After he transmigrates into a disaster-ravaged apocalypse, Lin Jin just wants to lie flat.
Radiation blights the land, mutated beasts roam everywhere, and natural disasters reap lives by the thousands.
In his previous life, he failed to get into a bunker and was reduced to ash by a nuclear blast. This time, from the start, he's in a refugee slum fighting stray dogs over rat legs.
His life goal is as simple as it gets: make it into the giant-walled city of Ironwall and land a secure job with the security force!
Patrol the streets, check people's papers, and collect a ration that keeps him from starving. What's not to love about the quiet life of a civil servant in the apocalypse, working nine to five?
After enduring every hardship, he finally gets to wear that tattered uniform. He has barely pinned the badge to his chest when, before he can even get used to it,
hell descends that very night.
The city wall crashes apart, and a horde of marauders, as if crawling out of charred remains, roars into the city. Their cleavers, like molten lava, sear the air. Wherever their blood-red, bloodthirsty gazes fall, mountains of corpses rise.
Lin Jin stands at the street corner, sand and wind filling his sleeves.
Behind him are the homeless kid who shared half a biscuit with him, and the kind old widow who gave up her tin shack for him.
Before him are madness and slaughter, burning everything to the ground.
He could retreat, cling to life, and continue pursuing his "grand" dream of a nine-to-five job.
Or he could move forward... The Ashen Breathing Technique silently kindles within his lungs. Every breath feels like swallowing searing hot charcoal ash, bringing power that burns with pain.
He'd meant to keep his head down, but the apocalypse insists on forcing him to become ash,
or... set the whole stage ablaze!
"I just want enough to eat. Why are you making me into a charcoal-grilled powerhouse?"
When that long-suppressed, ashen breath finally bursts from his throat and burns away the endless night,
only then does Lin Jin understand: in this screwed-up world, if you don't want to be burned to ash, you have to burn everyone else first!
