It started when a bloody rain was about to fall.

The bed let out its first groan in the deepest darkness before dawn.

The sound seemed to emanate from the depths of decaying wood—first a fine, joint-like creaking, then bursting into a sharp cracking sound like a spine breaking.

Finally, all was silence, with only dust falling softly in the gray pillar of light.

The sound not only pierced through the April morning mist, but also shattered Lin Ye's blood-red dream that he had been immersed in for five years.

At that moment, his body taut like a bowstring, then sprang up from the bed. Inside his chest, his heart no longer beat—it pounded, a violent rage before death.

Each blow felt like a heavy battering ram striking his ribs, the muffled echoes reverberating deep within Lin Ye's body.

At the same time, as the blood in his body flowed through his ear canals, it was like a surging tsunami roaring, intertwining with the drumbeat of his heart to create a crazy symphony that only Lin Ye could hear.

During this process, icy cold sweat gushed out from every pore of Lin Ye's body, instantly soaking through his faded cotton pajamas—the collar was loose, and the edges were worn with lint-like fibers by the passage of time.

The soaked fabric clung to the contours of Lin Ye's young body, outlining the strong lines sculpted by years of physical labor:

The scapulae resemble folded butterfly wings, the latissimus dorsi muscles are stretched out like mountains, and the waist and abdomen contain a tight muscle group with explosive power, unique to manual laborers.

At this moment, Lin Ye's body was steaming with thin white vapor in the cool morning light, like a living statue just pulled from the deep sea, except that the heart in his chest was already ringing the bell of resurrection.

He is still breathing.

This realization struck Lin Ye's chaotic consciousness like a lightning bolt. At the same time, his pupils contracted sharply in the dim light, and his breath caught in his throat.

Only when his lungs began to wheeze like broken bellows due to lack of oxygen did Lin Ye finally take a deep breath—

Air rushed in.

The greasy, spiced smell of cheap instant noodles, the damp, musty smell seeping from deep within the walls, the dry, fine particles of dust floating in the beam of light, and the faint, unique scent of an April morning drifting in from outside the window—the freshness of grass and the aroma of breakfast oil.

These trivial yet concrete flavors belonging to the "ordinary world" converged into a blunt blade, slowly but firmly prying open the frozen layer of ice deep in Lin Ye's memory.

2025年4月16日，清晨6点23分。星期三。

The date and time, like red-hot inscriptions, were imprinted into Lin Ye's nerve endings, stroke by stroke.

Then Lin Ye turned his gaze to the window—the dusty glass filtered the morning light into a murky halo, and the tiny crack on the edge of the glass cut the light and shadow into broken geometric shapes.

The light dappled onto the takeout route map that was barely held together by yellowed transparent tape on the wall. The edges of the map were curled up, casting a distorted shadow.

That posture was exactly like the final, stiff pose of those who died violent deaths that Lin Ye had witnessed countless times in the ruins of the apocalypse—curled up, twisted, frozen in the second of life's end.

"I... I've been reborn?"

The moment the sound left his mouth, even Lin Ye himself felt a sense of unfamiliarity.

The timbre produced by the vibration of the vocal cords was too clear, lacking the rough polishing of five years of ruins and dust, and the hoarseness and weariness after countless desperate screams—

That clean, youthful voice felt strangely unfamiliar, like a hallucination of the "past" that he didn't deserve.

But Lin Ye's consciousness clearly replayed the last scene from "before":

July 2030. The fifth scorching summer with blood rain.

Lin Ye huddled on the edge of the seventh isolation zone in the old city ruins, deep inside the collapsed underground passage of a shopping mall.

His back was pressed against a broken concrete pillar—the exposed steel bars resembled the ribs of the dead, covered in rust.

The overhead ventilation ducts let in scarlet light, cutting the narrow space into a hellish cage.

That light was not sunlight, but the sickly glow left in the sky after the blood rain had stopped—like a festering wound in the universe itself.

An indescribable odor filled the air:

The sweet, cloying stench of rotting flesh, the pungent smell of mixed chemical reagents, the dampness of mold growth, and a more fundamental, decaying odor that belongs to the "end times" itself.

Each breath felt like swallowing thick venom.

Outside the passage, the distant roars of mutants echoed—like rusty gears grinding against each other, like metal plates being dragged across the ground, like some creature that should not exist in this world, mimicking the form of life with vocal cords that do not belong to this dimension.

And closer—

They were the two "partners" who, just three days ago, had shared the compressed biscuits that Lin Ye had risked his life to bring out from the No. 3 ruins.

Wang Qiang. Li Feng.

At this moment, they were reporting Lin Ye's coordinates precisely to the fully armed search team members in an almost fawning tone:

"Brother Ye is inside, at the third fork on the left... Yes, he just came out of those No. 3 ruins, he must have some good stuff on him... He even asked us to find antibiotics recently, he must be seriously injured..."

The greed in that voice almost materialized.

Even through the thick, ruined walls, Lin Ye could clearly "see" the fawning smiles on their faces—and the deep longing in their eyes for the "bounty" that was about to be theirs.

That greed was more repulsive than the stench deep within the tunnel, because it came from the "kin" he had entrusted his back to.

And now-

Lin Ye slowly raised his hands.

My fingertips trembled slightly, almost uncontrollably, in the cold air.

Lin Ye carefully examined it, using the morning light streaming in through the window:

His skin was smooth, intact, and youthful, with even thin calluses on his knuckles that hadn't completely faded from his "student days"—marks left from holding a pen for a long time, not from holding a knife.

Then Lin Ye stroked his chest. Beneath his palm was warm, smooth skin, and he could clearly feel the rhythm of his heartbeat—steady, strong, and full of the vibrant life unique to a young heart.

There was no longer that grotesque, centipede-like scar that slashed diagonally from his left collarbone to his lower right abdomen—that was a gift from the mutant's bone blade, which Lin Ye had branded back together with a red-hot piece of iron in the ruins.

Then Lin Ye moved his fingers to his shoulder blade. There was no shocking dent left by a bayonet—the lesson learned from being stabbed in the back by a so-called "comrade-in-arms" for the first time.

As blood soaked through his combat uniform, Lin Ye learned his first lesson of the apocalypse: trust is a luxury, and should only be used occasionally when you are sure you have enough leverage.