Ashes of Mercy

In a coastal Chinese city shattered by a catastrophic viral pandemic, all legal institutions collapse within seventy-two hours. Dr. Chen Yuanqing, a once-respected physician, and her desperate patient's son, Lin Haotian, are forced into a brutal new order where euthanasia becomes the currency of power. As survivors fight for medicine and food, the act of "merciful death" mutates into a hereditary curse—passed from father to son, from doctor to disciple. This story traces how the first savage rules of the post-apocalyptic world are written not by the strongest, but by those who inherit the darkest family legacies.