“Boys! Big news!”

“Garrett Yale just pulled a Longevity Pill from the green roulette!”

“What the hell?! Doesn’t the green roulette cost ten years of lifespan to spin?!”

“And the key is, a Longevity Pill from a green roulette gives at least a hundred years, right?!”

“Pay ten years, win a hundred. That’s a damn robbery in his favor!”

“Shame, though. Ah…”

“Shame Garrett Yale is the same as us, just a bunch of lifespan tumor worms raised by the Letian Club!”

“A lifespan tumor worm, plain and simple, is a lifespan storehouse for the strong! Anything we pull by burning our own years, good or bad, has to be handed over to the club!”

“That Longevity Pill Garrett Yale got? The club’s gonna strip it off him without blinking. No way it ends up in his own hands!”

“Ah, don’t be so gloomy…”

“Sure, lifespan tumor worms are lowly, and whatever we pull isn’t ours. But at least we don’t have to face ferocious beasts head-on!”

“Even if the roulette spits out some beast, the club’s big shots deal with it. Lifespan tumor worms don’t need to worry about a thing!”

“If you ask me, living in the Letian Club as a lifespan tumor worm isn’t that bad. At least your life isn’t on the line…”

“And if you pull something like a Longevity Pill, like Garrett Yale did, the club even gives rewards!”

“After pulling that Longevity Pill, Garrett Yale should be moving into a better single room, right? He probably won’t have to go hungry anymore either!”

“Tch. What’s there to envy about a single room? What’s there to be proud of in being a lifespan tumor worm?”

The one speaking was a thug with tattoos snaking up both arms. He lay sprawled on a straw mat, lazy as a dead dog, eyes full of scorn.

“For trash like us lifespan tumor worms, sure, we don’t have to stare monsters in the face. But living in this filthy underground garage? That’s just rotting away while waiting to die.”

“Our lifespan keeps getting shaved off every time we start a roulette, and we don’t get any real chance to increase it.”

“At this rate, sooner or later, we all die when the clock runs dry.”

“See that waste in the northwest corner? He’s got barely more than a year left. Too scared to even spin the roulette. How many days has he been starving now?”

“And if we keep drifting like this, odds are we’ll end up just like him.”

“If you ask me, we ought to take Callum Stride as the example!”

“Callum Stride pulled an all attributes +1 reward from the roulette and went straight into becoming a formal club member!”

“Yeah, once you’re a formal member, you gotta go outside and kill monsters. But at least then you get the right to keep and use your own roulette rewards!”

“If luck holds, maybe you keep rising all the way and turn your fate around!”

When he said turn your fate around, the tattooed man’s face lit up. He could barely hide the heat in his eyes.

But another boy wearing black-rimmed glasses gave a cold snort and shot him down on the spot.

“I heard the roulette Callum Stride spun for that all attributes +1 had nine other options, and every last one of them was negative. That all attributes +1 reward didn’t even make up 0.1% of the wheel!”

“For him to hit that? That was pure damn ancestral smoke from the grave. Blessing piled up from who knows how many generations!”

“The roulettes the Letian Club lets lifespan tumor worms spin are basically all garbage wheels with huge chunks of negative effects!”

“You want to pull something good from a trash roulette and flip your fate? Keep dreaming.”

“Callum Stride’s case is a one-off. It’s not something little ants like us get to fantasize about.”

The tattooed man heard that and went quiet.

Couldn’t argue.

The thought of changing fate through the roulette was beautiful.

Too beautiful.

And because of that, too damn unreal.

For lifespan tumor worms like them, raised in captivity by the club…

Their fate was probably no more than rotting in place and waiting for death.

If they got lucky, maybe they’d end up like Garrett Yale—pull a Longevity Pill, trade it for a better place to live.

Then, when the day came and their lifespan finally burned out, at least they’d die looking a little less miserable.

Ah, this world.

The weak didn’t deserve dignity.

Didn’t deserve dreams either.

“What’re you boys talking about? Why’s the mood so dead?”

A strong, full-bellied voice suddenly rang out from the entrance to the filthy underground garage.

In an instant, every lifespan tumor worm who’d been slumped on straw mats scrambled to their feet.

Like they were welcoming back some victorious hero, they rushed forward in a burst of noise—

“Brother Garrett’s back?!”

“I heard you pulled a Longevity Pill, Brother Garrett! Is that true or not?!”

“With a haul like that, your treatment’s definitely going up, right? You won’t be coming back to this garage anymore, will you?!”

Garrett Yale, ringed by everyone like stars around the moon, looked no more than a college-aged youth.

Ordinary face. Sour stink on him like he hadn’t washed in half a month.

But right now his face was glowing, and he even let out a satisfied belch.

Faced with all this fawning from the low-tier lifespan tumor worms, he lifted his chin a little and spoke with smug pride.

“Lucky, that’s all. I happened to pull a green-quality Longevity Pill.”

“Boss Griffith Turner agreed on the spot to raise my treatment.”

“As for this underground garage, I, Garrett Yale, won’t be coming back here again.”

“I only came this time because the feast the club rewarded me with was too much for one man to finish. What’s left, I’m giving to you brothers.”

“Ohhh!!! Brother Garrett, that’s the spirit!”

The whole underground garage erupted at once. The cheers hit like thunder, as if Garrett Yale were their reborn father.

These lifespan tumor worms usually went hungry and cold.

Only by spending lifespan to start the roulette could they trade for supplies from the club.

To get at Garrett Yale’s leftovers was a blessing dropped from the heavens.

And sure enough, when the food cart was pushed in, the plates on top held nothing but scraps Garrett Yale had already eaten from.

But the lifespan tumor worms in the garage surged forward like refugees who hadn’t eaten in half their lives.

Some who were starving bad enough even started grabbing and shoving.

That messy racket finally stirred the weak young man curled up in the northwest corner of the garage.

Evander Ward struggled to narrow his eyes.

His whole body felt drained, empty, limp.

The air itself carried a sour, rotten stink.

What the hell?

Wasn’t he erased by a streak of golden light when he burned a million years of lifespan to activate the golden roulette?

How was he still conscious?

Hell?

Was this hell?

If so, hell had a damn rotten environment.

Evander Ward was still thinking that when a figure stepped up and blocked the light in front of him.

Then something seemed to be flung down beside him.

It carried a faint fragrance.

The smell hit him, and saliva flooded his mouth before he could stop it.

At that moment, his mind cleared a little.

And once it cleared, only one word remained in it—

Hungry.

So damn hungry!

He could clearly feel his whole stomach twisted tight into a knot, the kind of emptiness where chest and back felt like they’d stick together.

He had the sick certainty he could eat an entire ox whole.

As he was thinking that, the figure standing beside him spoke in a tone full of malice.

“Evander Ward, seeing as we were classmates once, Brother Garrett brought you a dog bone on purpose.”

“Sure, I gnawed it clean and only the bone’s left, but this is a Silverback Jackal Hound bone. Packed with nourishment.”

Voices nearby instantly joined in, making noise for the fun of it.

“Damn! Brother Garrett really treats old classmates well! Saving something as nutritious as a dog bone especially for Evander Ward!”

“This Evander Ward’s really blessed!”

Farther off, the other lifespan tumor worms started whispering among themselves.

“Why do I feel like Garrett Yale and this Evander Ward have some kind of grudge?”

“Of course they do. Didn’t you see there’s not a shred of meat left on that bone? This is straight-up humiliation.”

“I heard back in college, Garrett Yale and Evander Ward were after the same girl…”

“Not exactly after the same girl. More like Garrett Yale harassed Evander Ward’s girlfriend.”

“Tsk, tsk. You know who that girlfriend was?”

“Who?”

“Fiona Weeks.”

“??? What?! Fi— Fiona Weeks?! That Fiona Weeks?!”

“Fiona Weeks, ranked first on Jiangcheng’s Longevity List?!”

“The Fiona Weeks whom all four major forces of Jiangcheng treat like an honored guest? The only one in Jiangcheng who currently knows how to refine a Longevity Pill? Jiangcheng’s number one alchemist, Fiona Weeks?!”

Those titles were enough to stun the marrow out of a man.

So much so that right then, nobody dared believe it—

That a heaven-proud chosen daughter with a future stretching without end…

Had once crossed paths with some unseen lifespan tumor worm rotting in an underground garage?

But after thinking it through, maybe it wasn’t so hard to believe.

After all, the arrival of the apocalyptic game and the Roulette of Fate had only been one month ago.

One month.

And in that one month, the whole world had been turned upside down.

Human fortunes had split apart like heaven and mud.

Take Garrett Yale for example. Before the apocalypse, they said he’d been some rich second-generation brat.

Now?

Now he’d fallen to the very bottom, a lifespan tumor worm who couldn’t fill his belly or clothe himself, just waiting to rot to death.

Or take Barnett Cross, the chairman of the Letian Club. Before the apocalypse, he’d been nothing but an ordinary gate guard.

Now he was one of Jiangcheng’s top hundred fighters.

And Fiona Weeks stood where she did now for one reason only—

Heaven-defying luck.

She had pulled the Longevity Pill formula from a roulette.

So if this heaven-proud girl had once, before the apocalypse, had a useless boyfriend like this…

It suddenly didn’t seem that strange.

With that thought, quite a few lifespan tumor worms in the garage couldn’t help drifting closer, wanting to see what this useless Evander Ward actually looked like.

He was handsome enough.

But he looked too weak.

Probably didn’t have many days left.

That was the judgment forming in their hearts.

Then all at once, they saw—

That useless Evander Ward suddenly snapped his eyes open.

The look in them was eerie, almost ghost-struck, sweeping across everyone present.

Then, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, he looked at Garrett Yale and called out, “Gar… Garrett Yale? You’re Garrett Yale?”

“You… weren’t you starved to death already?”

The second those words landed, Garrett Yale’s face turned black as the bottom of a pot.

“Fuck your mother! I’m alive and well! You’re the dog bastard who’s about to starve to death!”

As he cursed, he kicked away the dog bone he had thrown beside Evander Ward.

“Starve to death then, you dog bastard!”

“Don’t think I don’t know—you’ve only got one year of lifespan left!”

“One lousy year of lifespan, and that’s only enough to start the lowest-grade white roulette!”

“In a few days, I’ll be waiting to collect your corpse!”

As Evander Ward listened to Garrett Yale’s cursing, his whole mind was in a daze.

A horrifying thought flashed through his head.

Then he called out in his heart: Status Panel.

At once, the data panel that every person had possessed since the descent of the apocalyptic game appeared in his vision.

[Name: Evander Ward]

[Level: 0]

[Lifespan: 1 year 038 days]