TVHCM 08

That night, the city seemed to come alive again with the arrival of that single message.

Inside the warehouse, Mo Chu could occasionally hear survivors moving through the streets in groups, searching for supplies. Seven or eight people together, sometimes more than a dozen. They walked carefully through the roads while quietly discussing the rescue team that would arrive tomorrow.

This was the sixth day of the apocalypse.

Before now, anyone capable of leaving had already driven out of the city. The survivors still trapped here were either too afraid to go outside, unable to leave for one reason or another, or still clinging to hope that rescue would come.

And now, because of one message, everyone had found hope again. The dead city had regained the faintest trace of life.

Mo Chu chose not to go out.

She shut the warehouse doors tightly and, after thinking for a long time, decided to absorb another crystal core.

Only a single day had passed since the first time she absorbed one. Under normal circumstances, trying again so soon was an extremely reckless decision. But relying on the experience she carried from her previous life, Mo Chu decided to take the risk.

At worst, her body would reject the power.

But as a former sixth-rank ability user, she still knew ways to survive even that.

Her confrontation with those two ability users during the day had shattered the sense of security she’d been relying on ever since waking up in this life. And the overwhelming power Li Chen had released while unconscious had shocked her even more.

For the first time, she understood with painful clarity—

Abilities were never fair.

As the owner of a “useless ability” before reaching third rank, if she wanted to avoid repeating the same path she walked in her previous life, experience alone would never be enough. Once ability users grew familiar with their powers and adapted to this apocalypse, the advantage of foresight would disappear.

She had to find a way to stay ahead of everyone else.

But that wasn’t the only reason she decided to absorb another crystal core.

More than anything, she was preparing for tomorrow.

Tomorrow, the military’s first rescue team would enter the city. They would escort survivors and ability users out, and around this ruined city they would establish Lin City’s first survival base.

After that, survival bases with different functions would spring up outside cities like mushrooms after rain, becoming humanity’s final refuge in the apocalypse.

Tomorrow, humanity would step into a new era.

And before that era arrived, she needed to be ready.

She didn’t want to end up like she had in her previous life—battered and helpless before the unstoppable tide.

Mo Chu took a deep breath, tightened her grip around the crystal core in her hand, and closed her eyes.

Her consciousness was instantly dragged into a whirlpool of power.

Around her, thin crimson threads of fire wound silently through the air like loyal knights guarding their master—untouchable and unwavering.

The warehouse fell silent.

Only the distant sounds outside drifted faintly through the darkness, sometimes near, sometimes far away.

The sounds of humans.

The sounds of zombies.

—

Li Chen had a dream.

He knew clearly that it was a dream. He remembered everything that had happened before he lost consciousness, yet the world inside the dream felt terrifyingly real.

In the dream, he was bound to a cross, burned alive by flames.

He could feel the fire scorching his skin. The invisible flames first burned through flesh, then devoured muscle and blood, until finally they gnawed into his bones.

He experienced every second of it with unbearable clarity.

And after the fire reduced him completely to ashes, everything began again from the beginning.

The flames burned his skin.

His flesh.

His bones.

Again and again, endlessly repeating.

The fire consumed not only his body, but his mind as well.

Every time the agony pushed him to the brink and he wanted to give up, the pain would suddenly lessen.

The stronger his desire to surrender became, the lighter the pain grew.

As though something was tempting him to let go.

Again and again, he endured unbearable suffering, dragging himself back from the edge of collapse until despair nearly swallowed him whole.

And when he could no longer hold on, a thought surfaced uncontrollably—

Why should he keep enduring this?

What reason did he have to continue?

Who in this world was worth suffering through all of this for?

Just as that thought appeared, a voice suddenly answered inside his heart.

There was.

Who?

The flames before him exploded open.

For the first time, he felt no pain.

He opened his eyes and saw crimson fire burning into the shape of a silhouette before him.

A thin young girl lay sprawled across the roof of a car, desperately gripping the arm of a falling man. Her frail arms trembled violently under the weight dragging her toward the abyss, yet she never loosened her hold.

In front of her were horrifying zombies.

Behind her stood cold, indifferent humans.

Then a voice sounded beside his ear.

“Let’s go.”

There was still a girl waiting for him to wake up.

Li Chen suddenly opened his eyes.

In the distance, he could hear cheers echoing faintly through the city. Above him was the dim but familiar ceiling of the warehouse.

His senses had become astonishingly sharp. Even the smallest sounds were magnified countless times within his perception.

And the moment he woke, crimson flames suddenly erupted around him—exactly like the ones from his dream.

In an instant, the ropes binding him were burned completely away.

He sat upright, only for his gaze to abruptly freeze.

The girl who had appeared in his dream just moments ago was sitting beside his bed.

Mo Chu leaned quietly against the edge of it with her eyes closed, seemingly unaware of the disturbance he had caused.

Around her floated several threads of fire, guarding her like silent protectors.

And those flames…

Had come from him.

Li Chen hesitated for a moment.

For reasons he himself couldn’t explain, he didn’t withdraw them.

The next second, the girl under his gaze suddenly opened her eyes and met his directly.

Li Chen instinctively wanted to look away in embarrassment, yet stubbornly continued staring at her.

He watched surprise and joy bloom across her face. Her eyes lit up little by little, bright enough to chase away the dimness of the warehouse.

“Thank god,” she said softly. “You’re awake.”

At that moment, something inside Li Chen finally settled.

Thank god.

She was still waiting for him.

He hadn’t been abandoned.

“I’m awake,” he replied quietly.

—

Li Chen waking up had completely exceeded Mo Chu’s expectations.

Before beginning to absorb the crystal core, she had carefully checked his condition, and the conclusion she reached hadn’t been optimistic at all.

Not only had Li Chen not improved—

He had actually been getting worse.

Mo Chu knew that fighting the zombie virus inside one’s body was a long and agonizing process. She had already prepared herself for him to remain unconscious for another two days at least.

Yet he had suddenly awakened without warning.

What exactly had happened while she was absorbing the crystal core?

Still, no matter what, Li Chen waking up was a good thing.

For both of them.

And for her next plans, things would now become much easier.

Mo Chu was still considering how to bring up what she wanted to say when Li Chen suddenly asked,

“Why did you save me?”

Why did she save him?

Mo Chu looked up at him.

The young man before her still looked pale from illness, but his eyes were dark and impossibly deep, calm yet unreadable.

Compared to the Li Chen she had first seen after waking up—the one gentlemanly enough to carry her onto the roof of the car—the Li Chen before her now already resembled the man she remembered from the sixth year of the apocalypse.

She didn’t know whether saving him had been the right choice.

But she had never regretted it.

She wanted to say, I wanted to thank you.

But in the end, after a moment of silence, she lowered her head slightly and smiled.

“Because you saved me first.”

“I see…” Li Chen murmured.

Then he suddenly asked again,

“Aren’t you going to ask what ability I awakened?”

What ability?

Of course Mo Chu knew.

By the sixth year of the apocalypse, everyone knew.

She smiled faintly and pointed at the fire threads beside her.

“This one.”

A powerful fire ability.

One of the five elemental abilities, known for devastating large-scale attacks.

The first time Li Chen and his fire ability truly became famous was after Chu Ming was brutally killed. An ability user close to Chu Ming had led an entire special operations squad of over twenty people to seek revenge against Li Chen.

Li Chen raised his hand.

Countless flaming crows filled the sky.

In a single moment, more than twenty people were burned into ashes.

Before that day, people only knew that the closer an ability was to the five elemental types, the rarer it became. And the elemental abilities themselves were considered the strongest abilities in the apocalypse.

Back then, everyone had thought—

How strong could they really be?

Maybe just a little more impressive than ordinary powers.

Until Li Chen annihilated an entire special ops squad in one move.

Only then did people truly understand how terrifying elemental abilities were.

From that day onward, the name “Li Chen” became something no one dared speak lightly.

Mo Chu said, “You awakened a fire ability.”

But the young man shook his head.

“Fire… and concealment.”

The moment he finished speaking, his entire body vanished from the bed.

The next second, he appeared again without warning.

A trace of amusement flickered in his eyes as he looked at her.

Mo Chu was completely stunned.

Li Chen…

Was a dual ability user?

But in her previous life, the only ability anyone knew he possessed was fire.

Had he always hidden the concealment ability?

Or was this a new power he had awakened in this life?

Suddenly, Mo Chu remembered something.

Before her death in her previous life, Li Chen had admitted several times that he had been the one saving her over and over again.

But every single time, she had never once seen the rescuer’s figure.

If Li Chen possessed a concealment ability…

Mo Chu abruptly cut off the thought before she could continue down that path.

She forced herself to look up at him instead.

Li Chen was still watching her.

Sincerely, she said, “That’s amazing.”

Li Chen moved his fingers slightly.

The flames surrounding him returned to his body, along with the fire threads guarding Mo Chu.

Her gaze unconsciously followed those threads, and a faint sense of disappointment rose in her chest.

Then she heard him say quietly,

“Thank you for saving me.”

He had saved her so many times.

And now he was the one thanking her.

Mo Chu felt strangely uncomfortable. She quickly changed the subject and brought up the message they had received earlier that day.

“…The rescue team will arrive tomorrow. They’ll probably establish a temporary survival base outside the city. Are you going with them?”

Li Chen didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he asked softly,

“What about you?”

Mo Chu hesitated for a moment before saying,

“I’m not going with the rescue team.”

She said “you” and “I.”

Not “we.”