When his mother was pregnant with him, she had tried to terminate the pregnancy several times. It was only when Jiang’s grandfather discovered her intentions and used corporate interest as leverage that she finally agreed to carry him to term.
From the moment he was born, he was raised by a nanny, and as he grew a bit older, he stayed close to his grandfather’s side.
Young Jiang Ran used to wonder in innocent curiosity why other children had loving parents while he had no one.
He assumed it was simply because he wasn’t well-behaved enough.
When he was three years old, he proudly clutched a completed set of building blocks—what he genuinely believed to be the most precious gift in the world—and toddled over to his mother.
He had barely stood on tip-toes to call out “Mommy,” before she shoved him violently to the ground.
“Get away from me, you little bastard! I’m not your mother!”
Little Jiang Ran fell hard to the floor. Seeing his building blocks shatter into pieces, he reached out his tiny hand to pick them up, only for his mother to slam the sharp heel of her shoe directly onto the back of his hand.
He sobbed hysterically, calling out, “Mommy, it hurts!”
His mother merely cast a cold, detached glance at him before turning and leaving the house.
When reading through this section of the hidden plot, Lin Buyu couldn’t quite describe the knot tightening in her chest—she only knew that breathing felt suddenly heavy.
Jiang Ran was only three years old back then.
He knew nothing of the world. He couldn’t comprehend why his own mother and father hated him so deeply.
Originally, those events were merely lines of static text on a screen.
Yet standing here, matching that tragic backstory to the living person before her, Lin Buyu finally realized that this was a real, breathing world.
She finally understood why Jiang Ran was so utterly weary of life.
He had never known a mother’s warmth growing up. The single time he ever tasted maternal love was after the apocalypse broke out.
He had risked everything to rescue his mother. As a woman, she was naturally terrified of the roaming zombies.
He had fought his way back to the Jiang estate to bring her out safely. To secure his protection, his mother showered him with brief, fleeting affection—making Jiang Ran foolishly believe that deep down, she truly loved him after all.
That brief delusion lasted only until he rescued his father, and they discovered that Jiang Tao had awakened special powers.
Having awakened his abilities, Jiang Tao naturally despised Jiang Ran, whom he had always clashed with since childhood.
Jiang Tao had uttered just one sentence: “It’s either him or me.”
Without a second thought, Jiang Ran’s mother and father shoved him right off the moving vehicle—straight into a horde of zombies pursuing them from behind.
He watched as his mother didn’t even bother to glance back at him once, turning instead with a flattering smile to fawn over Jiang Tao.
Recalling this, Lin Buyu felt a bitter pang in her heart.
After enduring so much relentless darkness, who could possibly expect anyone to remain a wholesome, model citizen?
Falling to the dark side was practically inevitable.
“Do you think I’m pathetic? Feeling sorry for me?” Jiang Ran spoke with his back still facing the doorway, though he had known the moment Lin Buyu stepped in.
When she stood there in silence for so long, he didn’t need to guess to know what was running through her head.
This woman had always carried an inexplicable, out-of-nowhere sense of justice.
Lin Buyu knew all too well that someone like him despised pity more than anything else.
So, she immediately switched to her usual smooth-talking nonsense.
“Aww, what are you talking about? I was clearly just lost in thoughts of you!” She sauntered over with a bright smile, unabashedly hooking her arm around Jiang Ran’s and leaning against him. “Leader Jiang, a fortune teller once told me I bring good luck to my husband. Care to give it a test run?”
Bring good luck to her husband?
Ah, he got it—cheesy pickup lines.
Jiang Ran turned his head to look down at her. “Just how much brain-rotting junk were you reading online before the apocalypse?”
“Brain-rotting?” Lin Buyu huffed indignantly. “You, me, and love—how is that not nutritious? It’s basically a full-body health tonic!”
She said it with such straight-faced sincerity that it sounded almost convincing.
Yet Jiang Ran knew full well that her words were sweet as honey while her heart remained entirely unbothered.
Reaching out, he gave the back of her head a gentle pat and let out a soft chuckle. “I don’t know what your true motive is, but keep one thing in mind—if you don’t mean it, don’t play with fire.”
“Because if you flirt, you have to take responsibility.”
For now, he could still guard his heart from falling into the abyss. After being abandoned time and time again, he never dared hope that anyone would remember him in a crucial moment.
And he certainly didn’t expect this girl—whose mouth was filled with sweet words, yet whose eyes showed not a shred of romantic feelings—to actually care for him.
He didn’t believe in affection of any kind.
If even his own flesh and blood couldn’t be trusted, what worth was love?
It was simply the most useless thing in the world.
Lin Buyu was so used to spewing sweet talk that, hearing his warning, she blinked as a sudden realization hit her.
Damn it! She had gotten far too comfortable. When she said those words earlier, it was purely a spontaneous reaction—she hadn’t thought about her assigned mission at all!
She gasped, slapping a hand over her mouth in panic. Deadly mistake. How am I getting so wrapped up in my own act?
Slap on the wrist! Or rather… mouth-slapping time.
Instead of slapping herself, she reached out and lightly tapped her fingers twice against Jiang Ran’s lips.
Feeling the touch of her cool fingers against his soft lips, Jiang Ran looked down at her. “Did you already forget what I just said?”
Lin Buyu froze for a second before realizing—Oops, slapped the wrong mouth.
Rolling with it, she pinched Jiang Ran’s lips gently and marveled, “Your lips are so soft! You don’t even have any dry skin.”
Not a single shred of seriousness in her body.
Jiang Ran let out a tired sigh and gently pulled her hand away. “Tell me the real reason you insist on staying by my side. I’ll give you one chance. Just name it—as long as I have it, I’ll give it to you.”
Consider it repayment for that brief moment of sympathy she showed me earlier, Jiang Ran thought to himself.
Lin Buyu certainly had a motive for drawing close to him, but it was something she could never reveal.
She could hardly tell him: “Because the system detected that you have the power to destroy the world, and in the future storyline, you actually try to destroy it. So I was sent here to reform you, hoping you’d feel the warmth of love and abandon your world-ending plans.”
Yet, gazing into Jiang Ran’s eyes—so full of heavy, weathered exhaustion—she found herself unable to lie to him any further, nor could she deflect the topic with another cheesy line.
She let out a soft sigh, her heart softening completely.
“Can I not say?” She blinked, looking up at him pitifully, her voice taking on an involuntary soft whine. “Please don’t force me, okay?”
Fierce and decisive enough to kill in battle, yet smooth enough to act cute and play pitiful in the next breath.
Jiang Ran stared at her in silence for a moment before lifting his hand and covering her soft, pleading eyes. “Suit yourself.”
He turned around, intending to get on the bed to catch up on sleep. He hadn’t slept well last night, and a major conflict might break out very soon.
“Woohoo!” Cheering in victory, she leaped up from behind and hooked her arms around his neck like a backpack. “You’re the best, Leader!”
Jiang Ran: “…”
Did a single word I just said actually go into her head?
“Let go.”
“Alrighty!”
Lin Buyu released him without hesitation, slipped right past him, and flopped onto the bed first, spreading out like a star.
Jiang Ran paused for two seconds before stepping over and lying down beside her.
Lin Buyu immediately wriggled closer, sticking to his side. “Jiang Ran, I actually realized something… you’re not as cold-blooded and ruthless as everyone says.”
Jiang Ran sneered softly. “That’s only because you haven’t seen me at my worst.”
“But I’ve seen you when you care.”
Jiang Ran went silent.
Lin Buyu began listing her points logically: “Look, you promised your grandfather you wouldn’t kill Jiang Tao or your father, so even when Jiang Tao said those terrible things to you, you never intended to end him.
“And then, when I first met you—even though you knew I had suspicious motives and an unclear background—once you confirmed I wasn’t a zombie, you still brought me back to the base.
“Plus, back at the hospital when we were gathering medical supplies and ran into all those mutated zombies… you didn’t just run off on your own. You warned everyone to fall back first, and then you stayed behind with me to cover the retreat.”
“And lastly, back then, I ran off to lure away the horde to buy everyone time to escape, but when I came back out, you guys were still waiting.
“Nie Fei and the others take orders from you. If you had called for a retreat, no one would have stayed. So you must have been the one who ordered them to stay behind and wait for me, right?”
She snuggled close against his side, chattering away like a total chatterbox.
Jiang Ran kept his eyes closed, his throat bobbing up and down. “First, I didn’t kill them because they hadn’t completely pushed me over the edge. Second, bringing you back to the base was to let you run wild and stir up chaos, but you didn’t. Third, I used you as bait. Fourth, I don’t owe anyone favors, so I stayed behind to wait for you.”
Watching his throat move as he spoke, Lin Buyu found his Adam’s apple fascinating. Unable to resist, she reached out and pinched the sharp prominence of his throat.
“Whoa, why is a man’s Adam’s apple so fun to touch? Why don’t girls have one?” She wished hers moved up and down like that when she spoke—it looked so cool and attractive.
Jiang Ran opened his eyes. “…”
So she only asks questions, but never bothers to listen to the answers?
“If you don’t want to hear my response, don’t ask next time,” Jiang Ran snapped, turning to face her as a surge of inexplicable annoyance rose in his chest.
Lin Buyu burst out laughing. “Pfft! Who said I wasn’t listening? I was just thinking about how to add point number five for you! A girl’s gotta keep her hands busy while she’s thinking, right?”
So that’s why she pinched his throat?!
“Did I ever say I needed you to add a fifth point?” Jiang Ran scowled, his brow furrowing deep.
Lin Buyu held up five fingers in front of him, declaring with exaggerated fanfare: “Fifth: you never mean what you say.”
Jiang Ran: “…”
He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Go to sleep and stop talking. Say one more word, and I’m throwing you out of the base.”
“As if you would,” Lin Buyu teased playfully, but she didn’t chatter any further to disturb his rest.
She knew that a bitter battle might be looming ahead.
Jiang Tao was dead. Given how much Jiang Congwen doted on him according to the hidden plotlines, he would undoubtedly come after Jiang Ran.
Even if Jiang Ran possessed the strongest special ability in the entire base, what if Jiang Congwen rallied every power-user in the compound to crush him together?
And since she was the one who killed Jiang Tao, she had no intention of letting Jiang Ran shoulder the blame alone.
With his pathetic excuse of a father running this rotten base anyway, why stick around?
The sooner they left, the better.
Yet things escalated far worse than Lin Buyu had anticipated.
The reason Jiang Congwen hadn’t rushed out after Jiang Tao earlier was that he assumed Jiang Ran would never actually go as far as killing his own brother.
Jiang Ran cared most about the old man, and he was bound to honor his grandfather’s dying wish.
What kept Jiang Congwen tied up in the conference room was a revelation: right after Jiang Ran killed the blue-eyed zombie, one of Jiang Tao’s subordinates informed him that they still had several modified experimental specimens remaining.
All of them were blue-eyed zombies.
So after Jiang Ran and Jiang Tao departed, they had immediately reconvened the meeting.
Jiang Congwen had walked out of that room full of high spirits, only to stumble upon Jiang Tao’s lifeless corpse sprawled in the hallway outside.
After the initial shock and grief passed, Jiang Congwen was consumed by a blind, irrational rage.
He gathered every power-user at his disposal, along with the several blue-eyed zombies brought by Dr. Yang, and completely surrounded the building where Jiang Ran lived, locking down every exit.
He roared from downstairs: “Jiang Ran, you absolute monster, get your ass down here!”
That furious roar jolted Lin Buyu wide awake.
She blinked in confusion—wait, she had actually fallen asleep again?
Lifting her hand to touch her head, she could feel the zombie crystal core inside her growing slightly larger once again.