Chapter Six: The Lucky Draw

“What are you doing? Don’t tell me you actually want to stay?”
Qi Hai could hardly believe it. Usually, Wu Yinmei tried every way to curry favor with him, but now she stood there in silence. And Bai Su, whom he had pursued for almost a year, was there too, ignoring him completely. How could he not be furious?
“Bai Su, for the sake of what we once had, I’ll give you a chance. Come in. And you, Wu Yinmei—kneel down right now and shout three times that Qi Hai is a dog, and I’ll let you in too. Remember, you’re surrounded by zombies now. They have no sense or reason. When they tear your pretty face apart and shred your skin, I imagine it won’t be pretty.”
Yang Fan’s voice was nearly icy as he spoke. He slowly opened the door. Bai Su, terrified, walked in at once, her cheeks burning, not daring to look back at Qi Hai. Yang Fan remained wary of this woman. Wu Yinmei, on the other hand, broke down in tears, fell to her knees, and sobbed, “Qi Hai is a dog! Qi Hai is a dog! Qi Hai is a dog! Yang Fan, I beg you, have mercy, let me in. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die!”
After all, in the face of death, everything else is meaningless.
Wu Yinmei, utterly spineless, wailed pitifully on the ground. Yang Fan watched her with a satisfaction that bordered on the perverse.
That was just how he was—if someone slapped him in the face, he would never let them get their revenge. If he struck back, he’d do it until they coughed blood.
“Get in.” Yang Fan wanted to see Qi Hai’s helplessness, to see the arrogance stripped from him. He opened the door a little. Wu Yinmei crawled in on her knees, then crouched there, her face lit up with joy at having survived.
“You bastards, remember this.”
Qi Hai, eyeing the approaching zombies, cursed Yang Fan, then spat at Wu Yinmei and Bai Su in disgust, “You two filthy whores, don’t let me see you again, or I’ll make you regret it.”
With that, he ran off to the right. There was little hope for him wherever he went; things would not go well, and Qi Hai’s prospects were grim.
Yang Fan watched Qi Hai disappear and sneered. He looked at Bai Su, who sat silently on the ground, and taunted, “That’s your man? The one who calls you a filthy whore? And you, you cheap thing—go on, curry favor with him now.”
Neither woman spoke. Wu Yinmei, terrified that Yang Fan might kill her, kept her mouth shut; Bai Su, her expression frosty, said nothing at all.
The others, unfamiliar with the situation, didn’t know what to say, and the air was thick with discomfort. It was Liu Qiaoqiao who finally broke the awkward silence: “Alright, Brother Yang Fan, this isn’t the time for this. What should we do now?”
“We go upstairs first,” Yang Fan replied, hearing the breath of zombies below. “Ordinary zombies find targets by sight and can sense living beings within five meters. The evolved ones track by scent. If we stay upstairs, we’re less likely to be found by the regular zombies. With all the chaos below, the evolved ones won’t pick up our trail either. After a few days, when all the scents have mingled, we really won’t need to worry. The only thing I’m concerned about now is food.”

The seventh floor was mainly computer rooms, a music room, storage for textbooks, and a printing area. After leading everyone there, Yang Fan finally relaxed a little.
But the shrill screams from below could still be heard even from the seventh floor, and everyone’s mood darkened at once.
Yang Fan didn’t go to the music room but instead headed for the textbook storage. He gripped his axe as he carefully checked each room, making sure no one was hiding. Only then did he breathe easy.
With the axe in one hand as a deterrent, he had everyone line up before him while he sat at a desk.
Counting himself, there were nine people in all.
Liu Qiaoqiao, Bai Su, Wu Yinmei, the discipline director Zhu Liang, and the rest were all girls—no boys at all. The four girls were quite attractive. Yang Fan recognized them as students from Class 6. Of the six classes in the senior high school, Class 1 was for the top students.
Classes 2 and 3 were for students with potential to move up. Classes 4 and 5 were average, and Class 6 was where wealthy parents placed their children regardless of ability. The four girls before him wore trendy outfits in crimson, blue, white, and dark green.
On a scale of ten, these four would score a six—cute, but not stunning. Bai Su, though, was an eight. Liu Qiaoqiao, in Yang Fan’s eyes, was a six and a half. Wu Yinmei rated a five.
“The world’s already in ruins. Zombies have invaded the planet. If you want to survive, you’ll have to do as I say. Understood?” Yang Fan’s first words were laced with absolute authority. Wu Yinmei was the first to nod, nearly scared witless by him.
Liu Qiaoqiao was the second, putting on a serious expression. Yang Fan handed her a stool to rest on, something the others could only envy.
The four other girls nodded too. They were reluctant at first, but the screams from below quickly cowed them into compliance.
“Don’t think you deserve any kindness from me. I’m not the same Yang Fan as before.” Yang Fan looked at Bai Su coldly.
A trace of anger flickered across her beautiful face, but after glancing at the icy Yang Fan and hearing the screams, fear overcame her, and she nodded, though reluctantly.
“Alright then, let me ask: has anyone here inherited an apocalypse system?”
Yang Fan asked.
They all looked at each other, shaking their heads. Only Liu Qiaoqiao’s face lit up with joy. “Do you mean this?”

Liu Qiaoqiao opened her status panel and shared her information with Yang Fan.
Yang Fan had already known in his previous life that Liu Qiaoqiao possessed an apocalypse system, but he had never learned what her innate skill was. Now, as he studied her stats, most of them seemed quite ordinary—nothing special.
But her innate ability surprised him.
Innate Skill: Advance Loan. Allows you to borrow 500 apocalypse coins from the apocalypse merchant in advance.
—
This skill wasn’t particularly good or bad, but it was a tremendous advantage in the early stages. Yang Fan nodded in satisfaction. The apocalypse system could only be inherited by one percent of people; with a global population of ten billion, at most one hundred million people could inherit it. At the start of the apocalypse, one or two percent of them might die right away.
So, there were probably seventy to eighty million system holders worldwide—not as many as it might sound. Yang Fan had worked out that the number of zombies was ten times that of system inheritors, mutated beasts a hundred times, and the insect race even more so.
Humanity’s status was abysmal, so low that infighting became inevitable.
Yang Fan grew irritated, surrounded by these chattering girls. In the apocalypse, surviving alone was hard enough—dragging a group along was even worse. He was feeling frustrated when suddenly, the system’s voice sounded in his mind.
“Congratulations, player. In the ten minutes since the apocalypse began, you have earned the highest experience points and received a special luck reward: one chance at a Bloodline Lottery. This is unique in the whole world.”
Yang Fan was stunned—
A bloodline lottery! This was an incredible stroke of fortune!