“Who are you?”
The icy, bone-chilling voice exploded beside her ear like an interrogation from the depths of hell.
The hand clamped around her neck was like an iron vise, tightening relentlessly with irresistible force.
The air was slowly being squeezed from her lungs.
Qiao Yu’s face had turned purplish-red from severe oxygen deprivation. Her vision was going black in waves, with stars flashing before her eyes.
Her hands instinctively tried to pry away that iron-like hand, her fingernails leaving several bloody scratches across the back of Rong Chen’s hand.
Instead of making him loosen his grip, however, her struggle only intensified the murderous intent in those blood-red eyes.
【2!】
The system’s scarlet countdown flashed frantically across her retina like the tolling of a death knell.
The shadow of death instantly enveloped her.
This utterly deranged madman was genuinely going to crush her throat without mercy!
【1!】
Only one second remained on the countdown, and the Grim Reaper’s scythe was already resting against her neck.
No, she absolutely could not die such a pathetic death again!
At the brink of despair, Qiao Yu’s instinct for survival instantly surged to its absolute limit.
Her mind raced like a computer operating beyond its capacity, frantically searching for a way out.
Facing this completely irrational, obsessive killing machine, she absolutely could not say she was a stranger.
She could not reveal even the slightest hint of hostility, either!
At the very instant the countdown was about to reach zero, Qiao Yu suddenly dug her fingers viciously into the inner side of her thigh.
A piercing pain shot through her body, instantly reddening the corners of her eyes. Two crystal-clear, heartbreakingly beautiful tears slid precisely from the corners of her eyes.
Instead of struggling to push Rong Chen away, she suddenly grabbed his bloodstained, icy arm with one hand.
With the other, she reached out and tightly wrapped her arms around Rong Chen’s lean, powerful waist.
“Wuwuwu… hubby!”
Her tearful, anguished cry suddenly shattered the deathly silence of the riverside night.
That single “hubby” was delivered with such heart-wrenching twists and turns that anyone who heard it would have been moved to tears, as though it carried with it an age-old injustice and profound despair.
That one cry not only left Rong Chen stunned.
Even the system that had been mechanically counting down inside her mind seemed to glitch like it had been infected by a virus.
【…？】
Qiao Yu did not dare stop. She buried her face firmly against Rong Chen’s chest, which was covered in mud and water, and cried as though her heart were breaking.
“Hubby! You don’t recognize me anymore?”
“I’m your Beloved Wife who has been through thick and thin with you. You’re my devoted husband!”
“We swore that we would spend our whole lives together, with no one else between us. You said I was the moonlight in your heart and the cinnabar mark on your chest!”
“How could you forget me?”
The hand Rong Chen had around her neck stiffened almost imperceptibly.
For the first time, a trace of bewilderment and confusion flashed through his blood-red eyes, which had been filled with brutality and bloodlust.
Beloved Wife? Husband?
At this moment, his mind seemed to be pierced by ten thousand steel needles at once. The violent pain made it impossible for him to think normally.
His severely wounded, near-death state, combined with the strain of being forcibly awakened by the system’s warning just moments ago, had left his memory filled with vast blanks and severe confusion.
Who was this woman clinging to him and crying her eyes out? Had he really been married?
Qiao Yu keenly noticed that the pressure around her neck had loosened slightly.
There was hope!
She immediately doubled down, bringing out every cliché from the melodramatic TV dramas she had watched in her previous life.
“Hubby, you were bitten by those monsters while protecting me just now. Don’t you remember?”
“You lost so much blood. When you collapsed into my arms, you were still holding my hand and telling me that you wanted to marry me again in our next life…”
“Wuwuwu, now you’re even trying to kill me. Do you think I’m useless now? Then just strangle me to death. I don’t want to live without you either!”
While crying her heart out, Qiao Yu rubbed her mud-covered face frantically against Rong Chen’s expensive, damaged windbreaker.
She smeared all her tears and snot over it.
The whole performance was built around one principle: utterly sincere and shamelessly persistent.
Rong Chen lowered his eyes and coldly stared at the woman in his arms, who looked like a muddy monkey and was clinging tightly to him.
His head was splitting with pain, yet he still could not recall a single fragment of any memory involving a “wife.”
But…
In this Apocalypse, filled with the howls of zombies, humans devouring one another, betrayal, and slaughter, there was actually someone willing to throw away her own life just to rush toward him and call him hubby?
Interesting.
The twisted, malicious part of his nature seemed to have developed a trace of interest in this woman who could make up outrageous stories without even blinking.
Rong Chen suddenly let out a low chuckle.
The laugh was extremely hoarse, his chest vibrating slightly, yet it carried a bone-chilling coldness.
The hand around Qiao Yu’s neck finally began to loosen.
Fresh air instantly rushed into her windpipe.
Qiao Yu coughed violently, clutching her neck as she greedily gulped down mouthfuls of air.
Before she had even fully recovered, Rong Chen’s slender, icy hand, still stained with blood, suddenly moved downward and seized her chin.
The force was not great, yet it carried an overwhelming sense of absolute dominance.
He forced Qiao Yu to raise her head and look directly into those deep, unfathomable, heart-stopping blood-red eyes.
“Oh? Beloved Wife?”
There was a teasing lilt in Rong Chen’s voice, like a venomous snake winding itself around her and flicking out its tongue.
Following Qiao Yu’s own words, he sneered as he tested her.
“If you really are my devoted Beloved Wife, then why were you trying to leave me just now? Why were you running so fast?”
Qiao Yu’s heart sank.
Damn it, even after suffering severe injuries and losing his memory, this Devil King was still impossible to fool!
She immediately blinked her watery eyes, summoning tears on command and filling her expression with grievance.
“Hubby, you misunderstood me!”
“How could you call that running away? I was trying to find a doctor for you!”
“You had lost so much blood, and there was nothing I could do by staying here. I was planning to go into the city for medicine even if it meant risking my life for you!”
The lies came effortlessly, without even the need for a draft.
Qiao Yu even affectionately clasped the hand Rong Chen was using to hold her chin, her gaze so determined that she looked as though she were about to swear an oath before the heavens.
Just then, the electronic voice that sounded like heavenly music finally rang out in her mind.
【Ding! Detected a decrease in the target Rong Chen’s killing intent.】
【Villain’s corruption value has stopped rising.】
【Erasure countdown canceled. Crisis temporarily resolved.】
Phew…
Qiao Yu let out a long sigh of relief internally, and her tightly wound nerves finally relaxed a little.
Her life had finally been snatched back from the King of Hell, at least for the moment.
It seemed that this shameless “fake wife” persona really had worked!
She was just about to strike while the iron was hot and say a few more sweet words to solidify her position as his “Beloved Wife.”
But Rong Chen suddenly shuddered violently without warning.
Immediately afterward,
“Pfft!”
A large mouthful of horrifying black blood suddenly gushed from his originally pale, paper-white lips.
The black blood splattered onto the muddy ground beside them, where it actually began to hiss and corrode the earth, sending wisps of white smoke into the air.
The focus instantly disappeared from Rong Chen’s blood-red eyes, and his eyelids closed heavily as though weighed down by lead.
His tall, upright body was like a towering tree that had suddenly lost its support.
It fell straight toward Qiao Yu.
With a heavy thud, Rong Chen crashed onto Qiao Yu, knocking her defenseless body into the muddy water beneath them and becoming completely motionless.
“Holy crap! Hubby, don’t fake a fall on me!”
Qiao Yu was nearly crushed to the point of suffocation. She hurriedly struggled to push him off her.
Before she could even drag him away, the system’s icy warning once again transformed into a death knell, ringing frantically inside her mind while flashing with blinding red light.
【Warning! Warning!】
【The Villain’s vital signs are experiencing a cliff-like decline! They have fallen below the absolute safety threshold!】
【Reiterating the system binding rule: The host and the Villain’s lives are now linked. If one prospers, both prosper; if one suffers, both suffer.】
【If the Villain dies, the host will die immediately as well!】
【Please replenish the Villain’s energy immediately to maintain his basic vital signs!】
【If energy is not replenished within five minutes, the Villain will die, and the system will immediately execute the linked erasure program!】
Qiao Yu was completely dumbfounded, her hand frozen in midair as she pushed against Rong Chen.
Replenish his energy?!
She looked around in despair.
The vast wilderness stretched out around her, with nothing but a dark riverside shoal as far as the eye could see. There was nothing except mud and stones.
The cold river wind howled past them.
In the distance, the howls of zombies seemed to have been drawn closer by the smell of blood, growing denser and nearer by the second.
There was not even a blade of edible grass in sight.
Where was she supposed to find food to feed this husband she had gotten for free, who was now on the verge of death?!