Chapter 1: Luxury on a Rainy Night
Su Wanqing curled up on the wool mat by the bay window, the tip of the silver fork poking into the cherry flesh, and the dark red juice flowed down her silk cuffs.

The phone next to him made the glass coffee table buzz. A pop-up window in the homeowners' group chat covered the currently playing "Empresses in the Palace." A resident of Room 602 posted three vomit emojis in a row: "The old beast in Room 301 secretly filmed a female student!"

The video played automatically. The camera slanted in through the crack in the doorway. A girl in bear pajamas huddled in a corner, shivering. Two packets of braised beef noodles in her arms were swollen from the rain.

The bald landlord's plastic slippers were stepped into the stagnant water, and the reflective water surface reflected the oil stains on the back of his head. The torn Durex box lay on the edge of the trash can.

"My daughter is only a junior in college!" The decorator in Room 502 suddenly sent a voice message in the group chat, mixed with the noise of the roar of the electric drill, "You dare to touch her, you son of a bitch!"

Then there was a photo of a bloody kitchen knife. Su Wanqing forwarded the video to all members, specifically @ing the number named "Counselor Zhang" in the emergency contact list.

The jade bracelet suddenly became so hot that it made my wrist numb. A translucent red light shone from the bracelet surface, marking the landlord's WeChat profile picture with a scarlet label of "Malicious Reporter".

When Su Wanqing pulled open the stem of the second cherry, she remembered that in her previous life, it was this bald man who brought the neighborhood committee to kick open her door, saying that someone had reported her for secretly storing compressed biscuits.

The number of messages in the owners' group reached 99+, and the piano teacher of 603 posted a 59-second voice message: "301 has removed all the fire hydrants on the seventh floor! They have stockpiled more than 20 barrels of mineral water!" followed by a blurry photo, in which barrels of water were piled up to block the emergency exit.

Su Wanqing licked the juice off her fingertips and clicked on the landlord's circle of friends. The latest update was five minutes ago: "Sharing instant noodles during this special period. Private chats are limited to women."

The housewife of Room 402 suddenly burst into tears: "My twins are so hungry that they drink toilet water." The voice could be heard as the child's hoarse whimpering, like a cat with its neck strangled.

Someone suggested forming a group to rob a convenience store, and the owner of the tattoo shop in 701 immediately sent out a chain list with bloody fingerprints.

Su Wanqing took out a box of cherries from the space, picked the most wilted one, took a couple of bites, and took a picture of the core while facing the heavy rain outside the bay window.

The purple-red juice flowed along the cracks in the tiles onto the "GUCCI" carpet label, and she casually posted the photo in the group.

The messages that were flooding the screen suddenly froze, leaving only the dull sound of raindrops hitting the bulletproof glass.

The landlord's voice message suddenly popped up: "Some people are still showing off their wealth at this time?"

The voice seemed to be squeezed out from between teeth, "Everyone remember that 1601 did not help the dying today!"

The red light of the jade bracelet flashed more rapidly. Su Wanqing touched the newly appeared cracks on the bracelet and remembered that when her last bag of instant noodles was snatched away in her previous life, this group of people also @ her room number in the group chat.

At this moment, the anti-wolf alarm suddenly screamed, and the surveillance screen showed a dark shadow passing by the door of 601.

Su Wanqing retrieved a half-cold box of Tomahawk steaks from the space, and deliberately placed the label with today's date facing upwards and threw it behind the fire hydrant in the stairwell.

The moment the gravy dripped down the crack in the door, there was the sound of a plastic box tumbling downstairs, followed by the dull thud of a heavy object hitting the wall and a man's roar: "I saw this box first!"

The sound of rain was mixed with the crisp sound of broken glass, and a new message popped up in the owners' group.

The owner of the curtain shop in 702 posted a video: three men were rolling on the fourth-floor platform and tearing each other apart, with instant noodle residue mixed with rainwater all over their faces.

Su Wanqing turned off her cell phone and picked through the cherries with her silver fork, looking for the rotten one that had been pecked by a bird.

The jade bracelet suddenly vibrated three times, and a red light gathered into an arrow on the landlord's profile picture, pointing to the "Report 1601 for hoarding supplies" he was typing.

Su Wanqing pressed the record button, and the sound of the fork poking into the fruit flesh was recorded very clearly: "How many boxes of Durex can you make with those twenty buckets of water?"

The group chat fell silent again. Heavy rain pounded against the bulletproof glass thirty stories high. Su Wanqing listened to the scuffle downstairs and suddenly laughed.

The silk nightgown slipped down her shoulders, revealing an old scar on her collarbone where a zombie had bitten her.

Su Wanqing kicked away the cherry pits rolling by the bay window, and the wet wool mat rubbed against the soles of her feet, making her feel itchy.

The eyepiece of the military telescope was covered with a layer of white mist. She pulled off the belt of her silk nightgown and used it as a rag. As the velvet fabric rubbed across the lens, a tuft of purple hair swayed across the railing of the opposite rooftop.

Raindrops clattered against the telescope's casing. In the camera lens, a purple-haired boy slumped beside the water tank, his blue and white school uniform trouser legs torn to strips, his ankles swollen like steamed buns.

Su Wanqing adjusted the focus and saw three purple marks across his wrist, as if he had been tied up with a fire hose all night.

The utility knife slipped in the rain, and the boy reached for the handle with trembling hands. The blade just touched his fingertips when it was blown into the gutter by the wind.

The jade bracelet suddenly made a buzzing sound, and red light shot out from the center of the bracelet, reflecting a rotating triangle symbol on the telescope lens.

Su Wanqing felt an electric current pricking her wrist bone, and a translucent image of a human skeleton appeared on her retina.

The purple-haired boy's ribs were clearly visible in the torrential rain, a metal shrapnel embedded in the third bone. "SSS-level awakened psychic detected." The mechanical sound numbed his eardrums, and a red light marked the countdown at the boy's heart: 11 minutes and 23 seconds.

Su Wanqing picked at the rubber eye mask of the telescope and recalled a similar scene she had seen in the air-raid shelter in her previous life - when the man who could control fire died, an infusible ice flower popped out of the bullet casing.

She took out a bag of beef jerky from the space, and was stunned as soon as she tore open the jagged package.

The production date was clearly printed as "October 7, 2023", which was the day when her throat was bitten off in her previous life.

The sound of the fighting downstairs suddenly changed. Someone bumped into the fire door, and the crisp sound of broken ribs could be heard throughout the building.

As the hard soles of her hiking boots stepped into her sheepskin slippers, Su Wanqing stared at the rooftop opposite and sneered.

The child held the half-broken utility knife and moved it against his neck, leaving a white mark on his Adam's apple with the tip of the knife.

Memories of past lives came flooding back. On the night when the iron door of the air-raid shelter was knocked open by zombies, a man in a white coat held a scalpel against himself in the same way. As a result, he was pushed out by his companions to be fed to the mutant dogs.

"Start rescue mode." A holographic screen popped up on the jade bracelet, and a red box popped up in the supply list: two bags of beef jerky can be exchanged for a climbing rope.

Su Wanqing threw the leftover steak box into the corridor. The greasy packaging bag hit the door frame of room 601 and bounced back. Immediately, there was a chaotic sound of footsteps downstairs.

Someone shouted, "1601 threw food away again," and the vibration of the metal handrail could be felt from under my feet.

When the fiber belt of the stab-proof pants dug into his waist, the purple-haired boy in the telescope suddenly looked up at the sky.

The rain washed away the tattoo on his collarbone, which was an iris pierced by an arrow.

Su Wanqing touched the newly cracked lines on the jade bracelet and remembered the system's warning just now - death before the awakening of superpowers will cause an energy explosion, which is enough to collapse this 30-story apartment building.

The moment the metal buckle of the climbing rope bit into the window frame, a dull thud of something heavy falling to the ground was heard from the rooftop opposite.

The purple-haired boy fell into the puddle of water, and the utility knife flew out of his hand and flew towards the water tank, the blade making a harsh friction sound as it scraped against the iron sheet.

Su Wanqing fastened the hood of her raincoat, and her boot soles rolled over the cherry juice on the bay window, leaving a winding trail of dark red liquid on the bulletproof glass.

The scramble downstairs suddenly turned into screams. As Su Wanqing descended the rope, she caught a glimpse of a bloody kitchen knife lodged between a person's ribs, unable to be pulled out.

The old lady in Room 401 squatted in the emergency passage, chewing on a noodle seasoning packet. She looked up and saw her hanging in mid-air. She grinned toothlessly, "Where are the fairies scattering flowers?"

The jade bracelet's alarm was particularly piercing in the rain. Su Wanqing kicked open the air conditioner on the fifteenth floor, and the climbing rope swung in an arc in mid-air.

The purple-haired boy on the opposite rooftop began to twitch, and the shrapnel burned orange-red in the perspective image, as if someone had stuffed a branding iron into his chest.

When the system countdown jumped to 5 minutes and 17 seconds, she finally touched the rusty handle of the rooftop iron door.

The utility knife was stuck in the gap of the gutter, and the blade reflected Su Wanqing's figure climbing over the railing.

The purple-haired boy whimpered with his Adam's apple rolling, and dug his fingers into the moss at the bottom of the water tank.

Su Wanqing squatted down and tore the beef jerky packaging, and the sauce dripped onto the other's cracked lips.

The boy's carotid artery was throbbing, and the water droplets hanging on his eyelashes were hard to tell whether they were rain or tears.

"Swallow it." She pinched the boy's chin and stuffed the dried meat into his mouth, and her knuckles rubbed against his teeth, causing them to chatter.

The jade bracelet suddenly emitted a red light to scan the other person's pupils, and a bright red prompt box popped up on the holographic screen: [Probability of awakening the second personality 97%].

In the distance, there was a loud noise of hail hitting a billboard, and the roar of the first wave of zombies was swept onto the rooftop by the wind and rain.

The boy suddenly bit her finger, his canine teeth piercing the fiber layer of the protective gloves.

Su Wanqing slapped him in the face with her backhand, and her wrist strength was so strong that her head was knocked off the handle and hit the water tank.

The accumulated water that fell from the iron sheet poured onto the two people. The countdown of the jade bracelet stopped at 00:00:03, and the red light suddenly burst into a light cocoon that wrapped around the dying body.

(End of this chapter)

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