The apocalypse begins with a dungeon game.

After walking along a long stretch of gravel road, until my feet once again stepped onto the main road in the city, the smooth cement surface no longer had that bumpy feeling.

Two men, one tall and one short, appeared near the city's outskirts.

It was Li Can and Qian Shi who were pulling the cart to load goods.

Huang Xiaoqi, who was squatting at the door of her house, saw her husband returning from a great distance and excitedly turned around and shouted into the restaurant.

"Guys, come out and lend a hand, they're back!"

The room had been thoroughly cleaned by then, and the remaining few people, who had been listlessly leaning back in their chairs waiting for their bosses to return, were drowsy.

Upon hearing Huang Xiaoqi's announcement, everyone immediately perked up and ran out after her.

Looking at the people who came to greet him from the restaurant just across the street, Li Can suddenly felt a strange sense of familiarity.

It's like a family keeping vigil, waiting for another wave of family members to return.

"Honey, why have you been gone for so long? I was so worried!" Huang Xiaoqi ran to Li Can and hurriedly checked his figure from head to toe.

Seeing that he was still alright, I was relieved.

The three skinny guys were also very concerned about Qian Shi, circling around the chubby guy several times, looking as bewildered as little animals.

"Go, hurry up, go back inside." Qian Shi was still sneaking around, peeking left and right, waving his hands to urge the group back.

Huang Xiaoqi noticed that his tense expression seemed genuine, and then turned to look at Li Can.

"What happened, sir?" she asked, sounding a little nervous.

The guys immediately perked up their ears, afraid of missing any details.

Li Can nodded. "We'll talk about it when we get back. We need to discuss it."

So after returning to the hotel, Huang Xiaoqi locked the front door, and the group pulled the wooden trailer to the kitchen, opened the door, and delivered it directly to the backyard of Baijie Hotel.

It's the house where Xing Dazhuang and Huang Xiaoqi's family used to live.

The layout here is such that the front yard is used for business, while the back yard is for family living.

So getting in and out is relatively convenient.

Together with Qian Shi and his staff from the restaurant next door, the six of them huddled together and whispered and discussed for a long time.

So this happened while the restaurant was closing.

In the front yard, with a series of crackling sounds, Qian Shi and his men were working through the night, sweating profusely, to break down walls and open up the space for two restaurants.

In the backyard, Li Can took out medicine from the medical kit and handed it to Huang Xiaoqi, asking her to treat the unknown girl's external wounds.

Everything is proceeding at a rapid pace.

Half a day later, Huang Xiaoqi finally came out of the house, covered in sweat.

The girl lay on the bed indoors, covered with a blanket, her breathing steady.

Huang Xiaoqi changed her clothes into one of her own.

The original set of clothes, along with the clothes stripped from the newly acquired "goods," were burned together in the yard.

"Why hasn't my son come back yet?" Li Can, wearing an apron, sat by the large stove, cutting raw meat into pieces.

While using a wooden stick to burn the clothes, Huang Xiaoqi found plastic bags to pack the meat pieces.

"Oh, the teacher called and said he won't be coming back today. Something happened at school, so he'll have to be brought back tomorrow. Don't worry, he'll be there in time for our son's birthday."

Li Can nodded. It seemed that Huang Xiaoqi received the call while he was leaving.

He was just curious what could have happened at the school that would cause the students to stay on campus for so long, and not be able to return until tomorrow.

What a huge deal it is, to be able to keep Xing Tiantian, who has become a monster...

"Well, how is that person doing?" Li Can asked again.

As a man, it's still inconvenient for him to treat a woman's private parts.

So it was handed over to Huang Xiaoqi.

If it were a corpse, that would be one thing, like when he's chopping something with a machete...

But if she were alive, he would still choose to protect her dignity.

Although there's practically no logic to it in this damned, bizarre labyrinthine city...

Even he himself, in order to avoid being out of character and to play the role of Xing Dazhuang well, was unknowingly integrated into this world. He looked at the blood on his hands and felt a moment of dizziness.

When did I start getting so into playing a role...?

Thinking of this, Li Can's hand holding the hilt of the knife trembled involuntarily, and the blurry crimson before his eyes merged into one.

He quickly took out a blue zombie crystal core from his spatial storage and absorbed it, which stabilized his mental state.

"There's even mental pollution here," he thought to himself, a chill running down his spine.

Huang Xiaoqi tied the bag in a knot and threw it into a large plastic basin on the ground. "Looks like he can still live. He's so badly injured but he's still alive. He's really lucky to be alive."

"When I was applying medicine and disinfecting her just now, she was able to say a few words, but I couldn't hear her clearly."

"What is it?"

"What do you mean, 'don't want to'...?" Huang Xiaoqi scratched her head and pulled Li Can to go inside.

The renovation team in the hotel lobby ahead had finished their basic work and was getting ready to rest.

"Honey, I don't understand either. Come and see for yourself. And look at her injuries. Where did all these people live before? They're all strangers I've never seen before..."

As Li Can listened to Huang Xiaoqi's slightly puzzled analysis, he gradually realized a problem.

The city's original inhabitants seemed to have become numb and hadn't even realized what was happening before he returned with the unknown girl.

Only now am I starting to get a little smarter.

"Mental pollution, it's still this stuff." He pondered, realizing that he had become so engrossed in preparing the ingredients that he was starting to lose control of his mind.

People like Huang Xiaoqi, who can claim to have lived here for about three hundred years, are they not already thoroughly spiritually polluted?

It's impossible to make them "wake up" in a short time.

"Dazhuang, what are you two doing standing here? Move aside, I'm going in to see how Damei is doing." Qian Shi walked over with his men.

Li Can turned around and glanced at him. This person was the same. Although there was some awakening or stirring under the influence of mental pollution, it was not enough.

The group went inside the house, where the girl remained unconscious with her brows furrowed.

She was wearing a pale yellow dress, a piece of clothing that Huang Xiaoqi herself usually wouldn't wear, kept at the bottom of her wardrobe.

This still surprised Li Can a little.

It seems that even though Huang Xiaoqi has been assimilated, she still retains a lot of the kindness she once had.

"No...don't..." the girl unconsciously uttered a few words in her nightmare.

Seeing this, Huang Xiaoqi pointed at the girl and showed it to Li Can, "Yes, yes, that's what she keeps saying, listen to it."

"What do you mean, 'don't want'...don't want what?" Qian Shi squatted down next to the girl, squinting with one big eye and the other small.

She would only mutter a few words to herself occasionally, and was mostly in a daze.

Judging from the situation, Li Can deduced that even if Huang Xiaoqi had treated her soft tissue wounds, it was simply impossible for her to survive completely.

At most, they can only linger on for a few more days or hours before they die completely.

After thinking for a few seconds, Li Can silently walked behind Qian Shi's fat body, who was squatting, and stood next to the girl by the bed.

A hand tentatively touched her fingertips, wanting to test the energy of the green zombie crystal core to see if she could absorb it.

The next second, just as he wished, wisps of transparent energy entered the girl's body.

And her murmured voice finally became clear.

"Don't... leave the city... please don't... you'll die..."

Upon hearing this, Qian Shi collapsed to the ground, his face filled with astonishment and confusion.

He was about to leave the city to enjoy a good life, and now she says he'll die if he leaves.

What is really true?