WMSR – QT Chapter 124

 

WMSR – QT Chapter 124

By

siofra

Chapter 124: The Senior of the Apocalypse

Because the interior cleaning remained unfinished, the heavy front doors of the villa stood wide open, allowing Xiao Yi to step straight inside without obstruction. The base operations staff directing the cleanup froze instantly in their tracks, stuttering out a nervous greeting: "Ch-Chief..."

Ignoring their salutations, Xiao Yi swept his gaze eagerly across the room. Finally, his eyes locked onto the familiar silhouette tucked away in the corner of the room, sending a jolt through his chest that felt as dazzling and explosive as fireworks blooming in the dark. He felt entirely as though he had stepped inside a waking dream.

It was real—it was actually him! This was no optical illusion or desperate delusion; standing right before his eyes was the very person he had spent five grueling years searching for.

Xiao Yi's gaze devoured the figure with a near-predatory hunger. Five years had elapsed. In that half-decade, the youth had matured, shedding lingering boyhood for an even sharper, more striking handsomeness. Yet he retained his effortless, innate magnetism—the sheer power to render Xiao Yi's heart pound violently simply by existing within his field of vision. The core of his chest, dead and dormant for five long years, surged violently back to life.

Just as Xiao Yi stood paralyzed by overwhelming emotion, choking on the words trapped in his throat while staring at his long-time secret crush, Lin Jiawen's brow snapped into a ferocious frown. In a fluid motion, Lin Jiawen shifted his stance, planting himself squarely in front of Bai Yichen to completely block the youth from view, locking a cold, hostile glare onto Xiao Yi.

Observing the person he had worked so desperately to locate suddenly vanish behind a protective wall, Xiao Yi's fingers clenched involuntarily at his sides. He managed to claw back a shred of his baseline rationality before making a move. Sizing up the hostile ability wielder standing before him—a total stranger to the base's internal roster, yet radiating a supernatural aura fierce enough to rival his own—Xiao Yi instantly deduced the man's identity, especially factoring in the intelligence that Ling Mengchen had entered the compound registered as a dependent follower of an independent wielder named Lin.

Though Xiao Yi's natural temperament leaned toward reserved silence, years of governing and coordinating a sprawling safe zone had forged a polished exterior. He had mastered the art of tailoring his speech precisely to the demands of the immediate environment.

Hence, despite his overwhelming impulse to snatch his beloved away and flee into the sunset, Xiao Yi maintained a courteous facade. He offered a polite greeting to Lin Jiawen, explaining that he had dropped by to officially welcome the powerful wielder, inquired whether the base personnel had committed any hospitality oversights, and assured him that any administrative request would be accommodated to the fullest extent.

Every syllable tumbling from Xiao Yi's lips was immaculate, designed to foster immediate goodwill and ensure a sense of absolute belonging. Yet Lin Jiawen remained entirely unimpressed, his eyes swimming with unmitigated suspicion and aggression.

Witnessing Lin Jiawen's icy, unyielding resistance, Xiao Yi recognized a compounding structural obstacle. In standard operational protocols across the wasteland, unless a dependent maintained close familial or romantic ties to their wielder protector, followers could technically be negotiated, bartered, or requested; because subordinates served as a renewable resource for powerhouse wielders, mutually beneficial trades were commonplace.

Xiao Yi's immediate instinct was to broker a transfer for Ling Mengchen. However, any such transaction required absolute voluntary consent from the current protector, compounded by two prerequisites: the wielder holding the follower placed minimal value on them, and the two powerhouses established an amicable diplomatic rapport. Surveying Lin Jiawen's defensive posture, Xiao Yi wisely elected against floating the request prematurely.

Without absolute tactical preparation, alarming the target was a foolish misstep. If his rash proposal provoked the wielder's hostility, securing a smooth transfer later would become an uphill battle.

Reining in his most primal, possessive impulses, Xiao Yi maintained a polite smile, exchanged a few more superficial pleasantries, and took his leave. He needed to return to his office and strategize the cleanest path to drawing that specific individual back into his orbit.

As for Lin Jiawen, watching the intruder retreat triggered a lingering, visceral knot in his chest. That man possessed a gaze that repulsed him down to his cellular bone marrow.

Author's Note:I’ll try to update as early as possible~

Chapter 63: The Senior of the Apocalypse (19)

Even long after Xiao Yi's departure, Lin Jiawen remained deeply unsettled by the lingering discomfort the encounter had triggered. In particular, the raw intensity of the man's gaze toward Bai Yichen evoked an acute sense of territorial dread—the primitive panic of a dragon realizing an outsider was eyeing its hoarded treasure.

Convinced his instincts were flagging a genuine threat, and trusting the hyper-sensitive perceptual filters native to ability wielders, Lin Jiawen decided to adopt an elimination protocol. Turning directly to Bai Yichen, he probed cautiously: "Mengchen, do you happen to recognize the man who was just here?"

Bai Yichen had indeed noticed the cold, imposing man stepping into the foyer earlier, primarily because the sheer psychological weight of the stranger's stare had been impossible to ignore. Initially, as the man engaged exclusively with Lin Jiawen, Bai Yichen had dismissed it as a paranoid overreaction; but hearing Lin Jiawen directly inquire if he knew the visitor triggered a sudden cascade of cognitive connections. The lingering wisps of familiarity expanded exponentially until the complete puzzle snapped into focus... Good grief, wasn't this the canonical protagonist-gong of this entire universe?

"Mengchen, do you know him?" Receiving no immediate response, Lin Jiawen's anxiety spiked visibly.

Bai Yichen raised his gaze to meet Lin Jiawen's, his lips parting in mute hesitation. How was he supposed to articulate the truth—that the man standing at the door was the exact romantic lead designated by destiny to cross paths with him at the dawn of the apocalypse, binding their souls together to co-found a monumental safe zone?

Naturally, while Bai Yichen held a panoramic view of the narrative arc, sharing those meta-details was an operational impossibility. Ultimately, he opted to curate a strictly sanitized version of reality: "I have a faint impression. He looks like an old campus alumnus. I remember catching glimpses of him around the university grounds back then."

The exact millisecond Bai Yichen confirmed the connection, Lin Jiawen's nervous system snapped taut. As expected—it wasn't paranoia. That man genuinely knows Mengchen, and without a shadow of a doubt, he harbors illicit designs on him.

That deduction instantly plunged Lin Jiawen's mood into an abyss of cold fury. A stray, dangerous thought flickered across his mind: Was relocating into a survivor safe zone a catastrophic strategic miscalculation? Is it still early enough to pack up and evacuate right now?

Concurrently, Bai Yichen was spinning down his own independent mental rabbit hole, though his conclusions diverged sharply from Lin Jiawen's anxieties. His core puzzle centered on an entirely different structural anomaly: Why on earth is the protagonist-gong Xiao Yi operating inside the Lingxiao Survivor Base? If memory serves, the foundational safe zone established by Xiao Yi in the original plot line was explicitly named the Homeland Base.

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