Chapter 1

Zhou Yun was in a daze for a long time when he was suddenly shaken awake.

He opened his eyes and saw a man in front of him, hands clasped together, smiling and speaking to him: “Zhou Yun, can I trouble you to cover my night shift again tonight?”

“I have a very important date, and I can’t miss it. Please, please, I’ll treat you to milk tea tomorrow.”

Zhou Yun stared blankly at him without responding. The man thought he was unwilling and tried to persuade him: “I know you’ve been helping Sister Cai with her night shifts because her child is sick, right?”

“I know you’re kind-hearted. But Sister Cai is really just taking advantage of you. You’ve covered so many of her night shifts, but when it comes time to help you, she’s not that reliable.”

The man looked indignant: “When performance reviews were done, I saw she only gave you a score of sixty, but she gave Xiao Sun a high score.”

“Hehe… I’m different. I’ll give you all the shift allowance! And I’ll treat you to milk tea!”

The man laughed and patted Zhou Yun on the shoulder: “Anyway, you’re single with no kids, and the night shift allowance is higher.”

He clasped his hands together again: “This time it’s really important. Please help me out, brother. You’ve rested during the day, one more night shift won’t hurt. If I find someone, I’ll treat you to a meal! Or I can cover your shift next time!”

Zhou Yun watched the man’s thin eyebrows, small eyes, and moving lips for a while before a name slowly surfaced in his mind: “Song Zhenhua?”

Song Zhenhua, seeing Zhou Yun didn’t readily agree as before, felt a bit annoyed but still suppressed his temper and whispered: “How about this, your labor dispatch contract hasn’t been renewed, right?”

He lowered his voice mysteriously: “I’ve reminded you before, Dean Luo is just stalling, waiting for you to give him some money. How about this, I’ll ask my dad to put in a good word for you and get your contract renewed early. How about that? Fair enough, right?”

He patted Zhou Yun’s shoulder again, thinking it was a done deal: “It’s settled then, I’ll go on rounds now.”

Zhou Yun watched him walk away, sat there for a while, and looked around. The small, dim room had the smell of disinfectant, a locker, a duty roster, and a computer.

Outside the corridor, there were sounds of people walking back and forth, and the nurses’ voices guiding patients.

This was—the hospital’s duty room.

Zhou Yun slowly got up, pulled open the blackout curtains of the duty room, and the bright morning light immediately streamed in. Outside, green trees swayed, casting shadows, and the cheerful chirping of birds could be heard.

Everything was so peaceful and serene—a tranquility belonging to peaceful times, more comforting than any dream.

He should have just finished his night shift and laid down for a nap, only to be shaken awake by Song Zhenhua.

He heard commotion and shouting in front of the hospital again, and the sound of security guards running over.

That was the patients’ families causing trouble. They would soon break through the front line and reach the ward, blocking Song Zhenhua in the front, then they would push the blame onto him, claiming he was the one who performed the surgery.

Then he would be besieged by these family’s day and night, harassed, followed home, and left in peace.

He got up, took off his white coat, placed it aside, grabbed his bag, walked out of the duty room, and headed towards the stairs. Instead of going down, he went up directly to the personnel department.

When the section chief of the personnel department, Chief Fang, saw him, he impatiently said: “Here to push for the contract renewal again? I’ve told you before, I can’t decide on the renewal. You have to talk to the higher-ups. If you keep working like this, it will be for nothing. When the contract period ends, your salary definitely won’t be paid…”

“The contract expired two months ago, I’m here to resign.”

Chief Fang was stunned: “What?”

Zhou Yun looked at Chief Fang’s incredulous expression and clarified: “My contract has expired, and the salary hasn’t been paid. My labor relationship is not actually with the hospital. The night shifts have all been handed over. Today, I am officially leaving, just informing you.”

Chief Fang didn’t know what to say for a moment. After thinking for a while, he couldn’t find a way to keep Zhou Yun working without pay, so he said: “If you resign now, your salary can’t be made up. Have you found another job? It’s not easy to continue your insurance if it lapses.”

The Second Hospital was one of the only two public hospitals in this county-level city, Danlin City. Zhou Yun’s traditional Chinese medicine major was not in demand in this small place, so he signed a labor dispatch contract, waiting for a position to open up to get officially hired.

It was said that Zhou Yun originally came back to this small county to take care of his mother, but his mother passed away last year. The official doctors and nurses in this hospital inevitably had some sense of superiority over these labor dispatch workers.

Now, Chief Fang found it unbelievable that Zhou Yun wanted to resign and couldn’t help but say: “Aren’t you going to wait a bit longer? I heard a position has opened up. If you talk to Dean Luo again, even if you can’t get the official position, renewing the contract shouldn’t be a problem.”

The hospital was actually always short-staffed. Zhou Yun was silent and hardworking, single, capable, and took on a lot of night shifts and emergency work. If he left, they would definitely be short-handed, and it would be hard to find someone so easy to exploit, with low wages but high qualifications and good skills.

Originally, he kept dangling the renewal as a carrot in front of him, thinking the other person would endure for the sake of the position. But unexpectedly…

Section Chief Fang quickly calculated in his mind and realized that finding someone on short notice was impossible. He hurriedly said, “I’ll find a way to give you the back pay for the past few days.”

Zhou Yun shook his head. “No need. Thank you, Section Chief Fang, for taking care of me these past days. I’ll consider myself officially resigned from here. Please handle my discharge procedures. I’ll be leaving today.”

He then decisively handed over his work badge, cafeteria card, and other items to Section Chief Fang. After nodding slightly, he turned and swiftly left the personnel department.

As he walked out of the doctor’s corridor, the front yard was densely packed with people. He cast a cold glance at Song Zhenhua, who was surrounded by mourning family members and looked disheveled, then turned away without a second look. He wheeled out his mountain bike from the shed, mounted it, and left the place that had trapped him for so long.

The day was already bright, with thin white clouds in the blue sky. The streets were bustling with people commuting to work and school, their expressions indifferent as if repeating the start of an ordinary day over and over again.

Breakfast stalls by the roadside were setting up, and the aroma of fried buns, deep-fried mantou, layered cakes, rice noodles, fried dough sticks, fresh porridge, egg pancakes, meat sandwiches, and grilled sausages filled the air—just another ordinary day in the world.

Zhou Yun, with one foot on the ground and the other on his bicycle, bought a portion of taro layered cake and fried dough sticks from a roadside porridge stall. While waiting for the dough sticks to be fried, he glanced at the vibrant blue sky typical of summer. It was a sunny day, but soon it would rain continuously for half a month, followed by a month of intense heat and drought…

Just like in that well-known apocalypse movie, it began with localized floods and wildfires, then animals started mutating first, followed by humans…

Harsh weather became the norm, and zombie hordes turned into the biggest survival threat. No one could pinpoint the exact day the disaster began, and these ordinary days would become the cherished memories of a happier past.

He observed the busy crowd, still unable to shake off the shock from zombies and supernatural abilities.

He didn’t know if it was a long prophetic dream or if he had been reborn back to this time before the apocalypse. The pain, fatigue, hunger, and weariness followed him every day, making him more inclined to believe that his life had somehow rewound.

This time, he didn’t want to drift aimlessly like in his previous life, chased by survival, becoming a rootless dandelion, exhausted from dealing with all kinds of people.

This was the unspoken social rule: a person must have social attributes to live in the world, always interacting with others. How could one live without dealing with people?

But he was tired.

He longed for a place entirely his own, where he could rest peacefully.

This intense yearning remained until he returned to his residential community. The name “Yunding Mountain Estate” on the gate made him feel a sense of familiarity.

The community was built at the foot of Yunding Mountain, the highest peak in Danlin City, hence the name Yunding Mountain Estate. Most of the area was developed into villas, with a tall twin tower in the middle, thirty floors high, housing resettled residents and some who wanted to enjoy the scenic mountain view but couldn’t afford a villa.

Typically, in first- and second-tier cities, villa areas as high-end residences wouldn’t mix with resettlement housing, as it would affect the villa prices. But here, the villagers were tough and insisted on on-site resettlement when signing the land transfer agreement, demanding guarantees for kindergarten and elementary school admissions.

Danlin City, being a county-level city with most young people moving to first-tier cities, had little economic industry and relied on land sales for revenue. Yunding Mountain was far from the city center, with inconvenient transportation and poor school districts. Villas were hard to sell, leading to compromises in pricing and planning, resulting in their strange, mismatched community.

The so-called “villa area” wasn’t expensive, inhabited by slightly better-off local families.

The road in Yunding Mountain Estate was indeed steep, spiraling upwards, with many residents joking that an electric bike with an empty battery would need to be pushed halfway up.

But Zhou Yun liked this mountain path. The community had specially built a jogging path and preserved many of the original large trees. The mountain top even had a reservoir to cope with the water pressure issues of tall buildings.

Zhou Yun bought a house here due to the resettlement. His parents got the highest floor and were delighted because the top floor came with additional loft space and a large rooftop garden where they could grow vegetables.

In fact, top-floor units without extra space wouldn’t sell. Such high buildings had a high likelihood of elevator breakdowns, leaks, and insufficient water pressure, making the top floor the cheapest.

Other than resettlement units, top-floor units in the commercial buildings were hard to sell, so the developer directly rented the entire floor of the adjacent unit to a restaurant, turning it into a Yunding restaurant. From the rooftop, one could see the distant sea and the entire city’s panorama. It was said to be doing good business.

Zhou Yun rode his mountain bike up the winding road. His long legs created beautiful muscle lines, and he rode the bike as if it were flying. Although the uphill road was steep, he navigated it easily, swiftly reaching the twin towers at the highest point. The wind blowing against his face gave him a sense of exhilaration.

He carried his mountain bike into the elevator, went up to the top floor, unlocked the door with his fingerprint, and entered his apartment. He hung the bike at the entrance, changed his shoes, and walked into the room. The three-bedroom, two-living-room apartment was tidy and clean, just as he had meticulously arranged it, a place he had longed for in his memories.

He opened the windows, letting the wind flow through. From this height, the view from the thirtieth floor combined with the mountain’s elevation provided an altitude of over 600 meters. On cloudy or foggy days, the surroundings would be a white expanse, like being in a sea of clouds.

—–

Today, the weather was clear, offering a view of the majestic mountain ranges, deep valleys, nearby Lotus Mountain, Sheepback Mountain, the distant Golden Bay Beach, and the bright mirror-like Qingyun Reservoir, all expanding his vision and mind.

He walked up to the second floor from the balcony. There were two rooms and a bathroom on the second floor. He opened the door leading to the rooftop, and the wind rushed in more vigorously, greeting him noisily.

On the rooftop, there were meticulously maintained vegetable plots and flower trellises. The beautiful green leaves of the golden passion fruit he bought online climbed up the trellis and had already borne fruit. The cucumber trellis against the wall and the tomato plants with red and green fruits hung vibrantly. Nearby, a large water jar held his beloved thousand-year lotus seeds. In their first year of cultivation, they had bloomed and now bore a few tenders, green lotus pods.

In the rooftop garden, lush green Chinese cabbage, scallions, leeks, and pumpkin vines flourished. In the soil, there were super-sized pumpkins he had meticulously cultivated following online guides. It was not yet harvesting time, but the large, round pumpkins could already be seen among the pumpkin leaves.

On one side, the trumpet creeper (Campsis) stretched out and bloomed profusely, looking like flames dancing and burning under the sunlight.

Online, it was said that the roots of trumpet creeper were too vigorous and could damage the walls and foundations if left unchecked. Since this was the rooftop, he had always planned to remove it. But seeing it in full, fiery bloom, he couldn’t bear to do so. Instead, he transplanted it into a large water jar, built a trellis for it, and constantly pruned its roots and branches to control its size, preventing it from climbing onto the roof and walls.

He gently touched the flamboyant flowers of the trumpet creeper with his finger, thinking that when the weather turned harsh, it would be these resilient plants that would survive…

And indeed, after a long time, when he passed by again, he saw that the rooftop had been ravaged by the winds of the apocalypse. The lush, brightly blooming flowers had not been blown away by the fierce winds. It was the trumpet creeper that had survived, with its vigorous roots and vines firmly gripping the walls and water jar.

He lowered his head and looked again at the small lotus pods of the thousand-year lotus seeds. The lotus pods cultivated from these seeds were likely the direct reason for his awakening of dual water and wood abilities.

Standing tall on the rooftop, facing the wind, in this place filled with light and tranquility, it seemed as if he was the only one left in the world. His eyes suddenly felt warm. Was it real? Had he truly returned?