The streets are getting increasingly chaotic, traffic is basically paralyzed, cars are stuck together, and even slightly overweight people can't squeeze through.

The car door was locked shut, so Yan Shi climbed out of the window and ran towards the refuge point, trying to avoid the crowd. All he could see in his peripheral vision were people falling down, and the red everywhere he looked was unsettling.

The area around the refuge was teeming with people and monsters, and the narrow entrance, barely wide enough for two people, was completely blocked. In this situation, let alone squeezing in, even if you did get in, it wouldn't be safe.

Yan Shi gave up and turned to a less crowded place. Later, when there was nowhere else to go, he simply climbed a tree.

The bleeding from the wound on my arm had stopped sometime ago, but the area around the teeth marks was swollen up, a color that was hard to describe – bluish-purple, red, black, or anything else. Just by looking at it, you could tell there was no hope. I might turn into one of those monsters after I die.

The swelling and pain in my left arm became more intense, and my head started to feel dizzy and my vision blurred. I felt a strong craving in my heart, but I didn't know what I wanted.

Is this what death feels like?

She felt her injured arm trembling, one beat after another, like the rhythm of a heartbeat.

Yan Shi found it strange. He stared intently at his left arm, and after shifting his attention, the discomfort in his body lessened considerably.

As he was counting the number of teeth marks, a red line suddenly extended from each of the four tooth marks, heading towards his wrist. The lines converged halfway and finally stopped in his palm, forming a red dot the size of a soybean. Yan Shi immediately thought of a cinnabar mole.

Yan Shi blinked, pinched herself, and felt pain. How could it feel like a dream? She touched the blood line on her arm; it was a beautiful color, like it had been painted on, and there was no unevenness.

But the pit is different; you can clearly feel the undulations, stronger than a pulse, as if there's a tiny heart beating underneath.

Yan Shi was stunned, his mind wandering wildly. Was it an alien creature or a parasite?

Suddenly, her palms burned, more painful than being scalded by hot oil. She looked over and saw that the red spot on her palm seemed to be burning, with red sparks spreading from the center outwards, much like the way paper burns.

White paper, yellow flames followed by flickering red sparks, leaving only ashes in their wake, which were scattered by the wind.

Yan Shi fainted from the pain. When she woke up, there was only a black hole in her palm, about the size of a soybean. The back of her hand was intact and had not been pierced. She could still hear the wind when her palm was close to her ear.

That's amazing.

Just as she was about to examine the red line on her arm again, a group of zombies had gathered under the tree, baring their teeth and reaching out to grab her feet.

Yan Shi immediately lifted her foot. The tree wasn't tall, and she couldn't climb any higher. Just as she put her foot down, she saw the zombies stepping on their companions' bodies, almost reaching the top.

Yan Shi's eyes widened as he looked around for a way to escape, but his hand slipped and he fell straight down. Then, a thought struck him: if he could use the head of the zombie that was focused on climbing up as leverage, he could grab a tree branch and steady himself.

Unexpectedly, the moment she placed her left hand on the zombie's head, a gust of demonic wind appeared out of nowhere, and the zombie's head disappeared instantly. The cut surface of its neck looked as if it had been burned, pitch black, and there was a burnt smell in the air.

In the sunlight, there was something shiny in the pitch black. Yan Shi reached out and picked it up. It was a crystal-clear stone with a red thread inside. It looked a bit like a glass marble that he played with as a child, but much smaller.

Yan Shi usually likes pretty stones and casually puts them in his pocket.

So here's the question: what just happened? Where's the zombie's head? Where did the pebbles come from? And what's even more puzzling is, why does it smell so bad? Even if zombies smell bad, they shouldn't smell this bad.

She covered her mouth and nose, but still couldn't stop the smell. The urge to vomit grew stronger and stronger. When she opened her mouth, last night's dinner appeared on the zombie's head in another form.

Then she saw her own vomit and vomited again. She was so worried that she would get esophageal cancer. But then she thought, "Why should I care about cancer when I'm already like this? I might get eaten up in the next second."

After all that fussing, Yan Shi vomited everything up, the nausea subsided, and her mind cleared. She noticed that the monsters scratching the tree were gone, even though there had been several of them drooling over her just moments before.

She looked around and saw no living person, unless a half-person lying on the ground, barely breathing and unable to even groan, was considered alive.

This must be the end of the world.