Chapter 1: After the End of the World, I Was Reborn

Pain. Too much pain.

A searing agony spread through every inch of Zhang Yi’s body.

This was no illusion. It was a brutal reality happening to him right now.

The friends and neighbors he had once trusted and helped were mercilessly smashing him to the ground, fists, feet, even clubs raining down upon him like a storm.

In this resource-starved apocalypse, they did not even hesitate out of gratitude for what he had once done for them. They simply turned on him!

At the edge of death, he vaguely saw the goddess in his heart, Fang Yuqing, standing behind the crowd. With a pitiful expression, she shouted with all her strength, “I was the one who told him to open the door. You have to give me an extra share of the supplies!”

It was this woman who had tricked Zhang Yi into opening the door, and then killed him.

Zhang Yi stared at her, hatred and regret blazing in his eyes.

If there was anyone to blame, it was only himself for being too foolish, too kind, and letting himself become a stepping stone for others in this end times.

How desperately he wished everything could begin again.

If that happened, he would never show mercy to anyone again. He would live only for himself.

Very soon, Zhang Yi’s vision went black, and he lost consciousness.

Yet the next moment, he suddenly opened his eyes and sat straight up from the sofa.

The hellish scene he had just experienced was still vivid, and the terrifying pain remained fresh in his memory.

Zhang Yi gasped for breath, and in no time his whole body was drenched in sweat.

“What happened? Didn’t those beastly neighbors kill me?”

After regaining his senses, Zhang Yi began to look around.

This place was not unfamiliar to him. It was his own home.

Yet the pleasantly warm air around him made him feel strangely unsettled.

Because in December of 2050, Blue Star had been struck by the effects of a supernova explosion from half a million light-years away, ushering in a global catastrophe of frigid storms.

Temperatures across the world plunged. In Tianhai City, where Zhang Yi lived, daily temperatures sat at sixty or seventy degrees below zero. Blizzard after blizzard had fallen for a full month, burying the entire city.

It was said that in the north of the country, the cold had even reached a terrifying one hundred degrees below zero. The earth itself was buried beneath ice and snow.

Countless forms of life were wiped out on a vast scale, and more than ninety-five percent of humanity perished in the disaster.

Zhang Yi stood up and took a bottle of water from the refrigerator, then drank more than half of it in great gulps.

Though the chilled water was extremely cold, for him now it was no different from nectar.

During the apocalypse, the only way people could obtain water was to go outside and, enduring the extreme cold of sixty or seventy degrees below zero, dig up snow and melt it.

Such labor could easily freeze a person to death.

After finishing the water, Zhang Yi picked up his phone and glanced at it.

The display showed the date, November 12.

There was still a full month before the end of the world.

“Looks like I’ve been reborn.”

Zhang Yi drew in a deep breath and quickly understood what had happened.

That month of experience could not possibly have been a dream, especially not the agony of being torn apart by others. It had been far too real.

He lifted his head, and after surviving disaster by the narrowest margin, his heart filled with overwhelming relief.

At the same time, a sharp, ruthless light flashed in his eyes.

The people who had killed him before, he remembered every single one of them clearly.

In this life, he would survive properly. He would never again show kindness to those animals.

And provided his own safety was secure, he would make those beasts pay dearly.

But for now, the first thing Zhang Yi had to consider was how to survive well in the apocalypse that would descend in a month.

His living conditions were fairly decent.

His parents had died years ago, and he had inherited a one-hundred-and-twenty-square-meter apartment in Tianhai City.

He also had more than two million in savings. In ordinary times, that would have been considered quite comfortable.

But once the apocalypse arrived, supplies all over the world would become desperately scarce.

With only that little money, he would not be able to hold out for long.

After all, for one person to survive, what he needed was a massive quantity of supplies.

Since he now had time to prepare in advance, Zhang Yi did not merely want to stay alive. He also wanted his future life to retain some quality.

Food and entertainment both had to be accounted for, or his mind would surely collapse after too long.

And weapons and equipment were absolutely necessary as well. Only then would he be able to protect himself and carry out his revenge on his neighbors.

At that moment, a streak of white light suddenly appeared before Zhang Yi’s eyes.

He thought his right eye had gone a little blurry, so he raised a hand and rubbed it.

But all at once, a strange thought surged through his mind.

It seemed that the streak of white light was itself part of him, and information about it also appeared in his consciousness.

Zhang Yi’s thoughts shifted, and his awareness instantly entered that white light.

When he looked inside, he found that it was an enormous, blank, white space.

Its size was impossible to judge. There was only an expanse of emptiness.

“Could this be... another dimension?”

“So after my rebirth, I’ve gained some special ability.”

Joy immediately rose in Zhang Yi’s heart.

It seemed the passage of gamma rays had caused a mutation in his body, granting him extraordinary power.

With such a vast space, storing supplies for the apocalypse would become far more convenient.

However, Zhang Yi wanted to know exactly how much it could hold, and whether there were any limits to what could be taken in.

His consciousness promptly returned to his room, and he began testing by putting household items into the space.

He started with teacups and washbasins, and they were easily stored.

Then Zhang Yi began trying to stuff larger appliances inside.

Televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, computers, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners.

The white space accepted everything without complaint, swallowing all of them whole.

What was more, with a single thought, Zhang Yi could retrieve anything from the space at will.

However, objects under powerful external force, or things that were not separate in themselves, were difficult to take in.

For example, when he tried to pry up a section of floor from the ground, there was no response at all.

“This other dimension seems to obey many rules. I’ll have to figure them out slowly.”

“But just this enormous storage space alone is enough to let me stockpile a mountain of resources!”

He licked his lips, and a bold plan began forming in his mind.

Zhang Yi worked as a supervisor in the South China warehouse of Wal-Mart Supermarket.

As the world’s largest supermarket chain, Wal-Mart had every imaginable kind of merchandise.

In China, it operated three giant warehouses: one in Central China, one in South China, and one in North China.

The scale of these three warehouses was truly terrifying, especially the South China warehouse.

Built in 2040, it was fifteen hundred meters long and seven hundred twenty meters wide, covering more than a million square meters. It was the largest warehouse in the world.

The president of Wal-Mart Greater China had once praised it as the eighth wonder of the world.

Of course, the world officially recognizes only seven wonders, while the so-called eighth wonder is whatever people decide to call it, numbering in the thousands.

But in terms of area and storage capacity, the South China warehouse truly stood at the pinnacle of the entire global warehousing industry.

The supplies normally stored there could support the consumption of several cities and tens of millions of people for an entire week.

That meant if Zhang Yi could empty a warehouse completely and move everything into his own space...

Then let alone a lifetime—he would not even be able to use it all in ten lifetimes.

Most importantly, Wal-Mart’s quality control was extremely strict.

There was no low-grade, off-brand junk in the warehouse.

Whether food, general merchandise, or luxury goods, everything was from reputable brands with solid reputations.

If Zhang Yi could empty out one of Wal-Mart’s warehouses, he would not only have no need to worry about supplies when the apocalypse came, but he would also be able to live quite luxuriously.

As the warehouse supervisor, Zhang Yi knew every shelf, every surveillance device, and every staff shift with complete familiarity.

For him, emptying the warehouse would absolutely not be a difficult task.

Once his mind was made up, he felt much more at ease.

Gurgle...

Just then, Zhang Yi’s stomach let out a protesting growl.

He rubbed his belly and glanced at the serving of braised chicken and rice sitting on the table.

After a moment’s hesitation, he smiled, shook his head, and decided to forgo the takeout.

“In another month, the apocalypse arrives. I need to eat all the delicious things I can now, or I won’t get the chance later. Why keep being so stingy with myself?”

He had endured a month of cold and hunger. Right now, he urgently wanted to eat something hot and delicious.

What was money for, anyway?

When the end of the world came, money would turn into scraps of paper. Better to spend it all now, so nothing would go to waste.

Zhang Yi turned with carefree ease, ready to find a fine restaurant he had once been unwilling to enter and enjoy a proper feast.