In the apocalypse, I hoarded goods and handed over my storage space to the government.

Su Ran stared at the screen, lost in thought.

I originally thought that Ye Xiao's reckless fighting style would secure him the second spot.

Unexpectedly, he was overtaken by Mo Yun, a new recruit.

"Mages are indeed the chosen ones in the early game."

In the early stages of such a dense zombie horde, even if Ye Xiao's swordsmanship was superb, he still had to cut down enemies one by one, and his stamina would eventually run out.

But Mo Yun is different.

All that guy needs to do is stand on high ground and release poison mist into the horde of corpses, and that's massive area-of-effect damage.

As for Bai Lu... she's even more unreasonable.

Using mental power to control the flying knives not only results in high precision and speed, but also eliminates the need for manual crystal core recovery.

"Mo Yun's ranking, though unexpected, is also reasonable."

Su Ran silently made a mental note of it.

He continued scrolling down the list.

The top ten were almost entirely occupied by all sorts of strange and unusual awakened individuals.

And then, after ranking a dozen or so, I finally saw the names that Su Ran had placed high hopes on.

The geniuses selected by the "Cradle of Gods" program include Wang Meng, Xu Yang, Zhao Tian, ​​and Pei Miaomiao...

Their scores are mostly around a few hundred.

While this is a respectable achievement for ordinary people, it presents a despairing, precipitous gap compared to awakened individuals like Bai Lu and Mo Yun.

A gap of tens of times.

This is the insurmountable chasm between mortals and the extraordinary.

"Still can't awaken it...?"

Su Ran exhaled a breath of stale air.

The trials under protection can never compare to the trials of life and death.

This brutal selection mechanism still exists.

Slide your finger to the bottom.

That was where the score should have been displayed.

But now it has turned completely gray.

The three names turned into a jarring gray.

Bai Lu's smile faded.

She stared silently at the three names, her fingers tightening slightly on the water bottle, which made a soft popping sound.

"Dead?"

She asked softly, her voice losing its previous arrogance and gaining a subtle, almost imperceptible depth.

"Um."

Su Ran looked at those names, her eyes unreadable.

Zhang Yuan, Liu Sisi, Chen Mo.

A name I'd never heard of in my past life.

This suggests that in the previous timeline, they might have died even earlier, without even having the right to leave their mark on the apocalypse.

In this life, we have intelligence, training, and equipment.

The ending still couldn't be rewritten.

The inertia of fate is suffocating.

Su Ran put away the tablet, closed her eyes, and suppressed the heaviness in her heart.

These three people, chosen from among millions, perished before they could even sprout.

But that's how the end times are; you never know whether death or the future will come first.

"Feeling sorry for him?"

Li Guodong stood to the side, patted Su Ran on the shoulder, and said in a low voice, "In war, people always die. From the moment they stepped out of the base, this was their destiny. They died paving the way for all mankind, and they died a worthy death."

"I know."

Su Ran opened her eyes, the regret in them replaced by a hard, cold light.

As a reborn individual, he understood the rules of the apocalypse better than anyone else.

"Death is the norm. Being alive is a matter of luck."

"Alright, stop getting sentimental."

Bai Lu patted her cheeks, regaining her cool and wild demeanor.

"Aren't we supposed to be doing scientific experiments? I can't wait."

"Let's begin."

Su Ran turned around and waved to the research team waiting in the distance.

At that moment, his gloomy expression suddenly changed.

"Attention all units, prepare to begin."

Li Guodong spoke first.

More than a dozen experts in white coats who had been waiting immediately surrounded them.

The leader was an elderly professor with gray hair, a leading figure in neurobiology.

He was Zhang Qian, a leading figure in the field of neuroscience in Daxia. At that moment, the thin report in his hand was rustling in the wind.

"Advisor Su! At this stage, the Chinese Academy of Sciences really cannot come up with a mature theoretical model for topics in the idealistic field of 'mental intervention'."

Zhang Qian spoke extremely fast, with no intention of being polite at all.

"Our only option is exhaustive search."

Professor Zhang Qian slammed a table covered in red crosses onto the table, his tone solemn. "Control the variables, repeat a lot. If it doesn't work the first time, try ten times; if it doesn't work the first time, try a hundred times. As long as the sample size is large enough, we'll eventually find the right answer."

This is like not knowing the combination to a safe, so you try from 0000 to 9999.

It's clumsy, but absolutely effective.

Su Ran nodded; he didn't quite understand how a mentally awakened person could control zombies either.

Regarding his understanding of the mental system, Su Ran only knew the general direction, but when it came to the specific methodology, he was at a loss.

Having survived for ten years in my previous life, constantly on the run, I was incredibly lucky to have learned all this.

I really regret not being a strong person in my past life, sigh...

"Did you understand?"

Su Ran turned to look at the girl in black beside her.

Bai Lu crushed the empty plastic bottle in her hand and casually tossed it into a trash can a few meters away.

"I didn't understand."

Bai Lu stated confidently, "But I roughly know how to do it."

"Let's begin then."

Su Ran took the report and casually flipped through a couple of pages. The pages were filled with brainwave data graphs that had just been collected.

I don't understand it, and I don't need to understand it.

He only cares about the results.

Su Ran slapped the report back into Zhang Qian's arms, turned around and walked to the railing, gesturing towards the glass room below.

below.

Bai Lu took a deep breath and tossed the half-empty bottle of electrolyte water to the special forces soldier next to her.

She stretched her neck and gave Su Ran an "OK" sign with her back turned.

"Sample number one deployed! Miss Bai Lu, try to connect to this zombie's mental world using your mental power."

Professor Zhang Qian gave the order over the walkie-talkie.

The sound of hydraulic valves turning could be heard.

Inside the glass wall, a metal cage, only half a person's height, slowly opened.

"roar!"

A male zombie wearing a tattered suit suddenly rushed out.

One of its arms was gone, with black, rotting flesh hanging from the cut, but this did not diminish its frenzy in the slightest.

It crashed headfirst into the bulletproof glass, leaving a black, grimy mark.

The fingernails scratching the glass produced a sharp, teeth-grinding noise.

"White Deer, don't use brute force."

Su Ran's voice was amplified and broadcast into the venue.

"Imagine your spiritual power as a stream of water. Let it permeate. Perceive its consciousness, communicate with it, and take control of it."

"Okay, I know, stop rambling on."

Bai Lu made a sarcastic remark, but her eyes instantly sharpened.