Meanwhile, inside the hospital, the atmosphere had already completely lost the order and restraint that normally defined such a place. The corridors outside no longer sounded like a hospital at all. There were no clear footsteps of nurses pushing carts, no hurried but controlled voices calling patient names, no rolling sound of stretchers moving toward treatment rooms. Everything outside had become sharp, broken, and terrifyingly chaotic, the kind of noise that made even people hiding inside a locked room feel their nerves tightening with every passing second. Yan Cijin was currently inside one of the inner doctor cabins on the upper floor, a room originally used for brief consultations, paperwork, and short breaks between shifts, but now the small space had become an improvised shelter for everyone who managed to run in before the corridor fully descended into madness. The room was crowded far beyond comfort. Two younger doctors stood pressed close to the metal shelving unit near the wall, one nurse leaned against the cabinet with both hands clasped so tightly that her fingers had already turned pale, three patients who had blindly followed the nearest calm looking person inside were crouched close together near the far corner, and an elderly man sat directly on the floor with his back against the wall, breathing unevenly as if trying hard not to make any sound at all. The air carried a mix of antiseptic, fear, sweat, and stale closed room heaviness, but even with so many people inside, nobody dared speak loudly because the sounds outside were enough to keep every throat tight.

Only Yan Cijin looked completely out of place in this room. She sat on a chair near the desk as if this were merely an inconvenient pause in an otherwise ordinary day, one leg crossed over the other, phone resting in one hand, her posture relaxed enough that if someone ignored the sounds outside, they might think she was simply waiting for the next patient file. Her expression remained calm to the point of almost appearing detached. She did not even look toward the door every few seconds the way the others did. She did not tense whenever footsteps suddenly passed outside. She did not react when distant screams rose sharply and then stopped so abruptly that everyone inside instinctively imagined what had happened next. The only movement from her was the slow motion of her thumb scrolling through Weibo, where emergency posts, shaky videos, and chaotic messages were already flooding every platform. If someone looked carefully, they would notice that her eyes were not cold, only steady, the kind of steadiness that could not exist in someone seeing this kind of disaster for the first time.

The reason she had come to the hospital today despite already knowing what kind of day this would become was simple, though nobody here could possibly understand it. She could have avoided this place entirely. She knew very well that once the first infected patients entered emergency treatment, the hospital would become one of the earliest large scale collapse points in the city. She knew how quickly the infection spread in enclosed medical environments, how many people would be trapped in wards, how fast corridors would become death traps because too many injured and weak people were concentrated in one place. If she wanted, she could have stayed home from morning, remained with her family, and simply waited until the first wave outside passed. But after experiencing regression so many times, she had already learned something that earlier versions of herself had not understood. Knowing the future did not mean recklessly changing every small detail from the very beginning. A future only remained useful as long as its main direction stayed recognizable. The moment she changed too many early events, countless later outcomes also shifted in ways that even she could no longer predict. She herself stood too close to the center of too many later events, and because of that, even her absence from ordinary routines could trigger unknown movements elsewhere. That was why she came to work exactly as she usually did, followed the same route, wore the same clothes, entered the same building, and even ended up in this same doctor cabin with nearly the same group of frightened people who had also survived here in previous timelines.

Only this time, the difference was too great to compare. In earlier lives, when the first outbreak happened, she had no idea what was unfolding. She still remembered the first time clearly enough that even now the memory carried a faint unpleasant edge. Several emergency patients had been brought in after reports of violent incidents in the city. Staff assumed they were drug related attacks, severe mental breakdowns, or criminal injuries. One patient lying on a stretcher suddenly rose while treatment was being prepared and bit directly into a nurse’s neck before anyone even understood that he was not merely convulsing. Another patient ripped free of restraints and attacked the nearest doctor. The corridor collapsed into panic almost instantly. Medical trays crashed, glass shattered, people screamed, and patients unable to move became immediate victims because they were closest. Back then, even Yan Cijin had been caught in confusion. She had no powers awakened yet, no memories, no understanding, and the first escape from this floor had cost blood, luck, and fear she could still remember vividly. She had locked herself inside this very room before, listening to those same sounds, wondering if the door would hold, wondering if those things outside could smell them, hear breathing, break locks, infect through air, or anything else her mind invented in panic.

Now she sat there almost leisurely because fear had long become unnecessary. When she regressed this time and recovered all her memories fully, even she had been surprised by what came with that return. Her powers had come back with her. Not at their previous terrifying peak, not anywhere near the level where entire battlefields bent around her presence, but every superpower she had accumulated through previous timelines had returned in basic form. That meant the foundations remained inside her body exactly as before, only compressed back to initial stages. She still needed crystal cores to strengthen them. She still needed to rebuild each power step by step. But even at basic level, what she possessed now was already enough to crush most newly awakened superpower users that would appear later in the coming weeks. Even many so called elite survivors from later stages would still not match her current baseline if they fought her now. So while everyone else in this room kept listening to death moving just outside the door, Yan Cijin quietly watched emergency news updates on her phone with the faint boredom of someone rereading a Chapter she had already memorized many times before.

Outside the cabin, the sounds kept changing. Sometimes heavy footsteps dragged past the door. Sometimes something hit metal in the corridor. Once there was a sharp scream so close that the younger nurse beside the cabinet almost collapsed where she stood, covering her mouth with both hands to stop herself from crying out loud. Another time came a low rough growling sound, followed by something scraping along the wall. One of the younger doctors looked toward Yan Cijin several times, clearly unable to understand how she remained so composed. Finally, unable to endure it any longer, he whispered in a trembling voice, "Doctor Yan... how are you still so calm right now?" His voice was barely louder than breath, but in the room’s silence everyone heard it clearly.

Yan Cijin did not look up immediately. She finished reading one post, then calmly locked the screen before replying in the same tone she used while discussing ordinary work. "Because panic does not improve the situation." Her answer was simple, almost indifferent, but strangely enough, that single sentence made the room quieter again because nobody could argue with it, even if none of them could imitate it. Another scream sounded outside just then, followed by hurried footsteps and then silence so sudden that even the elderly man on the floor squeezed his eyes shut as if refusing to hear any more.

At that moment Yan Cijin finally thought of home. Her mother would definitely already know something had happened because news alerts must already be spreading everywhere. Its best to give her a call and reassure her, otherwise she will worry about her to death.

Before leaving for the hospital that morning, Yan Cijin had already arranged everything at home with far more care than anyone around her could imagine. To her mother, it had sounded almost like excessive caution at the time. She had told her very clearly not to step outside under any circumstance after morning, no matter who knocked, no matter what happened in the building, and no matter what kind of news came from outside. She had also firmly decided that LiLi would not go to school that day, using a simple excuse that she was too busy at the hospital and wanted the child to stay home. Her mother had found it unusual because LiLi rarely missed school without reason, but she still listened because over the years she had learned that when Yan Cijin spoke in that calm, certain tone, there was usually a reason even if she did not explain it fully. What nobody knew was that before leaving, Yan Cijin had quietly placed a thin protective barrier outside the apartment entrance itself. The barrier was invisible, impossible for ordinary people to notice, and weak only by her own later standards, but more than enough for the present moment. If anything infected somehow reached that floor and approached the door, the barrier would react immediately. In ordinary circumstances, zombies should not even reach that height in the building so early, but she had long stopped trusting ordinary assumptions after living through too many timelines where tiny accidents created ugly results. The barrier would not last forever, but for now it was enough to guarantee that nothing mindless could cross that threshold without being torn apart the moment it touched the door area.

Because of that, when she came to the hospital this morning, she had done so with unusual ease of mind. Her greatest concern in earlier lives had always been the helpless fear of not knowing whether her mother and LiLi were safe while she herself was trapped elsewhere. That helplessness had once driven her nearly mad during the first outbreak. This time that burden was lighter, and perhaps that was why even while sitting in a doctor cabin surrounded by frightened people and listening to the hospital collapse outside, she still looked as though she were only waiting for an inconvenient shift delay to end.

The moment she dialed home, the call connected almost instantly, as if the phone had already been in waiting hands the entire time. On the other side, Yan Laojin answered so quickly that even before fully speaking, her uneven breathing could already be heard. Her voice came trembling, thick with tears and fear she was trying very hard to suppress. "Yanyan... how are you? Are you alright? I just saw the news again. They are saying there are monsters outside, people biting each other everywhere, even near the hospital area... You are still there, right? Please be careful. Don’t go near anyone if things look strange."

Yan Cijin listened quietly for a moment before answering, and when she spoke, her voice carried the same calm certainty she always used whenever her mother was frightened, the kind that naturally made people believe her even before thinking logically. "Mom, don’t worry. I’m safe for now. I’m inside and nothing will happen to me. Listen carefully, do exactly what I said this morning. Lock the main door and do not open it for anyone unless I call you first and tell you personally. Even if someone says they are from the building, even if someone cries outside, do not open the door."

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. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

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To be continued. Please help this novel by donating power stones and writing reviews or comments and sharing to as many people as possible.