020, Song Chen Levels Up

Good grief! Qi Ran pressed a hand to her forehead. She found herself wondering, quite perplexed, how on earth the title "Great Ancestor" had come to be applied to her.

Her gaze drifted inadvertently toward the crowd not far away, but in the next second, she was frozen in her tracks by a figure that suddenly entered her line of sight. Her eyes burned, an ache rising that she could barely control.

Song Chen! It was him!

It had been ten years since the last time Qi Ran saw Song Chen in her previous life. He had died at the very beginning of the apocalypse, even earlier than Chu Yan. In a sense, Qi Ran and Qi Sheng were truly like siblings from different parents who shared a strange, fated connection. Qi Sheng was never close to their parents and treated Qi Ran with cold indifference. Chu Yan was the only goddess for whom Qi Sheng was willing to bow his head and act like a dog, yet she had perished at the dawn of the apocalypse. For the decade that followed, Qi Sheng lived entirely in the regret and agony of her passing.

Qi Ran, on the other hand, had been abandoned at the gate of an orphanage by her biological mother at the age of five. When the Qi parents brought her into their home at ten, they never truly accepted her as one of their own. Qi Sheng had once sincerely treated her as a sister, but perhaps as his merchant instincts awakened later in life, he began to view her only as a convenient sibling to be used whenever he pleased.

Mu Jingchen had once held Qi Ran in the palm of his hand during their youth, willing to break ties with his own family to be with her, eventually securing their approval for their marriage. Yet, less than a year after the apocalypse began, he had trampled their past affection into the mud for the sake of a "green tea" junior.

Song Chen was the only one who had been willing to give his heart and soul for Qi Ran, even sacrificing his life. He had died on the fourth day of the apocalypse while saving her. At the time of his death, however, Qi Ran hadn't realized she held any romantic feelings for him. Back then, she was still Mu Jingchen’s fiancée, a pair of childhood sweethearts deeply in love. It wasn't until the third and seventh years of the apocalypse, when Song Chen died for her a second and third time in different ways, that she finally understood the depth of her feelings for him with heart-wrenching clarity. Those subsequent deaths had left her shattered, nearly costing her her own life.

She had sworn that if Song Chen could ever return to her side, no matter the cost, she would never let him suffer again. Yet now, here he was, appearing before her unexpectedly—a devil-may-care man with a wicked aura, his left sleeve soaked in blood. In that instant, a surge of overwhelming rage erupted within Qi Ran.

Qi Sheng, Mu Jingchen, and their ilk were all cast to the winds. It was 15:57. There were only three minutes left before the apocalypse had officially lasted for three hours.

Qi Ran moved with lightning speed, snatching Song Chen away from the crowd. At the same time, she unleashed her "Fire Serpent Entanglement" skill twenty times in succession! Two hundred fire serpents instantly bound two hundred zombies. At this stage, not a single zombie had an agility stat exceeding fifty, so they were trapped in place, unable to move a muscle.

"Song Chen, kill them! Attack their necks!"

There was no time for explanations. She shoved a kitchen knife into his uninjured right hand. Song Chen, snatched from the crowd, had been on high alert, his wooden club raised to strike back. But Qi Ran was too fast. Amidst the swirling wind—heavy with the stench of blood and rotting flesh—Song Chen caught a faint, hauntingly familiar scent. He froze, his hand held high. The next moment, someone grabbed his hand and forced a kitchen knife into it, followed by a familiar voice whispering in his ear:

"Song Chen, kill them! Attack their necks!"

"Qi... Ran?"

In a single second, Song Chen recognized her identity beneath the armor. He didn't hesitate, nor did he waste time questioning the feasibility of her instructions. He heard the urgency in her voice and acted without thought, swinging the blade at the fire-entangled zombies, hacking forcefully at their necks.

One by one, strike after strike. Song Chen lost count of how many heads he had severed, driven only by Qi Ran’s constant, anxious urging: "Song Chen, faster! Try to take down two per second!"

During this time, a passionate electronic voice seemed to echo in his mind, but Song Chen paid it no heed, focusing all his energy on doing exactly as Qi Ran asked. He knew that if she was this anxious, she must really need him, and he would never let her down.

As the time neared 16:00, Qi Ran seized the moment to remind him: "Level up, Song Chen! Remember to select level up!"

With her heightened mental power, tasks that had once felt strenuous now felt effortless. Having been raised as a foster child in the Qi family, she had long ago developed the habit of keeping her eyes and ears open to everything around her. She had been counting silently as Song Chen fought, her mental stat of 343 allowing her to handle the complex calculations.

As Song Chen finished off the two hundredth zombie just as the clock neared 16:00, Qi Ran urged him to level up immediately. It wasn't enough to just kill the zombies; he had to hit Level 1 before 16:00 to achieve the milestone of "reaching Level 1 within three hours of the apocalypse." She was terrified that after all their hard work, he might forget to click the button and fall into the four-hour bracket.

"Alright!" Song Chen replied, obediently selecting the prompt in his mind without stopping his blade.

When the clock struck 16:00, everything settled. Qi Ran let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief. Under the cover of the zombies she had bound, she asked him, "How is it, Song Chen? Did you hear that electronic voice? Did you choose to level up?"

Song Chen shook his aching right arm and nodded, answering, "I heard it! Yes, I’m a Level 1 Novice Tester now."

Hearing this, the weight finally lifted from Qi Ran’s heart. She nodded, still slightly uneasy as she asked, "But did you make it within the three-hour window?"