Doomsday Cognition Guide

At breakfast, the family sat around the table.

"Let's sort out what happened today," the father said, putting down his chopsticks. "The foundation still needs to be dug, the wall needs to be built, lights need to be installed in the caves, and the village needs to be searched again."

Uncle Si took a sip of porridge: "I looked at the terrain yesterday. The road below is only four or five meters wide, with a steep slope leading down to a cliff on the left and dense forest on the mountainside on the right. I plan to build the wall in an arc shape, connecting to the cliff rocks on the left and curving up the mountainside on the right. From the outside, it will look like an arc, but the road will be enclosed inside. Cars coming up will have to turn first, so they won't be able to pick up speed. It will also be difficult for people to climb over, as there are steep slopes on both sides, and only the front side is accessible."

"You know this best. Just tell me if you need someone."

"Not for now. After the excavator finishes digging, we'll set up the formwork tomorrow and start mortar construction the day after." Uncle Si paused, "I've also checked the culvert area. The excavator will go down there later, dig soil on both sides, and move some large stones to fill the middle, sealing it tightly. Once the road below is ruined, the only way up the mountain is the highway."

The father nodded: "Then I'll search the village."

Li Xuan swallowed the steamed bun: "I'm going to town."

The mother stopped using her chopsticks.

"What are you going to town for?" Her voice was clearly tense.

"We have enough to eat and use right now, but we're lacking essential supplies like medicine, which are only available in town."

"No." The mother put down her chopsticks. "You know what the situation is like in town right now."

"Mom, it's okay. Zombies move slowly; I'll just go around them."

The father, holding the bowl of porridge, remained silent for a few seconds: "The town is densely populated; the zombies will definitely be in hordes. How many can you handle by yourself?"

"Then I'll go with you." Fourth Uncle put down his bowl.

"Fourth Uncle, you've seen my skills." Li Xuan looked at him. "I can target small targets and am agile when I go alone. You're the only one in the family who can operate an excavator; we need you for the wall."

Fourth Uncle frowned and remained silent.

The father slowly swallowed his porridge: "Just keep that in mind. Remember, never be reckless; resources are never as important as people."

His mother opened her mouth, then got up and went into the kitchen, bringing out a canvas shoulder bag containing two steamed buns and a bottle of water. She placed the bag beside Li Xuan: "Be careful on the road."

Uncle Si stood up and walked out: "I'll dig a gap over the highway for you, just big enough for the pickup truck to get up. Take the stuff and come back, don't try to be a hero."

In less than half an hour, Uncle Si finished repairing the access road with an excavator. He compacted the gravel on the slope, widened the bends, and created a path, barely wide enough for a pickup truck, extending from the gate of the yard to the highway guardrail. He cut open the guardrail, peered over the edge to check the road, and said, "It's passable, but drive slowly."

Li Xuan changed into dark clothes, tucked a long-handled machete into his waistband, slung a hiking backpack over his shoulder, and carried an empty woven bag in his hand. His mother came out, glanced at him, and said nothing.

The pickup truck drove onto the highway from the sidewalk. In the rearview mirror, Uncle Si had already turned the excavator towards the culvert down the mountain.

The highway was unreally empty. The sky was hazy, and there were occasional abandoned cars by the roadside, their doors open and luggage scattered on the ground. Twenty minutes later, he turned into a narrow alley on the edge of town. The buildings on both sides completely obscured the car; driving into town would be too conspicuous, so parking here and collecting the items on foot was safer.

He slung his backpack over his shoulder, a machete tucked into his waistband, and walked along the alley toward the town.

There was a faint, foul odor in the air, like garbage mixed with raw meat fermenting in the sun. The streets were deserted; some shop doors had been smashed open, shelves overturned, and goods scattered all over the ground.

He went to the town's health center first.

The clinic was a three-story white building at the crossroads. The main door was open, and there was a dark, bloody handprint on the glass door. Li Xuan listened for a few seconds; it was very quiet inside, with only the sound of the wind blowing the curtains. But his experience from that memory told him that quiet did not mean safe; zombies could stand motionless for hours if they were not triggered.

He gently pushed open the door and slipped inside. The chairs in the lobby were askew, and the glass of the registration window was broken. There was a white coat on the floor, with dark red stains on the sleeves. He bent down, picked it up, folded it neatly, and placed it on a waiting chair.

The pharmacy was at the end of the corridor. The door was locked, but he kicked it open. Half the medicine shelves were overturned; he stuffed everything he could into his backpack—antibiotics, painkillers, fever reducers, iodine, gauze, and tape. The traditional Chinese medicine cabinet was in the corner; he opened a small drawer and examined each herb: angelica, astragalus, ginseng, goji berries, and poria. Unopened herbs were packed directly, while opened herbs were sorted and packed into plastic bags.

In that memory, crystal core extracts, when combined with traditional Chinese medicine, could enhance the efficacy of the medicine. If extraction was impossible, they could be directly soaked into medicinal wine. Zombies won't evolve crystal cores for some time, so stockpiling traditional Chinese medicine is a good idea.

As I walked down the corridor, I heard a noise from the second floor. A zombie dressed in a hospital gown poked its head out from around the corner of the stairs. Half of its face was rotten, revealing its gums and cheekbones, and its eye sockets were filled with only cloudy white. It smelled the scent of living people, made a low gurgling sound in its throat, and staggered down the stairs.

Li Xuan didn't fight head-on. He pushed a stainless steel cart out of the pharmacy and placed it across the stairwell, then turned and went out through the side door. The zombie tripped over the cart and fell on the steps, struggling to get up, but the cart was stuck at the corner and couldn't get through. He wasn't sure how many zombies were left in the building, and it wasn't worth the risk.

He went around to the back and entered through the back door, going up to the second floor. There were three wards in the corridor, and in one of them, a corpse in a nurse's uniform lay on the bed, with a large dark red patch on its chest. He paused for two seconds, then pulled out a white sheet and covered the corpse, even its face.

As Li Xuan passed the rehabilitation treatment room, he paused at the door. The equipment inside had been rummaged through; the wires of several low-frequency therapy devices were torn and hung beside the beds. On the iron shelves against the wall were several medium-frequency therapy devices, some with four channels and some with eight channels, of different models.

Mid-frequency therapy device. A memory suddenly flashed through his mind—in the later stages of the apocalypse, the country developed an auxiliary device called "Force Guiding Device" for cultivators in the Ming Jin stage. This device could help cultivators quickly find the correct path of force exertion, increase training efficiency several times, and help cultivators avoid erroneous and arduous training.

That kind of sophisticated instrument hasn't been invented yet, but its underlying principle is exactly the same as this instrument. He stacked several portable intermediate-frequency therapy devices together and carried them back to the car.

After leaving the health center, I headed south along the main street. As I turned into a small alley, two zombies appeared a dozen meters ahead, standing in the middle of the road with their backs to me.

He quickened his pace, lowering his center of gravity. The instant the first zombie lunged, he didn't block it head-on, but instead stepped to the side, gently nudging the outside of its raised arm with his shoulder. The zombie shifted its weight, its body involuntarily turning half a circle. In that instant of its sideways stagger and its nape exposed, Li Xuan's machete precisely sliced ​​into the gap between the skull and the first cervical vertebra, his wrist twisting as he withdrew the knife.

The zombie collapsed silently.

The other one was already close at hand. Using the momentum of drawing his sword, Li Xuan ducked forward, slipping under the zombie's raised arm. Simultaneously, he reversed his grip on the hilt and struck the zombie hard in the back of its knee with the back of the blade. The leg instantly lost its support, and the zombie knelt on one knee. Without turning his head, Li Xuan swiftly and cleanly stabbed the zombie in the back of its knee, the tip of the blade plunging diagonally upwards from behind its ear.

Neither of them moved. He wiped the blade clean on the zombie's clothes, his gaze already sweeping towards the alleyway entrance. Every move was risky; if he didn't kill with a single blow and made a sound, nearby zombies would swarm him.

The hardware store was at the east end of town, and its roller shutter door had been pried open. He turned on his flashlight and picked out two sturdy crowbars, an axe, a bundle of thick iron wire, two packs of nails, three rolls of electrical wire, four lamp holders, and two boxes of light bulbs.

As he left the hardware store, there was movement at the street corner. Seven zombies turned the corner and moved toward him, less than thirty meters away.

Li Xuan glanced at them and made a judgment: seven, clustered together and then scattered, moving at different speeds; three of them had already started jogging. He could quickly defeat four or five, and even if all seven attacked together, it would take at least several minutes. This was the town center; the sounds of fighting and the smell of blood would attract more within minutes, and then it wouldn't be just seven anymore. Not worth it.

Instead of running away immediately, he retreated to the entrance of the hardware store and slowly threw the bundle of thick wire into a broken window across the street.

"Clang!"

The wire struck the clutter inside the room with a piercing sound. The seven zombies froze, then, drawn by the sound, swayed and moved toward the broken window.

In the brief few seconds that they turned aside and their attention shifted, Li Xuan turned and strode away along the base of the wall. His steps were light, without running or any panic, and he glided silently into the narrow alley next to the hardware store like a shadow, leaving the seven zombies, who had been distracted by the noise, far behind him.

A corner of the gas station's roof had collapsed, and two abandoned bread trucks were blocking the entrance. He went around to the gas pump, opened the side metal cover, and used a crowbar to pry open the fuel line.

He rummaged through his backpack and found a hose and plastic oil drums. He inserted one end of the hose into the fuel line and the other end into the oil drums. He filled six drums with gasoline, each containing twenty liters, and then found two drums of engine oil in the storage room and loaded them onto the vehicle.

The small supermarket next to the gas station and the grocery store diagonally opposite had also been ransacked. Most of the food had already been taken away, but there were still quite a few condiments left. Several large packs of toilet paper and half a box of feminine hygiene products were found under the grocery store shelves and stuffed into woven bags.

On his way back, he took a detour through a side alley. At the end of the alley, a lone zombie squatted on the ground, its back to him, gnawing on something. A gold necklace hung from the collar of its filthy jacket. Li Xuan approached quietly and sliced ​​into the back of the zombie's neck. After the zombie fell, he tore off the necklace—not out of greed, but because gold was far more useful in the apocalypse than before; it was needed for supernatural weapons, body modifications, and even some special drugs.

He's just an ordinary person with decent strength right now, possessing a plethora of advanced techniques in his head but unable to use them. He shouldn't use his divine state unless absolutely necessary, because he's unsure if it might corrupt his humanity. Another issue is that his body can't keep up with his mind's pace. He can easily win against two, handle four, but anything more than four requires careful consideration—winning isn't the problem, but the horde of zombies he attracts afterward is. He can't allow himself to get injured in such a pointless situation. Even a simple scratch could lead to infection.

While awakening superpowers increases resistance to the zombie virus, it's not worth gambling on that probability. Early-stage zombies are highly contagious, but once they've evolved and the virus has fully integrated with their bodies, they become less infectious.

Back home, Li Xuan sorted and put away the supplies. He sealed the Western and Chinese medicines in plastic bags and placed them in the driest part of the cave. He pushed the gasoline can to a shady spot near the cave entrance and covered it with an oilcloth. He put the gold in a separate metal box. He also placed the hygiene products in a black bag at his cousin's doorway.

After dinner, he briefly recounted what he had gathered. Hearing that zombies were still roaming the town, his mother frowned, somewhat blaming Li Xuan for taking the risk. His father listened, finally saying, "As long as everyone's alright."

The power lines had been connected during the day, and a gasoline generator would provide temporary power at night. Li Xuan sat under the walnut tree, mentally reviewing every encounter he'd had in town that day. His combat skills were too weak; it seemed he needed to prioritize training in martial arts.

He took off his shirt and attached the first set of electrode pads to his calves, the second to his waist, and the third to his arms. The three machines were placed side by side at his feet, with wires extending from his ankles to his shoulders, pressed against his skin and secured with tape. He turned all the switches to their lowest setting and then assumed a horse stance.

His thighs were parallel to the ground, his spine straight, and his arms outstretched forward. He adjusted his breathing and turned on the switches of the three machines in sequence. Current surged into twelve points simultaneously—his calves were activated first, followed by his waist, and then his arms. The three muscle groups did not contract at the same time; the three machines were not linked, the delay coming from the speed at which he pressed the switches. The first machine started first, and in the brief moment his hand moved to the second switch, the first wave of contraction signals had already traveled from the soles of his feet to his waist. By the time he pressed the third switch, the first two waves of vibration had just converged at his shoulders, the entire force transmission chain having traveled from beginning to end.

He closed his eyes, not controlling his muscles, but simply feeling. The electric current performed the active contraction for him, and his brain only needed to passively receive the signals. When practicing boxing, the brain has to process the force exertion command and the feedback signal simultaneously, and the two signals interfere with each other, resulting in a lack of precision. Now that the electric current exerted the force for him, his brain only needed to do one thing: perceive the time it took for the force to travel from his calf to his waist, the angle from his waist to his shoulder, and the path from his shoulder to his fingertips.

This training method helps him find the correct path for generating power. In the Ming Jin stage, he needs to open up the vibration transmission chain throughout his body, eliminating energy leakage at every stage. The mid-frequency therapy device uses electrical current to simulate the correct sequence of power generation.

My cousin passed by the pond and saw him standing on the platform, his entire body covered in electrical wires. She stopped and stood there for several seconds before continuing on her way. My mother came to bring water and stood in front of the platform for a while, asking, "What are you doing?"

"Practice generating power," Li Xuan replied with his eyes closed. The current was circulating through his erector spinae muscles for the third time. He could feel a slight angular deviation at the junction of the fifth lumbar vertebra and the sacrum; that section of the spine was always a half-beat slower when generating power. He focused his attention on that spot, letting the current stimulate it repeatedly until that muscle began to contract actively in rhythm with the current.

My fourth uncle and father came over to take a look after hearing about it. My fourth uncle watched for a while before speaking first: "Let me try."

Li Xuan removed the electrode pads and helped his fourth uncle apply them. His fourth uncle assumed a horse stance, and when the current surged in, his shoulders visibly trembled. He adjusted his breathing, and after a few minutes, the trembling stopped, replaced by a subtle, continuous vibration that traveled from the soles of his feet to his fingertips.

"Did you feel it? When the power comes up from the soles of your feet, your waist moves first, then your shoulders." Uncle Si didn't speak, he just nodded slightly. Then, Father also tried it. From that day on, they would set aside some time each day to train their power generation.

The construction of the wall began early the next morning.

Fourth Uncle drove the excavator out from outside the courtyard wall and used the bucket to push down the old stone wall. He picked out the intact stones and piled them aside as filler for the new wall, while the broken stones were used to pave the roadbed. The job of mixing cement mortar fell to Li Xuan.

Uncle Si squatted beside the arched foundation, drawing lines on the rock face with a stone pencil. He used the natural rock face of the cliff as the starting point for the wall, curving outwards before connecting to the mountainside. The arc wasn't large, but it perfectly encompassed the narrowest part of the road. Standing outside the wall and looking up, one could only see the arched stone wall, not the courtyard inside. To get up, a car had to first turn around the apex of the arc, naturally slowing it down.

At noon, Mother brought lunch downstairs. Father came over from the cave, glanced at it, nodded, said nothing, and went back to his work.

My father and mother have been working on the cave for the past two days. The cave was originally a natural karst cave with two levels. Spring water gushes out from a crevice in the lower level, forming a small pool at the bottom. My father moved a small generator he'd salvaged from a construction site to a stone platform next to the pool and made a makeshift turbine out of sheet metal and wooden planks. He tried several times before getting the angle right—too fast a flow and the blades would spin aimlessly; too slow and it wouldn't be able to power the turbine.

Father rummaged through the toolbox and found light bulbs and wires, running them from the generator terminals all the way up to the upper level. Four bulbs were installed—two in the upper living area, one by the pool on the lower level, and one outside the cave entrance. In the evening, the last bulb was connected, and the switch was turned on. All four bulbs lit up simultaneously, their dim yellow light warming the cave walls.

The mother stood on the upper floor looking down, her lips twitching, but she didn't speak. The younger cousin peeked out from behind the curtain, her eyes lighting up as she looked at the light bulb. She pasted a sticker she'd brought from home—a faded sunflower—on the rock wall of her room.