028, Preparations Before the Trial!
Page (1/3)
In her previous life, after the apocalypse descended, Qi Sheng and Qi Ran mingled among the surviving masses, yet they were always the ones ostracized and singled out.
At the critical juncture between life and death, the people who were targeted and exploited first were invariably those they found most unpleasant.
No reason was needed. No logic or fairness was required.
In her previous life, Qi Ran was always the one who endured everyone’s malice and suffered their schemes in order to protect Qi Sheng.
She was also always the first to bow her head and yield to the others.
But in this life, from the very beginning of the apocalypse, Qi Ran’s strength already surpassed that of 99.999 percent of the survivors.
She had skipped straight past the stage where she needed to form alliances with others merely to ensure her own safety.
She watched coldly as Qi Sheng failed to manipulate others and was instead fooled and toyed with like an idiot, then abandoned and left behind without the slightest burden of guilt.
Qi Ran felt not the slightest trace of sympathy for him simply because she had endured the same fate in her previous life.
On the contrary, she felt a tiny, secret thrill in her heart for one brief second.
Watching Qi Sheng suffer misfortune and fare poorly in the apocalypse truly made it easy for Qi Ran, whose confidence had already begun to swell, to regain her vigorous fighting spirit.
She had to work hard to increase her strength, ensuring that even if Qi Sheng were lucky enough to awaken a powerful talent, he would remain under her suppression at all times.
He would be frustrated and unfulfilled forever.
Every day, he would endure scenes no different from what he was experiencing now.
The essence of survival was plunder.
Especially in an environment starved of resources and filled with insecurity.
Without sufficient ability to secure an advantageous position among the masses, one could only become someone to be abandoned, sacrificed, or drained for nourishment.
In her previous life, during the first three days after the apocalypse descended, Qi Ran and Qi Sheng had yet to awaken their talents. Among the people huddled together for warmth and mutual support, the two of them were undoubtedly in the most disadvantaged position.
Yet Qi Ran had already experienced the same circumstances once before, in the orphanage.
She had spent five years there. She knew all too well what it felt like to be isolated, have food snatched away, be betrayed, treated unfairly, and subjected to baseless malice.
Thus, after changing locations and entering the apocalypse, Qi Sheng and Qi Ran—both well educated by the Qi family and radiating the unmistakable air of capitalists who exploited others—were unsurprisingly ostracized and repeatedly targeted by everyone else.
Qi Ran quickly readjusted.
She had no interest in pointless arguments with others. She simply and pragmatically slaughtered zombies in silence, ensuring the safety of herself and Qi Sheng.
As a result, after three days, Qi Ran had killed a full 152 zombies.
She obtained the opportunity to awaken beyond her level: the A-rank talent, Essence of Fire.
Because of this, the high fever that should have struck only after nightfall at 6:00 p.m. on the day of her talent awakening came early instead.
After awakening her talent beyond her level at midnight, Qi Ran immediately developed a high fever.
Page (1/3)
Page (2/3)
She had chosen to awaken beyond her level because she knew that her situation and Qi Sheng’s were dire and wanted to improve their chances of survival.
Before the awakening, an impassioned electronic voice had warned Qi Ran that awakening beyond her level would bring certain side effects.
But at that time, Qi Ran trusted Qi Sheng.
She believed that even if she lost her combat ability for a period of time, Qi Sheng was her elder brother and her family. In the chaos, they would have to rely on each other to survive.
He would surely protect her during that time.
Therefore, Qi Ran had chosen awakening beyond her level without hesitation.
...
In this life, Qi Ran was no longer by Qi Sheng’s side.
If the person being targeted and treated with malice were Qi Sheng instead—
Or if it were Qi Sheng and Chu Yan together...
How would they deal with it?
Qi Ran was very much looking forward to finding out.
She truly could not wait to see Qi Sheng cast off the refined, pampered aura he had been carefully tended with, struggle miserably for survival in the apocalypse, become filthy and disheveled, and fade into the faceless masses.
With Qi Sheng slung over her shoulder after being struck unconscious, Qi Ran rushed toward the grilled-fish restaurant.
In her previous life, after they returned from Orchid Bridge, Qi Sheng had stubbornly insisted on going to the eighth floor to find Chu Yan.
But there had been too many zombies on the eighth floor.
On the first day of the apocalypse, they had gone upstairs three times.
Each time, they had been chased by zombies and fled back in abject disgrace.
As the sky grew completely dark and night descended, Qi Sheng and the others had no choice but to give up.
Yet in the middle of that night, Chu Yan was rescued by the personal guards summoned by the Chu family.
When Chu Yan left, she neither informed Qi Sheng nor took along the fair-weather friend who had eaten with her before the apocalypse.
She traveled alone with her grandmother, escorted by the personal guards through the night, heading to the capital to reunite with their clan.
And that laid the groundwork for the tragedy that would later befall her.
...
In her previous life, Qi Sheng had not rescued Chu Yan immediately.
However, the place where Chu Yan was hiding—
When she first called Qi Sheng for help, she had already told him where she was.
Aside from that, on the fifth day after the apocalypse descended, once Qi Ran had awakened her talent and fully regained consciousness, she had returned to find Qi Sheng.
The first thing Qi Sheng did was demand that Qi Ran go to the eighth floor and rescue Chu Yan.
Thus, Qi Ran still remembered very clearly that Chu Yan was hiding in the kitchen of a grilled-fish restaurant.
She carried Qi Sheng on her back and headed straight for the restaurant where Chu Yan was located.
Page (2/3)
Page (3/3)
In five minutes, Qi Ran would be participating in the Ant Trial.
In her previous life, Qi Ran had never taken part in a trial.
Opportunities for trials to appear on Blue Star had been exceedingly rare.
Consequently, Qi Ran knew virtually nothing about them.
To ensure that Qi Sheng would be unable to kill ten zombies within the first three days of the apocalypse, Qi Ran decided to go all the way and lock him up after knocking him unconscious.
As for the location, she chose the storage room on the seventh floor where they had hidden in their previous life.
There were fewer zombies on the seventh floor than on the eighth.
If Qi Sheng and the others were locked inside, the likelihood of zombies breaking through the door would be much lower.
Besides, there would presumably be many old acquaintances of Qi Ran’s from her previous life in the seventh-floor storage room.
These villains she had encountered by chance had not even left particularly vivid traces in Qi Ran’s memories of the ten years that followed the apocalypse.
But that did not mean the schemes they had plotted against her, or the harm they had caused her, would be forgiven by the reborn Qi Ran as she turned the page and let bygones be bygones.
In her previous life, under the guidance of her father and mother, Qi Ran had been a refined and dignified young lady of a prestigious family—kindhearted, benevolent, just, and upright.
Because she had been deprived of familial affection, she treated others with tolerance and mercy and valued loyalty and affection above all else.
Even until the moment of her death, she had continued to adhere to the moral principles of the world before the apocalypse.
She had never killed or committed arson for the sake of profit.
Yet through a twist of fate, she obtained one of the ten extraordinary spirit fruits that had ever appeared on Blue Star, treasures of unparalleled significance: the Primordial Sacred Spirit Fruit.
As a result, she was surrounded and hunted by the ten top-tier bases on Blue Star.
She managed to escape by sheer luck and returned to the base where she had been hiding.
But there, she was betrayed by the three people closest to her.
Page (3/3)