It had been an ordinary day. Three years had passed, and Lu Hao had started his first year of university. After finishing his classes late in the afternoon, Lu Hao returned to his dorm room to find his girlfriend, Xia Weiwei, waiting for him.

Lu Hao's roommates grumbled, but after Weiwei cooked them a sumptuous dinner, their complaints subsided.

That evening, Lu Hao and Weiwei fooled around a bit before falling asleep together in bed.

It had been an absolutely ordinary day.

And then, deep in the night, when all were asleep and a thick blanket of clouds had rolled over the earth, a light sparked in the shadowed sky.

Similar to a flash of lightning, the strange red light illuminated the entire world for one brief moment. The red faded into darkness, leaving only the shadows of the clouds behind. The wind blew in circles, the clouds drifting heavily above a world that had just begun to change.

Far below this sky, in the specks on the Earth that were the bodies of human beings, a strange phenomenon began to unfold. People began twisting in their sleep, their insides roiling, the very cells inside of them churning and transforming. Their closed eyes snapped wide open, the whites around their pinprick pupils bleeding red from bursting capillaries. Their fingers and toes hooked into corpse-like claws, and their limbs froze with a pain and agony so great that when these suffering people screamed, the deathly sound of millions of cries rose and harmonized into a single haunting wail.

In Lu Hao's narrow bed, two bodies thrashed in pain. Lu Hao awoke screaming, his body overheated and profusely sweating. He jackknifed upright, and after blinking his hazy eyes, he looked down at his tingling hands. His veins glowed beneath his skin, simmering like the embers of a fire. The unnatural light faded slowly, leaving his body as it seemed before.

But Lu Hao could tell something was different. His skin vibrated with a pulsing instinct to fight. His ears prickled from an overload of sound: car sirens from neighborhoods away, animals barking and screeching, running water left unattended. And from beside him, a wheezing, rattling sound.

Lu Hao looked over to see Xia Weiwei's twisted figure reaching out to him, the bloody balls of her eyes running down her face as her skin began to droop and melt. Her teeth gleamed in the shadow of her wide open mouth, which issued a terrifying and inhuman squeal.

Lu Hao raised his hands to protect himself, and somehow a power rushed through him. The tips of his fingers crackled, and the next Lu Hao knew, he was alone on the bed.

On the floor was a smear. Ash and dust and a crimson stain that had been a person, once.

When he realized what had happened—not only in his dorm, but in the rest of the country and perhaps even the world as well—Lu Hao battled his way out of the university campus. The horrific remains of students milled in every hall and crawled in the darkness outside. The few people who hadn't become monsters tried their best to flee, but it was nearly impossible to escape from this crowded campus. Lu Hao had only managed to rescue a handful of people, bringing them to the university's car park. The group parted ways there. Lu Hao stole a dead man's car and drove without rest to his parents' home in F City.

His familiar hometown had become a nightmarish abyss. Streets he had run through as a child were now painted with bloody corpses. Grim specters of former friends and neighbors chased after his car, but their ambling and distorted limbs were too slow and clumsy to catch up.

Lu Hao parked in front of entryway to the gated community his parents lived in. The security guard was dead, a burst of red splattered over the window of the yellow-lit guard box. He couldn't open the gate to pass through, so Lu Hao exited the car.

He took a look at the 2-meter tall gate and, after feeling some sense that he could pass it, began running forward. He quickly gained speed, faster than any normal human could, and at the pivotal moment he leaped. Lu Hao soared through the air, bypassing the 2-meter gate with ease and landing within the private circle of housing.

There was no one outside. The grand faces of the darkened mansions towered over the street. An eerie quiet permeated the air, only broken by the rustle of wind and the distant shrieks of humans and creatures beyond the gated walls. Though fear pressed against Lu Hao's mind, an even stronger ferocity drove him to forward.

He rushed to his parents' house.

All the lights were off, and Lu Hao heard only a faint dripping sound coming from inside.

A squirming and foreboding sense weighed in Lu Hao's stomach. His footsteps faltered as he reached the front door. Though he kept no expression on his face, his hand trembled slightly while searching for the key in his pocket. Lu Hao forced his fingers to curl tightly, as if they were steel, around that small piece of metal. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and thrust the key into the lock, turning it without letting himself think. The sharp thunk of the lock sounded. Lu Hao opened the door, the heavy wood swinging open silently to reveal the dim foyer, lit only from the back by the pale blue moonlight.

Lu Hao stepped into the house, closing the door quietly behind him. He turned his head. His enhanced senses easily picked out every whisper of the trees and every brush of the grass, so he naturally could hear the faint and gasping wheezes of someone—a woman—upstairs.

His heart thumped painfully, and adrenaline pounded in his veins. Throwing away his caution, Lu Hao rushed up the stairs and toward the room where he heard those sounds—his parents' bedroom.

The door had been left ajar. Lu Hao slid to a stop at the doorway, and froze.

A man's body splayed across the bed. He was dressed only in a bare shirt and pants. His grey hair fanned out over the rumpled blankets, framing a pallid face that had been caught in an inhuman snarl. Nothing of Lu Hao's kind and patient father could be seen in that monstrous creature, except for the glint of the pendant necklace wrapped around its neck. The silver chain cut into the bloated skin, pulled taut by the creature's own hand.

Laying on the floor, huddled by the wall, was Lu Hao's mother.

His eyes red, Lu Hao rushed to his mother and dropped to his knees beside her. "Ma!" he breathed, his eyes glistening as he reached out toward her.

Ma took a shaky breath, her fragile chest heaving under her pale nightdress. Her bruised eyes slid open to reveal a deep, unnatural shadow in her sockets. Black tears dripped onto her eyelashes before her eyes shut once more.

"Little Hao." A ghost of a smile flitted across her lips. Even with the black staining the corners of her closed eyes, Lu Hao's mother looked beautiful. She reached a hand up weakly, and Lu Hao caught it between his palms. Her skin was cold, her pulse nearly nonexistent. Lu Hao saw that her other arm, hanging limply at her side, bled from a sharp human bite. The veins in that arm had turned dark blue from infection.

Lu Hao ducked his head, his hair falling over his face.

"Shhh." Ma knew what her son was thinking, of course. Even as her life slipped away, she knew. She would always know in her heart when her son needed her comfort. Her fingers slipped from Lu Hao's grasp and touched his face, softly wiping at his tears. "Are you safe?" she asked, her rasping voice as bare as the skeleton of a leaf.

"Yes," Lu Hao said, tightening his throat. "Ma... I'm sorry, Ma. I was too la—I should have—"

Ma stopped his words with her fingers. "You couldn't have stopped it," Ma said, a wry smile hooking at the corners of her lips. "Your Pa... something happened to him. He changed. But he—he tried to stop himself. He tried to save me." Ma paused. Her eyebrows trembled, and for an instant her lips wobbled. But in the next instant she became serene. "Even if not," she said, "I would stay with your father until the end. No matter what he became, he is... the man I love, after all. But I am... so—so happy that... you're okay, Lu Hao."

Ma's breathing grew strained. She began slipping down, and Lu Hao hurriedly grasped her shoulder to stabilize her. "Ma—" His voice was wretched.

Even as she struggled to breathe, Ma put a smile on her face. "It's okay. I'll be... okay." She brushed her fingers lightly along the curve of Lu Hao's face, skimming across the droplets falling from his eyes.

Lu Hao held her hand, squeezing it with an aching grip as Ma gasped, her eyelashes fluttering.

"Little Hao... please keep yourself safe," she whispered. Though her lips could barely move, her body was composed, her words calm and reassured. "Whatever happens... find a way to survive. If you can, please live a full and happy life. Find the person you will love with all your heart. And," she paused, the movement of her chest growing ever fainter. "If you find little Sheng," she said, her words growing weaker until they were barely puffs of air, "please protect him. He... he deserves..."

One more tear fell from her eyes at the thought of the second son she had taken in, but who had disappeared from her life without a single trace.

And as that tear burst against the floor, her life also ended.

Lu Hao sat there holding his mother's hand for a long time.

He would think about her words over and over.

After this, Lu Hao wandered the city. He rescued some survivors—families and loners, strong and weak—and brought them to form a stronghold at his parents' vacation villa. Lu Hao's power was like a soaring bonfire; it burned away the evils and attracted people seeking salvation. The stronghold grew and became a fortress, and Lu Hao's straggling survivors readied into the Survivor Guard. When the military finally acted, they recognized Lu Hao's group as an independent force and formed a contract of alliance. The military would send supplies and survivors to Lu Hao if Lu Hao's group would do missions for the military.

Like this, Lu Hao's influence, reputation, and power swelled greater and greater.

Yet, still—

He thought about his mother's words over and over.

Still, no matter how many people he rescued, and no matter how many women he dallied with, there were none who touched his heart.

It would take three more years for Lu Hao to begin taking steps to fulfilling his mother's dying wishes, for three years later was when Lu Hao and Hong Sheng finally met again.