Chapter 1: The Beginning

Blazing white light, blurred figures, and hushed, excited conversations...

"Dr. Zhong... could it be... the nerves... the brain nerves..."

"Of course... there will be breakthroughs... not long from now..."

Buzzing, buzzing.

Mo Yu felt as if her head was about to explode, her mind being stirred as though by a knife, the pain radiating through her entire body.

It was an unbearable agony, a nightmare from which she could not awaken. Unable to endure any longer, tears silently slipped down her cheeks. Let me be selfish, just this once.

"Dr. Zhong! Test subject 00427 is having a violent brainwave reaction!"

"Quick, inject Agent HT1!"

Panicked footsteps and the clattering of bottles echoed through the vast, solemn laboratory.

"Dr. Zhong, here!"

"Beeeeep——!"

The precise instruments blared with a piercing, shrill alarm.

"Dr... Dr. Zhong, there are... there are no brainwaves!"

It was clear: the person strapped to the experimental bed with special metal had died.

"How... how is this possible! She was stable just a moment ago!"

The young researcher, who had kept calling for Dr. Zhong, wore a look of utter shock. Dr. Zhong hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment, before turning to his subordinate and saying, "Subject 00427, original name Mo Yu, psychic ability user, mid-tier third rank. Died in the third year of the New Era due to brainwave failure, age... Right, Li Tong, how old was subject 00427?"

Li Tong paused in his archival work and adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses.

"Twenty-two years old."

"Twenty-two... years old..."

"Yes."

"Prepare the next subject. Dispose of this one."

"Yes. Next subject, 00428—He Ting, earth ability user, early stage second rank..."

The previous chaos seemed to vanish as quickly as it had appeared.

Li Tong knew all too well what "dispose" meant: extract the psychic’s core, then feed them to the zombies. He had personally sent off 426 test subjects already—how could he not know? Pity these people; while alive, they could not feed the zombies, but in death, they became food for their ravenous mouths. Such was the end of the world.

From that moment on, there would never again be a twenty-two-year-old girl named Mo Yu in this world.

Mo Yu, oh Mo Yu—swallowed by the universe, forever silent...