Chapter 1

"Go! Don't stop for me!"
Amid the zombie horde, a tall, handsome man fought the zombies and shouted hoarsely at a helicopter, but the chopper was reluctant to leave. People aboard shouted back at him, "If we're leaving, we leave together, get on now!"
The man suddenly waved his hand, and a wind dragon shot straight toward the helicopter with perfect accuracy; its immense force sent the unwilling chopper hurtling away.
As the helicopter receded, the man looked back at the endless, layered zombie swarm surrounding him. He smiled, a look both tragic and resolute, tinged with relief, closed his eyes, and let out a bellow.
The next moment, seen from above, an invisible tidal wave radiated out from the man in all directions. Every zombie and even the remaining buildings were pulverized in an instant; the whole area was cleansed.
The self-detonation of a Level-9 wind-type ability user destroyed the last of the zombie horde and changed the world forever.
...
"Waaah!" Lin Tantan pulled out her last tissue, her eyes reddened with crying. "Why, why did he have to blow himself up? Why did he have to die? He clearly could have lived!"
The nurse beside her tore her eyes away from the screen and gave a long-suffering look as she explained, probably for the umpteenth time, "He was bitten by a zombie; he couldn't have survived."
"No, no!" Lin Tantan suddenly put down the tissue, her face solemn. "It's because over those seven years his comrades and friends all died, his lover died too, he had no attachment left to this world, he chose to stop living... Waaah, how can it be so tragic, my God Ye!"
The nurse forced a laugh. "Tantan, the relationship between God Ye and Deputy Bai, that's all fanfiction and gossip."
"Impossible. God Ye had so many comrades, yet I've never seen him so close with anyone else. God Ye was the nation's strongest; Deputy Bai was his chief strategist, they complemented each other and stood by one another for life. Deputy Bai died, and a few months later God Ye self-destructed. That's love!"
The nurse's mouth twitched. "Alright then, suit yourself."
The screen had already switched shots. Survivors' bases across the country were mourning the passing of the great Ye Xiao. A man stepped onto the stage and spoke passionately, "Although Leader Ye has left us, the zombies have been completely cleared. A new world is coming; now is the time to unite and build our new home."
This man was Zhou Yan, the country's first president after the apocalypse, who led the survivors in building the new homeland, a towering figure in history. Lin Tantan, however, curled her lip; she thought this fellow's sharp, simian features made him not a good person.
Indeed, during the seven years of the apocalypse he did nothing but ride the coattails of the strong. In national power rankings he couldn't even break the top twenty, but because in the final zombie counterattack one strong person after another died, and even the top-strongest Ye Xiao self-destructed, this man finally had his chance. Otherwise, how would he ever have become the leader of the new world?
Rumor has it he did a lot of shady things to cement his leadership. God Ye's Zhengyang base even carried out cleanups at his behest; anyone who disagreed with him was quietly eliminated.
If it weren't for the fact that more than three hundred years had passed and people were beginning to rethink history and dare to unearth old records, who knows how long those dirty deeds would have stayed buried!
Lin Tantan suddenly said, "I wish I could help God Ye. He did so much for the people during the apocalypse, saved so many, yet he didn't get a proper ending. His sworn brothers died such tragic deaths..."
The young nurse looked at her and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She fought to hold them back and said, "Tantan, your parents and your little brother have come to see you. Let's go out."
Lin Tantan immediately pulled herself together. "They're here? Then let's go."
The nurse wheeled Tantan out, and sure enough her parents and younger brother were already there. They spoke to her affectionately and ate together, but even though the scene seemed cheerful, everyone looked as if they were forcing themselves to hold back grief.
Only Tantan seemed unaffected. After eating with her parents and brother, she asked them to push her to the hospital garden for a walk. They chatted and laughed; along the way they met patients who greeted Tantan warmly and respectfully: "Doctor Lin." "Doctor Lin out for a walk?"
Tantan nodded to each of them in turn with the composed dignity of a celebrated doctor, no sign of the sobbing mess she'd been a little while ago at the movies. After a while she felt tired and said she wanted to go back to her room.
At the door she said goodbye to her family, "Mom, Dad, little brother, you should go home. I'm going to sleep."
Her mother finally couldn't hold it in and began to sob, "Tantan…"
Tantan's smile didn't falter. She reached out to wipe her mother's tears. "Don't be sad, Mom. My body was never meant to last. To have lived happily to twenty is already lucky. I learned to cultivate my powers, I helped treat and save many people. My life has been worth it."
Her mother nodded but couldn't stop crying.
Tantan turned to her little brother, who was also wiping his eyes. "From now on you'll be the only child left. Take good care of Mom and Dad."
"Sis, I know!"
"Dad, take Mom and my brother home. I don't want you to watch me go. After I'm gone, donate my body to the state. Please don't come back to see me," Tantan told her father.
Her father patted her head, choking as he mumbled, "All right, all right."
Tantan smiled as she went into the room. When the door closed it shut out all sound, and a flash of sadness crossed her face.
Since the cataclysm more than three hundred years ago, human bodies have been fundamentally altered. Now one in five people are ability-users, and for them their powers are the basis of survival.
When a child is born, the hospital tests for abilities. First they separate ordinary people from ability-users; for the latter they further scan the attributes of the energy core in their minds.
They say that during the end times there were many kinds of powers, but over time the obscure energies either burned out or transformed into others. In the end the world stabilized around just five elements, the metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.
Tantan didn't understand the deeper connections to the five elements; she only knew that if a child's energy core registered a single element, that child would almost certainly be gifted, brilliant, a born strong one.
Two elements meant one would be less remarkable; three meant a life of middling ordinariness; four usually meant crippling disability or mental impairment; five? Being born with all five meant you'd already spent all your luck at birth.
Tantan had developed very slowly in her mother's womb. At birth she lay like a tiny kitten, not breathing. Thanks to the doctors and nurses' emergency efforts she was revived, and then tested as having all five elements.
Her parents were struck as if by thunder, but they didn't abandon her. They commissioned the best five-element energy chamber and placed her inside it.
Then a miracle happened. Tantan not only did not die; she slowly grew. Although partially paralyzed and frail, her mind was intact, sharper than that of ordinary children.
Her parents were overjoyed, but raising a five-element child was prohibitively expensive. The daily consumption of crystal cores was enormous; a once-comfortable family was driven to poverty.
At that point Tantan's mentor appeared: a powerful wood-element ability-user and a renowned rehabilitative healer. Hearing Tantan's story, she used her powers to help regulate Tantan's body, covered the cost of crystal cores, and taught her how to cultivate her abilities.
Training was brutal and exhausting. The five energies fought inside her like warring forces, excruciating, and many times she nearly died.
But cultivation could bring order to the chaos, strengthen the body, and in the end Tantan persevered.
The energy core had to be cultivated across all its registered elements; imbalance could be fatal. Tantan's talent for cultivation was exceptionally rare; even with all five elements active she advanced quickly. By fourteen, each of her abilities had reached level six. Influenced by her mentor, she excelled particularly in wood-element powers and went to work as a healer at her mentor's clinic.
In six years she rose from ordinary physician to expert, earning nationwide renown and even state honors. The number of lives she saved was countless; families ruined before were restored because of her, and she enjoyed governmental favor.
Now her wood-element power was nearly maxed, and her other abilities were strong too, she ranked among the nation's top ability-users. Yet her body suddenly began to fail.
Maybe that's the fate of multi-element users: no matter how hard they strive, how many trials they pass, no matter how high they rise beyond most others, they still cannot escape an early death.
Still, in this short life she had reached her limit, she had lived without letting her parents, her mentor, or herself down. That was enough.
Tantan sighed softly. If there were a next life, she thought, she would be happy just to stand up and run a little. She looked at her numb legs and added that it would be even better to see God Ye one more time.
A faint smile touched her lips as she slowly closed her eyes.
Sunlight and a breeze came through the window and fell across her. The monitors began to beep, the readings showed that the subject's vital signs had ceased.
On the other side of the door, Tantan's parents and little brother and many of the hospital staff who had stayed were there, and some people she had once saved had hurried over upon hearing the news. They all heard the machines, the Lin family collapsed into each other's arms in sobs, and others couldn't help wiping their eyes.
The next day, the state issued an obituary: "Ms. Lin Tantan, State Special-Class Therapist, Honorary Vice President of the Ability Users Association, Innovator of multi-attribute cultivation methods, recipient of the Ziyun Medal, Level-9 ability user, the world's only five-attribute ability user... passed away on 23X1 July 8 at the National Central Hospital, dying young at twenty..."
...
20X9-01-01, 13:59, a dorm room at a university in Yang City. The girl on the top bunk was drenched in sweat, her face flushed and twisted as if in a nightmare or enduring some terrible pain, her body twitching faintly.
Suddenly she opened her eyes with a start, gasping, her focus slowly sharpening, then freezing.
W-where is this? Wasn't she dead? Had she come back to life?
Lin Tantan sat up, eyes wide. Apart from the white walls and a vague resemblance to the room she was used to, everything else, the furnishings, the layout, was utterly unfamiliar. Not just unfamiliar because she'd never seen it before, but because... what were all these antiques?
She thought of the movies, books, and photos she'd seen; pre-apocalypse homes all seemed to have this style. This didn't look like a private apartment, it was a communal dormitory.
She looked at her hands, this wasn't her body. She pinched herself. Ouch, it hurt!
Had she died and been reborn in the world before the cataclysm?
Her heart pounding, she groped around and finally found a "phone" under the bed. It was an antique to her, but she wasn't helpless; she found the power button and pressed it. The screen lit up: 20X9-01-01. Th-this... isn't this the day the apocalypse begins?!
Her pupils contracted, her mind went blank. After a moment she screamed, "Aaaaaa!!! God Ye, God Ye, I'm coming!"
In her excitement she threw off the absurdly heavy quilt and was about to get down.
But Lin Tantan, who had never slept on a bunk before, met disaster the next second.
With a thud, a scream and a crash echoed from Girls' Dormitory Room 305, the whole floor trembling.