Chapter 3

Before the fall semester began, Aunt Clara returned to Hollow Creek with a construction crew, breaking ground immediately on her four-story luxury villa built squarely on our ancestral land.

I ignored her entirely, bidding Grandma farewell and returning to college. Over the next six months, I crammed wilderness survival tactics, close-quarters combat skills, and snuck into urban architecture lectures to master cave fortification, hidden structural design, and disaster-proof renovation. Every spare moment was spent preparing for doomsday.

Winter vacation arrived quickly. When I returned to the mountain cottage, Clara’s villa stood nearly completed—a towering modern structure glaringly out of place beside Grandma’s tiny weathered wooden home.

Pushing open the kitchen door, I found Clara, her husband, Jason, and Haley lounging casually around the heating stove, chatting and snacking while Grandma slaved away alone preparing their meals.

I set down my luggage, walked silently to Grandma, and took the kitchen knife gently from her hands. The room fell into an awkward, heavy silence instantly.

After an uncomfortable pause, Clara spoke in a deliberately sympathetic tone.

“The mountain town is brutal in winter. We plan to take Grandma down to Hainan for New Year’s. But holiday flights are impossible to book; we only managed one ticket for her. You won’t mind staying here alone for break, will you, Ethan?”

I froze for half a second. This exact scenario had played out in my past life. Grandma had never travelled far, overjoyed at the chance to escape the bitter mountain cold, yet she’d refused to leave me behind and surrendered the trip entirely.

This time, I cut Grandma off before she could speak.

“I picked up a full-time winter part-time job. I can’t leave. You take Grandma to Hainan, Aunt Clara. Enjoy the holiday.”

Inside, I remained cold and calculating. With Grandma away with Clara until Lantern Festival, I would have unlimited freedom to renovate the mountain cave without fabricating endless excuses to sneak up the ridge every few days.

A few days before New Year’s Eve, Grandma departed with Clara’s family, not scheduled to return for a month. I packed my belongings, transferred daily necessities into my storage space, and officially moved into the hidden cave fortress.

My first task was covering the main cave entrance with transplanted oak trees and tangled climbing vines, erasing all visible traces from outside eyes. I polished the narrow hidden exit and installed a heavy bulletproof steel door. I erected partition walls inside the main cavern to divide living quarters, then moved furniture and appliances out of the space to set up a fully comfortable, modern underground home.

The only major problem was the diesel generators. Their thunderous roar would inevitably draw zombies once the outbreak began. The undead were hyper-sensitive to sound; one careless mistake would spell fatal disaster.

I suspected the karst cave held more hidden chambers, as natural cave systems were almost always interconnected by winding tunnels. I grabbed a flashlight and explored every crevice inch by inch.

Behind a colossal stalactite, I discovered a narrow one-person tunnel. After a two-minute walk, I stepped into a small enclosed grotto roughly the size of a bathroom. A tattered cloth draped the entrance, and the moment I lifted it, a wave of thick mouldy rot washed over me, choking and nauseating.

Dust motes floated thick in the stagnant air, covering mountains of decades-old rotten sweet potatoes and potatoes—long sprouted, withered, decayed into a biological sludge reeking of decomposition.

I backed out quickly, covering my mouth and nose, yet I immediately recognized this tiny grotto as the perfect generator room. Buried deep within solid mountain rock, the thick stone layers would absorb nearly all engine noise, concealing the sound entirely from roaming zombies.

After two days of mental preparation, I fully armed myself, sprayed odour-neutralizing mist and dust suppressant, and began the gruelling cleanup. I sprinkled water to settle dust clouds, bagged the decaying crops in heavy plastic sacks, and carried them out of the cave one load at a time. It took three full days to clear the grotto completely.

I transported ten industrial diesel generators into the chamber, installed circuits and wiring throughout the living cavern. Lights, heaters, water purifiers, and refrigerators hummed to life one after another, fully operational.

By Qingming Festival, Grandma and I returned to the mountain to visit Grandpa’s grave. Locust blossoms bloomed across the ridge, and Grandma picked armfuls to fry into egg dishes once we returned home. That night, endless drizzling rain began to fall, continuing nonstop for two full months—a clear ominous precursor to the apocalypse’s extreme weather chaos.

The next morning, I carried a basket of red traditional celebration eggs and walked from one end of Hollow Creek to the other, gifting one egg to every villager I met, claiming it was a housewarming gesture for Aunt Clara’s new villa.

Finally, I stopped at the village chief’s home, smiling innocently.

“Uncle Chief, Aunt Clara wanted me to thank you personally for approving her villa land. She sent these over as thanks.”

The village chief tapped his tobacco pipe against the table and sighed. “That land originally belonged to your Third Uncle. He moved overseas for business years ago and will never return. I only acted as a middleman for land usage approval.”

I seized the opening, casually hinting that Clara had rushed to move her family back and build extra structures solely to monopolize mining compensation, hiding the news from other townsfolk entirely. I pretended to accidentally slip sensitive words, then made a hasty excuse to leave. Outside, I nearly collided with the village chief’s wife eavesdropping behind the courtyard wall. She smiled awkwardly and hurried back inside.

I knew my work was done. With the chief’s shrewdness and his wife’s love of gossip, the news would spread across Hollow Creek within hours, igniting the villagers’ greed and jealousy.

By early May, every villager bulldozed farmland, tore up crops, and rushed to build multi-story villas, some reaching six floors high, all desperate to claim a slice of the mining compensation pie. Their attitude toward Grandma and me turned cold and hostile overnight, glaring and spitting whenever they passed our cottage.

In June, Aunt Clara moved into her villa with a lavish ten-thousand-firecracker celebration. Villagers gathered to watch, their faces dark and resentful.

A furious shout suddenly split the noisy crowd. Third Uncle had returned from abroad with his son, storming into the gathering livid with rage.

“Clara! You plotted behind my back to seize my land! The deal is off—get out of my property now!”

Clara refused to yield an inch, screaming accusations back. Enraged villagers swarmed the villa instantly, shoving, smashing windows, overturning tables and sofas, turning the courtyard into a muddy chaotic wreckage.

I watched the farce silently from the crowd’s edge before returning to keep Grandma company as she sighed over the chaos unfolding outside.

The rain continued pouring relentlessly. The sky hung dark and oppressive, a damp earthy wind sweeping down from the mountains. Everyone remained trapped in their greedy delusions of easy wealth, blind to the doomsday disaster rushing toward them.

Clara and Third Uncle brawled and argued for days until police and government officials intervened. Eventually, higher authorities officially cancelled Hollow Creek’s entire mining land acquisition project.

Every greedy dream shattered instantly.

Clara had taken massive bank loans and high-interest usury to fund her villa, counting entirely on compensation to clear her debts. With the acquisition scrapped, loan sharks hounded her day and night, calling relentlessly and even harassing Grandma’s old phone. I hid Grandma’s device in advance, keeping her oblivious to the crisis.

Trapped inside her villa, Clara dared not step outside, terrified of villager retaliation and loan shark violence. On the fifth night, she abandoned Jason and Haley entirely, climbing out a window and fleeing town under cover of darkness.

Police arrived the next morning to disperse the mob and send the two cousins back to the city. I knew Clara could never outrun the loan sharks. Her fate was sealed, and half my revenge from the past life was complete.

Early July brought an abrupt temperature plummet to ten degrees Celsius—bizarre, unseasonable, and unlike any weather anomaly I’d witnessed in my last life. A heavy sense of unease coiled tight in my chest. The zombie outbreak was only one month away, and this chaotic climate shift warned me the coming apocalypse would be far more unpredictable and deadly.

I immediately opened every loan app on my phone, borrowing the maximum limit from every platform. Post-apocalypse debt would never be collected. I rented a massive warehouse in town under a wholesale business pretext and began my insane large-scale supply stockpile.

Rice, flour, grain oil, canned fruits, canned vegetables, dried seafood, preserved meats, milk, eggs, frozen meat, instant meals, snacks, daily necessities, toilet paper, hygiene products, vegetable seeds, planting fertilizer, large planting pots, medical supplies, heating and cooling equipment, extra generators, industrial freezers, defensive weapons, cutting tools—I purchased everything in truckload bulk, shipping all inventory to the warehouse before teleporting it into my space when no one watched.

My storage space preserved all goods eternally fresh, no rot, no expiry. It took five full days to finish hoarding millions of supplies, enough to sustain Grandma and me for decades of isolated underground survival.

On my way back to the mountain, I passed a local restaurant famous for traditional Appalachian hometown dishes. I ordered every signature dish by the dozen, buying up their entire daily ingredient stock, storing the cooked meals into my space for long-term preservation.

Mid-July, temperatures dropped even further. Summer sleet blanketed the ground in thin white snow. My unease deepened by the hour. I took Grandma back to town for a full medical recheck, stocked up on every necessary medication, then told her the entire truth: my reincarnation, the zombie apocalypse, Clara’s betrayal, and the fully renovated mountain cave fortress.

To my quiet relief, Grandma believed me without hesitation, pulling me into a tight tearful hug.

“I failed to protect you before, Ethan. This time, we stay together, no matter what comes.”

We packed our luggage that same day, preparing to move permanently into the hidden cave before the zombie outbreak erupted. Before leaving, Grandma wanted to warn neighbouring villagers of the impending disaster, but every household barred their doors tightly, refusing to listen. She sighed deeply, glanced back at the small town she’d lived in all her life, and followed me silently up the mountain.

We settled into our comfortable hidden fortress, safe and concealed from the world.

Doomsday Countdown: Three Days.Temperatures plummeted below minus twenty degrees Celsius. Heavy black clouds blotted out all sunlight.

Doomsday Countdown: Two Days.The sky turned pitch black, a yawning void swallowing the world, oppressive silence hanging over the entire mountain ridge.

Doomsday Countdown: One Day.Temperatures suddenly skyrocketed to forty degrees Celsius overnight. A brutal heatwave swept the mountains, forcing us to change into summer clothes even deep inside the insulated cave.

The great mutation had begun.

That midnight, a hoarse, inhuman roar shattered the mountain’s silence.

I rushed to the hidden observation window, staring down at the sleeping town below. The roar roused the nearest household. A man cursed loudly and threw open his front door—only to meet a rotting, blood-streaked zombie maw.

Three minutes later, the entire family was dead, transformed into the walking undead.

Roars, screams, and panicked shouts spread house to house across Hollow Creek. Flames erupted from several yards, lighting up the black night sky. By dawn, the entire town was submerged in wandering zombies. Wrecked cars blocked the town entrance, burnt vehicle frames smouldered silently, half-rotten corpses dangling from shattered windows.

I stood guard at the window all night, watching doomsday descend with tangled emotions—sorrow for innocent townsfolk, relief for Grandma’s safety, and unshakable lingering fear of the unknown.

Grandma walked over quietly, draping a warm coat over my shoulders. I turned and hugged her tightly, drawing strength from her calm presence.

For the next month, I kept constant watch at the observation window, watching desperate survivors flee their hiding spots only to be torn apart by zombies within minutes. No one escaped the town alive.

One month after outbreak, temperatures stabilized at a hellish sixty-five degrees Celsius. I used space-stored ice makers to stockpile endless blocks of ice, combining with the cave’s natural coolness to keep our underground home comfortable despite the scorching surface heat.

I was distracted enjoying Grandma’s home-cooked lunch one afternoon when three figures suddenly bolted out of the town, scrambling up the mountain ridge straight toward my hidden cave.

My heart skipped a beat. Survivors had escaped the zombie horde and were heading directly for my territory.

Before I could formulate a plan to block their path, a deafening tiger roar exploded across the forest.

Giant ancient trees crashed to the ground one after another. Through dense branch cover, I clearly recognized the three runners—the village chief and his family.

But what turned my blood to ice instantly was the colossal creature swatting trees aside with one paw.

A mutated zombie tiger.

A feral beast infected by the zombie virus, towering, savage, far stronger and deadlier than any ordinary human zombie I’d faced in my past life.

The village chief’s family froze in terror, paralyzed with fear. The chief wet his trousers in panic, the sharp scent of urine instantly triggering the zombie tiger’s predatory instinct. It let out a furious snarl and charged straight for him.

His wife and son fled blindly, abandoning him to collapse trembling on the ground, facing certain brutal death.

I looked away, unable to bear the bloody spectacle. Yet the moment the zombie tiger pounced, rustling sounds echoed from the cave’s top skylight.

A dark shadow flashed across the skylight gap in an instant, moving with inhuman terrifying speed.

My entire body went rigid, breath catching in my throat.

This was not the zombie tiger. Not a common mutated beast.

Something else lurked deep in the mountain—an intelligent, mysterious entity that had hidden in the shadows all along, watching my cave fortress this entire time.

It knew we were here. It had been staring at us, waiting.