other children burst into laughter. “Little fool! Stupid idiot! Nobody wants you! Nobody wants you... Hahaha...” The little girl stared in terror at the laughing children around her and hurriedly protested, “Somebody wants Qingqing... Mother wants Qingqing...” Then she burst into tears. “Mother... Mother... Qingqing's scared...” She cried out in fear as she backed away. “Don't back up anymore! You'll fall into the river!” Li Wanqing shouted urgently. She tried to stop the little girl from behind, but her body passed straight through the girl's. The chubby boy pressed closer. “Little fool, crying won't help. Your mother doesn't want you anymore. You're just a waste of money nobody wants.” The little girl panicked and hurriedly stepped backward. Her foot slipped, her body tilted, and she fell straight back. Splash! The icy river water instantly engulfed her frail body. Water rushed into her throat, and she flailed her hands wildly against the surface. Her faint cries came in broken gasps. “Mother... Mother...” The chubby boy, who had been acting so arrogantly moments before, froze, all the color draining from his face. The children who had been watching were stunned with fear. Someone suddenly screamed, “Help! The little fool fell into the river!” Li Wanqing jumped into the river after the girl, trying to grab her hand. The moment they touched, a powerful suction force pulled Li Wanqing straight into the little girl's body. Then she lost consciousness once more.