When they got home, they closed the security door and immediately locked it from the inside. The sound of the lock clicking shut was like clocking out for the last time.

“I’m going to bed now, boss…”

Qin Ye’s voice was weak as he leaned against the wall, yawning all the way as he drifted toward the old sofa in the living room. His way of healing himself was simply to sleep soundly.

That’s fine, too.

Lu Yao returned to his room and closed the door.

The bandage on his shoulder had already seeped a little dark red, like plum blossoms falling on white snow. But there weren’t many blossoms—after all, his injury wasn’t that serious.

He applied some medicine himself, then wrapped it up haphazardly. Alright, that’s taken care of—now for today’s main event! Because he’d finally achieved a milestone victory.

System!

Give! Me! A! Reward!

【Congratulations, Host, on achieving your milestone goal and successfully resigning.】

【From now on, the Host is a free person! The sea is vast—let the fish leap; the sky is high—let the birds fly!】

【Congratulations to the Host on winning a Green-Tier Spin-the-Wheel reward!】

【As the saying goes, the beginning is always the hardest】

【Congratulations to the Host on completing their first milestone task!】

【Reward Upgrade】

【Congratulations, Host! You’ve earned a Yellow-Tier Big Wheel spin reward.】

Lu Yao’s eyes lit up immediately. Yellow! Tier! Big Wheel!

That alloy bone blade from last time was obtained from the Yellow-Tier Big Wheel.

Tough, sharp, and lightweight—it was more reliable than many of his colleagues who were just beginning to take human form. The Yellow-Tier Big Wheel unfolded in his mind.

There were still those rewards, though the slot for the alloy bone blade had disappeared.

Lu Yao’s attention turned once again to the low-tier Ability Fragments. Although the probability of drawing one was still low.

But what if?

Lu Yao began making a wish. The draw begins!

The pointer spun rapidly.

It slowed down more and more, gliding past the motorcycle engine upgrade kit, the electromagnetic pulse grenade… gliding past…

…and stopped at…

A low-tier ability shard. Lu Yao froze for a moment. Did I really win that? 

“Is my luck really this good? Or am I going to have to spend another week picking through trash?” He immediately used the system to summon the low-tier ability fragment into his hand.

 A crystal shard slightly larger than a fingernail, looking a bit like a piece of plastic.

【Item: Low-Tier Ability Shard】

【Usage: Crush it for a chance to awaken a low-tier ability】

【Source Description:

Low-tier ability fragments are generated with an extremely low probability from the brains of V-tier zombies.】 

The shorter the sentence, the bigger the deal.

These few short sentences contain an incredible amount of information.

But this item… He’d drawn it—he’d actually drawn it—yet Lu Yao was beginning to have second thoughts.

Lu Yao ran his finger along the edge of the low-tier ability fragment, weighing his options.

As the owner of the System, if he wanted to acquire a superpower, he’d definitely go for a top-tier one. So this low-tier superpower fragment was a bit of a mixed blessing—too good to throw away, yet not quite worth keeping. 

Lu Yao thought for a moment, then walked out.

The living room was bathed in a dim, yellowish light, tinged with a hint of twilight blue. Qin Ye was sleeping on the sofa like a big dog. 

Lu Yao walked over, reached out, grabbed his shoulder, and shook him. “Wake up, Qin Ye! Wake up! How can you possibly be asleep at your age, Qin Ye!” 

Qin Ye screamed in fright, “What’s going on, boss? What’s happening? Have the zombies broken in?”

Lu Yao: “Not exactly. I need to talk to you.”

Qin Ye: “Um, boss, are you saying that after I quit, you realized it wasn’t going to work out, so now you want to help me find a second job?”

Lu Yao stroked his chin: “You’ve reminded me…”

Qin Ye’s face went pale.

He wanted to slap himself. Damn mouth—you’re so talkative! You’re so talkative!

Lu Yao: “Unfortunately, I don’t have any plans to look for a new job right now.”

Qin Ye: “…Hehehe. Well, if that’s all, boss, I’m going to bed.”

Lu Yao: “Sleep, sleep, sleep—all you ever think about is sleeping. Do you know that humans can have supernatural abilities? Do you know that zombies are divided into tiers? Do you know that tanks don’t have rearview mirrors?” 

Qin Ye: “Wait, wait, wait—boss, something just randomly popped up here…”

“You actually noticed it?” Lu Yao let out a dismissive “Pfft. Here’s the thing—while you were sleeping, I accidentally came across something. It’s called a low-level Ability Fragment.” 

Qin Ye’s mind went blank for a few seconds.

After all, Lu Yao’s words were full of things to nitpick; Qin Ye needed to let those thoughts sweep across his smooth cerebral cortex before distilling the important information.

If he couldn’t do that, Qin Ye would go crazy sooner or later.

A few seconds later, he finally snapped out of it: “Big shot, you mean… ability shards? Are there really super—super—superpowers in this world?”

Lu Yao nodded: “There’s an opportunity right now. Do you want to take it…”

Qin Ye: “I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it! Thanks a bunch, boss!”

Lu Yao said earnestly, “Of course, using this doesn’t guarantee you’ll awaken your powers, and besides, this is low-level. I suspect that even if you do awaken them, it might limit your future potential.”

Qin Ye couldn’t care less about any of that: “It’s okay, thanks, big shot! Just meeting you is already a stroke of luck! Otherwise, I’d already be nothing but a skeleton in a grave! Having the chance to gain a superpower is something I’m infinitely grateful for!”

Lu Yao: “It’s not that big of a deal—you don’t need to think of yourself that way.”

Qin Ye was touched: “Big Shot, deep down, you’re actually a gentle soul…”

Lu Yao: “A human body doesn’t turn into a skeleton that fast. After all, a bare skeleton implies that the soft tissue has basically decomposed… I’ve studied the rate of cadaveric decomposition before. If you hadn’t turned into a zombie, judging by the timeline, right now you ought to be going through the bloat stage.”

“…”

Qin Ye: “I feel like my head is swelling up just listening to you, Big Boss.”

Lu Yao chuckled: “Isn’t that just a form of localized bloating? My assessment was correct after all.”

Qin Ye: “…” Yeah, Big Boss, you’re always right.

Qin Ye: “…You’re always right, Big Shot.”

Lu Yao stopped messing around and pulled out that low-tier ability shard for Qin Ye.

“How to use it? Crush it and let it dissolve in your body,” Lu Yao said. “But I think crushing it will cause some powder to fall out, and the probability of awakening a superpower is already very low, so I suggest you just swallow it whole.”

Qin Ye held the shard: “Okay, okay.” Without the slightest hint of hesitation, he popped the shard into his mouth, crunched it to pieces, and swallowed it.

A few seconds later. A few minutes later. More than ten minutes later.

Lu Yao: “Hmm…”

Qin Ye: “Hmm…” 

Lu Yao: “It seems like nothing happened.”

Qin Ye: “Nothing really happened.”

Qin Ye felt guilty: “Sorry, boss. I’m such a noob—I didn’t awaken any superpowers.” 

“It’s okay, that’s normal.” Lu Yao waved his hand. “You go back to sleep. I’ll figure out how we can use this information.”

Although Qin Ye lay back down on the couch, he was no longer sleepy.

Even though Lu Yao had told him that awakening was only a matter of probability, not having awakened still left him feeling quite disappointed. Meanwhile, Lu Yao dragged the whiteboard into the bedroom and began to strategize.

The one he’d encountered that day must have been a V-tier zombie.

Although V-tier zombies are very powerful, if there are two people work together and they handle the situation properly, they can be taken down. Now that they know about these valuable ability fragments, might it be possible to experiment with them?

Variables…

He wrote on the whiteboard: hunger level, density, space, and individual differences among zombies.

━━ 🐈‍⬛ ━━

When Qin Ye woke up again, it was already dusk.

His mind was still a bit foggy when he woke up, and he stared dazedly at the cracks in the ceiling for quite a while. The cracks stretched from the doorway toward the light fixture, as if darkness had crept in from outside through the crack in the door, following the patterns of the wall paint. He felt terrible and terrified; he could even smell the stench of blood and rot. 

He forced himself to get up and realized it wasn’t an illusion.

Lu Yao was over in that corner of the room, fiddling with a zombie that had already been cut into pieces. 

His hair had grown a little longer since they’d first met, and was now loosely tied back with a leather cord.

The twilight light of the apocalypse streamed in through the window, casting a sharp shadow across his straight nose. The thin sheen of sweat on the tip of his nose was tantalizing to behold.

A few strands of hair slipped down the side of his face as he moved, slightly blurring his sharp, defined jawline. With the tip of the knife hovering over the zombie’s head, Lu Yao took out his phone and began snapping photos from various angles.

Qin Ye thought Lu Yao looked incredibly professional and handsome like this, so he cautiously asked, “Boss, are you analyzing the zombie’s internal structure?”

Lu Yao put down the knife and replied, “Huh? No. I’m just getting ready for tomorrow’s WeChat Moments post.”

Qin Ye: “Hmm… Huh?”

He flashed his Moments feed in front of Qin Ye.

Image caption: Scattered zombie body parts, grid layout: arm, cross-section, muscle fiber cross-section, thigh…

Moments post: “Snippets of life in the apocalypse—so full of a sense of security~ 【smiley】【sticking out tongue】【sticking out tongue】.” 

Qin Ye: …

All the feelings he’d had just a moment ago were shattered.

Qin Ye felt like he was about to be torn to shreds by 【Censored】.

Qin Ye roared, “Big Shot, ‘fragments of life’ doesn’t mean that! It doesn’t mean zombie body parts! Are you really taking it literally?!”

For God’s sake, they’re just little fragments of the apocalypse!

Lu Yao patted him on the shoulder: “It’s the apocalypse—why are you still nitpicking over these trivial details?”

Qin Ye’s mouth twitched.

He rubbed his face a couple of times, then ran his hands through his hair.

He felt that the melancholy he’d felt when he first woke up had completely vanished.

Lu Yao put away his phone, tossed his gloves into the trash can, and clapped his hands. “Alright, since I’ve quit my job and you’re awake, let’s discuss our next steps. First off, we need to find a bigger place.”

The boss said, “We.”

Qin Ye’s eyes lit up: “Okay, Boss.”

Lu Yao: “Finding a place to live in the apocalypse isn’t something where you can just pick any old place—we need to consider a variety of factors.”

Qin Ye nodded: “Location, floor plan, safety, natural light…”

Lu Yao scratched his head and said shyly, “Not really. My main concern is whether we can find the keys to the house.”

Qin Ye：“……”

Qin Ye: “Uh, , oh.”

Lu Yao pointed to a few spots on the whiteboard: “Since we’ve been here, we’ve mainly been exploring this area. Also, I’m planning to run an experiment.”

Qin Ye: “What kind of experiment?”

Lu Yao pointed to another spot: “This is my company’s warehouse—it’s spacious, and we have control over the doors.”

Qin Ye: “What are you planning to do, boss?”

Lu Yao: “I plan to lure some zombies inside and find a way to make them kill each other, to see if I can guide them to evolve into V-tier zombies.”

Qin Ye: “Big Shot, you mean…”

Lu Yao nodded: “That’s right. V-tier zombies might contain fragments of supernatural abilities in their bodies.”

Qin Ye instinctively felt that something wasn’t quite right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Yu nodded readily: “Okay, Boss. I’ll follow your lead—whatever you tell me to do, I’ll do it.”

Lu Yao looked at Qin Ye intently: “Do you know what happens to those characters in your books who say that?”

Qin Ye: “?”

Night was gradually falling.

Qin Ye went to make instant noodles, while Lu Yao sat at the table, writing and drawing.

As the night grew darker, the little green light on the power bank glowed like a tiny firefly, struggling to shine.

Inside the room, there was the gurgling sound of instant noodles, the scraping of a knife, and the rustling of a pen on paper.

It was a very quiet night.

On the other side of the city.

The wind swept up a discarded newspaper, then let it fall again.

A young man with silver-gray streaks in his short hair casually caught the papers, crumpled them into a ball, and tossed them into a nearby trash can. 

He wore a black work jacket over blue work pants, the large holes at the knees patched with a different shade of blue.

He walked into Hongda Company, his boots crunching on the broken glass on the floor.

With one hand in his jacket pocket, the young man held the microphone close to his lips; his voice was clear, with a lazy drawl.

“Day seven. The V-tier zombie is currently missing.”

“I’ve crossed half the city, chasing it for a week. It’s badly injured; it won’t get far.” 

The glass in the conference room was shattered as well, and moonlight poured in through the gaping hole. 

“A V-tier zombie must have been in here… Wait… Interesting.” The young man stopped in front of a bloodstain on the floor and crouched down.

The blood had dried, turning brown, with flaked edges.

He lightly touched it with his finger, sniffed it, his eyes amber.

“Someone was here.”

He looked up, gazing down the corridor.

“A survivor fought a V-class zombie here.”

“I’ve decided to start looking for signs of survivors right now.”

“Reporting: Jiang Xingrui.”