Chapter 122: The Origin of the Zombie Virus
At this moment, people still didn’t know—this day would be forever etched in their memories, a day they’d wake from in nightmares, a day they’d speak of with dread.
A hundred-meter-long blue whale soared through the sky, eyes rolled back, its body crisscrossed with bloody veins. Out of curiosity, many looked up, calling friends over, pulling out their phones to take pictures, the scene full of noisy chatter.
In her past life, Luo Zhu was woken up by the commotion outside. When she opened the window and saw the flying whale, she ended up getting bitten by a corpse-fish.
“Look, that whale’s mouth is open so wide!” someone shouted.
The blue whale had opened its mouth to a full ninety degrees, and countless corpse-fish leapt out, as if raining fish upon the vast city below. The corpse-fish scattered across the entire city.
These fish also had thin wings, but they weren’t capable of flying—just gliding.
From a thousand meters in the air, the corpse-fish glided downward with a screech, their jaws lined with sharp teeth, biting at anything in sight.
Seeing such a terrifying transformation, people fled in panic.
Those bitten didn’t immediately turn into zombies. First, they felt pain, then confusion and disorientation. Their minds became foggy, and they instinctively followed the crowd, running toward what seemed like safer places.
Ten minutes later, they fully transformed into zombies.
By that time, the newly turned zombies were already in malls, supermarkets, schools, underground parking lots…
“Hey, what’s wrong with you?” Many people had hidden in a nearby supermarket. Someone noticed their companion acting strangely.
That companion—now a zombie—suddenly bared bloody fangs and lunged at them in a frenzy.
“Ah! He’s lost it!”
“Hold him down!”
People quickly subdued that zombie, but by then, too many had already been bitten.
Everyone bitten also took ten minutes to transform, turning the entire supermarket into a zombie hunting ground. Barely anyone survived.
A family of three huddled together in a bathroom stall, trembling.
The wife, still shaken, whispered, “Is… is it over?”
Clack.
A bloody hand grabbed the edge of the door, stretching to peer through the ten-centimeter-high gap. Because of the angle, it couldn’t see inside—but somehow, it sensed someone was there. It reached its hand in, groping around the floor.
Seeing this, the family nearly had heart attacks.
Fortunately, they were standing further inside. The zombie felt around for a bit without finding anyone and eventually left.
Whew—
All three let out a breath of relief and relaxed a bit. The young daughter looked up—only to see a zombie clinging to the top of the door, grinning down at them with a creepy smile.
“Ahhhhh—!”
……
Scenes like this were playing out all over the city. People tried to hide from the zombies in terror, only to be found anyway by those ghostly, unpredictable monsters.
The windows of Luo Ying’s home were boarded up, and he was watching the outside world through a deliberately left crack.
“Stop watching,”
Luo Ying heard Jiang Li’s advice and reluctantly sealed the last gap. Yeah… what was there left to see? The more he saw, the more powerless he felt.
If he were still the Shadow King… even if he were only Tier One, he could at least save a few people.
Luo Zhu only had a mild cold—it was easy to cure. Following Jiang Li’s instructions, Luo Ying pressed a few acupoints, and Luo Zhu quickly recovered.
On TV, the female host was reporting the incident.
“Dear viewers, due to unknown reasons, many coastal cities have reported sightings of flying blue whales. The fish emerging from the whales’ mouths appear to be highly infectious. Those infected show signs of madness and biting others within ten minutes. Medical experts suggest it may be caused by an unknown virus, but further research is needed.”
Behind the host was footage from the zombie crisis zones, though heavily pixelated so it wouldn’t appear too terrifying.
Someone handed her a sheet of paper. After a quick glance, she smiled and said, “We’ve just received news that mechanized troops have been deployed to support the affected cities. We believe the disaster will be brought under control soon. Let’s wait and see.”
“We urge everyone to shut their doors and windows, do not go outside, and wait for rescue.”
Hearing this, Luo Ying muttered, “It’s useless. The army doesn’t understand the power of Tier Four zombies. They’re unbeatable.”
Now fully recovered, Luo Zhu’s mind had cleared up. From her brother and Jiang Li’s conversation, the scenes outside, and the TV broadcast, she quickly pieced things together.
She first thanked Jiang Li, then turned pale and asked her brother, “Are zombies really that terrifying?”
Luo Ying wanted to say no—but the words wouldn’t come out.
“If I had more time, zombies wouldn’t be a problem. But right now, time is exactly what we lack.”
With nothing else to do, Luo Ying slowly recounted the events of his past life—from his school being overrun, to barely escaping with his life, to the army being completely wiped out by the zombie whale. Then came the discovery of brain cores, the rise of the Enhancer system, the fall of the nation, the formation of survival zones… and the collapse of most of them under the zombie tide, shrinking down to just five. Finally, humanity’s strongest gathered to deal with the crisis in the deep sea—only for him to be betrayed and reborn.
His ten years in the apocalypse had been full of hardship: near-death experiences, forming friendships, founding a small squad, joining a survival zone, facing corpse tides… In the end, only Luo Ying survived.
In the apocalypse, what you lose will always outweigh what you gain—and Luo Ying was no exception. But through it all, he grew stronger, eventually becoming the “Shadow King.”
Luo Zhu and Brahma Tower were both captivated by his story. Luo Zhu could feel the danger her brother had faced, while Brahma Tower thought—so even the weak could have such stories.
“If it weren’t for that alien spaceship—who knows where it came from—there wouldn’t even be a zombie crisis!” Luo Ying growled.
At this point, Brahma Tower had a lot to say. It had traveled the stars and knew quite a bit.
“To be honest, your planet might be the last place in the universe with living beings,” Brahma Tower said, shocking Luo Ying and Luo Zhu.
“I’ve visited many planets. Not a single living animal left. Only zombies. Some planets even had zombie infighting, until only two Tier Six zombies were left.”
According to Brahma Tower, the universe was overrun by zombies, and this planet was the final infection zone. Luo Ying and Luo Zhu were both stunned.
“Where did the very first zombies come from?” Jiang Li asked. He had a strong feeling there was something very strange about the virus.
“The earliest zombie I found was on the most technologically advanced planet in the universe. They had already made progress in spatial teleportation. A thousand years ago, zombies appeared on that planet—and it quickly fell.”
“A thousand…”
Jiang Li fell deep into thought. That timing was too coincidental. Nine thousand years had passed on the Nine Provinces Continent, but only a thousand here. In other words, a thousand years ago, the Stairway to Immortality also disappeared from this world.
The zombie virus might have been created by the Outer World Demons!
“Immortal Elder, could the Stairway to Immortality fragments bring this world back to a thousand years ago?” Jiang Li asked again, reaching out to Immortal Changcun.
“…Are you dreaming?”