He forcefully wedged the wooden stake in his right hand between the zombie and himself, and the thick stake did an excellent job of keeping the zombie separated from Brian Carter.

The zombie tore wildly at Brian Carter’s clothes, but with three coats providing solid protection, it couldn’t break through the layers for the time being. All it could do was scratch and bite frantically at Brian Carter.

“What do I do? What do I do?!” Brian Carter desperately used the stake to block the zombie’s mouth full of fangs. Yet, his mind was unexpectedly calm; at the brink of life and death, he seemed to have cast off all fear and panic. His senses became extraordinarily sharp.

In the struggle, the zombie seemed to grow impatient. Suddenly, it jerked its head up and slammed it toward Brian Carter’s head.

Brian Carter, with extreme composure, tried to adjust the stake so that the side with protruding nails faced the zombie.

“Bang!!”

Brian Carter only felt the back of his head slam hard against the floor from the impact, and his vision gradually blurred. He seemed to see the zombie shrieking as it rolled off his body to the side. He caught a strong whiff of rotting stench. The bright lights of the living room dimmed in his eyes. All the sounds around him seemed to fade away, growing distant, until he could hear nothing at all. A numbness swept over his entire body, making him feel as if he had completely lost his physical form. No sense of touch, no sight, no hearing, and finally, even smell and taste vanished completely.

He was utterly engulfed in a haze.

“Am I going to die?” he thought to himself. He couldn’t see, hear, smell, touch, or taste. All five senses were completely sealed off.

“Maybe dying like this isn’t so bad, since the world is about to end anyway.” He thought indifferently, with a sense of resignation.

In the black void, he simply imagined himself lying flat with his eyes closed. His thoughts grew muddled, until he knew nothing at all and completely lost consciousness.

Brian Carter had a dream. A very strange dream.

In the dream, he was a powerful mage, born into a great noble family, with a deep fascination for magic since childhood.

He studied and researched tirelessly, countless tomes and knowledge flashing by like an ocean throughout his long life. Unfortunately, his talent wasn’t particularly strong, and even with the family’s vast resources and knowledge, he couldn’t break through the final barrier—lifespan.

Even after transforming himself into a lich, after thousands of years, the mage still couldn’t resist the decay of time. In the end, as a legendary powerhouse, he spent countless top-tier resources to construct a massive space-time tunnel magic array, and at the very moment the lich was completely decayed by time, he sent the lich’s soul into the endless flow of space and time.

Brian Carter watched himself pass through the material plane, through the crystal sphere, and, with the power of the space-time array, traverse countless universes. At last, he descended into this world, becoming a person named Brian Carter. The violent shock of transmigration caused the lich’s soul to automatically enter a dormant, protective state. Thus, this person named Brian Carter had no knowledge of his own origins. He went to school, graduated, and worked just like any ordinary person. Only the lich’s original gloomy, rational, and research-loving personality influenced Brian Carter: he liked darkness, loved knowledge, disliked crowds, and these traits made Brian Carter someone with poor social relationships.

Then came the outbreak of the zombie virus, Brian Carter’s desperate struggle with two zombies, finally lying flat on the floor tiles, eyes glazed over as he lost consciousness, a faint trickle of blood seeping from the back of his head...

※※※※

Brian Carter slowly opened his eyes. The piercing light made him quickly shut them again. A burning sensation came from his left eyelid. He took stock of his body’s condition. Soreness radiated throughout his body—a clear sign of overexertion.

He moved his right hand with some difficulty; the stake was still tied to his arm, and there wasn’t a sound around him. The silence was utterly lifeless. He could still clearly smell the unique stench of zombie rot in his nose.

After waiting more than ten seconds, his eyes gradually adjusted to the light, and Brian Carter began to check himself and his surroundings.

The midday sunlight luckily shone straight onto him through a small gap in the curtain and aluminum panel, bringing a sliver of brightness to the entire living room.

To Brian Carter’s right lay a corpse with deathly pale skin, staring wide with blood-red eyes, its mouth full of fangs gaping open. The zombie’s hairless head had a hole as thick as a finger—likely the cause of its death.

Dragging his aching body, Brian Carter checked himself. Other than some blood at the back of his head, his right hand—the one holding the stake—had some scrapes. Looking at the black-red zombie blood on the floor, less than half a meter from where he lay, he shivered with lingering fear. That half-meter was all that separated a human from a zombie.

If his wound had been contaminated with zombie blood, he would definitely have turned into one of them.

The security door was open, and in the stairwell outside lay a corpse with a smashed-in head—the zombie Brian Carter had killed in his frenzy last night. Brian Carter identified the two zombies by their clothing. Although their facial features were completely deformed by mutation, from their clothes he recognized them as the couple next door—a newlywed pair who had moved in less than a month ago.