Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 183: Hatred, Number: 2001

The convoy selected a street-side restaurant specializing in sliced fish for their nightly camp.

Before the world ended, sliced fish was a famous local street food in Fog City. For twenty bucks a head, you got a massive pot of fish, unlimited vegetable sides, and all the cheap booze you could stomach. It was a haven for the working class. In the summer, tables would spill out onto the sidewalks, packed with friends laughing and clinking glasses—the very essence of human warmth. In the winter, the windows would be completely fogged over from the boiling broth, offering a steaming refuge from the biting snow.

Now, the restaurant was a hollow shell. The ghostly silence of the ruined dining room felt exceptionally anomaly-infested.

The three vehicles parked near the entrance. The survivors disembarked, weapons raised, sweeping the desolate restaurant. It was empty, save for overturned tables and chairs.

Captain Chu Che strode into the center of the room. He produced a wooden staff from somewhere and slammed the blunt end hard against the tiled floor.

A transparent, hemispherical barrier instantly cascaded down from the ceiling, cleanly enveloping the entire restaurant. Having secured the perimeter, Chu Che didn’t say a single word. He turned and walked away, his shoulders slumped with utter exhaustion. Navigating the lethal labyrinth of the city had drained him dry.

Manager Xue Nan raised his megaphone, his scarred, stitched-together face twisted into a fierce scowl. “Listen up! No one leaves this dome tonight. If you need to take a piss, hold it!”

Between the harsh command and his terrifying visage, not a single survivor dared to talk back. In just a few short hours, Xue Nan had thoroughly grown into his role as the convoy’s ruthless enforcer.

Convoy assistant Little Fu quickly organized work details to set up tents while others dragged the heavy front doors shut. The interior plunged into darkness, but a few quick-thinking survivors piled up smashed wooden chairs and ignited a campfire in the center of the room.

The flickering flames burned away the lingering indoor fog. Before the apocalypse, lighting a massive bonfire in the middle of a commercial restaurant would have gotten you cyberbullied into oblivion within minutes. Now, no one batted an eye. It was just basic survival.

As the others pulled out their rations, Chen Ye glanced toward the back of the room. Iron Lion was dead to the world. Beside him, Mad Lion’s gruesome injuries were knitting together at a terrifying pace. The missing half of his head had already regenerated into a lumpy, fleshy mass, and the stump of his severed arm had pushed out a fully formed elbow.

Chen Ye pulled some supplies from his bag and tossed them to a forty-year-old woman named Zhang Yanping.

She was relatively well-kept compared to the other survivors. Previously, she had been sleeping with the old man who drove the elderly mobility scooter in exchange for food and protection. When the old man died, her steady stream of income vanished. Since Auntie Qu hadn’t made it out of the Second Elementary School, Zhang Yanping had aggressively volunteered to take over cooking duties for the superhumans. She was proactive, entirely shameless, and knew exactly how to secure her own survival. Chu Che had agreed to the arrangement.

Zhang Yanping caught the rice and sausages, flashing Chen Ye a sickly-sweet, fawning smile.

Chen Ye ignored her. He looked across the fire at Chu Che. According to convoy rules, the firearms confiscated from the raider group they’d encountered earlier counted as communal supplies, meaning they needed to be split. More importantly, there was a high probability of finding an artifact among the loot.

However, Chu Che looked like a walking corpse. Forcing a conversation now would be a waste of breath. Chen Ye decided to wait until after they ate.

Besides, he had far more pressing matters to attend to. His heavy machete had finally finished its upgrade.

Chen Ye retreated to a dark, quiet corner of the restaurant, pulled out a Huazi cigarette, and lit it off a burning ember. As Zhang Yanping began boiling water nearby, he drew the blade from his waist.

The physical changes were immediately striking.

The handle was still tightly bound in woven willow branches, but the scabbard was entirely different. The cheap, black leather sheath he had originally traded from Sun Qianqian was gone. In its place was a sheath forged from the scalp of the skinning ghost.

It was a sickening, coagulated blood-red. The surface was wet, slick, and etched with intricate, anomaly-like patterns. When Chen Ye ran his thumb over the material, his skin crawled. It didn’t feel like leather. It possessed the exact temperature and yielding softness of living human flesh.

He gripped the hilt and slowly pulled.

The blade didn’t slide out cleanly. Instead, thousands of microscopic, hair-like blood threads stretched taut between the cold steel and the inner lining of the fleshy sheath. They writhed and clung to the metal with desperate tension, resisting the draw. Only when the blade was fully unsheathed did the bloody sinews finally snap, violently retracting back into the scabbard like severed muscle fibers.

It was a weapon possessing a vile, living spirituality.

The moment the blade cleared the sheath, a suffocating aura of dread flooded the corner of the room. A few feet away, Zhang Yanping violently shuddered. She cast a terrified glance at Chen Ye, her stirring spoon freezing in the pot as her muscles locked up in primal panic.

Chen Ye didn’t care about her terror. He tilted the blade, letting the firelight dance across the edge. The divine lethality of an artifact couldn’t be fully grasped with the naked eye, but it looked noticeably sharper.

He slid the machete back into its fleshy sheath. Zhang Yanping exhaled a massive, trembling breath, her shoulders sagging in relief.

Chen Ye opened the system interface to review the weapon’s new stats.

[Hatred: Number: 2001]

Chen Ye frowned. When did it drop to 2001? The system had promised a top 2000 ranking. Had a new artifact been born in the world during the upgrade process, bumping his blade down a single rank? Furthermore, the “Heavy Machete” classification was entirely gone. It was simply Hatred.

He rubbed his thumb against the weeping red sheath and read on.

[Review: A living cursed blade that feeds on pain, resentment, and bloodline taboos. Powerful but costly, it is a song of slaughter jointly composed by the user and the countless vengeful spirits dwelling within.]

The sheer darkness of the description practically bled off the screen.

[Ability 1: Damage against anomalies is significantly increased. Exerts a passive suppressive effect on low-level anomalies. Suppressive force against high-level anomalies is heavily enhanced.]

Chen Ye’s eyes gleamed. This single line was worth the wait. Absolute suppression against anomalies was the holy grail in this world. Previously, his blade could only shred the mist thralls into pieces without inflicting lasting, conceptual damage. Now, he couldn’t wait to test it on the horde.

[Ability 2: The willow branches act as living tentacles, extending up to 164 feet. (Upgrade Effect: Length doubled under a blood moon.)]

A standard enhancement, but useful.

[Ability 3: Absorbs ambient environmental resentment to accumulate Grudge within the blade.

Initial Stage (Wailing): Grudge is abundant. Blade sharpness and anti-anomaly damage are massively boosted.

Intermediate Stage (Lamentation): Grudge reaches critical mass. The user can actively consume the accumulated Grudge to unleash a devastating physical slash paired with an AoE shockwave of agonizing human faces. (Note: After activation, Grudge resets to the Initial Stage. The screaming faces will temporarily materialize, inflicting severe mental shock to all targets in the vicinity. Indiscriminate of friend or foe.)

Advanced Stage (Eternal Curse): Requires extremely strict conditions to trigger. “Hatred” temporarily awakens, granting the user unfathomable, unknown powers.]

Chen Ye’s perpetually cold expression broke into a slight, manic grin.

One ability acting as three distinct skills. The final stage, Eternal Curse, effectively allowed the blade to awaken on command. No wonder it was ranked 2001.

But it was the final line of text that truly made his heart skip a beat.

[Hidden Edge: The blood sheath continuously absorbs ambient resentment from the air. The internal “blood threads” constantly secrete a unique Grudge essence, forming an ultra-thin, perpetually self-honing edge over the steel. The longer the blade remains sheathed, the sharper it becomes. Once sufficient Grudge is accumulated passively, Hatred can automatically upgrade its Number ranking.]

Chen Ye stared at the glowing blue text, utterly stunned.

Passive evolution. He didn’t even need to risk his life slaughtering enemies to force it to grow. The scabbard was doing the work for him.

His analytical mind spun into overdrive. If I just keep it sheathed long enough… could this thing passively grind its way into the top ten?