Chapter 6: The Apocalypse Begins

**The Apocalypse: God Loves to Lie (Revised)**

“At the very last second of May 20, 2013, the apocalypse broke out. Those infected with the flu turned into the living dead. They had no intelligence, no emotions, moved sluggishly, lost all sensation, and were driven by an insatiable, frenzied hunger for food. Yes, these were what people called zombies. Besides the flu victims, some healthy people also turned into zombies—most of them had weak immune systems before the apocalypse. Together, they formed the first wave of zombies, making up about one-tenth of the population. Only smashing their brains or breaking their necks could kill them for good...”

“Ah—!”

A heart-wrenching scream pierced the midnight silence.

Bian Changxi’s eyes snapped open. She sat up in bed, reaching for the alarm clock on her nightstand just as it started ringing. She turned it off. The time: exactly midnight.

Only a dim bedside lamp lit the bedroom. Bian Changxi glanced around, listening intently. The scream had come from the building across the way, and it hadn’t stopped. Now, it was mixed with shouting, crying, and the sounds of a struggle.

Her heart tightened. She threw on a jacket, slipped into her slippers, and carefully stepped out onto the balcony. In the New Wind residential complex, only the streetlights were still on, casting a hazy glow over everything. Across the way, on the fourth floor of Building 3, an orange light was on. A woman with disheveled hair was clawing desperately at the doorframe, trying to escape onto the balcony, screaming for help. But something behind her was holding her back.

Suddenly, a head lunged forward from behind and bit into the woman’s neck. The woman screamed wildly, shoving at her attacker, her hands flailing until she grabbed something like a clothes rod and jabbed it backward with all her strength. Seizing the chance, she scrambled onto the balcony, sobbing and shrieking, “Stay away! Don’t come any closer!”

In the glow from across the way, Bian Changxi could see the woman was covered in blood, her neck almost entirely bitten through—a gruesome sight. The figure that emerged from the room behind her was even more terrifying.

It could no longer be called human.

It moved slowly, its eyes bulging from their sockets, skin pale and mottled with signs of decay. Vile liquid oozed from its gaping mouth and eye sockets. In truth, Bian Changxi couldn’t see all this so clearly; she was piecing together the scene from memories of her previous life. As it appeared, a nauseating stench filled the air.

It opened its mouth wide, letting out a chilling growl, and lunged excitedly at the woman.

The woman, utterly broken, screamed and scrambled up onto the railing, squeezing her eyes shut as she jumped.

Bian Changxi’s face tightened. She instinctively reached out a hand, taking a step forward, but then froze, her hand suspended in midair before she silently pulled it back.

She walked to the edge of the balcony and looked down. The woman had landed in the bushes below, unmoving—clearly dead. Looking up again, she saw the zombie greedily tearing into a chunk of flesh it had ripped from the woman’s calf, then letting out another low growl as it reached toward Bian Changxi’s direction.

Clearly, it had caught her scent.

Everything was deathly silent.

After two seconds, screams and retching began to ring out from all around.

Bian Changxi looked up. Lights were coming on in many apartments. People poked their heads out of windows or stood on their balconies. They had obviously seen, at least in part, what had just happened. The sight of the woman’s desperate leap had shocked everyone, and the bloody, nauseating image of the zombie was more than they could bear.

It was like a horror movie—beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.

Before people could recover, tragedy struck in several more apartments. In some, zombies easily killed and devoured people; in others, entire families fought desperately against a single zombie, the chaos turning the night upside down.

A man on a balcony shouted, “The end of the world! It’s the end of the world! That post wasn’t lying—those are zombies! They’ve all turned into zombies!”

No one answered him. The security guards, alarmed, rushed over with flashlights. When they saw the woman’s body, they were shocked and wanted to go check. The man shouted at them, “Don’t go near her! That woman was bitten by a zombie—she’ll turn into one too and attack you! Get away from her! No, wait—cut off her head, quickly!”

Bian Changxi glanced over in surprise. That man lived right next door to the tragedy; he must have witnessed the whole thing, and in high definition, too. Now, with the zombie roaring at him, his fear and clarity were understandable—no wonder he was the first to react.

Unfortunately, these first-generation zombies weren’t infectious. Simply put, if someone was bitten or scratched by this first wave, they wouldn’t turn into zombies themselves. Those killed by them were just dead—dead for good.

She looked at the woman’s corpse, thinking regretfully that if the woman had survived, she would have had a high chance of awakening a supernatural ability.

Most of the strongest ability users in the apocalypse came about this way: injured by a zombie, surviving, and then awakening incredible powers. Later, the capital’s editorial office called this “the gift of the first victims.”

But there was another side to this. Three days later, when the infectious zombies appeared, most people had already grown careless after dealing with the non-infectious ones. They let their guard down in fights, didn’t pay attention to injuries, and many became infected. Those people then bit their companions, one after another, wave after wave. The first massive wave of human casualties after the apocalypse came three days later—a tragedy later dubbed “God Loves to Lie.”

And the only person who knew the truth was Bian Changxi, who had only ever told Bai Heng.

Her eyes dimmed.

She had grown numb. Posting that warning online had been a spur-of-the-moment act, just to ease her conscience after emailing Bai Heng. After all, survival of the fittest—wasn’t that lie just another way for fate to sift humanity? She had no intention of revealing the truth.

But seeing someone die so horribly before her eyes again, she wavered.

Should she find a way to let the truth out?

How many lives could a single piece of information save?

Bian Changxi quietly retreated to her bedroom. Her new phone, which Bian Kuang had insisted on buying her, was ringing nonstop. The caller ID showed it was Bian Kuang.

She answered. Bian Kuang’s anxious voice burst out, “Xiao Xi! Are you okay? It’s really happening! Zombies have appeared in my area—we saw the whole thing through binoculars!”

“We?”

“Yeah, I got together with a few friends and we tried to prepare a bit, but I never thought... Xiao Xi, you’re still in that complex, right? Don’t move, I’ll come get you right now—”

“Bian Kuang!” Bian Changxi cut him off. “Did you forget what I told you? Calm down! Don’t come looking for me. Since you guys have prepared, think things through carefully. You can’t be worse off than those caught completely off guard. Let’s both do our best to survive. We’ll see each other again.”"