Luo Hou lay flat on the ground, his back against the cold earth. Not far from him lay the three zombies he had just slain.
"Heh… so this is what dying feels like… Hahaha, perhaps death isn't so bad after all. What am I, but a useless man with no ties to this world, unable to sense even a trace of elemental force? Death was always my fate—better sooner than later. At least now, there's peace... but... but…"
"No—I don't want to die! I refuse to die! I must see her again—I cannot die yet!"
A silhouette flickered through his mind, stirring bitter defiance in his heart. Luo Hou was not as untethered as he had claimed. In that moment, a tall and graceful figure consumed his thoughts, and for the first time, he yearned desperately to live.
Yet the zombie virus had already spread from his wounds throughout his body. His skin was turning a sickly gray-blue, and foul, black blood seeped from injuries on his elbows and knees, reeking of decay.
His consciousness began to fade. His pupils dilated slowly, losing focus, and without him realizing it, his breathing and heartbeat ceased altogether. The world fell into utter darkness. Within his vanishing awareness, that slender figure blurred until it too dissolved into the void.
"I… don't want to die… I must see her one more time…"
Just as the last flicker of life was about to leave him, a faint rainbow-hued glow emerged from the pitch-black, ancient-looking ring on the pinky of his left hand. In an instant, it expanded into a radiant circle nearly two meters wide, enveloping Luo Hou's entire body.
The blinding light flared brighter than the sun itself, swallowing his form completely.
The iridescent glow lasted for nearly three hours before it finally dimmed and dissipated into nothingness. When the brilliance faded, Luo Hou's face was flushed with life, his skin entirely restored, the wounds on his elbows and knees miraculously healed without a trace.
Luo Hou felt himself adrift in endless darkness, helpless and weightless. Time became meaningless in the abyss, a place that could drive anyone to despair.
"Is this… the world after death? No! I must escape—I have to get out! Ahhh!"
With a sudden cry, Luo Hou's body jolted upright from the ground. His eyes were instantly stung by the harsh daylight, tears streaming as he shielded his face with both hands. It took a long moment before he could bear to open them.
"Wasn't I… dead? I might have even turned into a zombie. So then—what is this?"
In disbelief, Luo Hou examined his body. Not a scratch remained, not the slightest sign of zombification. Yet the corpses of the three zombies still lay nearby—proof that what he had experienced was no dream.
He climbed to his feet, brushing the dust from his clothes. Glancing around cautiously, he shook his head in confusion. He remembered clearly the moment of infection. He had accepted death—there should have been no hope. So how was he now perfectly fine?
Who had ever heard of someone surviving a zombie virus completely unscathed?
Still stunned, Luo Hou flexed his limbs, testing his movement. Then, his expression changed.
His strength—had it increased?
Clenching his fists, he gave them a few powerful swings before breaking into uncontrollable laughter.
"Haha! They say great fortune follows great peril—the ancients were right after all!"
Power surged through every part of his body, leaving him more exhilarated than he'd ever felt. Though he lacked exact measurements, intuition told him his strength had more than doubled. What did that mean? Against three ordinary zombies now, he was confident he could defeat them head-on, without suffering a single wound.
And that wasn't all.
Beyond his explosive strength, Luo Hou noticed his five senses had grown sharper. His sight and hearing were significantly enhanced. Even the nearsightedness that had plagued him during his student years was now completely gone.
More astonishing still, he could sense a subtle, cool energy floating through the air around him, gently seeping into his body with each breath, merging effortlessly with his blood and flesh.
Could this be… elemental force?
A thunderclap rang through his mind. Luo Hou stood frozen, stunned.
Tears rolled silently down his cheeks. He wept—not from sorrow, but from joy.
"I can sense elemental force now? Yes—I truly can! I'm no longer a failure in the eyes of the world. I can become an Evolver!"
"Ahhhh—!" Luo Hou threw his fists skyward and bellowed with all his might.
That roar seemed to unleash a year's worth of pain, bitterness, and rage. In this new world, Luo Hou had endured a brutal existence, never knowing when he would next eat, always facing scorn and ridicule. If not for a single thread of stubborn will deep within his soul, he didn't know how many times he would've died already.
In this post-apocalyptic world, surviving as an ordinary human, one who could not evolve, was nearly impossible. Especially for someone like Luo Hou: a lone outsider with no backing, no support. Within the survivor settlements, almost all who had survived the past year had at least begun to evolve. Even those with the weakest aptitude had sensed elemental force and reached the lowest level of Evolver.
The only unevolved ones left were typically the elderly, the sick, or children. For a strong, able-bodied man like Luo Hou to remain unchanged, he had been a laughingstock, mockingly dubbed "the Useless One."
"But from this day forward, I am no longer the man I once was. One day, I shall rise above all others! Those who once looked down on me shall crawl at my feet!"
Luo Hou swore this silently to himself.
After venting the tangled emotions in his chest, he noticed the sun beginning to set. He picked up his steel blade from the ground, preparing to return to the settlement. Having gone a full day without food, his stomach growled in protest.
Just then, the sound of hurried footsteps echoed from the far end of the street, shattering the quiet.
Luo Hou turned his head. A few zombies that had wandered off earlier were now making their way back toward him, one after another. The moment he looked their way, the lead zombie locked eyes with him and let out a shrill roar, charging at him with terrifying speed.
Its movement startled the others. Their blood-red eyes searched for the source, and upon spotting Luo Hou, they too let out howls and broke into a sprint.
Luo Hou's scalp tingled. Though he was far stronger than before, facing seven or eight zombies at once meant certain death. He turned on his heels without hesitation, scrambling up a familiar slope, racing back toward the settlement.
But today's strangeness was far from over.
As Luo Hou climbed the incline, the first zombie had already closed the gap to less than ten meters, just a few paces from the slope.
Suddenly, a surge of foreign information rushed from the ring on his left pinky, coursing through his arm and neck, and flooding into his mind. The shock made him stumble and fall—
"Unranked zombie detected. Would you like to tame it as your spirit beast?"