Apocalypse King: Recruiting S-Tier Beauties With My Ruler System
Chapter 81: Fire in the Blood

Chapter 81: Fire in the Blood

John Wang’s POV

March 17th, 2025 — 8:47 PM

Longwan University — Linbei Campus, Pharmacy Ruins

—

The air stank of smoke and rotting meat.

The floor was starting to tilt under my boots, the structure groaning every few seconds like some dying animal. We didn’t have much time left before the whole pharmacy came down on our heads.

Didn’t matter.

I slung the Type-9k from my back, thumbed off the safety, and squeezed the trigger in short bursts.

The SMG barked sharp, loud in the cramped aisles.

Three infected staggered back, heads snapping like popped melons.

The Type-9k wasn’t a heavy weapon.9mm, low recoil, meant for fast, dirty culling. Perfect for clearing weaklings.

"Yifei, left!" I barked without looking. A Stage-1 zombie broke from the side, half a face missing. Shen Yifei swung her spear with a scared grunt, catching it across the throat and dropping it hard.

The system flickered at the edge of my vision:

[Shen Yifei Kill: Stage-1 Infected — EXP +10 / ZKP +5]

Noted. Keep moving.

Ahead, Mu Qinglan was still swinging that cracked bat, splinters flying with every hit. Her face was blank, detached, but her body was starting to slow down. Not exhaustion. Just physics. Metal couldn’t survive high-impact blows forever.

The bat cracked again — the sound sharp, ugly.

I cursed under my breath, flipped the SMG in my hand, and tossed it.

"Qinglan!"

She turned without hesitation and caught the weapon by the grip mid-spin.

Before she could even raise it, I pushed a system prompt mentally — fast, dirty command — Set Auto-Reload: Mu Qinglan / Type-9k Active.

System response flashed:

[Auto-Reload Enabled: Designated User — Mu Qinglan.]

Qinglan racked the slide, lifted the SMG, and started cutting down infected with clean, two-shot bursts. Head. Head. Head. Every round landing sharp and final.

[Mu Qinglan Kill: Stage-1 Infected — EXP +10 / ZKP +5]

[Mu Qinglan Kill: Stage-1 Infected — EXP +10 / ZKP +5]

[Mu Qinglan Kill: Stage-1 Infected — EXP +10 / ZKP +5]

The feed kept ticking up at the corner of my vision, stacking slowly.

I ducked under a falling shelf, jammed my shoulder into an infected trying to lunge, and drove it back into a broken freezer door with a crunch. No time to waste.

More kills meant more ZKP. More EXP flowing into the Ruler System from them, not from me.

Good.

Very good.

Shen Yifei yelped — barely avoided getting dragged down by two half-broken infected that had grabbed her legs. I moved without thinking, smashing the nearest one’s head against the concrete counter, while Qinglan gunned down the second.

[Shen Yifei Kill: Stage-1 Infected — EXP +10 / ZKP +5]

My breath misted in front of my face. The air was colder now. Fewer bodies blocking the street outside meant the city’s dead air was bleeding in.

But even through the thinning ranks of infected, even through the crumbling walls...

I could feel something was wrong.

The earth shook under my boots. Not just from the building giving way.

Something big was coming.

And it wasn’t dead yet.

—

The walls groaned louder now. Hairline cracks spiderwebbed across the ceiling. The floor shifted under my boots, a low tilt, almost like the ground itself was breathing.

Smoke burned my throat. Every breath tasted like dust and rot.

"Brute," I muttered.

Mu Qinglan didn’t flinch. She lifted the Type-9k, shifting her weight into a cleaner stance. Shen Yifei glanced sideways, swallowing hard, but gripped her spear tighter. No screaming. No breaking ranks. Good.

Through the half-collapsed shelves, I caught glimpses of the survivors.

Scattered. Fading.

A boy with a bloodied baseball bat swung wild at a half-dead infected — panic in every clumsy blow. Two others tried dragging a girl with a broken leg toward the doors but gave up halfway and bolted, leaving her sobbing on the cracked tile. Another kid — glasses askew, uniform torn — ran without looking back, shoving anyone in his way.

Survival. Ugly. Selfish. Real. I didn’t judge it. Not anymore.

But one thing caught my eye.

Near the broken checkout counters — half-pinned under a fallen sign, face smeared with blood and grime — Zhou Xue fought alone.

No backup. No weapons beyond broken arrows and a cracked length of pipe. No mercy.

She screamed as she swung, savage and raw, jamming a snapped arrow into the eye of an infected that grabbed at her.

Blood sprayed across her jacket. Her body shook with exhaustion, but her arms didn’t lower. She yanked the pipe free from the corpse and spun to drive it into another’s temple, using every ounce of strength left in her.

A crazy, hopeless fight.

But she kept fighting anyway.

Even when the others abandoned her.

Even when there was no point anymore.

Something twisted low in my gut — something I didn’t have a name for.

Not pity. Not admiration, either. Recognition, maybe? The same dead spark I’d seen in my own reflection too many times since the world fell apart.

The walls groaned again — louder — the ceiling coughing dust into the ruin-lit aisles.

Then the loading dock doors exploded inward.

The shockwave from the impact slammed through the pharmacy like a hammer.

Zhou Xue was thrown off her feet, smashing against the wall, and bouncing off the floor hard and sliding across the broken tile, a toppled shelf crashing down across her legs.

The Stage-2 Brute crashed through the wall like a wrecking ball, dragging twisted steel and shards of broken concrete behind it. Its body convulsed, muscles bulging wrong, tendons snapping and thickening under torn skin.

Still in the early phase. Slower.But if it finished mutating—

No thinking.

No speeches.

I planted my feet, shoulder twisted back, spear balanced perfectly across my palm.

Breathe.

Sight.

Throw.

The spear left my hand like a hammer shot, the shaft whistling through the broken air.

It punched straight through the Brute’s forehead — the impact so hard it knocked the creature back against a load-bearing column. Its whole frame buckled once and dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

The system blinked at the edge of my vision:

[John Wang Kill: Stage-2 Brute-Type — ZKP +50]

The fight didn’t pause.

The infected kept clawing forward — snarling, crawling over bodies, teeth gnashing.

Mu Qinglan laid down covering fire with sharp, economic bursts from the SMG.

Yifei stabbed low, pivoted, stabbed again — clumsy but getting faster, less afraid.

The floor rumbled under my boots again — harder.

A beam near the centre gave way with a sharp, ripping crack. The pharmacy wasn’t just unstable now. It was going to collapse and crush us all. I pushed forward to retrieve my spear — fingers outstretched — and saw her.

Zhou Xue.

Still desperate for survival... eyes burning with fire, fighting. Pinned halfway under a collapsed shelf, arms trembling, blood soaking down one sleeve from a gash I hadn’t seen before.

The others had fled and left her... She hadn’t left them, but now, I couldn’t stand it. Our eyes met across the ruin. Hers wide. Wild. Terrified. Alive.

Another heavy crack split the ceiling. Dust and plaster fell like rain.

No more time.

No more choices.

I abandoned my spear and rushed towards her. Spear or Victory forgotten.

Only one thing mattered now as I charged through the falling dust, boots hammering across the splitting floor. The debris pinned her across the thighs. Too heavy to lift carefully.

Fine.

I braced my legs, shoved hard with my shoulder, ignoring the scream that ripped through my muscles. The shelf shifted just enough. Zhou Xue let out a ragged cry as I grabbed her under the arms and yanked her free.

"Hold on," I growled.

Didn’t know if she heard me. Didn’t matter.

I threw her up across my shoulders in a fireman’s carry and sprinted for the broken entrance.

The world behind us groaned once — a low, final sound.

Then the ceiling came down.