Wouldn’t that be even more heaven-defying than someone who has been reborn?

“My head… it hurts!”

In a haze, Xue Feng slowly opened his eyes. His mind felt as if it had been battered by a sledgehammer, and the sight before him was one of utter desolation. The cramped room was in chaos, wooden furniture scattered haphazardly, and the walls were spattered with thick, rust-colored bloodstains.

What shocked him even more was the grotesquely twisted corpse of a man sprawled across the bed. On the floor lay the body of a woman, her abdomen torn wide open; both corpses were riddled with savage knife wounds.

Before he could recover his senses, a torrent of memories surged into his mind.

He had transmigrated!

He’d arrived in a world ravaged by the apocalypse for several days already!

These two zombies were the spoils of a desperate battle he’d fought, wielding a bone cleaver with all his might. In the struggle, he’d accidentally struck the back of his head and lost consciousness.

Piecing his thoughts together, Xue Feng realized the original owner had ventured out in search of food, driven by unbearable hunger, only to be forced into this life-and-death confrontation. Luckily, though the situation had been critical, the original had prepared adequate protection and avoided being bitten or scratched by the zombies, thus sidestepping the risk of mutation.

But now, a new problem arose—

Hunger, a gnawing, unprecedented hunger.

As a seasoned martial arts instructor in his previous life, Xue Feng had never experienced such utter weakness and ravenous emptiness.

“No matter what, I have to find something to eat first.”

Gripping the heavy cleaver, he began to search the ruined room.

Reality, however, dealt him a harsh blow. With the power out for days, even the food in the fridge had rotted beyond recognition. Only a small bag of sachima remained—a sugary, puffed snack, now his lifeline.

He wolfed down the sachima in a few bites, and his hunger abated just a little.

At that moment, a crisp, icy chime sounded abruptly in his mind:

[Ding! Today’s intelligence has been updated!]

[1. At 9:23 this morning, the resident of Apartment 502, Building 3, Jiameng Community, stepped outside for the first time since the apocalypse began and was killed within five seconds. A keychain hangs from their body—find the key, open the apartment, and you will obtain a generous supply of food.]

[2. In Apartment 509, Building 3, a female survivor is on the brink of starvation. You can use food to gain her trust and dependence.]

[3. There is a gang of scavengers in Jiameng Community: young and strong, a few have adapted to the apocalypse and act without the slightest shred of morality.]

…

“An intelligence system?”

“Doesn’t this make me even more powerful than a regressor?”

Xue Feng’s heart surged with excitement.

“A regressor can only foresee the future—a vague, shifting thing. But I seem to have a precise action plan.”

“First, I need to verify whether this intelligence is real!”

He decided to test it immediately.

Apartment 502, Building 3, was just two floors below. He could reach it quickly via the stairs.

He slung on a mountaineering backpack stuffed with gear, gripped the heavy cleaver, and wrapped his body with thick books and towels as make-shift armor against zombie attacks.

Once prepared, Xue Feng drew a deep breath and flung open the door.

The corridor was not swarming with zombies as he’d feared—just two or three wandered aimlessly.

He breathed out in relief; most residents on this floor had sealed their doors and windows, unlike the thronging chaos of the streets.

Two nearby zombies caught his scent.

With guttural snarls, they lunged toward him, claws outstretched.

Xue Feng’s eyes hardened—he raised his blade to meet them.

With one clean swing, he sliced away half the skull of the nearest zombie, instantly robbing it of the power to attack.

The second zombie lunged. He kicked it over, stomped on its chest, and brought the cleaver down with all his might. The skull burst; red and white matter splattered across the floor.

The fierce skirmish ended quickly.

Xue Feng raced for the stairwell, following the route from memory. There he met more zombies, but with his combat experience and the high ground advantage, he dispatched them one by one.

Suddenly—

A sharp metallic clatter drew his attention.

One zombie had a keychain hanging at its waist—surely the key to Apartment 502 mentioned in the intelligence.

Xue Feng’s eyes narrowed. With ruthless precision, he dispatched the zombie and snatched the key.

With key in hand, he hurried to Apartment 502, dispatching another handful of zombies along the way.

Soon, he stood at the door, heart racing, nerves taut with anticipation. He slid the key into the lock and turned.

With a soft creak, the door swung open.

The sight within made Xue Feng almost shout for joy.

At the same moment, another chime rang in his mind:

[You have successfully verified the accuracy of the intelligence. You are awarded a personal storage space (10m x 10m x 10m)!]

His heart pounded, hands trembling in excitement.

“So that’s how it is—verifying intelligence brings rich rewards.”

With a thought, he sensed it: a boundless space—one thousand cubic meters, like a warehouse—entirely under his mental control.

This storage space would vastly increase his efficiency in gathering supplies, offering convenience unimagined before.

Xue Feng stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

The room was in disarray, but the floor was piled high with packaged food.

Twenty-odd fifty-kilogram sacks of rice, over a dozen bags of flour, and countless strips of cured meat hung from the balcony—like a miniature granary.

Without hesitation, Xue Feng swept all the food into his storage space.

He opened a cupboard and found it packed with tins of canned meat—at least a hundred.

Without a second thought, he opened three cans at once and devoured them.

As the cans emptied and his hunger eased, he stopped at seventy percent full, knowing it was unwise to gorge when starving.

Replenished, his limbs regained their strength. He continued searching and soon, in the study, made new discoveries.

A long-handled broadsword and a finely crafted compound bow.

The broadsword’s handle was fifty to sixty centimeters long, the total length nearly one point six meters—suitable for single or double-handed use. It might not rival legendary blades in pure performance, but in the apocalypse, it was among the most practical weapons.

The compound bow had a draw weight of eighty pounds, enough to kill a wild ox at fifty meters—though, regrettably, there were only fifteen arrows.

Grinning, Xue Feng stored both weapons away, then glanced at a diary atop the desk.

He skimmed it for a few minutes before closing the book.

The diary's contents were simple: the owner had a premonition before the apocalypse and used up their savings to hoard food and arms, but forgot to store water. Despair drove them to open the door and embrace death.

“To ordinary people, the apocalypse is hell. Only those with meticulous minds may find a glimmer of hope. But how did this person foresee the end?”

Xue Feng muttered, recalling the strange sensation he’d felt each time he killed a zombie.

“Every time I kill a zombie, something seems to stir inside me—what does it mean?”

He hadn’t killed many zombies yet.

But from what he’d pieced together, he sensed deeper secrets behind this apocalypse.

After gathering his thoughts, Xue Feng left the study.

He stripped the room nearly bare, even breaking down wooden furniture for fuel.

He recalled the “daily intelligence”—there was still one lead left to verify on this floor.

With that in mind, he decisively opened the door, only to find the number of zombies in the corridor had grown—eight or nine now, likely drawn by the earlier commotion.

They were roaring, hurling themselves at him.

The situation was more perilous than before: zombies attacking from both ends.

Without hesitation, Xue Feng raised the broadsword and dealt with the lone zombie behind him first—the blade flashed, spraying brownish-red blood across the wall. The zombie’s head flew off, its body staggering forward a few steps before collapsing.

Three zombies surged from the front. No longer weak from hunger, Xue Feng moved with tireless energy. He slashed at the nearest, his blade cleaving straight through its skull. The corpse toppled instantly.

The other two tripped over the fallen body.

Seizing the moment, Xue Feng lunged, gripped the sword in both hands, and plunged it into another zombie’s skull. The hard bone shattered; gore sprayed everywhere.

He followed up with a downward swing of the cleaver, as if chopping meat on a kitchen board. In a flash, four zombies lay dead.

He was satisfied with the outcome—dangerous, but he'd leveraged the narrow corridor to his advantage. In open streets, surrounded from all sides, he would have struggled far more.

“That feeling inside me is growing stronger,” he murmured, sensing the shift within.

He raised his blade, readying himself as the remaining five zombies, roused by the noise, charged toward him with frenzied howls…

Meanwhile, in a tidy apartment, An Xiaowei paced restlessly back and forth.

Again and again, she pressed her ear to the security door, peering out through the peephole. All she could hear were the zombies’ roars and the fierce sounds of battle in the corridor.

Yet those sounds thrilled her with hope—she had been trapped in this room for ten days.

For the past five, there hadn’t been a single living soul nearby.

The streets outside crawled with zombies, and the corridor was never free of their shuffling.

The constant anxiety had nearly driven her to despair.

But now, the battle outside was dying down, and her attention sharpened.

She pressed herself to the door, ear almost wedged into the frame, watching through the peephole.

“The fight… it’s stopped. Is that man… still alive?”

An Xiaowei hesitated, unsure whether to risk stepping outside.

If the man harbored ill intentions, she was powerless to resist, forced to submit—even if he treated her as less than an animal.

After all, she’d read plenty of post-apocalyptic novels and watched those movies.

Especially during the first days of the apocalypse, when the internet was still working and TikTok kept pushing those videos at her.

As she wavered, a shadow appeared before the peephole.

What caught An Xiaowei’s eye was the can of meat in the man’s hand…