More than six hours later, there was no sound outside the gate—an eerie, deathly silence.

Henry Sutton packed up everything he needed, picked up the fire axe leaning at his feet, and slowly tightened his grip.

The corners of his mouth gradually curled upward, his face a sickly pale.

He gripped the cold steel latch tightly and twisted it in the direction to open. Accompanied by a tooth-grinding screech of metal, the heavy gate slowly loosened, opening a narrow gap.

Seeing the light streaming through the crack, Henry Sutton suddenly hesitated. He lowered his head, fell silent for a moment, then looked up again—there was no longer any confusion in his eyes. Instead, there was an unprecedented ferocity, decisiveness, and determination.

“No matter what the future becomes, this is the path I chose myself————”

……

Sunlight poured through the glass display window, gathering a stifling heat on the floor.

The basement corridor was not long. Soon, Henry Sutton had reached the end and ascended the stairs leading to the ground level.

No one was there. On the white terrazzo steps, large, shocking bloodstains remained.

Like a wary, agile cat, Henry Sutton moved lightly and swiftly up the stairs. The instant his gaze met the mall’s ground floor, he immediately spotted a figure standing about ten meters directly ahead.

It was a woman.

She wore a black suit skirt—judging by her appearance, she was likely an employee at one of the mall’s counters. Her stockings were torn, her feet bare, and her white blouse was ripped open at the shoulder, exposing a pink-and-white bra strap. The skin on her face was ashen like cement, with very obvious, irregularly shaped corpse spots. The foundation she had applied was cracked, forming a dense web of fissures. Her eye sockets were stretched wide by swollen eyeballs, with no pupils visible, her eyes rolled back like a corpse.

She clearly wasn’t relying on sight to locate her target. Head tilted back, she sniffed the air forcefully, searching for the faintest trace of living human scent… Suddenly, she detected Henry Sutton, who had just reached the top of the stairs. Instantly, she opened her cracked lips, oozing yellow-green pus, bared her sharp teeth, and let out a terrifying “huh-huh” sound from her throat, lurching forward in a wild attack.

“Crack————”

The fire axe in Henry Sutton’s hand struck the woman’s forehead with precision, splitting the hard skull with ease. It was as if some machine had instantly drained her strength—her eyes widened, and she collapsed to the ground like a pile of mud.

On May 11, 2020, the world was swept by a bizarre viral storm. This invisible demon, likely airborne, suddenly bared its fangs at unsuspecting humanity at 8:15 in the morning.

Less than fifty percent of humanity survived, but they had to face a reality even more brutal than death—their fellow humans, now turned into zombies, were intensely attracted to anything that moved. Though slow, they were true carnivores. Biting, tearing, even a scratch from their nails would allow the virus to enter the body directly, using the most savage and direct means to continually reduce the number of survivors and swell the ranks of the zombie horde.

In the future, this would be common knowledge.

But now, it existed only as a memory in Henry Sutton’s mind.

He reached down, grabbed the clothes of the twitching female corpse at his feet, flipped the body over, picked up the axe, and brought it down hard at the junction of the lower back and hips. The sharp metal blade sliced through fragile flesh, plunging deep into the spine.

Henry Sutton crouched low, using the tip of the axe to probe the sticky, ruined flesh. Soon, a small, white bone fragment, growing in reverse from the coccyx, appeared before his eyes.

It was tiny, only the size of a grain of rice. Pure white, its surface gleamed with the unique luster of chitin.

This was called the “Luther Aggregation Layer,” or “silver bone” for short.

After the outbreak, many people began researching zombies. In 2021, a Briton named Luther Cavitz discovered, while dissecting a zombie specimen, an abnormal protrusion on the second coccygeal vertebra. This strange growth was confirmed in hundreds of zombie cases. Based on the zombies’ habits and movement patterns, this hard protrusion was ultimately proven to be an accumulation formed by the interaction of the virus and trace hormones in the zombie’s body.

A peculiar active substance could be extracted from the silver bone. Researchers soon found that it could strengthen the hardness and toughness of metals, greatly increasing the K-value of steel. But its greatest function was its significant calming and element-consolidating effect on the human central nervous system. From that point on, silver bone was listed as one of the most important strategic resources by all major factions.

Through the glass window, a dozen or so slow-moving zombies could be seen staggering outside the mall. The street was crammed with vehicles parked haphazardly. Some had collided, some had doors wide open, and some seats were soaked in blood. From the distant end of the road and inside the mall, the urgent sound of running footsteps and chilling, piercing screams could be heard from time to time.

Henry Sutton strode to the mall entrance, looked up, and gazed at the brilliant, sunlit sky, his heart filled with mixed emotions.

Yes, this was Earth—the beginning of the collapse of order, of chaos, violence, slaughter, death, and all manner of evil.

I can’t change anything, nor can I reverse the situation by myself.

I just want more.