THE GREAT MERCHANT IN THE CATACLYSM

“19: 34. There are about half an hour and two minutes left. There is still time. I have bought fifteen packets of compressed biscuits, five bottles of mineral water, twenty ham sausages, two candles and two lighters. If I don’t waste them, they are enough for three days.”

Zhang Mu also bought a pair of comfortable sports shoes, a lot of cheap clothes, and a king-size backpack. They had almost cost him all his money.

The pair of shoes was the most expensive item he had bought, but it was well-spent. He didn’t mind if the food tasted bad, but he couldn’t take the risk of hurting his feet. If he couldn’t run fast enough, he may die before he fulfilled his ambitions.

Zhang Mu felt a little accomplished as he looked at the filled backpack.

Although time was running out, in order to keep himself in good condition, Zhang Mu sat against the wall to take a rest.

After ten minutes, Zhang Mu’s strength slightly recovered. He stood up and stored the sheathed part of the Tang sword into the backpack. Only the sword handle was exposed.

He ran about wildly and finally came to the last station of his shopping spree: a small food market.

It was about the closing time. Many shopkeepers had begun to clean their shops. Zhang Mu ran into the market. After ten minutes, he had a black rubbish bag in his hand, walking out of the market with satisfaction in his heart.

Zhang Mu lowered his head and looked at the watch again. There was still fifteen minutes. He let out a solid breath and his facial expression gradually returned to normal.

After knowing that there was still time, he slowly walked to his last destination: The People’s Square.

Zhang Mu passed by the crowd and directly walked to the top of a small hill. He shook his shoulders and flung off the heavy backpack. Leaning against a big, old locust tree, he directly sat down on the lawn.

He stayed there quietly with a stalk of grass dangling from his mouth, gazing at the crowd passing through the busy road and the setting sun. Zhang Mu understood that there were only five minutes left of peace, but now, his heart had completely calmed down.

He had done everything he could do, and now, he only needed to wait for the cataclysm’s arrival.

“Zi… Zi… Zi…”

The quartz watch on his hand started to vibrate. Time was up.

Zhang Mu’s pupils contracted. He instantly raised his head, gazing at the sky which had suddenly changed.

As he had expected, it started at the same time. A clearly visible wave suddenly appeared in the sky and spread towards every directions.

The wave meant… the evolution was staring!

“Ding!”

After hearing the strange, but familiar sound, Zhang Mu’s blood was boiling with enthusiasm.

While the wave swept through the whole planet, Zhang Mu froze, as well as the crowd on the streets. They still kept their postures of the previous second. In front of Zhang Mu’s eyes, a bird was opening its wings, keeping its pose of flying to the sky.

Time seemed to have stopped at this moment.

As the wave swept through Zhang Mu’s body, he smiled bitterly in his heart.

He didn’t feel any change happening to his body. He didn’t feel the feeling of which the evolvers had told him in his past life.

It looks like I expected too much. It seems that I have to keep going in the direction of my old career.

After half a year in cataclysm, people finally knew that the wave was the turning point of evolution. The people who had potential would feel that their souls were burning at this moment.

Although Zhang Mu felt a little depressed, he quickly adjusted his mentality and waited for the next thing that he knew would happen.

Three seconds later, the cold, mechanical voice appeared in everyone’s brain, shaking their souls just like what Zhang Mu had expected.

“Testing Field Number Forty-Seven opens. For the next three days, it’s the debugging period of the new testing field. The danger coefficient is raised to three times more dangerous than normal. The code of the new era: Paradise.”

The mechanical voice paused for a while, then suddenly changed its tone, becoming a little sarcastic.

“Ten seconds later, we will start to randomly select the first guinea pigs. We don’t need people who have bad luck. Remember, don’t leave your houses during the debugging time… Although I don’t think that any of you will have this idea. Ha ha ha ha…”

With the creepy laugh, the crowd found that they could control their bodies again. Unlike the people who looked at each other with disbelief, fear, and shock, Zhang Mu’s eyes were only filled with sadness.

He wasn’t any better than these people when he first experienced this scene. After all, it was too shocking to suddenly lose control of your own body and hear an unknown voice in your brain.

However, this was his second experience.

“Guinea pigs”, “Testing Field Number Forty-Seven”, and “Debugging time”. These words banged on Zhang Mu’s heart like hammers.

In his past life, he, fortunately, became the last Era Merchant in Luoyang City. He struggled for his life working under other people and survived for ten years by relying on his discretion and his large networking.

However, when “Paradise” came to its end, the people who were thousands of times stronger than him were also as weak as an ant in the storm.

Could it be their fate to be shoved about by “that presence”?

That thing… it wasn’t something he could obtain now, but it must be a bug of the system.

I will show you that I, Zhang Mu, won’t be your guinea pig again!

Finally, Zhang Mu overcame his anger and calmed down.

This time, a girl suddenly screamed loud in the crowd as if she saw the most horrible thing in the world.

People looked back and looked at the girl in green. She covered her mouth with both hands and her legs were shaking. Her bags had dropped on the ground and the vegetables she just bought scattered all around the ground.

A middle-aged man who was cursing about the whole event suddenly pounced on a slender teenager. The man’s face looked very ferocious with blood red veins spreading on his skin.

The middle-aged man held the teenager to the ground and his teeth sunk into the teenager’s neck, tearing off his flesh one piece after another.

The teenager’s aorta had ruptured and his eyes were opened wide. Obviously, he had died. His blood stained the middle-aged man’s shirt red, but he didn’t mind it at all and bit at the teenager’s flesh ferociously.

No, it wasn’t biting. It was eating.

The man heard the girl in green’s scream. He, or it, looked back at the girl with his vicious eyes, terrifying her out of her wits and made her collapse to the ground. The middle-aged man seemed to be reluctant to give up the flesh in his mouth. He turned back and bit the corpse again.

However, people found that they didn’t have time to pay attention to her because the same scene was happening everywhere. About 30% of the people had become bloodthirsty monsters and attacked the ones around them.

“Run!”

Someone suddenly shouted and that woke up the crowd. They didn’t care how many people were blocking in front of them or how many had been attacked. They just scrambled for their lives without a care for others.

The new era announced its coming with blood and death.