The appearance of moon thralls plunged the world into great chaos.
Thanks to Professor Tian Yuan's efforts, moon thrall outbreaks appeared simultaneously in the imperial capital and the continent's 32 other cities, catching people on the Heroic Spirit Continent by surprise.
The mutated moon thralls had characteristics that ordinary people couldn't imagine.
They lacked all rationality and were ferocious, unafraid of death. They were Heroic Spirits and thus hard to destroy. They also had the ability to infect humans, and on top of that, this ability was constantly evolving…
In the blink of an eye, almost 20 days had passed since the start of the moon thrall outbreak.
Because of a certain someone's outstanding contributions, the Heroic Spirit Continent's government had hardly mustered any effective response when doomsday came.
By the time humanity's top officials came back to their senses, the moon thralls had already destroyed the communication lines around the country, so each region could only fight its own battles.
Hidden in the very center of a man-made survivor camp in the middle of the capital was a research lab completely sealed off from the outside world.
All was silent around the lab, but if someone put their ear to the wall, they'd still be able to faintly discern the miserable shrieks from inside.
Those pained screams came from human beings. The screams emerged sporadically and sounded quite terrifying.
Gu Nan stood in the lab expressionlessly. A man was tied up in front of him. The man watched as a moon thrall was released and started nibbling on his head.
Throughout this process, the man was injected with psychotropic drugs to ensure that he stayed conscious the entire time.
After a series of blood-curdling screams, the man was turned into a moon thrall and beheaded by Gu Nan's sword shortly after.
"Still a failure… What exactly went wrong?" The headless body slowly fell down in front of Gu Nan, but he frowned and didn't seem relaxed at all.
According to Tian Yuan, the moon thrall's child was a human who could still retain their rationality even after being infected, but what sounded so simple was actually extremely difficult to do.
In the beginning, moon thralls had to eat all of a human's brain in order to infect the human's soul.
But a mere half a month later, the moon thralls' infectious powers had improved greatly, and they could turn humans with just an ordinary scratch.
"But even so, humans still die completely the instant they turn into a moon thrall…" Gu Nan rubbed his forehead, feeling some headache.
In just half a month, he had conducted at least hundreds of experiments, but not a single one succeeded.
Every time, the subjects would lose their consciousness before they were completely infected, and when they woke up next time, they would've already become mindless moon thralls.
Gu Nan couldn't even ask anyone about this situation—through the notes left by Tian Yuan, he was afraid that he was already the person who knew the mutant moon thralls the best in the world.
Compared with the normal moon thralls in ancient times, the biggest characteristic of mutant moon thralls was their infection ability and lack of reason.
These two were symptoms from the same source—according to Tian Yuan, it was precisely the moon thralls' mutated infection ability that made them unable to think, turning into mindless monsters that could only fight.
Originally, in Tian Yuan's plan, he could leverage his own advantage as their kin to control the mindless mutant moon thralls.
He originally wanted to instigate a war between humans and Heroic Spirits in order to control the entire continent.
But who could've expected Professor Tian to die in Gu Nan's hands before he could complete his plan? This triggered great turmoil throughout the continent.
In this sense, it was no exaggeration to say that Gu Nan single-handedly caused the apocalypse.
Not even Tian Yuan ever intended for the moon thralls to go berserk, because this wouldn't benefit him at all.
Gu Nan was the only person who needed the apocalypse to happen so that even if his own experiments failed, with a large number of specimens outside, the moon thrall's child would still appear sooner or later.
"Tian Yuan wanted an intelligent existence to awaken among the countless moon thralls and command them to counterattack mankind?" The corners of Gu Nan's mouth lifted.
...
In the capital's central area, Lin Duo slowly dragged her exhausted body into the camp.
This was her former high school, but now it was called the Star & Moon Camp, which was one of the largest survivor camps in the capital.
"Your Excellency Lin Duo, welcome back." The night guards around the camp hurriedly saluted after seeing Lin Duo.
Lin Duo nodded at them with a smile and entered the settlement, leaving a lot of buzz behind her.
"Hey, did you see that?! Lin Duo smiled at me!"
"Nonsense, she clearly smiled at me…"
Lin Duo's steps didn't slow upon hearing these conversations. A small smile involuntarily appeared, but she quickly stopped smiling.
Although it had only been half a month since the apocalypse started, the law of the jungle in which power meant everything had already permeated every corner of life.
Only the strong could get more food, resources, better living conditions, and respect from others.
Conversely, the weak may even be deprived of their own lives at the whims of the strong.
Lin Duo still didn't have a deep understanding of such an environment yet, but she enjoyed the respect from others and was proud to fight in order to protect the weak.
But she was also very aware that the reason people treated her with such respect was all because of those two little fellows...
The twin sun and moon Heroic Spirits revealed power on par with Tier 3 Heroic Spirits in the fight against the moon thralls.
And since they were her contracted Heroic Spirits, these contributions were naturally counted as Lin Duo's achievements.
"Big Sister, I'm back."
When she walked into her home inside the camp—the high school dormitory was converted into homes—Lin Duo shouted inside.
Her older sister, Lin Ke, poked her head out from the inside and saw Lin Duo's slightly tired face. Lin Ke said with a chuckle, "Go and get ready. We have chicken soup tonight!"
"Wow!" Classmate Lin Duo, the famed expert, suddenly lost her dignified image and cried out in excitement.
The current world wasn't like the time before the apocalypse. Meat, which seemed ordinary at that time, was extremely precious now. Even with Lin Duo's high status in the camp, she still hadn't tasted meat for several days.
A moment later, Lin Ke came out with hot chicken soup and said, "I heard this was because our camp's reconnaissance team found an uninfected chicken farm…"
"But the fact that we were rationed two whole chickens is all thanks to a bigshot like you!" Lin Ke put down the chicken soup and rubbed Lin Duo's head.
"No… It's all due to Little Ming and Little Yue," Lin Duo said with embarrassment while the figures of the sun and moon twin Heroic Spirits also emerged behind her.
After getting along for a long time, Lin Duo had given them names[1]—originally they were called Little Ri and Little Yue, but the former was so strange that it was changed to Little Ming.
"Little Ming, do you want to drink chicken soup?" While Lin Duo was feasting, she didn't forget her little friends.
The sun spirit rolled his eyes wordlessly. Beside him, the moon spirit laughed while covering her mouth. "Stupid Big Sister, we can't taste anything…"
Heroic Spirits didn't have taste buds.
Lin Duo's family spent their evening laughing at Lin Duo. During this time, Lin Ke casually mentioned, "By the way, Little Duo, your classmate Tian Tian came to look for you several times in the past two days…"