Still hoarding supplies in the apocalypse? I'll just go on a killing spree and looting!

Dark as ink.

Lin You stood on the edge of the rooftop, her toes touching the weathered and peeling cement, opposite which was the brightly lit police station.

The wind rushed in from all directions, tearing at the hem of her clothes.

She didn't hold onto the railing; she simply gazed at the brightly lit city in the distance.

The headlights formed a broken chain of light, a dazzling galaxy created by human civilization.

The nearby residential area was filled with the lights of countless windows, and in each of those windows, people were busy working hard for tomorrow's life.

They don't know that tomorrow they will never have to struggle for a living again.

I wonder if the world I wake up to tomorrow morning will be more unfamiliar than any nightmare.

But she knew.

In her past life, she spent five years running around this city, treading through every ruin in order to survive in this city that was on the verge of decay.

The wind rushed into her collar, tugging at her clothes and making a whooshing sound.

His bald head gleamed with a cold, white light in the night and amidst the city lights.

She pulled out the mantis knife wrapped in newspaper and placed the blade horizontally against the railing.

They pounded on the railing, making rhythmic clanging sounds, and hummed a tune that seemed to belong to either the Age of Order or the Age of Doomsday.

The music was strange, peaceful yet tinged with sadness, like the relief before death.

Tonight is the last moment of peace.

Tomorrow will become an abyss.

Because she crawled in the abyss for five years, died inside, and then crawled out again.

In this city, in this land, in this post-apocalyptic wasteland.

She looked up.

There were no stars overhead, only a layer of hazy clouds, which were tinged with a dark red by the distant lights.

But she knew something was brewing above the clouds—the harbinger of doom.

She looked up; the sky was ablaze.

That's the aurora borealis.

Solar ion storms are invisible; they are streams of high-energy particles, radiation, and silent killing.

But the moment it struck the Earth's magnetosphere, it ignited the entire ionosphere.

The clouds overhead were no longer inky black, but were tinged with ever-changing bands of dark green and dark purple light.

The band of light radiated out from directly above, like the blood of God being splashed across the sky.

Those magnificent auroras should only be seen in the Arctic or Antarctic Circles.

But tonight they hang overhead over Z City.

She stared at the aurora borealis without blinking.

She had seen this in her past life. On the night of the apocalypse, she stood in her cheap rented room, gazing with admiration at this beauty that did not belong to this world.

But they didn't know what the aurora borealis represented under this magnificent light.

The ion storm will penetrate every unprotected circuit board and burn out every electronic device that is not turned off.

Cell phones, computers, satellites, power grids, communication base stations... all turned into scrap metal in that instant.

The foundation of the old civilization was completely removed at that moment, leaving only ruins.

Then the meteor shower... arrived.

The beautiful aurora was instantly torn apart, as if the sky had been mercilessly ripped apart by a giant hand.

A rift appeared in the sky, like the eye of a demon, opening amidst the blood-soaked heavens.

When the first meteorite emerged from the dark red crack, it left a dark red trail, like a piece of embers that had been thrown down.

Then there were countless more.

They didn't fall, they poured down—the entire sky was ablaze, thousands of fiery streaks spilling outwards, turning the night sky into a burning tapestry.

It makes it hard to tell which is the sky and which is the earth.

No sound.

Only light, and the shadow of light, run across the earth.

When the largest one struck the earth, a silent white light rose from the horizon.

The light swallowed up the skyscrapers, the factories, and the outlines of the overpasses.

At the moment of impact, a hemispherical white light rose up—not fire, but plasma with a temperature high enough to vaporize reinforced concrete.

The white light lasted for about three seconds, followed by a deafening roar, the kind of roar that tears and twists the earth.

The blast wave swept across the entire city, shattering all the windows, overturning parked cars, and sending sirens blaring.

It was like the city's final clamor.

The air is compressed into a wall, pushing outwards from the point of impact.

The factory's corrugated iron roof was completely ripped off and disintegrated in the air.

The windows in the residential area that were still lit were blown open from the inside out by the pressure difference before the shock wave arrived, and shards of glass poured onto the street like a torrential rain.

The overpass surface was undulating and twisted. A truck that was still moving was pushed sideways, crashed through the guardrail, and overturned off the bridge. The fuel tank exploded, and flames rose from under the bridge.

The shockwave pushed the smoke and dust into a high, ring-shaped wall, spreading outwards from the point of impact.

It crushed everything and swallowed up the lights.

Smoke and dust rose and spread high in the sky, obscuring the cracks and the meteorite's tail.

The sky faded from dark red to gray-white, and then to deathly gray.

Then the ashes began to fall, covering the burning ruins, the collapsed buildings, everything.

It's like waves formed by layers of gray fog.

It rolled forward from the west of the city, not drifting over, but pushing over.

It advanced close to the ground, devouring streets, cars, streetlights, and corpses.

The car that crashed into the utility pole was still burning, and the flames reflected off the surface of the gray fog, giving it an eerie, gloomy appearance.

The flame flickered for a moment before disappearing completely.

The gray fog advanced at a moderate speed, neither fast nor slow.

It advanced from the east of the city to the center in less than ten minutes. It swallowed up the windows that were still lit, and the last glimmer of light vanished.

The entire city is being erased layer by layer, plunging into darkness shrouded in gray fog.

The police station is one of the tallest buildings in the vicinity.

The gray fog engulfed its ground floor and spread to the second floor. She heard indistinct sounds coming from within the fog—the screams of people.

The fog stopped about a meter before reaching the edge of the rooftop.

Then she saw it.

There is a light in the fog—but it is not a light, it is an eye.

Dark green, with pupils that are vertical slits, larger than a person's fist.

They floated in the gray fog, lighting up without warning, like two cold lights that had been suddenly turned on.

Then, the two eyes began to move and rise upwards.

The gray fog churned and retreated around it, like a layer of ripples being stirred.

Its outline emerged from the fog.

A wedge-shaped head covered with dark gray scales, no ears, only two rows of gill-like slits opening and closing on the sides of the neck.

Then there are the scapulae, where two bulges rise up.

The muscles beneath the scales were slowly undulating, as if something was growing under the skin.

Its body is humanoid, but its limbs are disproportionate—its arms are too long, hanging down below its knees.

The fingertips are not nails, but hooks made of bone.

It stood directly below the edge of the rooftop, only one floor away from her.

She didn't move.

She had seen this kind of thing in her past life.

Not this one, but the same kind. In her first year in the wasteland, she encountered one in the ruins of a chemical plant to the north, and almost died that time.

They were brought by meteorites or created by ash fog.

No one knows the answer.

Lin You carried the mantis knife, its serrated tip gleaming with a cold green light in the gray world.

She did not lower her body or adopt a fighting stance.

She simply stood there, looking down into the eyes of the strange beast.

The wind stopped.

The gray fog finally engulfed the entire city of Z.

Lin You took a step forward, her boot toes touching the concrete barrier at the edge of the rooftop, her body leaning slightly forward.

She spun the mantis knife around, with the serrated edges facing outwards and the blade held horizontally in front of her.

She looked down at the strange beast emerging from the gray mist, and her lips twitched slightly.

Hi, long time no see!

Lin You finally confirmed that the world had finally become the way she remembered it.

The beast did not respond. But suddenly, the gill-like slits on the side of its neck opened wide, emitting an extremely sharp hiss that pierced through the gray mist.

The gray fog was stirred up and began to surge like a tide.

Then, as if it had spotted prey, it began to climb rapidly.

The bony hooks pierced the wall, and the concrete became as fragile as foam under their claws.

It climbs upwards at an extremely fast speed, able to cross the edge of the rooftop in three seconds.

She waited until the second, then swung the knife down.

The goal is to insert its left-hand hook into the wall.

The blade struck the bone with a dull, crisp sound. Using the force of her entire body pressing down, she twisted sharply—the hook broke.

The beast lost its support and tilted to the left, its right hook carving four deep grooves into the wall.

Sparks were left on the wall.

A tail—swung up from the outside of the wall and got tangled in the rooftop railing.

With a bone spike attached to its tail, it got stuck in the gap of the iron railing, tearing the entire railing out of shape.

Lin You did not give it a chance to regain its balance.

The moment it used its tail to propel itself up, she stepped onto the railing and fell towards the ground.

It wasn't cunning—Lin You did it on purpose.

Lin You's body began to dive towards the ground, which would be considered suicidal by a normal person.

However, as if cooperating with Lin You, the strange beast leaped directly from the swirling gray mist towards the rooftop.

The relay point is that long tail.

This is a first-tier peak clawed beast. If its tail can split into two, it means that it has advanced to a second-tier beast.

Lin You gripped the knife handle with both hands, blade facing down, aiming at the surging gray mist.

A shadow broke through the surging gray fog.

In an instant, the man and the beast were almost face to face.

The dark green eyes reflected the approaching figure, filled with confusion and shock.

It wanted to launch an attack, but it was too slow.

The knife pierced diagonally upwards from below its left collarbone, passing through the scales and bypassing the hard sternum.

Piercing the heart through the gap.

Its dark green blood flowed down the serrated edge of the blade, emitting a pungent, strange smell.

It let out a hoarse howl, and before dying, it swung its right hook at her face.

She tilted her head, the hook brushing against her bald head.

Lin You used her knee to brace against its abdomen, and with her other hand, she swung the mantis knife in a backhand motion, the serrated edge cutting into the gill slit on the side of its neck.

Stretch horizontally to the end.

Dark green blood gushed from the wound on his neck, tracing an arc in the air, accompanied by a dying scream.

The Claw Beast's body plummeted into the gray mist.

The tail lost its strength and loosened its grip on the tightly wrapped bars.

"Bang!"

A muffled thud.

From the surging gray mist, a hideous head rolled off. The headless beast twitched twice and then lay still.

She jumped off the Claw Beast, stood up straight, and took a deep breath.

A sense of familiarity welled up inside me.

Blood was dripping from the mantis knife. She flicked the blade, and the dark green liquid drew a broken line on the cement floor.

She looked up at the sky.

The magnificent aurora and the burning sky were obscured by the surging gray fog, leaving only a deathly gray expanse.

Lin You stood beside the corpse and placed her hand on the carcass of the Claw Beast.

The system interface pops up.

Unregistered alien species detected. Should we proceed with the decomposition?

confirm.

The beast's corpse began to decompose from the wound on its neck, with its scales scattering specks of light layer by layer.

Soon those points of light formed a cluster of light.

The ball of light expanded rapidly, then suddenly contracted and disappeared.

Something fell from mid-air.

A dagger, its blade curved like a hook, was made from the longest finger bone of that strange beast.

She looked up at the police station across the street.

The appearance of the strange beasts so quickly suggests that things might not be going well for Mu Xue.