Doomsday Asylum Chapter 1

When she left the orphanage at the age of 16, the director said such words to Ning Xin:

“You are the most reassuring child I have ever brought up. Even if the world only throws you a stone, you can carve a piece of jade from it.

But Xin, life is not just about striving. Sometimes you can slow down, make friends, eat good food, and enjoy the pleasures of life.”

Ning Xin nodded vigorously, walked out of the orphanage where she had been living since childhood, holding her backpack tightly, crying with red eyes as she walked.

But by nightfall, she was back at People’s Square setting up her stall as usual, earning five hundred soft credits during the holidays. She completely put the director’s words behind her.

Money, how significant it is.

With it, she could eat, buy cars, buy houses, and live as decently as someone with parents.

Making money in life is the most important thing. As for friends, good food, and enjoyment, they are all things that hinder her from making money.

Ning Xin worked hard day and night, trying every means to make money. After more than three years of setting up stalls, she gave herself a gift at the age of twenty – rented a 20-square-meter shop.

After that, she worked even harder, with an annual income exceeding three hundred thousand.

Seeing the savings in her bank account growing, Ning Xin set herself even farther goals.

At 25, she wanted to own her own house.

At 30, she wanted to own her own store.

At 35, she wanted to turn her small shop into a chain, hire a group of people to work for her, and she would only need to patrol and count money in each store every day.

Such dreams were so beautiful that sometimes she would laugh herself awake, eager to make time run faster to fulfill her wishes sooner.

However, on a day when she was 23, she had to go to the hospital to receive intravenous treatment due to a high fever, missing the usual opening hours of her store. While rushing to the store on her electric scooter with a large bag of new goods, she was hit by a fatigued driver and broke her neck on the spot.

Luckily, Ning Xin didn’t die.

Unluckily, she seemed to be even more unlucky than dead.

When she woke up, it wasn’t at the familiar crossroads anymore, but in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies.

She, like many others with similar experiences, found herself in a dilapidated asylum.

Food was scarce in the asylum, and everyone there had already died once, so they were quite reckless. Before long, fights broke out over food.

Ning Xin looked at her thin arms and legs, knowing she definitely wouldn’t have the upper hand in a fight. She decided to hide in a secluded corner.

After three or four days, many in the asylum died or left, leaving only her feeling dizzy with hunger.

She had to come out of her hiding place, suppressing the urge to vomit, stepping over the bodies in the living room, locking the barely closed door behind her, and then attempting to find something to eat.

With no food, even water would do. She was dying of thirst.

But the asylum was pitifully small, only two floors in total.

Downstairs was the living room, kitchen, and communal bathroom, and upstairs were three rooms that could be searched in less than two minutes.

If there were any food or water, those people would have taken it already, leaving nothing for her.

Ning Xin walked alone in the gloomy, crumbling building, almost smashing the floor tiles open to search. But she found nothing, and her mood gradually sank.

She didn’t die in the car accident, only to starve to death here?

There was a window nearby, and she lifted the dusty velvet curtain to look outside. Downstairs, there were several severely decayed zombies, their mouths gaping open, making guttural noises towards her.

The zombies had human faces, but they were so rotten that one eyeball had even fallen out, hanging by a thin membrane.

Ning Xin considered herself brave, but her heart still shook at the sight. She quickly closed the curtain, trying hard to forget the image.

Those who went outside were likely to have little chance of survival, but how many more days could she endure staying here?

Her stomach growled painfully, her vision started to blur, and her limbs felt weak.

She didn’t care about cleanliness anymore. Leaning against the wall, she sat on the ground, looking at the corridor in front of her, suddenly feeling like crying.

She was unwilling to accept this fate. She had saved up half of the down payment for a house. She was on the brink of a better life, yet here she was, dying in this unfamiliar place.

Her nose tingled, her vision became blurry.

Ning Xin wiped her tears with her hand, but then she froze.

One, two, three… four.

There were just three rooms a moment ago, but now there was another door? Did she miscount?

Ning Xin gathered her courage, leaned against the wall, and slowly moved towards it, holding her breath as she reached out and knocked on the door.

“Please come in.”

A hoarse voice came from inside, startling her. Summoning her courage, she pushed the door open and entered.

The figure of an old lady greeted her.

She must have been at least eighty years old, with snow-white hair and wrinkles covering her face.

She was wearing a gray sweater, sitting in a wheelchair with a thin blanket over her knees.

The furnishings in the room were simple, with only a bed, a bedside table, and a wardrobe.

The old lady didn’t look at her but sat on the edge of the bed, head bowed, looking down.

Ning Xin remembered the scene she had seen earlier and couldn’t help but furrow her brow.

“Who are you?” she asked.

The old lady slowly turned her head and glanced at her. “Are you the new nurse?”

“I…” Before she could explain, the old lady interrupted, “I’m hungry. Go cook some food.”

…She did want to cook, but it’s hard to cook without ingredients. What could she use to cook?

Ning Xin explained her current predicament, and the old lady smiled slightly.

“How could there be no food? Look over there.”

She pointed to the bedside table, and Ning Xin looked over, her eyes widening in surprise.

There was actually… a small bag of rice!

Although it wasn’t much, it was food! How could she have missed it earlier? Was she so hungry that she became oblivious?

She was afraid it might be an illusion, so she slapped her face hard, then looked again, even grabbing a few grains and stuffing them into her mouth.

A familiar fragrance filled her mouth, confirming that it was indeed rice.

“Take it to the kitchen and cook some congee.”

After the old lady spoke, she didn’t look at her anymore, turning her head back to gaze out the window without moving.

Ning Xin held the bag of rice, finding it difficult to believe her situation. However, her stomach was too hungry, and she couldn’t care about much else. She immediately went downstairs to the kitchen.

As she passed through the living room, she looked at the ferocious corpses on the ground, feeling a complex mix of emotions.

These people had died in fights over insufficient food. She wondered what their souls would think if they saw the rice in her arms.

Oh well, it wasn’t her concern. Eating was the priority.

Ning Xin stepped over the bodies and entered the kitchen, searching for utensils to cook with.

The kitchen was as dilapidated as the rest of the building, resembling a kitchen from the 1980s. After searching for a while, she found a rusty iron pot and a ladle.

The pot needed to be washed; she didn’t want to be poisoned by the congee. But where was the water?

Ning Xin searched carefully, and her gaze fell on something suspicious. The more she looked at it, the more she suspected.

Could it be the legendary… well?

Next to the well was a bucket tied to a rope. She exerted tremendous effort to move the stone well cover aside, then threw the bucket down.

A splash came from the depths, confirming the presence of water!

Ning Xin was extremely excited, adrenaline rushing through her veins. Her weak body regained strength as she pulled up the bucket and eagerly drank the water.

Halfway through drinking, she was suddenly startled.

This was a post-apocalyptic world; could the water quality be trusted?

She quickly lifted her head and carefully examined the water against the light.

The water was clear and clean, with no visible impurities. However, some toxins might not be visible to the naked eye.

What to do? She didn’t have any testing tools.

Rubbing her stomach, she thought that since she had already drunk so much, regret would be useless. It would be better to quickly eat to her heart’s content. Even if she were to die, she’d die with a full stomach.

After drinking some more water, she used the remaining water to wash the pots, pans, bowls, and rice, then put the rice in the pot, ready to start cooking congee.

There was a coal stove in the kitchen, with two pieces of leftover coal inside.

She used to cook for herself often to save money, but she always used gas, not coal. They were completely different.

After struggling for a while, filling the room with smoke, she still couldn’t light the coal.

Ning Xin was choked with tears streaming down her face, her head spinning more and more. Unable to continue, she gave up on the coal stove, finding a few broken chairs and dismantling them to build a makeshift fire pit. She placed the pot on top.

There was an iron rack in the kitchen for placing basins, and it served perfectly as a pot stand now.

She squatted next to the fire, occasionally adding chair legs into the flames.

After half an hour, the aroma of white congee wafted through the asylum.

Ning Xin’s mouth watered, wishing she could drink it all right now.

But the rice was given by the old lady upstairs, and it wouldn’t be right for her to eat it all by herself.

She decided to have two bowls first.

Finally, the white congee refreshed her spirits after she finished drinking it.

She found a large bowl, poured the remaining congee into it, and brought a small bowl and spoon back to the second floor.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Um… Granny, the congee is ready.”

“Come in.”

Ning Xin walked in and placed the items on the bedside table, ladled a bowl of congee and handed it to her.

The old lady didn’t seem very hungry, eating slowly. Her features hidden in wrinkles looked quite ordinary, but she emitted an undeniable presence.

Suddenly, she looked up and asked Ning Xin:

“Aren’t you hungry?”

As the saying goes, “where there’s business, there’s trickery.” Having been in small business for so many years, Ning Xin had developed a thick skin. Without batting an eyelid, she said:

“I am hungry, but this rice is yours. I can’t eat it even if I’m starving.”

The old lady didn’t show whether she believed Ning Xin or not, and she simply put down her bowl, saying:

“There should only be the two of us left in the building now. What are your plans for the future?”

Ning Xin frowned at the thought and said:

“What kind of place is this exactly? Were you also suddenly brought here? Is there any way for us to get out?”

The old lady smiled cryptically. “I think rather than dwelling on that, it’s better to think about how to survive.”

Ning Xin looked troubled. “There’s no food left downstairs. Do you have any here?”

The old lady shook her head.

Ning Xin felt a chill in her heart. “Then we can only wait to die.”

The old lady sighed and said:

“I’m full now. Take the remaining porridge back and leave it there. We’ll have it together tonight.”

“Alright.”

Ning Xin went downstairs and placed the porridge on the square table in the living room, sitting beside it, her chin resting on her hands, contemplating the life ahead.

At the age of fifteen, she started her first stall with the two hundred yuan she earned from collecting garbage. Now, she had nearly a million in savings.

She refused to believe that her twenty-three-year-old self would be more fragile than when she was fifteen.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If she hadn’t died, it meant there was still hope.

What she needed to do now was to quickly clean up the corpses.

Spending all day with dead bodies was just too ominous.

The author has something to say: La la la, a new story is beginning to update, so nervous…

This time, the female lead is a resilient and resourceful little fighter, a savvy entrepreneur. The male lead in the next chapter is expected to be mentally ill~

I wonder if any cute readers will see the update tonight. Leave a comment in the front row for a little red envelope. Looking forward to it! (*^^*)

**Translator Nomad** I decided to leave in the authors comments. I think it makes reading more enjoyable!