"Except for my aunt, everyone’s dead..."
Liu Yueqi briefly fell into a daze.
Lin Feng’s brow furrowed slightly. He found it somewhat hard to believe.
In his eyes, Liu Ruojiao, who had never seemed to change her mindset, was the one most likely to meet an unfortunate end.
After all, with her meek, submissive personality—completely obedient and subservient to Zhang Xuan—it would be difficult for her to survive in this post-apocalyptic world of collapsed order.
What surprised Lin Feng even more was that Zhang Xuan, that refined egoist and highly-educated hypocrite, hadn’t survived until now...
"What about her fiancé, Zhang Xuan?"
Lin Feng was a little curious about how he died, so he asked.
Hearing that name, a trace of resentment and venomous hatred surfaced on Liu Yueqi’s somewhat downcast and sorrowful expression, and her tone became exceptionally cold:
"He’s dead. I killed him with my own hands."
Under the hot August Sun, Lin Feng felt this chilling story would be a good way to cool off, so he suggested:
"Let’s go. It’s too sunny out here. We can talk somewhere else."
As he spoke, he walked into a small villa nearby.
He easily twisted off the lock on the aluminum Alloy door and sat right down on the sofa in the tile-floored living room.
Staring at Lin Feng’s broad back, Liu Yueqi’s expression shifted. After a moment of hesitation, she followed him.
Lin Feng looked at the young woman standing in front of the television. Her wheat-colored skin made her seem all the more youthful and vibrant, but after experiencing the tribulation of life-and-death partings, she was no longer as optimistic and cheerful as she used to be.
This was a characteristic of most survivors in the apocalypse.
It was rare to see a smile on their faces.
And behind those mournful faces...
Half of it was hesitation before an unknown future—in the apocalypse, just staying alive was already incredibly difficult. The other half was the pain and sorrow of losing loved ones. Many survivors were the last of their families, carrying a pain that time could not heal.
Take Shen Jie, Zhang Liying, and the defeated remnants of Lin Feng’s Thirteenth Division, for example.
Some of them would channel their grief and indignation into Power, transforming their inner hatred into the motivation to kill enemies and seek revenge. But others grew weary of the fighting and wanted to leave the battlefield.
This was why Lin Feng had separated them into two systems, Warrior and Support Soldier, to maximize the combat effectiveness of his front-line soldiers.
And now, facing Liu Yueqi, he wanted to know what her choice would be after experiencing so many upheavals.
Would she still be as eager to follow him as she was before?
"What happened? Did he betray you all?"
Lin Feng waved his hand, and as he spoke, he had Han Yuxin and the others who had followed him stand guard outside.
Liu Yueqi nodded. Looking at a withered potted plant by the window, she slowly recounted the tragic events that, while all too common in the apocalypse, had happened to her personally:
"After escaping from Hai City, we followed the main convoy on the highway. We were stuck in traffic for a full day and night before we finally made it back to Jin City."
"Thanks to Miss Han’s help, and with the support of the Cans I received for joining the Administration Bureau, we quickly found my mom, grandpa, and grandma near Jin City’s University City."
"Because the two elders had mobility issues, and the car at home was out of gas, they decided to hide at home and wait for news from us."
"After we regrouped, we started discussing our next move. Should we follow the main convoy and continue west, fleeing all the way to a safe zone, or should we stay in Jin City and observe the situation..."
"If the defensive battle at Wu City was a complete victory, Jin City would naturally become a frontline base against the Zerg Race invasion. The city’s future status and development potential would be self-evident."
"At the time, most people chose to leave, but roughly a million or so remained. A considerable portion of those who stayed were personnel responsible for transporting important machinery and factory supplies out of Jin City."
"As these important supplies were shipped out of Jin City over a mere ten days or so, the number of survivors in the city also dropped sharply with the comings and goings of the transport ships..."
"Although after these people left, the remaining food in the city was enough for the rest of us to survive for many days, the drop in population was accompanied by something else: the complete collapse of the already precarious existing order!"
At this point, Liu Yueqi glanced out the window at Han Yuxin, who was giving orders under the eaves:
"Originally, the order within Jin City was maintained by the State Guard in cooperation with the public security bureau. The strict wartime measures could barely suppress the ambitions of the agitators, but once the State Guard left while escorting Jin City’s industrial supplies..."
"The remaining public security team, with fewer than a few hundred members, was completely unable to control the whole of Jin City, especially since their weapons were even more crude and outdated than the State Guard’s."
"The first disturbances appeared in the surrounding remote areas. Survivors hiding in residential complexes and shopping malls began to wantonly loot and seize the remaining food and medicine, then they formed one gang after another..."
"From that moment on, I could smell the danger."
"Unfortunately, I didn’t know at the time that Miss Han was in charge of the remaining public security teams and was still maintaining what little order there was from the security bureau in the city center."
"So I told my mother and grandfather about my pessimistic predictions for the future. They decided to leave Jin City secretly under the cover of night and begin their journey as refugees."
"But unexpectedly, Zhang Xuan, who had always agreed with my grandfather, raised an objection at this point."
"He argued that the food we had left wasn’t enough to support six people on the journey to the safe zone. And even if we did make it there, we wouldn’t have the means to survive."