“All the family’s savings will go to you. I’ve already put the apartment in Fulin Community up for sale, take the money from it with you too. When you’re out there on your own, it’s safer to have more cash on hand.”
In the sixth year of the apocalypse, Shen Cong finally lost her life.
When she woke up again, those were the words she heard.
She sat on the sofa, staring blankly at the man across from her.
“Gu Kai?” she called out, a little afraid to believe her own eyes.
“Hm?”
The man, who had been speaking softly with his head lowered, stopped and looked up.
Seeing that familiar face from her memories, tears instantly streamed down Shen Cong’s cheeks.
He was alive!
Gu Kai was still alive!
Though he looked a bit worn and tired, he was sitting here, healthy, right here—
In the small home where they had once lived together for three years.
And she had come back too.
Back from that lonely, terrifying, utterly despairing apocalypse!
Shen Cong sobbed uncontrollably.
“Stop crying.” Seeing his wife like this, Gu Kai sighed.
He stood up, walked over, and handed her a tissue. “Today’s the weekend. Tomorrow morning I’ll go with you to take care of the paperwork—”
Rip!
A sharp tearing sound cut him off mid-sentence.
Gu Kai stared in shock as his wife grabbed the divorce agreement she had brought and tore it cleanly in half.
“Congcong?”
“If you weren’t going to sign it anyway, why keep it?” Shen Cong sniffed, snatched the tissue from Gu Kai’s hand, and wiped her face haphazardly.
Her delicate skin was instantly rubbed red in two patches, standing out starkly against her fair complexion.
Gu Kai couldn’t help but look at her a second time.
Staring at the torn agreement, he explained helplessly, “It’s not that I won’t sign it. It’s just that the assets can’t be divided like this. You’re going to study at an art academy, even with a half scholarship, the tuition isn’t cheap. This isn’t the time to act on impulse. When you’re out on your own, you need to take more money with you.”
“I don’t want it! That’s not my money. That apartment is your premarital property.”
“Do you really have to draw such a clear line between us?” A trace of sadness flashed in Gu Kai’s eyes.
He took a deep breath and tried to persuade her again. “Congcong, just listen to me this once.”
“I won’t!”
Shen Cong looked at him with eyes washed bright by tears and demanded, word by word, “I just don’t want your money, what can you do about it?!”
“I can refuse to divorce!”
Gu Kai snapped as well. “If you don’t take the money, then I won’t get this divorce!”
“Fine.”
Shen Cong suddenly smiled. “Then we won’t divorce. I won’t divorce either!”
As she spoke, she tore the Divorce Agreement into pieces without a moment’s hesitation, then flung them away.
White scraps of paper scattered all over the floor.
His wife’s sudden change of attitude left Gu Kai completely stunned.
Ever since half a year ago, when one of Shen Cong’s design works won a major international award and she received an offer from her dream university, their lives had lost all sense of calm.
Shen Cong was determined to go abroad, and wanted him to quit his job and go with her.
But Gu Kai was unwilling to choose that path.
Because of this, they had argued, fought, gone through cold wars, and erupted again and again…
Later, Shen Cong even moved back to her parents’ home. Their contact was limited to phone calls and the internet; she wouldn’t even agree to meet him in person.
This meeting was only to come back and collect her belongings, and, incidentally, to have him sign the Divorce Agreement.
Gu Kai had already prepared himself.
He never imagined that things would take a completely different turn at this moment.
“Don’t just stand there. If there’s nothing else, let’s go out for a bit,” Shen Cong said, wiping at the tears on her face that wouldn’t quite come clean.
As she tried to rein in her emotions, she said to Gu Kai, “Take the keys to the place in Fulin. I didn’t bring mine, let’s head over there now.”
Six years of life in the apocalypse had long since tempered the human heart into steel.
Seeing the husband she had missed for so long, Shen Cong was so overwhelmed that she wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his arms and cry her heart out.
But she knew she couldn’t, not yet.
Because they didn’t have much time left. Every clear, peaceful day had to be cherished.
If she wasn’t mistaken, she had been reborn.
Reborn to the day before the divorce, meaning there was only one month left before the apocalypse.
Today was June 15. One month from today, with an unprecedented, world-shaking earthquake— the end of the world would arrive.
Since heaven had given her a chance to start over, she would seize it tightly and never allow history to repeat itself.
She would hold on firmly to her loved ones’ hands and face the coming disaster together with them.
And before that, of course, she had to make thorough preparations.
They had been in the middle of talking, so why the sudden rush to go look at the apartment?
Gu Kai couldn’t quite keep up with his wife’s pace.
Then he suddenly remembered something.
“The keys are with Jiashu. The agent called today and said someone wanted to see the place. Since I was waiting for you, I let him go over instead.”
As he spoke, he glanced at his watch. “By now, he and the agent are probably already on their way there.”
“Then take the spare keys. And call Jiashu right now, tell him the apartment’s not for sale anymore. Have the agent leave, and ask him to go to the apartment. I need to see him about something.”
Gu Kai didn’t understand why Shen Cong was in such a hurry to go to that apartment.
But if they truly weren’t getting divorced, then he didn’t want to sell the place either.
After all, that had been their marital home, and it was one his mother had personally chosen while she was still alive. In his heart, it carried a weight unlike any other.
“Alright,” he agreed, picking up his phone. Then he tugged lightly at Shen Cong, who had already stood up, signaling for her to wait a moment.
While calling his cousin Gu Jiashu, he quickly walked into their bedroom.
He soon came back out holding a boxed set of cosmetics.
Opening it, he took out a jar of face cream and handed it to Shen Cong, gesturing, “Put some on your face. You’ve cried so much it’s all red.”
Shen Cong froze for a moment.
She looked at the exquisitely packaged gift box and only after a while remembered that it was a very expensive cosmetics brand.
She had wanted to buy it before, but had never been willing to splurge.
She also couldn’t recall Gu Kai ever having bought her this brand of cosmetics.
Seeing Shen Cong staring at him, Gu Kai felt a little uncomfortable and turned his head to the side as he explained, “It was a birthday present I bought for you earlier.”
Shen Cong understood.
Her birthday was on January 25, and she had made up her mind to go abroad in early January.
At that time, the two of them had been fighting fiercely, so her birthday naturally went uncelebrated.
This gift, in her previous life, had never been given to her from beginning to end.
Thinking of that made her heart ache again.
She took the face cream and went to the bathroom.
As she walked, she instructed him, “Pack up the things you need to bring. We’ll be out all day today. Take the five thousand euros in the drawer with you, we’ll exchange them at the bank later. We’re not going abroad anyway, so there’s no point keeping them.”
Shen Cong’s words made Gu Kai pause in surprise, and then his emotions completely relaxed.
At that moment, he finally believed that his wife truly wasn’t planning to divorce him.
Before this, he had still been a little worried, afraid that Shen Cong was just acting on a burst of emotion and would change her mind again in a couple of days.
That kind of thing hadn’t been unheard of before.
But now she was saying she wanted to exchange the euros.
Gu Kai knew that when Shen Cong came today, aside from bringing the Divorce Agreement, the most important reason was to take this money, money she would need for her studies.
Now that she wanted to exchange it, that clearly meant she was no longer going abroad.
Thinking of this, Gu Kai’s joy truly became impossible to contain.
He answered loudly, moved at top speed to grab the money and the spare keys, and then left the house together with Shen Cong.
Gu Kai went to get the car, while Shen Cong stood alone by the driveway waiting.
She lifted her head and looked up at the sky. The dazzling sunlight was so bright it made it hard to open her eyes.
Yet Shen Cong felt—
How beautiful everything was.
To be able to see the sun, to feel its warmth.
No longer surrounded by swarms of poisonous insects, no longer forced to hide forever in underground burrows like a wild animal; no more living in constant fear, enduring endless terror and loneliness…
She didn’t know if it was because the sunlight was too blinding, but tears began to stream down Shen Cong’s face again.
She rubbed her eyes hard, then withdrew her gaze.
Now wasn’t the time for sentimentality. There was too much to do, she couldn’t afford to waste time.
After checking the dates, Shen Cong used her phone to cancel the flight and hotel she had booked for a class reunion in Nan’an City half a month later.
Very quickly, more than three thousand yuan was refunded to her bank card.
She also checked her account balance: her personal savings totaled a little over 248,000 yuan, basically all the money she currently had.
When Gu Kai spoke of the family’s savings, he was actually referring to his personal savings.
After the two of them had made their relationship official, he had handed over all his personal savings, and his monthly salary was deposited directly into that bank card as well.
This money had always been managed by Shen Cong.
Back then, they had agreed that her own money would be saved as an emergency fund, while Gu Kai’s money would be used for everyday expenses.
Later on, renovating the apartment, buying a car, and all daily household costs came out of that account. Even Gu Kai’s personal spending money was transferred monthly by her into his online banking account.
That was why, when Gu Kai had told her during the divorce that she should take all that money, Shen Cong truly couldn’t bring herself to do it.
But now, she could.
Gu Kai’s money was basically her money anyway, she spent it with a perfectly clear conscience.
Shen Cong skillfully opened the online banking app, entered Gu Kai’s bank account number from memory, and checked the balance.
From the transaction history, she could tell that over the past six months he had hardly spent any money at all.
The balance had only gone up, never down. There was now a little over 176,000 yuan left in the account.
The cash the two of them could freely use added up to 420,000 yuan.
It sounded like a lot, but in reality it couldn’t accomplish anything major.
Oh, and there were still the five thousand euros.
Shen Cong quickly checked today’s exchange rate and confirmed it would bring in another 35,000 yuan.
That meant she now had a total of 455,000 yuan at her disposal.
She was calculating rapidly in her head, so absorbed that she didn’t even look up when Gu Kai drove the car over.
After getting into the car, Shen Cong still didn’t have time to talk to him. She deftly opened a shopping app.
Looking at the dazzling array of products, she sighed inwardly once more, then quickly began searching.
To prepare for the coming earthquake and the disasters that would follow, the very first things to buy were, of course, emergency survival supplies.
As Shen Cong tried hard to recall the items that had been most urgently needed back then, she rapidly added the search results to her shopping cart.
Self-inflating emergency tents: one large one that could accommodate ten people, and three smaller ones suitable for three to four people each; five sets each of matching moisture-proof, insulated ground mats.
In addition, she selected:
Twenty foldable, earthquake-resistant safety helmets; emergency sleeping bags, ten extra-thick down-filled ones plus twenty lightweight ones; earthquake and disaster-relief rescue ropes (30 meters per bundle), ten bundles.
One hundred emergency thermal raincoats; one hundred thermal blankets; and long fluorescent jackets for nighttime outdoor use, fifty adult sizes and twenty children’s sizes.
Adult lightweight mesh one-piece suits with visible anti-mosquito protection: 100 pieces; drawstring waterproof sting-proof suits: 50 pieces; adjustable children’s one-piece suits: 20 sets; drawstring anti-mosquito jacket-and-pants sets: 10 sets; thick-soled rain boots (men’s, women’s, and children’s), 50 pairs in total.
After carefully checking all the items in her shopping cart, Shen Cong looked at the final total displayed, 39,400 yuan. She took a deep breath, then tapped Pay.
Out of total savings of just 450,000 yuan, nearly 40,000 was gone in one go.
But the things she needed to buy were far from just these.
It seemed that figuring out how to raise more money was now the most urgent task.
Just as Shen Cong was worrying about money, Gu Kai had already parked the car and said to her, “We’re here.”