Origin of Infection: The Old Era and the New

As a modern person, he was naturally no stranger to libraries. Cheng Ye could no longer remember how many days and nights he had spent holed up in one, frantically typing away to finish his thesis. He had never expected that after ending up in the wasteland, he would actually encounter a library again. Even though, in terms of appearance, it couldn't even compare to some rural primary school libraries, Cheng Ye stared at it for a moment, and a familiar sense of warmth still welled up from the bottom of his heart. Taking a few steps forward, he pushed open the picket gate before the library. To his surprise, the hinges of the gate turned quite smoothly, belying its rust-streaked exterior. It clearly received regular maintenance. Behind the gate, Cheng Ye spotted an eye-catching wooden sign. [Survival Library] [This library houses hundreds of volumes, compiling survival guides submitted by survivors from across the wasteland. Verified and practical, they can significantly increase your chances of survival when facing infected entities.] [Reading Fee: 5 coins/hour (A 20-coin deposit is required upon entry. Strictly no credit.)] [Borrowing Fee: Priced according to the rarity of the book. Collateral required.] [You may submit valuable information, books, and other materials. If verified as valid by the librarian, compensation will be provided accordingly.] "Five coins an hour?" Cheng Ye raised an eyebrow. No wonder so many people had given him strange looks when he got off the bus. A full day of repairing sewer pipes only earned sixteen coins, which wasn't even enough to cover the entry deposit here. If ordinary residents spent just a few hours reading without watching the clock, they would go bankrupt. Even an inspector like him, with a monthly salary of five hundred coins, wouldn't dare linger inside recklessly if not for the inheritance Cheng Long had left behind. "The training grounds only cost ten coins a day, yet here it's five coins an hour. That actually makes me curious about the quality of the books inside." Cheng Ye didn't care much about spending Happiness Coins. Especially when it came to paying for knowledge—if it truly lived up to the sign's claim of substantially improving a reader's chances of survival against infected entities, then let alone five coins, even fifty would be well worth it! Following the weathered tile path, he entered the library courtyard. Arriving before the main entrance, Cheng Ye hesitated briefly. He took off his raincoat, folded it neatly, and hung it by the window. Then he made a point of scraping the mud from the soles of his shoes against the steps. Creak. As he pushed the heavy library doors open, a faint scent of mildew blended with the distinct, aged smell of paper drifted out to meet him. Cheng Ye poked his head inside to take a look. Sure enough, it had the plain, unpretentious style of an Old Era library! Three old-fashioned tungsten bulbs hung from the ceiling, casting a dim, warm yellow glow. Two rows of wooden shelves stood neatly arranged, each divider bowed slightly under the weight of yellowed books. Beyond them was a study area Cheng Ye knew all too well. Four large wooden tables looked remarkably sturdy and heavy, each paired with two solid wood chairs. Because no one was around, the pendant lights above the tables remained off, leaving the interior somewhat dim. "Ahem..." A soft cough came from behind the door. Following the sound, Cheng Ye noticed a small desk set up behind the entrance, and behind it, a narrow cot. A slightly stooped, middle-aged Western woman was curled up on the cot, staring straight at him. Noticing that no water dripped from Cheng Ye's clothes and that his soles were free of mud, the woman's gaze softened slightly. "Please come in, guest. You are our only reader today." "If money is tight, I can make an exception: just three Happiness Coins per hour, or ten coins for the entire day." The woman's face was deathly pale, and strands of graying hair fell messily across her shoulders, making her look undernourished. Yet her voice was remarkably gentle, like a spring breeze drifting softly past his ears, in stark contrast to her haggard appearance. "A discount?" Cheng Ye was somewhat surprised, but he quickly understood. The steep price posted outside was likely just a screening mechanism, meant to filter out those without basic spending power or those who didn't appreciate the library's operating model. Anyone who actually walked through the doors wouldn't mind spending five coins. Offering a deliberate discount gave guests a pleasant surprise, and offering a full day for ten coins made one feel as though they were losing out if they didn't spend the ten coins. "Here's the deposit." Cheng Ye reached into his pocket and pulled out two ten-denomination Happiness Coins. "May I ask..." "Aixi Gwen. You may call me by my name, guest." "All right, Miss... Miss Gwen. If I want to learn about the types of infected entities and how to deal with them, which book would you recommend?" "The entire first bookshelf is dedicated to such topics. If you are facing infected entities soon and need a quick overview, you can go straight to the third row, which contains concise combat manuals. However, my advice is to take some time to read from top to bottom to build a solid foundation." Having said that, Gwen sat up slightly. "The second bookshelf contains travelogues from wasteland survivors. The first, fourth, and seventh books on the third row hold first-hand accounts of rare, special infected, in case you are interested in them." "The third and fourth bookshelves contain specialized survival manuals. Rest assured, guest, every single volume has value. They contain the authors' insights into the wasteland and practical survival techniques. Even if those tricks might not seem useful for your immediate circumstances, using them just once will show you what true value means." "Understood. Thank you!" Such detailed guidance and advice made Cheng Ye realize this was likely the reward for taking off his raincoat and cleaning his shoes. It seemed mutual respect wasn't entirely lost in the wasteland after all... Cheng Ye smiled inwardly, suddenly recalling back when he was preparing for graduate entrance exams. He had been the only one permitted to eat inside the library, saving him the thirty minutes it took to run back and forth to the cafeteria. Thirty minutes a day added up to several whole days saved over six months. Why? Because of the perks that came with building a good relationship with the librarian! It was the same now. With Gwen's tips, Cheng Ye was instantly spared the trouble of searching through the shelves and compiling notes himself. "In that case, I'll start from the first row. Two days will be enough for me to quickly skim through every book on the first shelf." Pulling out the very first book on the top row, Cheng Ye glanced at the cover and was surprised to see familiar Chinese characters. *Origin of Infection*. Its contents happened to cover precisely what interested him most. He walked over to the reading area. Gwen had already stood up and switched on the lights. Instead of a soft, warm glow, it was a crisp, cool white light that instantly sharpened his focus. "The choice of lighting aids in reading as well. If you require tea or food service, simply call for me." "Thank you." Cheng Ye nodded, sat down before the broad wooden table, and gently opened the book to its first page. The handwriting was somewhat scrawled, full of cursive connections that required concentrated effort to decipher, yet it unexpectedly gave him a solemn sense of bridging time and opening an ancient chronicle. *Do you believe in fate? Do you believe in prophecies? Do you believe in the apocalypse?* *I never did, but reality dealt me a brutal lesson, forcing me to believe in destiny.* *December 21, 2032 of the Old Era. Had it not been the twentieth anniversary of the Mayan civilization's doomsday prophecy, it would have been an ordinary day. No one would have remembered it. Even I, a writer who enjoyed drafting apocalyptic fiction, only recalled the occasion after seeing related news reports.* *"Oh? The apocalypse predicted by the Mayans!"* *"Haha, twenty years have passed. How could anyone still believe the world is ending? It's just a trending topic hyped up by capital, like 520 Valentine's Day or Single's Day on November 11. Eventually, it will be shelved in history and forgotten by everyone."* *Yet, yet, yet... it arrived after all!* *The apocalypse was twenty whole years late. That day, at four in the afternoon, I opened my window and witnessed a scene I will never forget. An unimaginably massive luminous celestial body visited Blue Star. Its long, trailing tail spanned nearly the entire sky, blotting out even the light of the sun. Experts speculated it was an extraterrestrial lifeform jumping through a wormhole. I do not know if that was true, but its brief appearance utterly altered Blue Star's destiny, tearing away civilization's fragile veneer step by step.* *Fragments breaking off from the comet plummeted across Blue Star, large and small, sparking a scramble among humanity.* *Everyone was desperate to learn something, to discover something from those fragments. Nations engaged in covert and overt struggles, attempting to find opportunities for technological breakthroughs.* *Haha, they certainly found something: the terrifying S-1 virus emerged!* *Using saliva and blood as its vessels, the virus swept across the globe in just three short months, proliferating madly. The infected resembled the zombies of film and television, yet they were far more horrifying. A mere scratch or bite triggered a gruesome mutation within ten seconds, driving them to attack their own kind indiscriminately and expand the infection zone at extreme speed.* *Even though human civilization was resilient enough and the infected remained subject to the limits of carbon-based biology, the S-1 virus still ravaged the world for four full years. It was only after the Human Federation was established, shelter cities sprang up everywhere, and organized combat formations formed encirclements that the nightmare was temporarily contained.* Below the text was an illustration: a man with a hideous, contorted face, his body twisted at an awkward angle. His murky, milky-white eyes stared blankly, and his receded gums exposed broken canines, saliva dripping from the corners of his mouth. Zombies? Cheng Ye's brow twitched. He wasn't sure if it was the influence of movies and television, but compared to infected entities with bizarre abilities, he felt zombies were actually far more troublesome. After all, a single bite meant infection, which meant staying in densely populated shelter cities was actually more dangerous. Fortunately, according to the text, those zombies still hadn't exceeded the boundaries of carbon-based organisms. They could run, but because their bones and muscles were decaying and damaged, they couldn't even outpace a healthy adult man. They had no fear of death, but that also made them clumsy, lumbering targets easily trapped by human defenses. And once humanity regained its footing and formed organized combat formations, the zombies' end was already sealed. How could mere flesh and blood withstand the sweeping fire of heavy machine guns? With incendiary bombs scouring the earth, no matter how vast the horde, they were nothing more than dry kindling feeding the flames. *In the winter of 2037 of the Old Era, when the last S-1 infected turned to ash in an incinerator, grand celebrations were held across Blue Star. Survivors emerged from the shelter cities, returning to the urban ruins and embracing one another in tears, as if heralding the rebirth of civilization from the ashes.* *I, too, had the good fortune to take part, having scraped through the disaster, cheering to celebrate the end of the apocalypse.* *Yet the "infinite energy" that the S-1 virus bestowed upon the zombies ultimately aroused the greed of a select few. They yearned to find the secret of immortality within it, to discover a way to bypass the ceiling that constrained carbon-based life. In clandestine underground laboratories, the original virus was intercepted and studied. Under human guidance, the S-1 virus abandoned its inefficient mode of broad-area transmission, directing its evolutionary path toward the absolute limits of life forms instead.* *In the spring of 2041, the S-2 virus was born by chance!* *The unique S-2 virus completely lost its broad-area transmissibility; a human had to remain in close contact with the infection source for over forty-eight hours for the virus to take root. And once infected, humanity finally achieved its original wish, successfully breaking through the genetic ceiling of carbon-based biology.* *During this period, giant infected standing dozens of meters tall emerged, along with high-speed infected capable of near-subsonic movement, special infected capable of flight, and intelligent infected capable of exerting mental control over humans... Yet because its transmission method was fixed and the Human Federation maintained its combat readiness, the S-2 virus was easily suppressed in just one year and four months, its infection sources thoroughly destroyed.* *Still, once a line is crossed once and twice, it will be crossed a third and fourth time. Now that the S-2 virus had revealed its potential for growth, could humanity truly suppress the cravings written into their very genes?*