C3 When He Woke Up, It Was the End of the World. the System Awakened the People and Made Them Confus
His head was throbbing!
Tang Bing inhaled the sharp scent of disinfectant, which nudged him back to consciousness.
Why was he lying in a hospital bed?
Confused, he reached up to massage his head and slowly propped himself up, fragments of memories flashing through his mind.
He had a faint recollection of leaving the Bluestar Branch in a daze.
Out on the street, Bluestar Branch security guards Zhao Dali and Jiaang Hefei had come after him out of nowhere, wielding iron pipes and striking him on the head without warning!
Tang Bing had fought back desperately, the three of them entangled in a fierce scuffle.
Amidst their brawl, the world turned a fiery red, the temperature soaring as if they were in a furnace.
Tang Bing remembered seeing a massive meteorite plummeting from the sky, as if heralding the end of the world!
It crashed a kilometer away, obliterating a building and gouging a monstrous crater into the road.
Panic ensued as people scattered, screaming for help; cars collided uncontrollably, alarms blaring incessantly.
Then, from the meteorite's direction, a black shard hurtled toward him. He felt an indescribable agony at his brow before consciousness slipped away. Now, he was awake to this reality.
Who had brought him to the hospital?
Tang Bing swung his legs off the bed, his body still weak. Oddly, he noticed numbers appearing in his vision whenever he looked around. Was something wrong with his eyes?
"Doctor!" he called out, only to be met with eerie silence.
The numbers before his eyes shifted incessantly, his eyes aching from the strain. Convinced there was an issue with his vision, Tang Bing hurried to the door, opened it, and hobbled into the hallway. "Doctor! Is anyone there?"
The corridor was oddly lit despite the daylight, deserted. Chairs lay toppled, potted plants upended, soil strewn across the floor.
"Is anyone there?" The numbers were becoming more frequent, his discomfort intensifying.
Squinting hard, he made his way to the service desk.
But it was deserted.
"Isn't anyone working today? What's going on?" Tang Bing's confusion grew. "Doctor! Anyone?"
He continued down the hallway to the elevator, the absence of people fueling a sense of dread.
He pressed the button for the ground floor, watching the numbers flicker until the doors slid open.
Inside, a nurse stood with her back to him, motionless in the corner.
Without overthinking, Tang Bing stepped in and hit the button for the first floor.
Turning to face the nurse, he noticed a curvaceous figure and a foul odor reminiscent of a dead rat. Curiosity piqued, he tapped her shoulder. "Excuse me! Can you tell me what's happening today? Where is everyone?"
The nurse let out a bizarre giggle and turned stiffly. Tang Bing recoiled at the sight of her face—ghoulish, eyes devoid of color, skin rotting away.
It was like a scene from a zombie movie, the nurse a perfect replica of those flesh-eating monsters.
"Is this makeup? It's incredibly lifelike!" Tang Bing stammered, retreating to the far corner of the elevator.
With a bestial roar, the nurse lunged at him.
"Ahh!" Tang Bing cried out, his foot connecting with her stomach.
She fell back, writhing unnaturally before rising to attack once more.
"Back off!" Terrified, Tang Bing realized this was no longer a human being. He kicked her chest with all his might.
She collapsed again, but Tang Bing's vision was now swarmed with numbers, obscuring everything else.
"Ahh!" As he struggled to see through the numerical haze, his right foot erupted in excruciating pain.
The nurse had bitten down on his leg, tearing away flesh.
The pain brought some clarity to his vision, and he grabbed her hair, yanking her head from his leg and slamming it repeatedly against the floor.
The nurse lay there, gnawing on the chunk of flesh she had ripped from his leg.
Tang Bing was drenched in sweat, his right foot quivering. The sight of exposed bone showed how much she had bitten off.
"Ding!" The elevator reached the first floor, the doors opening.
Relieved, Tang Bing thought he was safe, but outside stood a horde of figures in hospital attire, all as ghostly as the nurse he had just encountered.
Tang Bing felt his spirit nearly escape as the horde turned their gaze upon him, sizing him up like prey. Faced with a monster and a swarm of them, he made a painful but decisive retreat to the elevator, frantically pressing the close button.
"Boom!" The elevator doors slid shut just in time, sparing him from the oncoming monsters. But Tang Bing couldn't catch his breath; the nurse inside had finished gnawing off a chunk of flesh from his foot and now lunged at him like a wild beast.
His life hanging by a thread, Tang Bing, fueled by adrenaline, lunged forward, dodging the nurse's bite. He grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head and repeatedly smashed her skull against the sturdy elevator wall.
One, two, three times... He lost count of the blows, but the wall was smeared with blood and decaying flesh, a sight of utter revulsion. The nurse in his grasp finally stilled, lifeless.
Once he was sure the nurse was unresponsive, Tang Bing released her and stumbled back, collapsing in exhaustion. The searing pain in his right foot was maddening.
"System installation complete..."
An electronic synthesized voice suddenly echoed in his ears, startling him. "Who's there?"
The numbers before him vanished, replaced by a message: "Apocalypse Survival System installed, analyzing user condition..."
"Who are you?!" Tang Bing demanded, staring at the text materializing out of thin air and listening to the odd electronic voice, despite his agony.
"The character has sustained severe injuries and requires immediate medical attention! The character is infected with corpse poison, which will take effect in two hours and thirty minutes. Locate antibiotics to treat the mild infection before the onset of the corpse poison! Search the hospital's medicine cabinet for the necessary medical supplies!"
"What's happening? What is this thing?" Tang Bing yelled out.
But the electronic voice was silent.
"Ding!" The elevator reached the seventh floor, the same one where Tang Bing had awoken. Though he was still curious about the electronic voice, the urgent prompts of bleeding, infection, and weakness spurred him to find the medicine he needed. He didn't want to die, especially with his heart already shattered by Qin Mengyao.
"Medicine cabinet, medicine cabinet..." He dragged his mutilated leg, the gaping wound throbbing numbly as he hopped along the corridor, searching for a room with a medicine cabinet.
Fortune was on his side; he soon found an open pharmacy.
Tang Bing, wounded, entered and began rifling through the drawers.
System: No discoveries.
System: No discoveries.
System: Painkillers found!
System: Bandage found!
System: Painkillers found!
System: Alcohol found!
System: Blood bag found!
System: Painkillers found!
After scouring the room, he had only found three painkillers, one bandage, one bottle of alcohol, and one blood bag.
Painkillers would lessen the pain and restore some HP, though hydration would drop by 30%.
Bandages could treat bleeding.
Alcohol could be used for disinfection.
Using the blood bag would increase HP by 10.
Tang Bing was stunned to see a computer game-like interface before his eyes, filled with shock and bewilderment.
But there was no time for contemplation; his right foot was still bleeding, and his HP had plummeted from 100 to a perilous 30.
Real or not, he refused to die.
He swiftly bandaged his right foot, tightly securing the wound.
The bleeding ceased with the bandage, and his HP finally stopped its decline.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Tang Bing popped a painkiller into his mouth, which dissolved instantly.
His HP began to rise slowly, though his throat parched with thirst.
The infection symbol still flashed on his status bar, time ticking down relentlessly.
Tang Bing rose to his feet and moved on.
The bandage and painkiller had eased the pain in his foot, but his gait was still a limp.
He surveyed his surroundings cautiously, wary of more monsters. It seemed the zombie-like creatures were all on the floor below—likely lured there by the hospital staff's escape attempt before he awoke.
Regardless, he had to find antibiotics fast—he was determined not to become one of the lost.
Entering the second room, Tang Bing pulled open each drawer of the medicine cabinet, checking them one by one.
System: Nothing found.
System: Nothing found.
System: A piece of paper found.
System: Painkillers found.
System: Blood bag found.
System: Nothing found...
