Chapter One: The Apocalypse Descends—First, Slay the Saint

"Gu Sha, how can you be so heartless?"
"That's right, Gu Sha, we're all classmates. How can you be so cruel, just watching others die?"
"Gu Sha, hurry and open the door. Let them in."
A torrent of chaotic voices thundered around him, leaving Gu Sha's mind in a haze of confusion. It took him a while to regain clarity.
He had returned—
Returned to the very first day of the apocalypse.

Staring at those familiar yet distant faces before him, Gu Sha was certain—he was back twenty years in the past. Today was May 10th, 2023—the day the Era of Cataclysm began.
He would never forget this day.
This was the day humanity's nightmare truly began.

It started with a torrential downpour—
A rain that began on May 5th, falling relentlessly until May 10th. At first, no one paid much attention to it, save for concerns about possible flooding.
But at three in the afternoon on May 10th,
the moment the rain ceased,
the world changed.

When sunlight broke through the clouds, it was blood-red, bathing even the darkest corners of the earth in crimson. In an instant, over seventy percent of humanity became mindless, murderous husks. Countless animals and even plants mutated into terrifying forms.
Order collapsed, law vanished,
and the world was plunged into terror.

Gu Sha had lived through that cataclysm, surviving for twenty long years.
The world, two decades later, was unrecognizable. The earth had swollen dozens of times over, transformed into a realm ruled by slaughter and combat—a world for the strong. Hordes of monstrous zombies claimed their territories, and humans became just one of many struggling groups, their survival secured only by a handful of supreme warriors.
But alas—
Gu Sha, in his former life, had missed the crucial opportunities at the dawn of the apocalypse. He never became one of the top warriors who dominated the world. Through ruthless cunning, he managed to become a fifth-tier soldier, but ultimately, during a great battle, he was killed by the shockwaves from a clash between a human war king and a royal zombie beast.

"Who would have thought I'd return twenty years, to the very day the apocalypse began!"
A surge of joy burned in Gu Sha's heart.
Yet, as someone who had skirted the edge of death for two decades, he quickly calmed himself, recalling his current predicament.

He remembered it all with piercing clarity—
When the apocalypse descended, he was still a senior in high school. That day, the school was holding an event attended by most teachers and students. But with university entrance exams looming, Gu Sha and some of his more diligent classmates chose to stay in the classroom, studying—about a dozen of them in total.
That choice saved their lives.
They avoided the crimson light and escaped infection.

He had been taking out the trash in the corridor when the crimson fell from the sky. Though it was light, it poured down like rain.
He acted quickly, retreating before he was touched by the light—a narrow escape.
The crimson lasted only minutes,
but in that time, the vast majority became zombies, and chaos erupted throughout the school.

Orphaned from an early age, Gu Sha was fiercely independent and calm in a crisis. Sensing danger, he immediately shut the classroom door and led his classmates in barricading the windows with desks.
Outside, all manner of screams echoed—zombies howling as they devoured people, the dying cries of the bitten. It was terrifying.
Thanks to Gu Sha's quick reactions,
he and his classmates survived—
but soon,
someone began pounding on the door. A girl was begging for help.

Gu Sha remained rational.
He feared the girl was infected, or that opening the door would let zombies rush in. He refused to open it.
But there were those among them who could not accept his decision.

Chief among them was Chen Nannan, the class beauty. She insisted that as classmates, they could not abandon one another—one must have a conscience, compassion.
Gu Sha argued fiercely.
But as the class belle, Chen Nannan was not short of admirers, and several boys eager to display their chivalry leaped to her support, attacking Gu Sha with words.
He remembered it all too well.
In his past life, he failed to stop them.
Chen Nannan and her sycophants forced the door open.
The result—
the girl outside transformed into a zombie the moment the door swung wide, lunging at them, biting, drawing more zombies with her. They were nearly wiped out.

In the end, it was Gu Sha who acted, shoving those caught by the zombies out the door, buying time to close it again.
Yet, to his utter disbelief,
though he saved the survivors,
at Chen Nannan's urging, the rest turned on him, accusing him of causing those classmates' deaths by pushing them out. They isolated him.
The next day,
starving after a day and night without food, they decided to search for supplies.
By luck, they found the school's shop, well-stocked with enough food and water to last weeks.
But,
Chen Nannan rallied the others to ostracize Gu Sha, handing him a few packets of instant noodles and driving him out, declaring he was too ruthless, too inhuman. They refused to stay with someone like him.

Alone, Gu Sha was no match for the group—he was forced to leave, nearly dying. Desperate for food, he risked his life scavenging. His survival was sheer luck.

He never expected to live again,
let alone return to the very moment when Chen Nannan's misguided compassion would set everything in motion.
Now,
exactly as before,
Chen Nannan demanded they open the door to save someone, Gu Sha refused, and she, along with her supporters, began condemning him. Two even moved as if to shove him aside.

Gu Sha said coldly, "I'll say this once more: the door stays shut. The hallway is crawling with zombies, and that girl has likely been infected. If we open this door, we all die."

"Gu Sha," Chen Nannan retorted sharply, righteous indignation in her voice, "how can you be so cold-blooded? The zombies aren't here yet. If we hurry, we can save her. We're all classmates—how can you just watch her die?"

"Yeah, Gu Sha, I never thought you were this kind of person!"
"How could you act like this, Gu Sha?"
"Hmph," Chen Nannan snorted. "If he won't save her, we will. Let's move these desks, open the door. Gu Sha, you're truly heartless, you—"

"Go to hell!"

Gu Sha suddenly crouched, snatching up a splintered piece of desk wood—about twenty centimeters long, both ends sharpened.
Gripping it tightly, he drove the makeshift weapon into Chen Nannan's neck. Before she could even cry out, he stabbed several more times, blood spraying instantly.

Everyone was stunned into silence.