It started when a bloody rain was about to fall.

Faced with such a dangerous situation, Lin Ye, who was in the air, had exhausted his old strength and had not yet generated new strength.

Ahead, a storm of intertwined metal raged, each bullet searching for his flesh and blood.

Behind him lay a dead end and even more deadly pursuers. At this moment, Zhang Zhen had regained his footing and raised his gun again.

The blood-red, viscous setting sun cast Lin Ye's leaping figure into a solitary, burning silhouette against the mottled, filthy walls of the ruins.

It's as if it's the final pose frozen in an ancient and cruel sacrificial ritual.

Below, there is Zhang Zhen's face contorted with rage, Wang Qiang's eyes filled with astonishment and fear, and Li Feng's bewildered face, as if he were seeing the truth of the world for the first time...

Above, the decaying, dark red vines swayed gently in the rising evening breeze, like countless greedy tentacles waiting for a gluttonous feast to begin, like curtains hanging above the gates of hell.

The world, stripped of all its trivial colors and sounds, left only a black, white, and gray background in Lin Ye's eyes, and a scorching, dazzling glimmer of light between life and death.

Just as the bullet was about to tear through flesh and blood, and the icy touch seemed to have already reached Lin Ye's skin.

At the same time, in the deepest part of Lin Ye's consciousness, another completely different yet equally clear image, like a piece of glass shattered by violence, burst forth with entirely different light, temperature, and sound, overlapping with the dying world before him...

July 16, 2026, the first year of the Blood Rain Apocalypse, the fifth survivor base.

The crimson sky hung low, like a festering wound repeatedly struck by a blunt instrument, slowly oozing a viscous, dark light.

That's not a cloud; it's the decay of the sky itself.

Countless visible energy veins pulsated within, like the exposed blood vessels of a dying beast, each contraction squeezing out a nauseating crimson.

Amidst the churning clouds, lava-like patterns meandered through them, as if the entire sky were undergoing a silent, magnificent, and irreversible ritual of decay.

The air was so dense that you could almost hold it in your hand.

Bloodshed, the scorching of ionized ozone, and the spatial ripples left after the release of high-level supernatural abilities.

All these smells intertwined, like an invisible hand gripping the throat of each survivor, making every breath a form of torture.

The deeper layer consists of those things that seep out from the turbulent energy flows.

Like a sigh from the ends of the earth, it formed a faint sob among the ruins.

That was the law itself groaning, the world's final convulsions on the verge of death, the sound of the universe quietly dying in some corner.

Meanwhile, the medical area of ​​the fifth survivor base had been reduced to chewed bones.

The concrete fragments pierced the sky at bizarre angles, while the steel bars convulsed and twisted like exposed nerves.

The ground cracked into countless abyss-like fissures, and deep within these fissures, a dark red light seemed to breathe.

That was the response of the underground lava to being disturbed by supernatural forces; the earth was burning its own blood to fight against this catastrophe.

In the heart of this filth, Ye Qingrou stood quietly. Her very existence contrasted sharply with her surroundings, almost to the point of blasphemy.

She stood amidst the ruins, her blood-stained white coat torn like the wings of a dying butterfly, yet this did nothing to diminish her chilling and compassionate beauty.

It is the divine beauty that walks into hell from ancient murals, the solemnity of saints walking into the burning at the stake, and the sorrow of angels falling to earth.

Her skin, bathed in the dim light of the ruins, possessed a translucent quality reminiscent of frozen moonlight—not pale, but a purity that transcended the material.

Through that almost invisible layer of skin, one could vaguely see a faint, vibrant light of life flowing within, emerald green, as if the laws of life were manifested within her as a flowing galaxy.

That was not light, but the manifestation of the evolution of life itself, a wisp of primordial breath left behind by the Creator when creating the world.

It was seeping from her body at that moment, like a final blessing.

The bloodstains on it resembled plum blossoms falling on snow, a poignant and breathtaking sight.

Each drop transformed into a sparkling ruby ​​within the emerald halo surrounding her, blooming into tiny, fleeting flowers of life as it fell to the ground.

Those flowers bloomed for only a moment, yet their beauty was heartbreaking.

Ye Qingrou's eyebrows are like distant mountains shrouded in mist, outlined on rice paper with the most delicate brushstrokes. Each eyebrow carries a faint glow of life, trembling slightly in the wind.

The bridge of the nose is a peak and ridge drawn by the Creator with the most delicate strokes, straight and elegant, driving the energy rhythm of the entire field with each breath.

Her lips, pale as withered cherry petals from blood loss, still retained their gentle curve, as if they were about to utter words of healing.

Those words could soothe all the pain, but they couldn't soothe her own fate.

The most breathtaking thing was those lowered eyes; beneath the long lashes, the color of their eyes was as clear as an unpolluted star lake.

Even at this moment, even in the face of death, his eyes still reflected something beyond this world.

At the same time, ancient emerald-like runes flowed deep within his pupils.

The symbol is not a static inscription, but rather it is constantly disassembling, reassembling, and evolving, enacting the eternal cycle of birth and death of life.

The division of single cells, the aggregation of multiple cells, the differentiation of organs, the awakening of consciousness, the arrival of aging, the end of death... everything swirls like a galaxy deep within those eyes, changes like the seasons, and never stops, like the morning bell and evening drum.

The faint emerald halo that naturally emanated from Ye Qingrou drew a clean boundary in this filthy world.

That halo wasn't just a simple energy shield, but a complete, miniature ecosystem.

Wherever the halo reached, the scorched earth began to loosen, and tiny green shoots tentatively peeked out, only to be shredded by the turbulent flow of supernatural energy in the next moment.

But that attempt itself is a declaration: "Life will not give up, even if only one breath remains."

At the same time, Ye Qingrou's long, black hair spread out in the turbulent energy flow, like a flowing galaxy in the dark night.

Each strand of hair shimmered with a faint emerald starlight at its tip.

That was not decoration, but the crystallization of her overflowing vitality, a testament to her burning herself to illuminate others.

His slender 1.77-meter frame stood straight as an unyielding bamboo. His back bore the weight of 587 lives not far behind him.

Those breaths of life, those faint pulses, those dying embers of the soul, were all connected to her through invisible threads of energy.

She could feel everyone's heartbeat, the difficulty of each breath, and the flow of every drop of blood.

Ye Qingrou is the only heart still beating in these ruins.

Fifty meters away, deep in the shadow of the broken wall.

Lin Ye curled up.

A year into the apocalypse, time etched marks on him far deeper than the years themselves.

Long-term malnutrition causes cheekbones to protrude sharply, like two knives about to pierce from under the skin; it is hunger carving the human face.

His sallow skin was covered with tiny abrasions and old scars, like parchment that had been repeatedly crumpled and unfolded. Each scar was a testament to a narrow escape from death, a story about "living".

His hair was matted together, covered in filth and dried blood, exuding an aura of decay and despair—the smell of death, the stench of the apocalypse.

Only Lin Ye's eyes shone with an astonishing brightness, not like the healthy glow, but like the final, burning resistance of a dying person.

At this moment, Lin Ye's eyes were fixed on the white figure in the distance, his pupils contracting to pinpoints due to some intense emotion.

At the same time, the fingernails dug deep into the flesh of the palm, and fresh blood dripped from between the fingers, as if tiny dark red flowers were blooming on scorched earth, each one telling the same story.

In the palm of his hand, that pitiful "inventory" of space was coldly displayed in his consciousness.

A dozen or so rusted knives and spears, their blades curled like the fingernails of a dying man.

Seven or eight hand grenades, their expiration dates unknown, were so rusted that their original color was no longer visible.

Four or five homemade Molotov cocktails, their glass bodies riddled with cracks, the liquid inside murky like the last hope in the apocalypse.

But Lin Ye knew that this little bit of knowledge was as childish as a child throwing a stone at a giant beast, or a moth struggling futilely towards a flame, compared to that of a true superhuman.

He will be crushed, burned to ashes, forgotten in some corner deep in the ruins, without even a tombstone.

But Lin Ye couldn't take his eyes off her.

That white figure—the one he almost bumped into in the medical school corridor after the opening ceremony, the one that made his heart skip a beat.

That figure that appeared in his peripheral vision countless times during his four years of university, yet never truly entered his life.

At this moment, she is using her own flesh and blood to build the final wall for 587 strangers.

This scene made Lin Ye feel as if something was tearing, burning, and silently roaring inside his chest.

That was something Lin Ye thought had died in the first year of the apocalypse—called "caring".