Chapter 3: Bloodborne Infection
At this moment, atop West Cloud Mountain.
What Lin Yu didn’t know was that a man had appeared in the very place he had just searched.
Clad in hiking gear, the man had likely trespassed into West Cloud Mountain, drawn by the desire to witness the sunrise.
He found a suitable spot and began setting up a tent.
In Tianhai City, at Tianhai University.
Lin Xiaoyou carefully placed a golden fruit into her bag.
“Is the world about to change?”
She looked up at the night sky, now returned to darkness, overwhelmed with awe.
Since chatting with her brother that evening, she had slipped away to the soccer field behind the dormitory to quietly wait for dawn. Unexpectedly, a meteor shower truly arrived.
Its scale was unprecedented, a once-in-a-century phenomenon.
In thousands of years of records, there had never been such a massive meteor shower.
“It’s exactly as my brother said.”
After the meteor shower, Lin Xiaoyou saw many luminous orbs fall within the school grounds.
“I must collect more.”
Recalling her brother’s advice, she summoned her courage and boldly found six orbs on the soccer field, gathering their contents into her bag.
The campus was originally quiet in the early hours.
But the meteor shower roused some students to get up and watch.
As the meteor shower approached and orbs descended, the entire school buzzed with excitement, the whole city of Tianhai stirred, and even the world was electrified that night.
Within half an hour, countless people worldwide had encountered these orbs and obtained their contents.
On the way back to her dorm.
“Another one!”
Lin Xiaoyou beamed with joy, carefully slipping another orb’s contents into her arms.
With seven fruits in her possession, she hurried back to the dormitory, which was now lively and noisy, far from its usual quiet.
At the summit of West Cloud Mountain.
Lin Yu gazed at his haul, his heart swelling with excitement.
“A total of sixty-two rare treasures.”
Besides small ceramic bottles, he had seven cards, three red fruits, sixteen yellow fruits, and thirty-five green fruits.
“This is an absolute fortune!”
The true evolution had yet to begin, and though he lacked the skill to appraise these items, he understood their worth.
In the early days of the apocalypse, possessing these was enough to make someone strong.
In this new era, everyone starting on the path of evolution had low initial attributes.
A normal person's base stats were:
[Magic: 500]
[Strength: 5 points]
[Constitution: 5 points]
[Speed: 5 points]
[Spirit: 5 points]
Most ordinary people had stats like these; those with better physiques might have strength or constitution around seven or eight points.
“Though some frail individuals might only have three or four points.”
Lin Yu smiled to himself.
The fruits he had just collected were attribute or magic fruits.
Once evolution began, consuming them would boost his stats.
Green fruits were low-level; eating one added one attribute point, or 100 magic if it was a magic fruit.
Yellow ones were mid-level; one added five attribute points, or 500 magic.
“Red fruits—I never even saw these in my past life.”
Lin Yu was thrilled.
Red high-grade attribute fruits granted fifty attribute points each; red high-grade magic fruits added 5,000 magic each.
He had scavenged orbs from nearly half of West Cloud Mountain, and if all the fruits were attribute fruits, the total would amount to 265 attribute points.
Ordinary people's combined four attributes only reached about 20 points.
He could immediately boost his initial stats to around 200 points—an astonishing leap.
Suppressing his excitement, Lin Yu leaned against a large crevice and checked his phone.
There were no trending discussions about the meteor shower on the headlines.
“Seems like people aren’t paying much attention to it.”
He murmured.
After all, it was the middle of the night.
Most people were asleep at home; even those who glimpsed the meteor shower likely saw it as just a spectacle.
Moreover, Lin Yu knew most orbs had fallen in remote mountains and forests.
The vast forests were the primary landing zones, while the bustling city saw far fewer.
Tightening his backpack, he closed his eyes to rest, awaiting the evolutionary rain that would come the next day.
He hadn’t eaten any attribute fruits yet, as consuming them now would waste much energy; only after evolution began could he absorb them fully.
“Ding dong.”
Lin Yu opened his messaging app and saw a voice message from his childhood friend, Wang Kang.
“Lin, you’re incredible! You actually guessed it right—have you learned fortune-telling or something?”
Wang Kang sounded both amazed and suspicious.
Everything Lin Yu had told him had come true; it was practically prophecy.
“Cut the nonsense. How many orbs did you collect?” Lin Yu asked, curious.
“I ran all over the neighborhood and found nine orbs. Also, I accidentally caught someone in a compromising situation behind the pavilion—hehe…”
Even through the phone, Lin Yu could imagine Wang Er Gou’s sly grin.
“Only nine? Don’t tell me you forgot the mission to watch that for some private viewing.”
“No way! I just stumbled upon that by accident. The guy probably got scared stiff. Hehe,” Wang Kang replied cheekily.
“What did you get from the orbs?”
“Two cards, one red fruit, one yellow fruit, two metal nuggets I don’t recognize, and three green fruits.”
“You’re lucky, Er Gou. Don’t forget my instructions: be under the rain at noon tomorrow and eat all the fruits afterward.”
Lin Yu reminded him before ending the chat.
He then tapped on Lin Xiaoyou’s profile without hesitation.
“Beep...”
After about half a minute, the call connected.
“How was your haul, Xiaoyou?”
“Brother, I only found seven orbs. Inside, there were six green fruits and one golden fruit.”
Lin Xiaoyou’s voice came through the phone.
“Golden fruit?”
Lin Yu exclaimed.
He hadn’t expected that among the seven orbs she gathered, there would be a golden fruit.
Such a fruit was unheard of even in his past life.
He didn’t know how much attribute it added, but it was definitely far more powerful than a red fruit.
All the fruits he had scavenged on West Cloud Mountain might not even compare to that golden fruit.
“Hehe, I’m awesome, right?” Lin Xiaoyou sent a proud expression—so adorable.
“It’s late; go to sleep soon! Remember what I said.”
Lin Yu sent a head-patting emoji, inwardly marveling at his sister’s unbelievable luck.
Though the other six were ordinary green fruits, one golden fruit far surpassed them all.
“This luck is truly phenomenal...”
After ending the call, Lin Yu, feeling sleepy, drifted off.
At dawn, as the sky began to brighten, Lin Yu opened his eyes and felt the contents of his backpack, relieved.
“Good, it wasn’t a dream!”
He took out some bread and water to replenish his energy and quietly awaited the evolutionary rain at noon.
He felt both excited and apprehensive.
At the same time, he called the supermarket outside Xiaoyou’s school to send supplies.
—
Meanwhile, in the hospital.
“Mr. Duan, your son appears to have a blood infection.”
“Upon examination, we found a significant amount of urine in his bloodstream.”
The doctor spoke cautiously.
“Urine in the blood? Do you take me for an idiot?” a burly middle-aged man shouted beside the hospital bed.
Behind him stood six imposing men in black suits, exuding menace.
“Please calm down, Mr. Duan.”
The attending physician wiped sweat from his brow and spoke carefully.
“After investigation, we discovered that the person who fought with your son knocked out our nurse and secretly replaced the infusion with urine.”
The man before him was a prominent businessman in Kun City but secretly led a criminal syndicate.
Such an incident made him deeply uneasy.
“Mr. Duan, we’ve tracked the boy’s whereabouts.”
Just then, a man in black entered.
“He likely went to West Cloud Mountain. Should we report this to the police?”
“How dare he make trouble under my nose? Reporting him is too lenient.”
Mr. Duan’s eyes darkened as he sneered.
“Send a few men to bring that boy back. I want to question him personally.”
He had initially wanted to stay out of trivial disputes between kids.
But this was too much—the boy actually infused his own son with urine!
That was utterly unforgivable.
—