When Lin Yao heard the words “abandon the cars,” her heart felt as if it were suddenly seized by a vice-like grip.
In her previous life, she had followed Xia Qing.
Whichever way the road went or whichever direction danger came from, Xia Qing had always been at the front blocking it all.
Everyone followed Xia Qing.
Everyone flattered her.
But this life was different.
Now, she was standing firmly inside Jin Chao’s squad.
Now, she was the spatial ability user.
This meant she was set to walk the very path Xia Qing had taken in her past life.
Meanwhile, the transmigrated Xia Qing knew nothing about it.
What hazards lay ahead, or when a mutant might spring out—
She was completely in the dark.
Abandoning the vehicles meant relying entirely on their own two legs to walk.
In a city torn to shreds by mutants, proceeding on foot was equivalent to dragging oneself out of a protective iron shell and placing oneself stark naked in the dead center of a hunting ground.
The hearing, sense of smell, and speed of those creatures far surpassed human limits.
They lurked in the shadows, ready to surge forward like a tidal wave at any moment to tear you to pieces.
“Just stay right behind me,” Qiao Sheng’s voice drifted down from above her head.
“Protecting you is my responsibility.”
After all, their entire stash of team supplies was now safely stored inside Lin Yao’s space.
Lin Yao snapped her head up.
Qiao Sheng was a speed-type ability user; while his eyes bore no unnecessary emotion, he was a man of his word.
If trouble really arose, he could flash in front of her within a fraction of a second to block a mutant’s razor-sharp claws.
“A-Alright.”
Lin Yao nodded repeatedly, a subtle tremor hiding in her voice.
That trembling wasn’t out of fear, but an emotion she hadn’t experienced in a very long time.
The peace of mind that came from being actively protected.
In her past life, no one had ever stepped forward to say they would protect her.
Not a single person.
Back then, whenever she wanted someone to shield her, she had to deploy her Charm ability.
Using her gaze, her smile, or specific angles of her body, she had to hook into those men’s desires.
Yet her internal energy capacity had been far too low, as she had never absorbed energy cores to upgrade.
The effects of her Charm would barely last a few hours before beginning to loosen.
Even more terrifying was the fact that Charm carried a dark price.
Once those men whom she had controlled snapped back to reality, their disgust toward her would multiply tenfold, kicking her aside like a filthy bug.
She had only discovered this horrifying backlash right before her death.
Xia Qing, heh…
You are going to die a miserable death.
Things were different now.
Jin Chao and his men approached her on their own initiative, flattering her and centering themselves around her—not for her body, nor for her beauty, but strictly for her spatial storage.
A spatial storage capable of swallowing an entire supermarket’s worth of goods.
In a world where food was growing increasingly precious, a spatial ability user was a walking, breathing gold vault.
Lin Yao couldn’t help but let out a quiet internal smirk.
This was infinitely better than that superficial Charm skill that relied on physical seduction.
In her past life, everyone had revolved around Xia Qing.
Su Bai, Fang Cheng, Jin Chao… the look in those men’s eyes when they watched Xia Qing carried trust, reliance, and even a faint trace of awe.
Lin Yao could only stand outside the circle, deploying Charm to trade for scraps of protection.
Now, every single person who used to crowd around Xia Qing had gathered around her instead.
Was it all for her space?
It didn’t matter.
As long as she was useful, it was better than anything else.
The vehicles were left completely abandoned by the roadside.
Everyone hoisted their bulging backpacks filled with food and water.
The backpack straps dug deep into their shoulders. No one spoke; only the sound of footsteps and the clinking of zipper pulls echoed quietly through the air.
Xia Qing walked at the very rear of the group.
Su Bai walked by her side, while Xia Ran held his arms crossed on her other side.
The three of them maintained a distance of two or three paces from the squad ahead, neither too close nor too far.
Xia Qing drew a blade from her waist, its edge glinting faintly in the dreary light.
Turning around, she picked up a kitchen knife she had found and held it out toward Wu Fang.
“Take this.”
Wu Fang froze for a second, staring at the knife as if looking at a foreign object.
“Relying on others for protection is nowhere as reliable as relying on yourself.”
Xia Qing’s voice wasn’t loud, yet every word landed with crystal clarity, as if carved into stone.
Wu Fang’s fingers trembled slightly, but she ultimately reached out and gripped the kitchen knife in her palm.
The wooden handle still retained the warmth of Xia Qing’s palm, its rough grain pressing uncomfortably against her skin.
Gritting her teeth, she slid the knife into a makeshift sheath wrapped in cloth strips around her waist, while her other hand tightly clutched her son’s arm.
A heavy feeling choked Wu Fang’s chest.
What was she now? A widow dragging along a helpless child, possessing zero voice or authority in this squad.
She could only walk, follow, and grip that knife tightly, praying that those mutants wouldn’t fixate their sights on her and her child.
Withdrawing her gaze, Xia Qing continued forward.
Yet another thought was churning inside her mind.
Although this world had fallen into chaos, supplies were still abundant.
Supermarket shelves held unexpired canned goods, and underground storage vaults contained boxes of bottled mineral water.
But what about the wasteland world?
Closing her eyes and opening them again, a picture of that barren, grayish-black earth surfaced in her mind.
Not a blade of grass grew, rivers smelled of rot, and invisible toxic particles floated in the air.
Over there, a single bottle of clean water was more precious than an energy core, and an unspooled apple was enough to make people bash each other’s heads in.
The Xia Qing of this world actually wanted to rebuild a home on the wasteland she hailed from?
Heh.
A faint curl touched the corner of Xia Qing’s lips, wrapping around an indescribable bitterness.
It felt somewhat absurd.
In a place where even the soil was poisoned, nothing planted could ever grow, and nothing built could last for long.
She had seen far too many people clutch onto hope just to stay alive, only to be swallowed whole by that very same hope in the end.
As she walked, a sudden flash of insight struck Xia Qing’s mind—
Like a bolt of lightning cutting through a thick fog.
What if the Xia Qing of this world had transmigrated straight into her original wasteland world?
Then she must have been reborn as well.
Furthermore, the Xia Qing of this world held spatial storage in her hands.
In her past life, she had hoarded an unimaginable quantity of goods during the apocalypse—ranging from compressed biscuits to power generators, antibiotics to crop seeds—nearly clearing out half a city’s worth of warehouses.
If she had carried that spatial storage into the wasteland world…
That would be truly interesting.
Two identical individuals sharing the exact same name and face, yet hailing from two vastly different apocalypses.
What was the underlying reason behind their exchange?
A spatial tear?
The backlash of some unknown ability?
Or a deeper set of world laws that she couldn’t even touch right now?
Xia Qing didn’t know.
She could only take things one step at a time.
Yet she held a subtle intuition that one day, they would meet again inside a dream.
The Xia Qing of that world would sit right in front of her, using an identical face and voice to tell her how many more people had perished on the wasteland, and what remnants of civilization had been uncovered.
That day would come.
Xia Qing believed it.
The place where the convoy had halted was a run-down commercial street.
Glass from storefronts on both sides lay shattered across the ground, and signboards hung lopsidedly, squeaking whenever the wind blew.
Moldy bedsheets, dried bloodstains, and unidentified bones littered the asphalt.
A sickly sweet stench of rot hung in the air, mingling with kick-ups of dust to invade everyone’s nostrils.
Fang Cheng walked at the very front of the line. His crew cut was trimmed clean as a blade, his eye sockets set deep, and his sharp gaze looked capable of peeling off human skin.
At a single glance, he was clearly a seasoned hardliner forged through years of rigorous training.
Broad-shouldered and straight-backed, every step he took landed light yet steady.
Suddenly, he halted his movement and raised a hand.
Instantly, everyone froze in place.
Tilting his head slightly, Fang Cheng lowered his voice so that only those standing closest could hear: “The hearing of entry-level mutants is exceptionally acute.”
“They track by sound. Through a solid wall, they can pinpoint the exact location of your heartbeat.”
“Everyone refrain from making noise. Keep your footsteps light and suppress your breathing.”
The group nodded, their movements so minute as to be nearly invisible.
Wu Fang’s pupils dilated subtly—a physiological reaction driven by pure terror that no one could control.
The headquarters in North City had previously captured live mutants for analytical research.
Fang Cheng had read that report, which stated with absolute clarity:
Mutants did not belong to any known biological category.
They could distinguish the weight, frequency, and even emotional state behind human footsteps—
A nervous person’s footsteps landed noticeably heavier than usual, and that subtle weight could be picked up by a mutant’s ears from a hundred meters away.
Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated. But the core issue was that these mutants didn’t belong to the blue planet at all.
They were an alien, foreign, entirely novel species. When humans awakened abilities and absorbed energy cores, they were essentially mimicking their evolutionary pathway—
Forcing certain DNA chains to connect in order to gain extraordinary powers.
Perhaps this was a form of mutual coexistence and counter-balance, but for the tens of billions of living creatures on this planet, it had been a fatal strike from the very beginning.
The group pressed onward in dead silence.
Lin Yao was shielded right in the middle of Jin Chao’s squad, flanked on both sides like a wall of human muscle wrapping around her.
She couldn’t resist glancing back over her shoulder.
Xia Qing, Su Bai, and Xia Ran lagged behind at the very rear.
Xia Ran was destined to die here in Tianjin City.
Xia Qing knew this fact, but she remained ignorant of how it specifically unfolded.
When she transmigrated over, she had only received sparse fragments of memories.
Perhaps when she fell asleep tonight, the other Xia Qing would give her the answer.
Or perhaps she wouldn’t.
Fang Cheng raised his hand once more, bringing everyone to a halt a second time.
Fifty meters ahead, a faint rustling noise echoed from inside a partially collapsed building.
Every strand of hair on everyone’s body stood on end.
Lin Yao held her breath, her palms drenched in cold sweat.
Staring into the dark void ahead, a single thought looped repeatedly in her mind.
In this lifetime, she would never have to rely on charming low-tier men again.
Never again would she have to approach them with a fake smile, trade her body as a bargaining chip, or be tossed aside like a dirty rag in the dead of night.
The disgust in those men’s eyes once they regained clarity—she never wanted to witness it a second time as long as she lived.
Xia Qing, you don’t know that Charm carries this exact backlash, do you?
Lin Yao let out a quiet internal smirk, the curve of her lips virtually unnoticeable in the dim lighting.
You don’t know.
You know nothing at all.
You only see Su Bai spinning around you right now, but the moment his disgust triggers, he’ll drive a knife straight into you!
No. It’s because your Charm ability is far deeper and more hidden than you realize.
Those men don’t even realize they’re being controlled; they genuinely believe they want to treat you well from the bottom of their hearts.
But once the backlash arrives…
Once your energy capacity drains or a crack appears in your Charm…
They will crush you with double the disgust, just like those men I controlled in the past.
Withdrawing her line of sight, Lin Yao followed the squad as they continued forward into the gloom.