It started when a bloody rain was about to fall.

Just as Shi Linglong, Ji Yuezi, and others in the East and South cities were gripped by fear, confusion, and bewilderment due to the strange phenomena happening around them.

Let's rewind to before 3 p.m.

Meanwhile, in a rented room in the southern part of Beijing, thousands of miles away, Lin Ye waited for the 3 PM stock price of Bitop Rare Earth to verify his memories, while fragments of his past life memories surging deep within his mind constantly reconstructed and challenged the boundaries of reality.

Some memories are so vivid, it feels like they happened just yesterday...

December 14, 2030, evening.

The blood-red setting sun, like the dissipated pupil of a dying beast, hung helplessly on the fragmented horizon.

It bathed the entire ruins in a viscous, almost solidified, rusty halo.

The light seemed to have weight.

The weight of the pressure caused the broken walls and ruins to creak and groan in the silence, like bones being dislocated, and made every floating dust particle in the thin air crawl heavily along the ground.

Like a dying microorganism, like the last gasp before the end of the world.

Lin Ye huddled at the edge of the seventh isolation zone in the old city ruins, his back pressed against the cold, rough inner wall of a broken cement pillar.

With each breath, the lungs feel like they are being repeatedly sanded from the inside by sandpaper.

The smell it emitted was a mixture of rust, gunpowder smoke, and a certain sweet, rotten flesh odor.

Lin Ye had smelled that scent for five years, but he still couldn't get used to it, just like a person can never get used to despair.

His left shoulder.

The spot where the Shadowclaw Beast's sharp teeth pierced the flesh three days ago is now a hideous, purplish-black mass of festering flesh.

A continuous and eerie pulse emanated from deep within the wound, as if some living thing was taking root, spreading, and growing beneath his flesh.

Those were early signs of infection with the Blood Rain Virus, the first invitation to death.

"cough……"

Lin Ye held a tattered strip of cloth in his mouth, clenched his teeth, and let out a suppressed gasp from between his teeth.

Then, from the deepest part of his tattered backpack, he pulled out the last half-bottle of disinfectant. The plastic bottle creaked as he squeezed it, almost deforming it.

The moment the cold liquid was poured onto Lin Ye's wound, the excruciating pain ceased to be pain. Instead, it felt like a red-hot iron rod had suddenly pierced into Lin Ye's brain from his shoulder, stirring up a blinding, black-and-white jumble of noise.

Lin Ye suddenly pressed his forehead against the rough surface of the cement pillar, sweat instantly seeping into the dust and leaving dark, damp stains. At the same time, the tattered strip of cloth that he had been biting between his teeth was almost bitten through by his molars.

Then, beads of sweat rolled down Lin Ye's trembling eyelashes, creating small, dark craters on the dusty ground.

That was proof that his life was slipping away, a trace of his existence in this despairing world.

Five years into the apocalypse, pain has become a constant in Lin Ye's blood.

Moaning, however, is a luxury that Lin Ye cannot afford.

In this urban wreckage composed of countless concrete tombs piled up layer upon layer, any slightly loud noise is a dangerous fuse, enough to ignite an end more tragic than death itself.

In the distance, the long, hungry roars of numerous mutants roamed along the undulating outline of the ruins, sometimes near, sometimes far.

It was as if this dying land itself was breathing out painful gasps, as if the earth was groaning, as if the world was making its final struggle.

Occasionally, there would be bursts of extremely short screams from people on the verge of death, or the lonely, futile explosions of guns!

But these sounds are quickly swallowed up by a larger, more greedy silence, like a stone thrown into an abyss, leaving not even a ripple.

All around, the towering building skeletons were covered with saprophytic vines grown by the blood rain.

Dark red, almost black, with tangled and knotted meridians, it resembles a vast network of blood vessels that has been dried up for too long and has turned black.

They will release hallucinogenic spores precisely on time after nightfall, turning this area into a self-destructive, green nightmare labyrinth.

At that point, living will be more terrifying than dying—because you will watch yourself kill the person you love most, and be powerless to stop it.

Meanwhile, after briefly treating the infected wound on his left shoulder and spitting out the rag from his mouth, Lin Ye moved his trembling, blood-stained right fingers toward his chest.

Through his tattered clothes, hardened with blood clots, he touched the mysterious fragment he kept close to his body.

It feels icy cold to the touch.

It didn't feel like metal or stone; it felt more like a "frozen night."

Its dark gray surface is dull and lacks luster, yet it has a muted, flowing light that seems to pulsate slowly within, as if it were a living, breathing thing.

A faint yet distinct chill was continuously seeping into his skin from the surface of the fragments, flowing through his blood vessels to his limbs and bones.

There was something in that chill that he couldn't understand, yet he vaguely felt a sense of fear.

It was this "mysterious fragment," obtained from the deepest part of Ruins No. 3 at the cost of almost his life, that allowed his supernatural space to expand from a pitiful dozen cubic meters at the beginning to nearly a hundred cubic meters today.

But Lin Ye knew that this was far from enough.

In this apocalyptic world, slowly and steadily devouring all hope and warmth, this little bit of support is as thin as a cicada's wing hanging above an abyss.

A slightly stronger gust of wind can tear it apart; a slightly heavier breath can blow it away.

"Brother Ye! Brother Ye! Are you in there?"

Just then, a deliberately lowered voice, laced with feigned concern, like a dirty and cunning rat, rustled out from the twisted shadows on the other side of the ruins.

Upon hearing this, every muscle in Lin Ye's body tensed up instantly—even the continuous throbbing pain from his wound was overshadowed by this sudden surge of icy alertness.

It was Wang Qiang, the former insurance salesman who always wove a network of relationships with a greasy smile and exaggerated promises in the underground market.

His voice, at that moment, sounded like a blunt blade coated with honey, carefully cutting through the silence.

"We got our hands on the anti-infection medication! Hang in there, Ye-ge!"

Another, more blunt and dull voice followed.

It was Li Feng, a former construction worker, who possessed a brute force that had been roughened up by the apocalypse, but lacked the corresponding cunning.

They were easily ensnared by Wang Qiang's dubious "survival philosophy" and turned into obedient followers, like a cow being led by the nose, completely unaware that there was a cliff ahead.

However, upon hearing their words, Lin Ye's heart silently sank into a cold abyss.

Two days ago, he did ask these two people to keep an eye on his medication because his injury was starting to show.

But at this moment, the timing is so coincidental it's chilling.

He had been hiding in this makeshift shelter for less than three hours when his wounds worsened to a visibly critical point, and they "just happened" to find the right medicine, and "just happened" to find it with such precision.

The air was filled not with the scent of hope, but with the distinctive, sweet-smelling chill of rust, dust, and meticulously laid traps.

Thinking of this, Lin Ye slowly turned his head and pressed his right eye close to a naturally formed, cracked crevice in the cement pillar.

Fifty meters away, three figures, using the ruins as cover, were forming a crude but effective wedge formation and quietly approaching.

Wang Qiang led the way. As his obese body moved among the rubble, he displayed an unsettling agility that seemed incongruous with his size. A fake smile graced his face, and his narrow eyes darted about calculatingly.

Li Feng followed closely behind, his steps heavy, kicking up a few pebbles; his thin face had high cheekbones and tightly pursed lips, but his evasive eyes betrayed his inner unease. He himself was completely unaware of the abyss he was stepping into.

When Lin Ye focused his gaze on the silhouette of the last person, his pupils suddenly contracted.

He was bald, with a hideous scar running diagonally from his brow bone to his jaw, and a thick beard that made his face look even more rugged; he wore a worn but well-maintained tactical vest, and the black grip of a standard-issue pistol in the holster at his waist reflected a cold light in the setting sun.

It turned out to be members of the search team.

The truth, like a steel needle soaked in ice water, instantly pierced through all of Lin Ye's wishful thinking.

He was sold.

To exchange his life for a few empty promises, or a few compressed biscuits to temporarily fill his stomach—this is the end times; sometimes, the price of a human life is nothing more than this.

"Brother Ye, don't push yourself!" Wang Qiang's voice continued to feign anxiety. "The Blood Rain virus infection needs to be suppressed with medication within 24 hours! We've actually found the medicine!"

Li Feng chimed in, his tone surprisingly carrying a genuine concern that he himself misinterpreted as "loyalty":

"Yeah, Brother Ye! It's getting dark, and this place... is absolutely unsafe to stay in at night..."

Seeing this, Lin Ye did not move.

At the same time, his gaze, like the most precise scanner, swept coldly and swiftly across every inch of the surrounding terrain. Fifteen meters to the left, he saw a half-collapsed entrance to an underground parking lot, like the gaping, pitch-black maw of a monster.

Twenty meters to the right is an irregular "hill" made up of construction waste and twisted steel bars.

Finally, behind them was a ten-meter-high, completely broken wall, blocking all escape routes.

This is a perfect encirclement, a textbook hunting ground.