PSW – Chapter 1

In the dark and silent night, only the occasional, meaningless roars of zombies echoed through the corridor. They stumbled back and forth, wandering aimlessly, sometimes bumping into closed doors.

Not a single living person made a sound, regardless of whether any humans still existed behind those tightly shut doors.

But just then, the faint sound of a door opening broke the silence. A young woman holding a flashlight pushed her door open. The harsh beam cut through the hallway, revealing dried bloodstains and scattered scraps of minced flesh. She directly took out a key, unlocked the door across the hall, and gently closed it behind her.

Click.

The flame of a lighter ignited a candle, and its light soon filled the room. As the woman moved, the flickering light and shadows trembled in unison.

She skillfully produced a set of tools out of thin air and began her work. In the candlelight, you could see her expressionlessly tying a tourniquet around her arm, pulling it tight, and then expertly drawing a tube of her own blood. She squeezed the blood into another, somewhat dirty basin, which contained unwashed stains of blood and mud. She efficiently put away the syringe, needle, and other items, then pressed a clean cotton ball to the puncture wound and released the tourniquet.

Quietly, quickly. She completed these tasks without a flicker of emotion, then casually grabbed a few clumps of dirt, placed them in the basin, and mixed them thoroughly with the blood. She divided the mixture into several small lumps and put them into a bag. After all this, she washed her hands with the same blank expression, cleansing herself of any scent.

Only after finishing her work did she place the white candle in a bowl. The flickering light made her shadow waver. As she passed through the living room, you could even see the long streaks of blood left by something being dragged and the bits of flesh that had dried on the floor. But other than that, the furniture in the room was perfectly intact, with no signs of a struggle. Of course, there were no signs of life or habitation either.

This only made the scene more bizarre. To be honest, it looked like the set of a horror film. The air was thick with the pervasive, lingering stench of rot and death, which was nauseating. Not to mention, the room hadn’t been aired out in a long time, making the smell absolutely foul. Yet the woman strode past it all as if she felt nothing, stopping only when she reached the door to the side bedroom.

She stood still and lowered her gaze. After a moment of silence, the woman, who had been so quiet she seemed almost lifeless, suddenly came “alive.” Those dull, emotionless black eyes were suddenly filled with a fervent, vibrant emotion. She broke into a brilliant smile, so pure and beautiful it seemed to light up the entire room.

She pushed the door open and went inside.

“Roar!” It was like the bellow of a wild beast, yet also like a human’s agonized shriek. Clang, clang. Chains were dragged across the floor. As the white candle was raised, the figure was illuminated. No, that was no longer human!

Its clothes were in tatters, almost entirely caked in dried blood, and it reeked of decay. Beneath a mess of tangled hair was a festering face—half of which was just raw, red flesh, while the other half was bone with chunks of meat clinging to it, the skin hanging off gruesomely. A maggot suddenly crawled out of its open mouth, dropped to the floor, and wriggled forward.

Its eyes were all white and hadn’t fallen out yet, but they bulged so severely that one had to wonder if they were about to. Ah, if they did fall out, a single stomp would probably release quite a bit of fluid.

It was the one roaring. A chain was wrapped around its neck, digging into the bone. A closer look would reveal that its vocal cords should have been destroyed, yet it somehow managed to roar. Not only that, but it was bursting with an unprecedented vitality. It constantly tried to crawl forward, dragging a body that had no legs, its hands—little more than bone with some minced flesh and barely any skin—still clawing at the air, as if it would tear a piece of flesh from the newcomer and devour it, even in death. Strangely, where its legs should have been, there was a pile of some unknown filth. Upon closer inspection, it looked like a large puddle of sludge.

Clang, clang. The iron chain was pulled taut again and again, the flesh it ground off accumulating on the floor like claw marks. It continued to roar and roar. If not for the chain and its missing legs, it would have instantly lunged forward and torn this person to shreds!

But there were no “if nots.”

“Oh my god, oh my god… sob…” A cry of alarm was followed by an outburst of tears. The young woman stared at the monster before her, tears streaming down her face like pearls from a broken string. Her voice was filled with endless sorrow and pity. “Your wounds are still so severe. Why must fate treat you this way? I haven’t been able to see you for so long, you must be starving. Here, eat this. It’s food I prepared especially for you.” She held out the bag of blood-mixed dirt clumps. The creature roared, snatched the bag, tore it open, and shoved the clumps into its mouth one by one, chewing and ripping at them.

“You must have suffered so much. Eat slowly.” She bit her lip and continued to sob, as if she couldn’t bear to look at the creature’s miserable state. Her pain and compassion were so real, her words so sincere. She even sat by the doorway and began telling the “eating” creature about the situation outside.

“There are more and more people like you. I don’t have many rooms left to take care of you all. But I think that even a Saint has her limits. I just have to do my best to save you.”

“Sigh, why did this have to happen? Why did you have to suffer this way, to be afflicted with such a terrible illness? If only I could do more for you.”

“You’re the most severely injured one, and you show no signs of recovery. If the rooms fill up… perhaps I’ll have to use another method of treatment on you. Don’t worry, I’ll do my best to minimize your pain.”

Her voice was soft and gentle, her speech slow. As she spoke, she couldn’t help but wipe a tear from the corner of her eye, her grief deepening. After finishing the dirt clumps, the “person” across from her again tried frantically to get closer, to tear her apart, but it was all in vain. She simply continued to speak her thoughts through her tears. Only when she had said her piece did she turn, as if unable to bear the sight of the “person’s” misery any longer, and pulled the door open to leave. “You should rest now. I’ll come see you again next time.”

The moment the door closed, her eyes were still slightly red, her eyelashes glistening with tears. A single tear clung to the corner of her eye, about to fall, making her look fragile and beautiful. But the expression on her face vanished once more, and she walked toward the master bedroom, her face a blank mask.

[My dear, honestly, even though I’ve seen it all, my heart still lurches a bit every time I see you farm Saint Points like this.] The system’s voice sighed softly in her mind. [If any other system were bound to you, they would surely go insane.]

“Zero One, is that a compliment?”

[I suppose it is.]

“Then, thank you?”

[You’re welcome. All my praise for you comes from the bottom of my heart.]

How… did it end up bound to a host like this? Zero One couldn’t help but fall into deep thought. Even though it was the top-performing and very first system of the Saint Growth Plan, and even though it had seen all kinds of Saints, it still found it hard to adapt to Zheng Yi’s brand of “Saint” operations.

Back then, what made it choose her at a glance?

Zero One, a sucker for a pretty face, slumped down in the system space, looking slightly melancholic, and peacefully entered standby mode, deciding not to watch Zheng Yi’s subsequent “Saintly” operations.

The Saint Growth Plan system, naturally, had to find a target to cultivate and bind to. For this mission, it had come to an apocalyptic world. At that time, the apocalypse had not yet begun, and the plot had not yet unfolded, giving Zero One ample time to find a suitable host. So it searched meticulously.

Zero One knew the “original work”—which had been abandoned halfway through—like the back of its hand. After excluding the protagonist and supporting characters as potential binding targets, it began its search for a host in a city far from the male and female leads.

Its purpose was cultivation, so the host couldn’t be too old. The initial screening was for females under the age of twenty-five. But they couldn’t be too young either; in the apocalypse, someone too young would struggle just to survive, let alone be cultivated. After all, it had no physical form and couldn’t manually help its host escape all the dangers of the apocalypse. The host had to rely on herself to perform Saintly deeds to earn Saint Points and exchange them for items in the store.

After much screening, it chose Zheng Yi—a sweet, pretty, and well-behaved girl.

She was gentle, considerate, and generous. Although her grades were average, she was very lucky. She had gotten into university by the skin of her teeth, and in every subject since, she had managed to barely scrape by with a passing grade. She held no positions in her class, but there wasn’t a single person, boy or girl, who didn’t like her. She got along well with everyone, and the teachers at school liked her too. Her only drawbacks were that she wasn’t very smart and her physical education scores were just barely passing, which would make survival in the early days of the apocalypse quite difficult. But her features were exquisite, even stunning…

In short, Zero One couldn’t help but observe her a little longer and began to look into Zheng Yi’s background. It then discovered that Zheng Yi’s life had been rather tragic. Her father was an alcoholic, a gambler, and a domestic abuser—a complete scoundrel. He had even driven Zheng Yi’s mother insane. Finally, during one of his abusive episodes, her mentally unstable mother picked up a kitchen knife and, to protect her daughter, hacked viciously at that scumbag.

Zheng Yi was only fourteen at the time. Her father was dead, and her mother was sent to a mental hospital. Relatives from both sides of the family wanted nothing to do with her. Zheng Yi survived on community and state aid, worked part-time in the school cafeteria, collected bottles and cardboard to sell after school, and spent her weekends handing out flyers or doing simple manual labor. Despite all this, the year Zheng Yi was accepted into university, her mother passed away in the mental hospital.

Fate had not been kind to her, but she had squeezed out from between the cracks of a rock, stubbornly growing upward.

It was quite an inspirational story.

Zero One couldn’t see any more details. At the time, it never thought that a cannon fodder character who didn’t exist in the original work would have any surprises. Even if there were things that didn’t add up, it ignored them. Because the original work didn’t mention her, the data Zero One could access was limited. But after some thought, it still chose Zheng Yi.

Zheng Yi, “Justice”—wasn’t that a perfect match for the Saint Growth Plan system?

The first time it formally met Zheng Yi, she was just an “ordinary” university student.

When Zheng Yi walked into the library, bathed in sunlight and holding her books, the brilliant, scorching sun seemed to soften as it fell upon her little white dress.

And Zero One became even more certain of its choice of host.