“I’m not going with the rescue team.”
The girl standing before him fell silent for a moment before finally saying it.
Li Chen didn’t respond right away.
First she had asked him whether he planned to leave with the rescue team. Then, without waiting long, she told him she wouldn’t be going with them herself.
He said nothing, and the air between them slowly sank into silence. For some reason, Mo Chu began to feel uneasy.
It felt like she must have said something wrong, though she couldn’t figure out what. And when she looked at Li Chen, a strange flicker of guilt rose in her chest for no reason she could explain.
Thankfully, after a while, she finally heard him ask quietly,
“If you’re not going with the rescue team… where are you planning to go?”
The moment he spoke, Mo Chu let out a breath of relief. She looked up at him. The young man still looked pale, his dark eyes unreadable as ever.
But when faced with his question, she hesitated again.
After a long pause, trusting him out of an instinct carried over from two lifetimes, she lowered her voice and said softly,
“I want to go to Haishi.”
From here to Haishi was over a thousand kilometers away. With no trains, no cars, and zombies roaming everywhere, no one could predict what dangers waited on the road.
But this wasn’t some impulsive decision she’d made on a whim.
She understood the risks. She understood exactly what it meant for a healing-type ability user to travel that far alone without teammates. And yet, after thinking it through again and again, she still chose Haishi.
It wasn’t because she had family or friends there.
In fact, two years before the apocalypse, both of her parents had died in a plane crash. She had no one left tying her down.
The reason she wanted to go to Haishi was simple.
There was something there she couldn’t ignore.
—Crude oil.
In the third month after the apocalypse began, a survivor settlement called White Island was established outside Haishi, built around what used to be the city’s largest oil well.
By the end of the first year of the apocalypse, White Island had already become one of the strongest survivor bases on the continent because of that oil.
At the beginning, everyone fought over food, clean water, weapons, and ability users. No one realized how important oil truly was.
But in the apocalypse, oil was more valuable than anyone could have imagined.
Without it, survivor bases could barely function.
White Island rose because of oil. It had almost nothing else—but it had oil, and that alone allowed it to grow stronger year after year, unstoppable.
Mo Chu arrived at White Island in her third year surviving the apocalypse. Thanks to her rare healing ability, she gradually found a place for herself there. After that, she stopped wandering.
And in the end—
She died there.
Whether because of White Island’s unique importance or because it was the place where she’d ultimately been buried in her previous life, she wanted to return there once more.
Compared to White Island, the survivor base in Lin City—where she currently was—had taken the exact opposite path.
Lin City’s first survivor base had been established and managed by the military. At first, everything seemed orderly enough. But as time passed, the cracks caused by rushed construction and lack of resources began to show.
Things became so difficult that ordinary people had to hunt zombies just to exchange them for food.
One first-tier zombie could only earn you a single pack of biscuits.
Back then, she and Chu Ming had both been living in that base.
And it was during that time that Chu Ming finally revealed his true nature, using food to force her into submission.
Later, more survivor settlements were established around Lin City, easing the pressure on the first base. Only then did conditions improve.
Long after she’d already left Lin City, she heard the military had finally reclaimed a grain depot occupied by zombie hordes and completely turned the situation around.
Because she carried memories from her previous life, none of these things were secrets to her.
And after weighing everything carefully, she chose Haishi.
But she knew why she wanted to go.
If Li Chen asked… how was she supposed to explain it?
Mo Chu was still struggling over whether she should make up an excuse—something like going to Haishi to find relatives—when Li Chen suddenly said calmly,
“Then I’ll go with you.”
Mo Chu looked up at him in shock.
Seeing the surprise plainly written across her face, Li Chen smiled faintly.
“I’ll go with you.”
He… wanted to come with her?
He wasn’t even asking why she was going to Haishi. He was simply choosing to follow her.
Honestly, Mo Chu had never imagined they would travel together.
For one thing, she had saved Li Chen simply because she wanted to save him. Partly out of gratitude, partly because her conscience wouldn’t let her ignore him. But she had never expected anything after that.
In her mind, Mo Chu was Mo Chu, and Li Chen was Li Chen.
Once she saved him, they should have gone their separate ways and continued their own lives. Their paths were never meant to overlap.
Who could guarantee that because he’d liked her in her previous life, he would still feel the same in this one?
And besides—
She had no right to ask anyone to cross more than a thousand kilometers of apocalypse-ridden wasteland with her without complaint.
While she hesitated, she heard him ask softly,
“…You don’t want me to?”
After a pause, Mo Chu asked quietly,
“Don’t you need to find your family?”
The young man answered calmly,
“I don’t have any family.”
Mo Chu fell silent.
Only then did she suddenly remember—
Li Chen and Chu Ming had once been as close as brothers.
Before they fell out, even Chu Ming himself had said they were closer than real family.
And for someone with no family left…
To be betrayed by the person he considered a brother—
Mo Chu sighed inwardly.
Li Chen looked at her again.
“So,” he asked softly, “can I come with you?”
She didn’t know whether it was pity for the future Demon King of her previous life, or simply because she couldn’t think of a reason to refuse him.
After hesitating for a moment, she finally said,
“Okay.”
The moment the word left her mouth, she gave a bitter smile to herself.
Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that, after getting a second chance at life, she would actually have the courage to travel alongside the Demon King himself.
She lifted her eyes and found him watching her intently.
The look in his eyes made her heart tremble.
…Fine then.
Together it is.
He might become the infamous Demon King feared across the wasteland in the future, but even if he stayed by her side for now out of gratitude, there was no way someone like him would remain forever with a mere healer.
After settling their plans, the night had already grown deep.
Mo Chu had stayed awake for two straight days. Now that Li Chen had woken up, the tension holding her together finally loosened, and exhaustion quickly overtook her.
As she drifted into sleep, hazy and half-conscious, she vaguely felt someone lift her up and place her onto something soft.
She turned over instinctively and sank into even deeper sleep.
Before dawn the next morning, movement inside the warehouse stirred her awake.
This time, she reacted instantly, sitting upright in alarm.
Then she saw Li Chen.
He had a large backpack slung over his shoulders and was fully geared up, clearly preparing to head out.
Mo Chu blinked in confusion.
“Li Chen? Where are you going?”
He turned around, looking slightly apologetic.
“Sorry. I woke you.”
She shook her head dismissively.
“You’re going out?”
Li Chen gestured toward the backpack behind him and explained unhurriedly,
“The rescue team is entering the city today. While they evacuate survivors, they’ll definitely take as many supplies as they can too. If we’re not leaving with them, we need to gather as much as possible before they arrive.”
Mo Chu instantly woke up completely.
Annoyance flashed through her.
She’d spent so long in her previous life acting as “Doctor Mo” that she’d neglected the most basic survival concerns.
She immediately jumped off the mattress.
Only then did she realize that she’d fallen asleep against the wall last night, yet somehow ended up on the mattress instead.
But she had no time to think about that now.
Running a hand through her messy hair, she grabbed another empty backpack and said,
“Come with me. I know a good place.”
She led Li Chen back to the supermarket she’d scavenged the day before.
By now, more and more people had started appearing on the streets. Most moved in groups of seven or eight young adults. Whenever zombies appeared, they swarmed together to handle them. Dangerous, yes—but manageable.
Gone was the helpless panic from the early days of the apocalypse.
Survivors were adapting frighteningly fast.
As the city grew busier, Mo Chu silently prayed the supermarket hadn’t already been stripped clean.
At least… leave her something.
But when they finally arrived, she froze.
The supermarket was still intact.
No signs of looting. Barely any difference from when she’d come before.
It was even… clean.
Too clean.
Not a single zombie in sight.
The last time she’d come here, it had been the same. Aside from a few human and zombie corpses, there hadn’t been a single living zombie inside. Even with so much food left untouched, there were no signs anyone had looted the place before them.
At the time, she’d assumed she’d just been lucky.
But now it had happened twice.
And that was no longer coincidence.
Especially since the last time, besides her and the students, there had also been that other group they’d driven away. Those people definitely weren’t the type to give up after one trip. If they’d been forced out once, they should have come back.
Something was wrong.
Li Chen noticed it too.
Without thinking, he lifted an arm slightly, shielding Mo Chu behind him.
She grabbed his sleeve and shook her head lightly. The two exchanged a glance.
Li Chen remained half a step ahead of her as they entered the supermarket, pretending to casually gather supplies.
Mo Chu kept working quickly, staying alert the entire time.
So when she heard the faint sound from behind one of the shelves, her hand immediately tightened around Li Chen’s arm.
Thin streams of fire flickered into existence in Li Chen’s hand as he pulled her behind him and rounded the shelf.
Then they saw it.
A golden retriever.
Its body was more than twice the size of a normal dog, and its eyes glowed with a startling translucent red—clearly unnatural.
Mo Chu recognized it instantly.
A mutated dog.
No—
An ability beast.
An animal that had awakened supernatural powers.
And at that moment, the rare ability dog was staring at her excitedly, tongue hanging out as it tried to push past Li Chen to rub against her, its tail wagging furiously with delight.
