His mother had tried several times to abort him while she was pregnant with him. It was only because Grandpa Jiang found out and used the company’s interests as leverage that she eventually gave birth to him.
From the moment he was born, he was raised by a nanny. When he was a little older, he began staying by Grandpa Jiang’s side.
Little Jiang Ran was always curious about why other children had parents who loved and cared for them while he did not.
He thought it was because he wasn’t obedient enough.
When he was three years old, he carried a set of building blocks he had put together himself—the most precious gift he could think of—and ran to his mother.
He had just risen onto his tiptoes and called out, “Mom,” when Jiang’s mother shoved him to the ground.
“You little bastard, stay away from me. I’m not your mother.”
Little Jiang Ran fell hard. When he saw the building blocks scattered and broken, he reached out his tiny hand to pick them up, only for his mother’s sharp high heel to come down on the back of his hand.
Crying, he called out, “Mommy, it hurts.”
Jiang’s mother merely gave him a cold look before leaving the house.
When Lin Buyu read this part of the story, she couldn’t describe how she felt. She only knew that even breathing had suddenly become difficult.
He had been only three years old.
He didn’t understand anything. He couldn’t understand why his own parents hated him so much.
Originally, this had only been a passage of text.
But when she connected those words to the person standing before her, Lin Buyu finally understood that this was a living, breathing world.
She also finally understood why Jiang Ran had become so disillusioned with the world.
He had never experienced a mother’s love while growing up. The only time he had ever received anything resembling maternal affection was after the apocalypse.
He had taken his mother and fled with her. As a woman, Jiang’s mother was naturally terrified of the zombies.
Jiang Ran had risked his life to return to the Jiang family and bring her out. In order to gain his protection, Jiang’s mother showed him a brief moment of maternal affection, making Jiang Ran believe that perhaps, deep down, she actually loved him.
But after he rescued his father as well, they discovered that Jiang Tao had awakened an ability.
Naturally, after awakening his ability, Jiang Tao hated Jiang Ran even more, given how they had always been at odds.
He only said one sentence:
“Either he goes, or I go.”
And Jiang Ran’s parents pushed him out of the vehicle.
Behind them was a swarm of zombies chasing the car.
Lin Buyu saw how Jiang’s mother didn’t even turn around to look at him. Instead, she turned around and smiled ingratiatingly at Jiang Tao.
Remembering this, Lin Buyu felt a sour ache in her heart.
After going through so much darkness, who could possibly remain a model citizen?
His descent into darkness had practically been inevitable.
“Do you think I’m pitiful? Do you feel sorry for me?”
Jiang Ran had his back to the doorway, yet he knew that Lin Buyu had been standing there for quite some time.
She had been silent for so long that he didn’t even need to guess what she was thinking.
She always seemed to possess this inexplicable sense of justice that he couldn’t understand.
Lin Buyu knew that people like him actually hated being pitied the most.
So she immediately started spouting nonsense.
“Hmm~ What are you talking about? I was clearly thinking about you.”
She grinned as she walked over, shamelessly hooking her arm around Jiang Ran’s and rubbing against him.
“Captain Jiang, a fortune teller said I’m good luck for my husband. Want to give it a try?”
Good luck for her husband?
Oh. He understood.
It was one of those cheesy pickup lines.
Jiang Ran turned his head and looked at her.
“How much useless stuff did you watch online before the apocalypse?”
“Useless?” Lin Buyu protested indignantly. “There’s me, there’s you, and there’s love. How is that not nutritious? It’s practically a ten-tonic supplement!”
She said it with such seriousness that anyone would have thought she genuinely meant it.
But Jiang Ran understood.
Her words were as sweet as honey, while her heart was as still as water.
He reached out and patted the back of her head lightly before saying with a faint smile, “I don’t know what your real intentions are, but remember one thing: if you don’t have feelings, don’t flirt carelessly.”
Because once you flirted with someone, you had to take responsibility.
For now, he could still keep his heart from falling.
He had been abandoned too many times. He had long since stopped expecting anyone to remember him when it truly mattered.
Much less this girl, who was full of sweet words yet had not the slightest hint of romantic affection in her eyes when she looked at him.
He didn’t believe in love.
If even blood relatives couldn’t be relied upon, how could he possibly trust romantic love?
It was the most useless thing in the world.
Lin Buyu had always been accustomed to saying sweet things. After hearing his warning, she blinked and suddenly realized something.
Damn it.
She had said those things so naturally and effortlessly that she hadn’t even thought about the mission while saying them.
She was horrified.
Damn, was she actually getting into character so deeply that she was beginning to believe it herself?
Slap herself!
She raised her hand and lightly tapped Jiang Ran twice on the lips.
Her soft fingers brushed against his warm lips.
Jiang Ran lowered his head and looked at her.
“Did you already forget what I just said?”
Lin Buyu froze for a moment before realizing—
Oh.
She had slapped the wrong mouth.
Taking advantage of the situation, she pinched Jiang Ran’s lips and sighed in wonder.
“Wow, your lips are so soft. And you don’t even have any dead skin.”
There wasn’t even the slightest hint that she intended to behave seriously.
Jiang Ran sighed and moved her hand away.
“Tell me why you insist on staying by my side. I’ll give you one chance. Tell me. Whatever I have, I’ll give it to you.”
He would consider it repayment for the brief moment of compassion she had shown him.
That was what Jiang Ran thought.
Lin Buyu did indeed have a reason for staying close to him.
But it was something she couldn’t tell him.
She couldn’t possibly say:
The system detected that you possess the ability to destroy the world, and according to the later plot, you’re going to try to destroy it. So it sent me here to make you feel loved and eliminate your desire to destroy the world.
But when she looked into Jiang Ran’s weathered eyes, she suddenly found herself unable to keep lying to him.
She couldn’t bring herself to change the subject with another cheesy pickup line, either.
She sighed.
Her heart was just too soft.
“Can’t I tell you?”
She blinked her eyes and looked at him pitifully, unconsciously slipping into a coquettish tone.
“Don’t force me, okay?”
She could fight with swift and decisive moves, yet she could also act spoiled and play the pitiful card.
Jiang Ran stared at her silently.
He raised his hand and covered her pitiful-looking eyes.
“Tell me if you want. Don’t tell me if you don’t.”
He turned around and prepared to get into bed for some sleep.
He hadn’t slept well the previous night, and there might be another battle coming soon.
“Yay!”
Lin Buyu jumped up behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Captain is so nice.”
Jiang Ran: “……”
Had she really not remembered a single word of what he had just said?
“Let go.”
“Okay!”
Lin Buyu immediately released him, hurried past him, and threw herself onto the bed before he could react, spreading herself out like a starfish.
Jiang Ran stopped for two seconds before finally walking over and lying down as well.
Lin Buyu scooted over and pressed herself against him again.
“Jiang Ran, you know, I’ve realized something. You’re actually not as cold-blooded and heartless as everyone says.”
Jiang Ran snorted.
“That’s because you haven’t seen me being cold-blooded and heartless.”
“But I’ve seen the side of you that has feelings.”
Jiang Ran fell silent.
Lin Buyu analyzed the situation methodically.
“Look. You promised your grandfather that you wouldn’t kill Jiang Tao or your father. So even though Jiang Tao said those things to you, you still didn’t intend to kill him.”
“Then there’s the first time I met you. Even though you knew my intentions were suspicious and my identity was questionable, once you confirmed that I wasn’t a zombie, you still brought me back to the base.”
“And when we went to the hospital to collect medical supplies and encountered all those mutated zombies, you didn’t run away by yourself. You first warned everyone to retreat, then stayed behind to cover them—and me.”
“And finally, when I went to lure the zombies away, I did it to buy you time to escape. But when I came back, you were all still there.”
“Everyone obeys your orders. If you had told them to leave, no one would have stayed behind. So you must have ordered them to wait there for me, right?”
She chattered beside him nonstop like a little talkative bird.
Jiang Ran closed his eyes, his Adam’s apple moving up and down.
“First: I didn’t kill them because they hadn’t completely angered me yet.”
“Second: I brought you back to the base because I wanted to let you stir things up. But you didn’t.”
“Third: I used you as bait.”
“Fourth: I don’t owe anyone favors, so I stayed there to wait for you.”
While he was speaking, Lin Buyu noticed how interestingly his Adam’s apple moved.
Unable to resist, she reached out and gently pinched his prominent Adam’s apple.
“Wow, why is a man’s Adam’s apple so much fun? Why don’t women have one?”
She really wanted to say that it would look incredibly sexy if a woman’s throat bobbed up and down when she talked, too.
Jiang Ran opened his eyes.
“……”
So she was only responsible for asking questions and not for listening to the answers, right?
“If you don’t want to hear my answer, don’t ask next time.”
Lin Buyu giggled.
“Who said I don’t want to hear your answer? I was just thinking about how to add a fifth point for you. You have to do something while you think, right?”
So she had pinched his Adam’s apple while thinking?
“Did I ever say I needed you to add a fifth point?”
Lin Buyu held up five fingers and declared dramatically,
“Fifth: You say one thing but mean another.”
Jiang Ran: “……”
He closed his eyes.
“Go to sleep. And stop talking. If you say another word, I’ll throw you out of the base.”
“You wouldn’t.”
Lin Buyu teased him, but she didn’t continue chattering and disturb his rest.
She knew that there might be another tough battle waiting for them.
Jiang Tao was dead.
According to how much Jiang Congwen cared about Jiang Tao in the hidden plot, he would definitely come after Jiang Ran.
Although Jiang Ran’s ability was the strongest in the entire base, what if Jiang Congwen gathered every ability user in the base to deal with him?
And since she had killed Jiang Tao, Lin Buyu had never intended to leave Jiang Ran to deal with everything alone.
With that useless father of his as the leader, what reason was there to stay in this broken base?
They should leave as soon as possible.
Things were even more serious than Lin Buyu had imagined.
The reason Jiang Congwen hadn’t followed Jiang Tao out was because he believed that, no matter what, Jiang Ran would never actually kill Jiang Tao.
After all, Jiang Ran cared most about the old man.
He would definitely obey his grandfather’s dying wish.
What had forced Jiang Congwen to remain in the meeting room was something else.
After Jiang Ran killed the blue-eyed zombie, one of Jiang Tao’s subordinates had told him that there were still several experimental subjects they had created.
And all of them were blue-eyed zombies.
So after Jiang Ran and Jiang Tao left, they held another meeting.
Jiang Congwen emerged from the meeting full of fighting spirit, only to find Jiang Tao’s corpse lying in the corridor outside the conference room.
After the initial shock and grief, Jiang Congwen flew into a rage and completely lost control.
He gathered every ability user in the base, along with several blue-eyed zombies brought by Dr. Yang, and surrounded the building where Jiang Ran was staying.
They completely blocked off the area.
He shouted from below,
“Jiang Ran, you damn bastard! Get out here!”
The roar jolted Lin Buyu awake.
She looked confused.
How had she managed to fall asleep again?
She raised a hand and touched her head.
She could feel that the zombie crystal core inside her seemed to have grown a little larger again.