Chapter 086: The Apocalypse (Part 1)

The sky was a bleak, endless gray.

A strange, hissing roar echoed in her ears.

Thud! Something heavy hit the ground.

“Boss, we can’t hold on much longer!”

“There are more and more zombies coming from the west!”

When Le Yixian opened her eyes, she found herself staring into a face pitted and misshapen, with one eye missing. The empty socket was crawling with maggots, writhing in a sickening mass. Even Le Yixian, who considered herself worldly, was so startled she screamed aloud.

Crack! Lightning split the air, striking the zombie and hurling it away.

“Shut the hell up!” came an impatient shout.

The stench of decaying flesh filled her nostrils. Le Yixian forced herself to take a few steadying breaths. Looking up, she saw that she was at the center of a desperate battle: people all around her were fighting off a tide of zombies surging from every direction. Fireballs, earthen walls, spears of ice, bolts of lightning—scenes that belonged only in stories or films now played out before her eyes.

“Madam, Gou Sheng at your service!” piped up a cutesy voice in her mind. “Analyzing this world for you right now.”

Le Yixian’s lips twitched. “An apocalypse.”

“Wow, Madam, you’re so clever! That’s right, this is an apocalyptic world—you guessed it in one!” Gou Sheng’s tone was mockingly surprised.

Le Yixian: …With zombies and superpowers everywhere, how could she not know?

Suddenly—

“Boss, Sister Qing is here!” cried a young man, his face smeared with blood, his voice full of relief.

“Break through that way!” the man leading the group barked, his back to Le Yixian.

Lightning crackled wildly around him, snapping and leaping through the air. As he turned, Le Yixian froze. In her mind, Gou Sheng squealed with delight, “Master!!!”

Dressed in dusty gray camouflage, Ke Yuandao was directing his team’s retreat. He noticed that the young lady they had just rescued from the zombie nest was standing rooted to the spot, dazed and unmoving.

His brow furrowed slightly, and he thought with some annoyance: Scared witless.

Without another thought, he strode forward, wrapped an arm around her waist, and hoisted her onto his shoulder like a sack of grain. His other hand was not idle—he raised it, and lightning arced out, roasting a horde of zombies into charred husks.

Hoisted up, Le Yixian felt her stomach lurch, bile rising to her throat. But, mindful of her surroundings, she forced herself to hold it back.

With a thump, her lover dumped her onto the back seat of an off-road vehicle as if she were nothing more than cargo.

Two vehicles shot forward, cutting a swath through the zombie horde with their supernatural powers, like arrows loosed from their strings.

“Damn, why are there so many zombies here?”

“Less talk, save your strength for fireballs!”

Le Yixian sat in the middle of the back seat. To her right, a teenage boy conjured blazing fireballs in his palm, hurling them out in a constant stream. On her left was a girl with a cold, forbidding aura; icy arrows and spears burst from her hands, skewering zombies and turning them into gruesome kebabs.

In the front passenger seat, Ke Yuandao was even more impressive—lightning flashed, and the wall of zombies ahead was blasted to cinders.

With lightning clearing the way, the two vehicles soon broke through the encirclement and sped away.

“I really thought I was going to die in there. Sister Qing, you showed up just in time,” the youth on her right said gratefully to the woman driving in silence at the wheel.

Le Yixian looked her over. Attractive, though not conventionally beautiful, her features were marked by a trace of severity. But when taken as a whole, her face had a striking, unforgettable allure—one that grew more appealing the longer you looked.

“Weren’t we supposed to leave through the east exit? How did we end up at the west?” Sister Qing asked, eyes fixed on the road.

The boy shot a disdainful glance at the woman they had protected so carefully, his tone unfriendly: “Don’t mention it. Someone insisted on taking the west exit. Good thing the boss is strong, or we’d all be zombies by now.”

Le Yixian: …They were talking about her, weren’t they? Of course they were.

“Zihao,” Ke Yuandao called from the passenger seat. Liu Zihao, who looked quite young, stuck out his tongue at him and made a face.

Le Yixian, sensing the team’s clear lack of warmth toward her, asked, “Where are you taking me?”

The atmosphere in the car froze. Ke Yuandao glanced back at her in surprise. “Didn’t we just say? The A Base.”

Then he fell silent, clearly unwilling to say more.

Le Yixian made a noncommittal sound and said nothing further.

Her head throbbed. She reached up and felt blood seeping from her scalp—she must have knocked it during the chaos.

She’d have to gather information slowly, bit by bit.

“Ding, Madam, the intelligence data has been collected and analyzed!” Gou Sheng’s voice chimed in her mind.

“Let’s hear it.”

“The title of this book is ‘Sunshine at the End of the World!’”

Sunshine at the End of the World was a post-apocalyptic novel Le Yixian herself had written once, a story with a rather unremarkable plot.

The protagonist, a university student named Li Qing, woke up to find the world had ended—and herself awakened to dual elemental powers: water and spatial manipulation. She never revealed the latter, so everyone who knew her believed she was merely a formidable water-type ability user.

She leveled up and fought monsters through the apocalypse, eventually encountering the leader of a military special forces unit, a lightning-powered man named Ling Han. Their repeated meetings left deep impressions on both. Gradually, after several brushes with death, Ling Han fell for her and began his pursuit. Along the way, a few expendable, decorative girls tried to get in the way, but were swiftly dealt with. In the end, the two of them slew the zombie king, conquered their region, and lived out their days together in love.

A lightning-powered ability user…

Le Yixian fell silent, her gaze lingering on Ke Yuandao in the passenger seat.

“Xiao Wang, how’s your side?” Ke Yuandao asked into his walkie-talkie.

“All good, Boss, just some minor injuries.” The device crackled with a young man’s spirited voice.

“Ah, it’s good to be alive.”

“Yeah, if Sister Qing hadn’t arrived in time, I would’ve tossed that Xia Meimei out to feed the zombies.”

“Min Rui’s absolutely right—told her to stop screaming, but she just kept going. No idea how she’s survived this long.”

“Lucky the reward is generous this time, or we’d be really losing out.”

The occupants of the other vehicle chattered away into their walkie-talkies, clearly making sure she heard every word.

The man in the front seat made no move to stop them, folding his arms across his chest, tapping his forefinger as he glanced at Xia Meimei in the back seat through the rearview mirror.

Unexpectedly, his eyes met a pair of clear, black eyes. She spoke: “What’s your name?”

His brow twitched, but before he could answer, his loyal fanboy cut in, “Our boss is Ke Yuandao of the Thunderbolt Unit—impressive, isn’t he?”

Ke Yuandao! His name had changed!?