The next day, the glaring midday sunlight shone into the shabby bedroom from outside the courtyard.
A pale, emaciated man sat leaning against the headboard. His gaze rested on the tiny specks of dust floating in the sunlight by the window, his expression indifferent.
At that moment, a faint movement from the sofa drew his attention. He turned his head toward the gray two-seater sofa not far away.
The girl curled up there in sleep had her arms and legs tangled in the thin blanket that had been rolled into a ball. After a night of sleeping, her loose long-sleeved top and trousers had ridden up, revealing sections of her fair, smooth arms and legs.
Her eyelashes fluttered rapidly, and her body restlessly wriggled on the narrow sofa. First, a pair of delicate little feet dangled outside the sofa. Then half of her butt slipped over the edge. Finally, with a loud “thump,” she fell onto the floor.
Jiang Chenyu: “…”
After being stunned for a moment, he smiled faintly and shook his head.
Song Qing sat up on the floor, clutching her aching waist. She sleepily opened her eyes, and the first thing she saw was Jiang Chenyu smiling at her.
A smile spread across the man’s gaunt face, washing away some of the gloom brought about by his excessive thinness and revealing a somewhat handsome and captivating air. For a moment, she seemed to see that dazzling medical genius from the early days of the apocalypse, the one who had been full of confidence and led his team in researching the virus.
A silly smile appeared on Song Qing’s face as she greeted him, “Good morning!”
The midday sunlight was glaringly bright. Jiang Chenyu responded against his conscience, “Good morning.”
“Host, it’s almost noon,” the System exposed her.
“Huh?” The smile on Song Qing’s face froze. Her gaze shifted from Jiang Chenyu to the window. When she saw the sunlight shining brightly outside, turning the weeds in the courtyard golden, she felt embarrassed.
How had she slept all the way until noon?
After telling Jiang Chenyu, she got up and went into the courtyard to cook porridge.
Yesterday, she had been too hungry, so she had used one jin of rice to cook a whole pot of thick porridge, which the two of them had completely finished.
At this rate, her four jin of rice would not last very long. Song Qing stared at the pot thoughtfully as she lit the fire, then went inside to wash up.
She also brought out a basin of water for Jiang Chenyu to wash himself.
After finishing the tasteless white porridge, Song Qing came back to life and went outside to search for food.
White porridge could only fill her stomach. Her mouth was practically going numb from having no flavor at all.
Going from a place where she could casually eat all kinds of fried chicken, barbecue, milk tea, and other delicious foods to a place like this made her feel extremely miserable.
There were not just no varieties of delicious food here—she was even having trouble filling her stomach!
Thinking about braised pork, big-plate chicken, and other heavily seasoned, oily foods, Song Qing swallowed and felt incredibly hungry.
She finally understood what the old saying meant: it was easy to go from frugality to extravagance, but difficult to go from extravagance back to frugality.
After searching the residential area for a long time, she found no food. Instead, she found some clean blankets, backpacks, and other miscellaneous items. Thinking that they might be useful later, Song Qing tossed them all into the System’s space.
When she finally headed home, she only managed to find half a bag of salt in some obscure corner.
She optimistically thought that, at least, they would no longer have to eat tasteless white porridge. On her way back, she picked a handful of wild greens from the roadside.
Just before she reached their shelter, she encountered two men dressed in black. Song Qing’s heart tightened, and she hurriedly hid in the shadows of a nearby building. She poked her eyes out from beside the wall and carefully observed them.
She saw one of them sprout a pair of wings from his back, darting around as he flew into rooms on the second floor and above. The other kicked open doors on the first floor and entered, searching one house after another.
The two of them seemed to be looking for something.
She had already encountered several groups since coming out that afternoon. In this resource-depleted residential area closest to the base, there was no reason for so many ability users to appear for no reason. It was obvious that they were looking for Jiang Chenyu.
Afraid that something might happen to Jiang Chenyu, Song Qing anxiously remained where she was. She wanted to go back and check on him, but because of the two ability users outside, she did not dare. She was afraid they would follow her and take advantage of the situation.
It was only after the sky grew dark and all movement around her had completely disappeared that Song Qing finally came out and sprinted back toward their shelter.
The place she had chosen was located in a corner of the residential area, surrounded by taller buildings that concealed it. It should not be that easy to discover.
Song Qing comforted herself with that thought.
When she reached the courtyard outside their shelter, she looked at the two-story house, its courtyard overgrown with weeds and its interior pitch-black, desolate, and devoid of life.
Her hands and feet turned cold, and she suddenly did not dare to go inside.
She was terrified that the person inside had been taken away.
The System comforted her. “Host, don’t scare yourself. The iron gate outside the courtyard is still properly fastened. If the male lead had been taken away, would they have had the time to fasten the gate?”
Right. The door was still closed. Everything was fine!
Song Qing entered the house. When she saw Jiang Chenyu lying safely on the bed, she finally relaxed completely and collapsed weakly onto the sofa.
“What’s wrong?” Jiang Chenyu asked.
His mental powers covered the surrounding area. He had first seen her standing strangely outside the door for several minutes, and when she came back, she looked as though she had survived a disaster.
It was already around seven or eight in the evening, and the sky had turned dark. Song Qing could only make out his vague silhouette. She sat up from the sofa and shook her head.
“Nothing. I ran into a lot of ability users outside, and I was afraid they would capture you.”
“I’m fine. You were out all afternoon. Did you find anything to eat?”
The truth was that two groups of people had come one after another that afternoon, wanting to enter the house and search for him. Jiang Chenyu had used his mental powers to control them, giving them the suggestion that the house had already been searched and that they should look somewhere else.
If he had not been worried about having to deal with the corpses afterward, he would have simply killed those people who had come to capture him.
However, Jiang Chenyu had no intention of telling Song Qing any of this. He continued pretending in front of her that he was weak and incapable of taking care of himself.
“I found half a bag of salt. We don’t have to eat tasteless porridge tonight!” Song Qing said happily.
She was extremely unaccustomed to the darkness. But this place was not the base, and the electricity had been completely cut off.
Remembering that she seemed to have found two scented candles among the things she had collected that afternoon, she excitedly took them out and lit them, placing one on the bedside table and the other on the small table in front of the sofa.
Her surroundings immediately brightened.
Jiang Chenyu, lying on the bed, no longer looked deathly pale like he had yesterday. After a day of rest, some color had returned to his face.
Song Qing became even happier.
“You must be hungry, right? Wait for me. I’ll go outside and cook some porridge.”
She placed the pot filled with rice and water on the bricks she had stacked up as a stove. Song Qing sat on the steps and started the fire, using paper to light it before stuffing in some wooden boards. Once the fire had grown strong, she braced her hands against the ground and tried to stand up.
But something moved beneath her palm.
Her heart clenched. Instinctively, she grabbed it. By the light of the fire from the stove, she saw a palm-sized black cockroach wriggling in her hand, its many thin legs raised and moving.
Her pupils contracted sharply.
“Ahhhhhhh!”
She immediately flung the cockroach away and screamed as she ran into the house. She rushed straight onto the bed and tightly wrapped her arms around Jiang Chenyu’s waist, her entire body trembling.
“Wuwu, there’s a cockroach! It’s so scary! It’s so big!”
Song Qing clung tightly to the man beneath her, drawing a sense of security from him.
Jiang Chenyu: “…”
He was extremely uncomfortable with other people getting close to him. Suppressing the urge to tear her off him and throw her out of bed, Jiang Chenyu maintained his gentle and composed demeanor and patted her slender shoulder reassuringly.
“It’s fine. The cockroach is dead.”
As he spoke, he completely crushed the cockroach that had been flung beside the pot of porridge and was still dazedly flapping its wings.
Even if someone had beaten him to death, he would never have imagined that after being reborn with such powerful mental strength, the first thing he would kill with it would not be an enemy or an ability user who had come to capture him, but a cockroach.
“Really?” Realizing that their position was inappropriate, Song Qing awkwardly let go of him. She knelt beside the bed, her eyes wide open as she gazed at him hopefully.
With such a huge cockroach outside, she completely did not dare to go back out.
Jiang Chenyu nodded. “Really. I have mental abilities. Although my level isn’t very high right now, killing a cockroach is still possible.”
His words reminded Song Qing that he possessed dual abilities. Although he had been imprisoned for more than a year and his abilities had not been able to improve, he was still a genius who had raised both his healing and mental abilities to the second tier within just a few months of the apocalypse.
A tiny cockroach was obviously not a problem.
It was much more useful than her earth-type ability.
She remembered how she had listened to the System’s advice before and used her earth-type ability, only to condense a ball of earth and then throw it at a zombie, scattering dirt all over her own head instead.
Ever since then, she had not used it again.
She really should use it more. At the very least, being able to bury a cockroach would be useful.
The pot of porridge outside needed to be stirred from time to time and could not be left unattended, so Song Qing nervously went back outside.
Jiang Chenyu watched her retreating figure. A strange light flashed through his pupils illuminated by the candlelight.
She was not surprised by his mental powers at all, as if she had already known about them. It seemed that she really had approached him with some unknown purpose.
Covering the abdominal wound that throbbed faintly from where she had crashed into it, Jiang Chenyu thought uncertainly again: What kind of faction would send someone who was even afraid of a cockroach to approach him?
Could all of this be an act, a means of making him lower his guard?
Song Qing had no idea about his complicated thoughts. She tiptoed back outside. The huge cockroach beside the pot was particularly conspicuous, but it was lying there without moving. It seemed to be dead.
She breathed a sigh of relief and walked over. She activated her ability and used a small mound of earth to completely bury it. Fortunately, her ability cooperated this time and did not cover her in dirt again. The cockroach was obediently buried underneath.
She sat down and stirred the pot of porridge, staring at the small mound of earth beside her with a deeply frustrated expression.
Other female protagonists who transmigrated into novels always seemed to get ice abilities, lightning abilities, mental powers, or all kinds of flashy and powerful abilities.
She, on the other hand, had gotten an earth-type ability—both earthy and uncontrollable.
Hearing her complaints, the System immediately protested.
“Earth-type abilities are incredibly powerful! Once you level up in the future, you’ll be able to bury a whole group of zombies alive without even having to deal with corpses scattered all over the ground. You can also condense hard earthen walls to block attacks. There are all kinds of other uses too. It’s not inferior to any other ability at all.”
After hearing this, Song Qing activated her ability again. She nearly exhausted herself, yet she could only produce a mound of earth that was not even knee-high.
Song Qing: “…”
Looking at this mound of earth, she wondered how many years it would take before she could become as powerful as the System described.
Improving her physical strength still seemed more practical.
At least, if she encountered a first-tier ability user now, she could knock them out with one strike each. The only problem was that it was disgusting and frightening, making her unable to bring herself to do it.
Once the porridge was cooked, Song Qing carried the pot inside. She first served a bowl for Jiang Chenyu on the bed, then served herself another bowl and sat down on the sofa to eat.
As she ate the porridge, which now had a salty taste and the fresh fragrance of wild greens, Song Qing let out a satisfied sigh. After eating a few mouthfuls to ease her hunger, she looked up at Jiang Chenyu, who was leaning against the headboard, and asked,
“Brother Yu, how much longer will your wounds take to heal? There are a lot of people looking for you outside. We can’t stay here for too long. There’s no food here either. Even if we aren’t found, we’ll eventually starve to death.”
Jiang Chenyu swallowed the porridge in his mouth and turned his gaze toward her. After thinking for a moment, he said, “I can barely get out of bed and walk now. If I want to walk normally, it might take a few more days.”
The situation was much better than Song Qing had expected. When she had first seen him, she had thought he was practically beyond saving. Having a healing ability really was great!
“Then let’s stay here for a few more days. How about going north afterward? I heard there’s a Zhuguang Base there. The treatment and everything are good. It’s not like Hua’an Base here, where they don’t treat people like human beings. There’s also a huge laboratory there, so you can study the virus there in peace.”
Song Qing blinked as she asked for his opinion.
Thinking of the Zhuguang Base where he had stayed at the end of his previous life, Jiang Chenyu’s lips curved into a smile that was neither quite a smile nor not a smile. He nodded in response.
“You decide.”
Song Qing could not understand the meaning behind his smile. She only thought that he had a beautiful smile, and his voice was clear and pleasant to listen to, making her heart tingle.
He also never contradicted her and would comfort her whenever she was afraid.
What kind of heavenly male lead was this?! She was so lucky!
Fortunately, she had not encountered the kind of domineering CEO or Long Aotian male lead who always had to have things their way, centered everything around themselves, and refused to listen to others. Otherwise, she would have been exhausted to death.