Chapter 2

Leaving the school's block, the sky full of black hail had transformed into a dense, vicious blizzard.  

The temperature ruthlessly plummeted below freezing. Every second before the absolute freeze took over was a bargaining chip for survival.  

Towing Lily along, I plunged straight into a large comprehensive supermarket two blocks away.  

There was still residual heating here. The front lobby was packed with customers lining up to pay, and a few housewives were shoving and cursing over line-cutting.  

I bypassed the crowd, shielding Lily as we made a beeline for the high-calorie food and outdoor supplies section.  

"Lily, turn your back. Block their line of sight for me."  

The little girl obediently turned around.  

I had no intention of frantically stuffing a backpack like ordinary people. I possessed an infinite, absolutely still spatial dimension. I just needed a thought, and these goods would be instantly absorbed into the space.  

I placed my palm against the metal shelves, my mind sweeping out like a radar.  

Store, store, store...  

A miracle played out in the shadows.  

Five entire rows of military-grade MREs and compressed biscuits, crates of dark chocolate, dehydrated vegetables, two pallets of bottled water, along with dozens of extreme-weather sleeping bags and portable gas stoves vanished into thin air in seconds, silently filling the black stone space on my chest.  

No checkout needed. Absolutely zero weight. A conceptual-level five-finger discount.  

I swept the outdoor supplies section using the exact same method. I stockpiled at least a hundred pieces of outdoor gear, ensuring we wouldn't freeze to death in the extreme cold.

Just as I was preparing to raid the hardware section, a harsh shout came from behind:  

"Hey! You in the black jacket! What are you doing?!"  

A supermarket supervisor in a blue vest quickly marched over. Looking at the completely empty shelves behind me, his face was full of utter disbelief.  

His hand rested on his walkie-talkie. "I don't care if you're a wizard or a mutant, hand over everything you hid right now! I'm calling security!"  

Cold sweat instantly beaded on my forehead.  

I wasn't afraid of him; it was just that time was more precious than diamonds right now. If I got bogged down here, we were done for.  

This supervisor was just an ordinary guy doing his job on the eve of destruction. I couldn't blame him.  

I gritted my teeth, gripping Lily's hand tighter, preparing to forcefully shove past him and escape through the back door.

But in the very split second the supervisor reached out to block me, a terrifyingly loud CRASH echoed from the automatic glass doors at the front of the supermarket!  

Everyone froze and turned their heads simultaneously.  

A woman with half her neck chewed into a bloody mess stumbled and crashed through the glass doors, falling heavily in front of the checkout counters. Dark red blood rapidly pooled and spread across the floor tiles.  

"Dear God! Call 911!" The supervisor completely forgot about me. His face pale, he sprinted toward the checkout counters, wanting to help stop the bleeding.  

But right at this moment, the black stone on my chest erupted with a sharp, piercing pain—a lethal threat!  

I instantly pulled Lily behind me while making a dash toward the exit, keeping my eyes locked on the woman.  

The woman lying in the pool of blood had stopped breathing for less than five seconds when thick, dark purple veins bulged beneath her pale skin like tree roots.  

Immediately following that, her eyes snapped violently open—the whites were completely bloodshot, and her pupils had shrunken to the size of pinpricks.  

A mutated ghoul!  

With the extreme cold acting alongside blood transmission, the virus completed its mutation in mere moments.  

"Ma'am, the ambulance is on its way—AHHHHHH!!"  

The supervisor's words of comfort morphed into a scream of absolute despair.  

The mutated woman sprang up like a coiled spring. Exhibiting strength that shattered human limits, she bit right through the supervisor's throat in one go!  

Boiling hot blood sprayed across the shelves like a high-pressure geyser.  

The supermarket instantly exploded into chaos as the crowd screamed and scattered.  

The mutated woman leaped into the fleeing crowd like an agile arachnid, commencing a frenzied massacre.  

"Go!" Taking advantage of the chaos, I scooped Lily up, kicked open a fire exit, and charged into the loading dock alley, straight into the blizzard.  

In a confined space like the supermarket, every living person would turn into the exact same monster within minutes.  

But this desperate sprint pushed Lily's asthma back to a critical threshold. She trembled violently in my arms, her throat emitting loud, wheezing noises like a broken bellows.  

We had enough generic supplies, but I still lacked Lily's specialized medication!

Bypassing two burning cars, I used a piece of wire from my spatial storage to quickly pick the back door of a high-end private clinic.  

This was a wealthy neighborhood, appointment-only. It was strictly safe for the time being.  

Heading straight for the core pharmacy, I didn't even bother trying to hack the keypad; I directly used my spatial ability to extract the lock cylinder from the blast-proof door.  

The door swung open. Hundreds of potent asthma inhalers, antibiotics, and portable oxygen concentrators were swept into my space in the blink of an eye.  

I had just used an emergency inhaler in the corner to stabilize Lily's breathing when violent banging noises suddenly echoed from the front lobby.

Clang! Smash!  

Tempered glass shattered. Three chaotic, leather-jacket-wearing Latino gang members barged in.  

They wielded bloody crowbars and loaded Glock pistols, covered in a mix of gore and snow.  

"It's full of biting freaks out there! We'll hide out here, grab some high-grade sedatives while we're at it!" A flunky shivered as he deadbolted the front door.  

Seconds later, the heavily tattooed gang leader spotted us inside the pharmacy.  

Looking at the completely empty shelves, he then looked at Lily. A cruel, obscene smile surfaced on his face. "Kid, hand over all the meds, and I might consider only breaking your legs before tossing you out to the monsters. As for the little girl... leave her to warm up the boys."

My expression turned cold. Faced with an ordinary citizen like the supermarket supervisor, I might hesitate, but dealing with scum like this, my dictionary only contained one phrase: physical annihilation.  

"I don't have any meds on me. You can search me." I raised my hands in a standard surrender posture and slowly walked toward him.  

Three meters... two meters... a meter and a half...  

The tattooed leader sneered and carelessly pressed the muzzle of his gun against my forehead. "Lucky y—"  

Spatial Disarm. In my mind, I issued the cold, precise command.  

In a mere fraction of a second, the fully loaded magazines inside the two pistols, along with the bullets currently in their chambers, completely bypassed the physical outer casing of the guns and dropped into my still space out of thin air!  

Laughing maniacally, the tattooed leader's finger pulled the trigger.  

Click. An empty, metallic snap echoed, sounding crisp and comical.  

"What?!" His pupils shrank dramatically, his body pulling back on sheer reflex.  

I refused to give him a second chance to breathe.  

My right hand grabbed at empty air, and a heavy, solid-steel fire axe from within the pendant's space instantly materialized in my grip.  

Twisting my waist for momentum, the twenty-pound axe blade whistled through the air, cleaving into the side of his neck without a shred of mercy!  

Squelch—Crack!  

Carotid artery severed. Cervical vertebrae chopped clean through.  

More than half of his head instantly drooped sideways, and scalding blood splashed across the pristine white walls like a fountain.  

"Fk! Kill him!" The remaining two were terrified out of their wits.  

The one with the gun frantically pulled his trigger, only to hear useless clicks, while the one with the knife screeched and lunged at me.  

I calmly kicked the leader's corpse away and stepped back. My left hand grabbed the air and instantly let go. Following the laws of gravity, a fifty-pound motor from an oxygen concentrator fell with pinpoint accuracy, completely smashing the knife-wielding flunky's facial bones.  

With a sickening thud, his brains splattered. Dead on the spot.  

The last flunky holding the empty gun literally pissed himself, turned around, and scrambled to run.  

With a cold, deadpan expression, I swung my arm full circle. The fire axe left my hand, transforming into a bloody windmill. With a wet whack, it flawlessly chopped right down the center of his lower spine.  

Less than ten seconds. Three corpses.  

Expressionless, I stepped on the man's back to yank my axe out, then confiscated the firearms from their hands.  

Walking back into the pharmacy, I wrapped Lily tightly in the oversized jacket, leaving only her eyes exposed.  

"Don't be afraid, Lily." I wiped the blood from the back of my hand and gently stroked the top of her head, my voice warm and soft. "We're just doing this to protect ourselves."

Pushing open the clinic doors to step back into the blizzard, the temperature was already approaching negative four degrees Fahrenheit (-20°C).  

The streets had well and truly devolved into an icy hell. At the very edge of my vision, packs of mutated ghouls were already leaping onto fleeing survivors, tearing them to pieces to feed.  

Staying in the city meant we would eventually be swarmed and bitten to death by the ever-growing horde of ghouls.  

I patted the newly acquired, fully-loaded pistol tucked in my waistband, my brain calculating furiously to figure out where we could hide from both the extreme cold and the ghoul wave.  

Suddenly, a massive e-commerce automated sorting center on the outskirts of the city flashed into my mind.  

There were sturdy perimeter walls, oceans of shipping containers filled with supplies, and very few people—a natural fortress!  

I gripped Lily's hand tight. "Let's go, Lily. We can't stop yet!"