On the rooftop, the two of them split their attention between watching the zombies below and scrolling through the latest news online.

Suddenly, Chen Hao's eyes went wide at his phone. "Bin-ge, look-someone posted a video of a guy fighting a zombie."

Yang Bin leaned over immediately. It was a Bilibili upload, filmed from a window at a decent angle.

In the video, a man in a security guard uniform gripped a riot baton and squared off against a zombie.

The guard was tall and solidly built-clearly someone who worked out regularly. Every swing of the baton connected with a heavy, meaty thud. The guy had real power behind his strikes.

But the zombie didn't react at all. No matter how hard the man hit it, the thing kept lunging at him like it felt nothing.

Luckily, the guard was agile. He dodged each lunge by a hair's breadth, then cracked the baton down again.

Man and corpse fought for over two minutes. Then two more zombies heard the commotion and shambled toward them.

The guard spotted them and panicked. He immediately abandoned the first zombie and turned to run.

But his nerves cost him half a second. The zombie behind him dove low and caught his foot, biting down hard on his ankle.

"Ah-!"

The man screamed and hit the ground. Within moments, the other two zombies closed in.

The video cut there-the person filming must have been too terrified to keep recording. But everyone watching could guess how it ended.

After the video finished, neither of them spoke. The danger outside was far worse than they'd imagined.

A long silence passed before Yang Bin spoke, his voice low. "Based on that video, a zombie's raw strength is about the same as a normal person's. But they don't feel pain. They're like cockroaches you can't kill. That's the real problem."

"Bin-ge... we're not going to have to fight those things too, are we?" Chen Hao's voice was tight.

"What do you think? If you want to live, you face them. You don't kill it, it eats you." Yang Bin didn't sugarcoat it.

"But... I can't. I don't dare..." Chen Hao whispered.

Yang Bin let out a breath. "You think I do? We're just regular people. Neither of us has ever killed anything. How many people out there actually have the guts to fight a zombie? But the world's already like this. We don't get a choice."

He clapped a hand on Chen Hao's shoulder.

"We've got a good position up here, and we've got time. But we have to use that time to get past the fear. Because when we finally face one of those things for real, hesitation means death."

"I know... I'll try." Chen Hao's face was white.

Yang Bin nodded. Truthfully, he wasn't much better off. He was just an ordinary student too.

The only difference was experience. He'd been on his own for years, fending for himself, thinking further ahead than most people his age. And he understood one thing with absolute clarity: if they couldn't master their fear, they were already dead.

He looked down again. No living people in sight anymore-just zombies drifting aimlessly between the buildings. Anyone still alive had gone to ground. No one dared show themselves.

Yang Bin's brow furrowed. There was no way to leave the dormitory building like this. But the food in the dorms was limited. If they couldn't get out, starvation would finish what the zombies hadn't.

"There has to be a way out of this," he thought.

He raised his head and glanced toward the Girls' Dormitory across the way. Figures were moving over there-it looked like a fight.

The distance between the boys' and girls' dormitories was too great to make out details. Yang Bin guessed someone was battling zombies, and curiosity gnawed at him. Who the hell was brave enough to try that?

He squinted hard, straining to see more clearly. And then-something shifted.

The scenery around him blurred. The Girls' Dormitory in his field of vision began to magnify, like a telescope snapping into focus, pulling closer and sharper with each heartbeat.

Within seconds, the scene appeared before him in perfect clarity.

On the sixth-floor corridor of the Girls' Dormitory, four tall women wielded stools, clothes-drying poles, and bed boards, hammering them down on several zombies blocking their path. From their builds, they had to be phys-ed majors.

All four were clearly from the same room, and not one of them had turned. Lucky as hell.

But the fact that they'd actually stepped out of their dorm in this situation-that took serious guts.

At least they had size on their side. Compared to most girls, they were built like athletes, and the zombies in front of them were all shorter. The narrow corridor worked in their favor too. They swung their improvised weapons in wide arcs, trying to force the zombies back. From the way they moved, they were trying to reach a specific room further down the hall.

Yang Bin shook his head. Too naive. They had weapons and physical advantages, sure. But every impact, every shout, every thud of wood on dead flesh was a dinner bell. More zombies would come. It was only a matter of time.

Just as he predicted, within moments, zombies from other rooms heard the noise and stumbled out into the corridor, then rushed toward the four women in a frenzy.

The women saw them coming and went pale. They scrambled back into their own room and slammed the door, locking it from inside.

A mob of zombies piled against the door, pounding on it with mindless fury. The door shook violently in its frame. Unless they had something heavy bracing it from the inside, it wouldn't hold long.

Yang Bin pulled his gaze back-and the world lurched.

Dizziness hit him like a wave. His body swayed and he nearly collapsed, but Chen Hao grabbed him just in time.

"Bin-ge, what happened?" Chen Hao's voice was sharp with worry.

Yang Bin steadied himself and shook his head. He pointed toward the distant Girls' Dormitory. "Hao-zi. Can you see what's going on over there?"

"Are you serious? It's way too far. No one could see that clearly." Chen Hao stared at him like he'd lost his mind.

Yang Bin nodded slowly, his thoughts racing.

He had mild nearsightedness. Not bad enough for glasses, but his vision definitely wasn't sharp. So how had he just seen a building that far away in perfect detail? That wasn't a vision issue. That was something else entirely.

"A Special Ability...?" The thought hit him like a jolt.

But he'd never had anything like this before. Could it have appeared last night?

Could the apocalypse do more than turn people into zombies? Could it also give people abilities?

A spark lit behind Yang Bin's eyes. Supernatural powers had never existed in reality-but come on, everyone in the twenty-first century had seen the movies. Zombies were already here. Special Abilities existing alongside them wasn't much of a stretch.

To test it further, Yang Bin focused his attention directly on Chen Hao.

Chen Hao immediately looked uncomfortable, like he was being peeled open layer by layer.

His hands drifted down instinctively to cover his crotch, as if that might help.

"Relax. It's not like I haven't seen it before," Yang Bin said with a grin.

Inside, his heart was hammering. He'd only meant to confirm whether the ability was real-but he'd just discovered something new. He could see through things.

X-ray vision. The ability every man on earth had fantasized about at least once. And it was his.

Even Yang Bin, steady as he usually was, couldn't keep the excitement from surging through him.

He kept his gaze locked on Chen Hao, pushing further, testing the limits of what he could see.

Then his expression froze.

Sheer disbelief. As if he'd just seen something impossible.