[Apocalypse] Black Lotus

Jiang Mian has recently become obsessed with an apocalypse novel.

The male lead, Shen Wang, is cold-blooded and decisive, and kills without batting an eye.

Zombies block the way? Kill them.

Mutated beasts lay siege to the city? Kill them.

Someone cries that they can't just leave a person to die, and insists on hiding a classmate already showing signs of infection in the group. When the classmate turns into a zombie in the middle of the night, they almost get everyone killed.

Shen Wang raises his hand and cuts them down. Peace at last.

Every day, Jiang Mian drags himself home with the exhaustion of a long day at work and relies on this novel to keep going. He reads it in blissful satisfaction, wishing he could tip the male lead with a message: Good kill. Kill one more.

Until one late night, after working overtime, his vision went black.

When he woke up, Jiang Mian was sitting in a high school classroom.

The sun shone brightly outside the window. The fan overhead rattled as it spun, and the blackboard showed the countdown to the college entrance exams. The teacher at the podium was still explaining monotonic functions.

He looked down at the phone in his desk.

The screen lit up with a news alert:

[Reports of unexplained biting incidents at multiple locations around the city. Residents are advised to avoid going outside.]

He checked the time. Shit! The apocalypse would break out in an hour.

To make matters worse, he'd transmigrated into the novel as a minor character with the same name as himself.

In the original story, this classmate was kind, helpful, and excessively softhearted. At the very start of the apocalypse, he secretly let an infected classmate escape, got half the class killed, and was personally taken out by the male lead, Shen Wang, in Chapter Three.

Jiang Mian looked up.

At a desk not far away, a boy was dozing with his head down. His school uniform jacket hung casually over the back of his chair, revealing a stretch of pale wrist.

That was Shen Wang.

The original male lead, the strongest fighter in the later stages of the apocalypse, a ruthless man who would cut through hordes of zombies and the nine great safe zones, and the killer who would serve him his last meal in Chapter Three.

Jiang Mian looked at the boy dozing at the desk, fell silent for two seconds, then slowly scooted his chair backward.

Value your life. Stay away from the male lead.

But he didn't know that the moment he looked over, Shen Wang had already opened his eyes.

There was no trace of sleepiness in the boy's dark eyes. They were as black as the ashes left behind after the world burned to the ground.

It seemed fate thought things weren't lively enough yet.

On the day he transmigrated, Jiang Mian was bound to a White Lotus System.

[Host, please remain kind, help others, and spread love and hope.]

[Perform good deeds to receive rewards.]

Jiang Mian stared at the message and fell into thought.

Ten minutes later, he bandaged a student cut by glass in the chaos, and the System announced that his reward had been granted.

Less than half an hour after they met, the student tried to steal his bread while he was distracted.

Jiang Mian stabbed him in the shoulder, then calmly used his healing ability on him before he could finish screaming.

The wound closed. The bleeding stopped.

System: [Host has helped an injured person. Reward being issued.]

Jiang Mian: "I get it."

System: [?]

From that day on, the White Lotus System began the darkest career of its life.

Other people did good deeds and accumulated merit. Jiang Mian did good deeds to farm points.

Other people believed saving one life was worth more than building a seven-story pagoda. Jiang Mian first decided whether someone was worth keeping alive before treating them again.

Someone was being chased by zombies. He saved them.

Afterward, they tried to push him into the horde to save themselves. Jiang Mian didn't rush. He first dislocated one of their arms, healed it, dislocated it again, and healed it again, earning credit for three "help an injured person" tasks along the way.

Someone's ability went out of control. He saved them.

When they woke up and tried to kill someone for their crystal core, Jiang Mian pinned them to the ground and gently asked, "Still out of control? I've got healing, bandages, and a knife. We can go through the process again."

Someone pretended to be an innocent survivor, joined the group, then prepared to open the door and let a horde inside in the middle of the night.

Jiang Mian waited behind the door. Only after the person was scared stiff by the zombie claws reaching through the crack, and nearly had a heart attack, did he leisurely drag them back.

The System fell silent for a moment.

[...Host has helped a frightened survivor. Reward being issued.]

Jiang Mian wiped his knife, his tone calm. "See? There's always a way."

[Host, please do not deliberately create situations that require rescue.]

"Huh? Did I create it? I didn't make him open the door."

"It's called anticipating danger and coming to the rescue in time!"

[...]

Jiang Mian: "Just tell me, did I do the good deed or not?"

System: [Reward being issued.]

Later, Jiang Mian came up with even more ways to use his abilities.

His healing ability could save people, or make an enemy's wounds repeatedly heal and split open again, keeping them conscious in agony without letting them die.

His purification ability could clear infections, or rip parasitic mutated creatures alive out of a person's body.

The White Lotus Shield could protect the weak, or be cast on an enemy, trapping them inside as they watched a horde of zombies press against the glass and gnaw at it.

The System went from enthusiastic encouragement at the start to a trembling electronic voice.

[Host, kindness isn't supposed to work like this!]

Jiang Mian looked at the new weapons and items that had appeared in the points shop, in a very good mood.

"Don't be so rigid."

"The world's ended. Even a White Lotus has to learn to mutate."

Jiang Mian's original plan was perfect.

Avoid Shen Wang, stay away from the main plot, do his best to survive, and turn the White Lotus System into his own apocalypse survival cheat.

But at some point, things started to go wrong.

He avoided the classroom building Shen Wang was supposed to visit in the original story. But just as he climbed out of the infirmary window, he saw Shen Wang standing outside the wall, holding a bloodstained steel pipe.

He left the survivor group early and planned to stock up on supplies at the warehouse under cover of night. But when the warehouse door opened, Shen Wang was sitting on a shelf, wiping his knife. He looked up at Jiang Mian as if he'd been waiting for him for a long time.

He finally found a secluded route to avoid the first wave of zombies in the original story, only to get trapped in a dead-end alley by mutated plants.

Jiang Mian was just about to act when a soft sound came from the alley entrance.

Shen Wang walked in over a carpet of broken vines, his school uniform sleeves rolled up to his elbows and countless bolts of lightning behind him.

"Little White Lotus! Fancy meeting you again!"

This was no coincidence anymore! There was definitely something wrong with this guy!

Shen Wang also thought there was something wrong with Jiang Mian.

Part of his soul had traveled back from the apocalypse after the world's destruction. He carried memories of zombie hordes flooding cities, human bases falling, and the last safe zone collapsing beneath a blood moon. He had returned to one hour before the apocalypse began.

He remembered how everyone died, every betrayal, and all the people and events that were supposed to appear in the future.

The only memories he had of Jiang Mian were a complete mess.

This person was supposed to die in the early days of the apocalypse, yet he kept straying from his destined path and crossing Shen Wang's path again and again.

The apocalypse descended, and order collapsed.

Zombies, ability users, mutated creatures, and twisted plants appeared one after another. Humanity struggled to survive among cities that had fallen one by one.

Some wore kindness like a mask while they ate people. Others bore a terrible reputation while protecting the cities behind them.

Jiang Mian, the softhearted cannon fodder whom the male lead was supposed to kill in the original story, managed to survive in the ruins as the least savior-like savior of all, with a White Lotus System he'd nearly driven insane.

Shen Wang, reborn with memories of the world's destruction, should have been eliminating threats and cutting off anything that could hold him back.

But Jiang Mian was an exception.

He wasn't in Shen Wang's future, in his memories, or on any of the familiar paths of fate.

He was dangerous and level-headed, hated trouble, and was occasionally so crazy that Shen Wang couldn't look away.

The more Jiang Mian tried to avoid him, the more Shen Wang wanted to get close.

Jiang Mian feared the knife destined to fall in the original story, but Shen Wang felt that the world had finally gained a crack that shouldn't exist.

They fought side by side amid the zombie hordes, and drew their knives against each other in the ruins.

One tried to rewrite his own death, while the other tried to rewrite the fate of the entire apocalypse.

At first, Shen Wang only wanted to figure out who Jiang Mian was.

Later, he realized that wasn't enough.

He wanted to keep this unexpected variable by his side.

Even if the future headed for destruction again, even if the world was beyond saving, Shen Wang still wanted to know:

If Jiang Mian were part of it this time,

would the ending be different?

Theme: Protect the Earth and cherish life