The chilling word was squeezed through Ye Chen's clenched teeth as the machete in his hand transformed into a streak of gleaming blade, cleaving toward the approaching zombie!

Splat! The brightly polished machete sliced through the zombie's skull without resistance, its force undiminished, splitting the head in half with a single stroke. The blade halted only when it lodged against a few ribs near the chest.

The zombie convulsed once more before collapsing utterly, its body fixed in a rigid "Y" shape as it crashed to the ground.

Roar!

The three limbless zombies behind him lunged forward.

Ye Chen spun around abruptly, his gaze icy as he fixed upon them. With a swift movement, he charged, leaping up to drive his foot into the chest of the lead zombie. A series of cracking sounds echoed as ribs fractured, sending the creature flying backward several feet.

The other two zombies, however, pressed their ferocious assault, their mouths wide, tearing toward Ye Yang’s shoulder.

Ye Chen scoffed—a zombie without claws was effectively weakened by eighty percent. As the two closed the distance, Ye Chen dropped the machete, his hands shooting out like lightning to grip their heads. He slammed them together forcefully toward his own chest!

Thud!

The two skulls collided, exploding like overripe watermelons. White, viscous brain matter splattered across Ye Chen’s face like thick juice. He released the two dead husks and saw the one he had kicked flying rise up, its eyes burning with cold malevolence. He charged straight at it, gripping its face tightly with five fingers, shoving its body upward and slamming it violently against the wall.

The zombie’s skull, finally, proved less resilient than concrete...

Ye Zhu stood to the side, almost paralyzed by the sight.

That was four zombies! Each one possessed the strength of three average men, their fists weighing hundreds of pounds. Coupled with their tough hides and sharp claws, encountering them meant certain death for any ordinary person!

Yet, these terrifyingly powerful zombies were dispatched by Ye Chen in mere blinks of an eye. She found it almost unbelievable; in just one day, had her brother evolved to such a horrifying extent?

As shock rippled through her, Ye Chen slowly approached, found a rag in the room, and wiped the gore from his face. In the bathroom, he washed his hair; the water running over his scalp was dark crimson, mixed with countless fragments.

After cleaning himself up, Ye Chen emerged from the washroom, his chest heaving. In that final surge, he had unleashed his full strength, and now felt a deep exhaustion, like an ordinary person who had just run twenty laps around a track.

“Dissect them now. It’s getting late, and we should head back,” Ye Chen said to his sister, Ye Zhu, nodding toward the headless zombies on the floor.

Ye Zhu snapped back to reality, looking at the four corpses scattered below. She felt a surge of joy at Ye Chen's immense power, nodding obediently before quickly moving to begin the dissection.

After an afternoon of work, Ye Zhu was far less clumsy than before. She swiftly sliced open the chests of the creatures and began exploring the Jihua organs, having reached a level where she could look upon the internal anatomy of a zombie without revulsion.

...

Having finished everything, the two left the room and walked down the silent corridor. Everywhere they looked, they saw shattered rooms and piles of zombie carcasses, making the entire floor resemble a personal hell.

Though he knew the path back was clear of living zombies, Ye Chen remained fully alert. In the Apocalypse, the smallest lapse in vigilance could mean the end of one’s life.

Moments later, they safely returned to their quarters.

Click!

The instant the door was shut, a profound sense of security washed over them, and their entire bodies relaxed. Ye Chen set down his blade and headed for the shower to clean up and change.

Ye Zhu, meanwhile, went to the kitchen to clean the Jihua.

Night descended. The city of neon lights was gone. Outside the window, countless dark high-rises stood like crouching behemoths. The bright streetlights remained unlit; darkness reigned everywhere, and the very air was thick with a suffocating sense of dread.

This world had lost its light...

Ye Chen walked to the window, closed it, drew the curtains, and then searched the room for newspaper. He pasted sheets over the glass to ensure no light leaked out, lest it attract powerful monsters or hordes of zombies...

“Brother, dinner is ready,” Ye Zhu called from the kitchen, carrying two plates of small dishes and a bowl of clear soup.

Ye Chen glanced over. Two dishes and one soup—that was considered excellent sustenance in the Apocalypse. After a long day of exertion, the savory aroma immediately made his stomach rumble with hunger.

Ye Chen did not start eating until Ye Zhu was seated. He then asked, “Where is the Jihua?”

Ye Zhu paused for a second, then returned to the kitchen. She sliced the washed Jihua into thin pieces, arranged them on a plate, and brought it out. “This tastes like jelly, so I didn't stir-fry it.”

Ye Chen nodded. “Jihua is meant to be eaten raw. Cooking it causes nutrient loss.” He picked up a slice and began to eat.

“Eat the Jihua first. When you’re starving, your digestive system speeds up. Eating it now allows all the energy within the Jihua to be fully absorbed by the body,” Ye Chen explained.

Ye Zhu understood immediately and picked up a piece, but she chewed much more slowly, intentionally allowing Ye Chen to eat more. Ye Chen noticed her subtle gesture but said nothing. After today’s events, he knew his strength was still insufficient. In this treacherous Apocalypse, he was the pillar; if he fell, his sister Ye Zhu would have almost no chance of surviving alone...

Ye Chen kept his head down, silently consuming the Jihua. After about half an hour, he had finished it all.

The Jihua was incredibly easy to digest; the fiber dissolved into his viscera, transforming into pure energy that spread throughout his body. Ye Chen felt as if thousands of hands were massaging him—a sensation of floating bliss, utterly comfortable.

As his strength increased, dark sweat began to seep from his pores. This was the body’s impurities being squeezed out by the muscle fibers. A scientist once theorized: “Theoretically, when muscle density reaches a certain level, it can resist bullets!”

A fist-sized wad of cotton, compressed to the size of a sesame seed, would be harder than a steel nail!

The impurities within the body were like water in a sponge; the muscle tissue was the sponge, and when squeezed, the impurities emerged.

Besides the enhancement of his strength to the equivalent of one man’s power, Ye Chen noticed other physical changes. The skin on his palms had become tougher, his bones significantly harder, and even his fingernails had stiffened. While not yet sharp enough to cut like blades, they could certainly slice vegetables with ease!

A sharp light flashed in Ye Chen’s eyes. “With my current strength, killing ordinary zombies is effortless. I can even take down three or four in a direct confrontation!”

Ye Chen’s heart swelled with exhilaration.

If this continued, his rate of killing zombies would vastly increase, meaning his power was snowballing rapidly!

“That mutated ant had the strength of ten zombies—that’s the strength of thirty men. I currently possess the strength of four men,” Ye Chen calculated the gap internally.

The standard index for 'one man’s strength' was: Strength: 50 kg! Speed: ... Nerve reaction time: 0.3 seconds!

Now, Ye Chen's strength had reached 400 jin (200 kg), translating to 200 g. As for speed, he was now clocking around ten seconds per hundred meters, and his nerve reaction time had improved to 0.1 seconds!

Ye Zhu had also gained significant strength after consuming a small portion of Jihua, but she was still short of the two-man strength level.

“We owe this haul to you,” Ye Chen sighed. “We swept all 32 rooms on the 17th floor, killing a total of 108 zombies. By average probability, we should have found only about ten pieces of Jihua. But in your hands, the one-in-ten chance became two-in-five—we found almost one piece for every two zombies killed...”

Ye Zhu giggled, her eyes bright with pride. “Of course! Your little sister has powerful karma; even Heaven acknowledges it.”

Ye Chen: “...”

Ye Zhu chuckled again. “I didn’t say your karma was bad, don’t overthink it...”

Ye Chen: “...”

...

After a night of rest, the hunting operation began again the next day. Fully armed, the pair left their room to commence their zombie-slaying mission for the day...

The procedure was straightforward. With Ye Chen’s four-man strength, even facing several zombies head-on was easy. If they encountered seven or eight, they used room barriers to defeat them one by one.

Time flew, and ten days passed in a flash.

During these ten days, Ye Chen and Ye Zhu were like plunderers, ruthlessly hunting zombies day after day, fighting their way down to the 12th floor. The most dangerous incident involved barging into a presidential suite hotel room teeming with over thirty zombies. Had they not fled quickly, they would have been torn to pieces. In the end, they used a gas canister to blow the entire room up.

...

Recommend votes, anyone? Anyone?