WMSR – QT Chapter 126

 

WMSR – QT Chapter 126

By

siofra

Chapter 126: The Senior of the Apocalypse

He was consumed solely by bitter resentment—cursing his failure to track him down at the very dawn of the apocalypse, and bitterly questioning why the ability wielder who crossed paths with Ling Mengchen hadn't been him. Five years had elapsed—five agonizing years. The agonizing realization that the person occupying his thoughts day and night had been possessed by someone else for half a decade filled Xiao Yi with an unspeakable, hollow agony. In particular, knowing that the youth had likely spent those years sequestered within Z City, so agonizingly close to his own coordinates, triggered wave after wave of agonizing regret that he hadn't scoured the ruins with greater meticulousness.

Yet this will be the final time, Xiao Yi swore fiercely to himself. Whether it pertained to his pre-apocalyptic cowardice of harboring silent, unvoiced infatuation, or the agonizing desolation of the past five years, this marked the absolute limit. The youth would return to his side shortly, and this time, he would never permit him to slip away.

Having completed his mental fortification, Xiao Yi managed to flatten the turbulent tides of his pulse into a semblance of calm.

Conversely, after abruptly cutting off Xiao Yi and refusing to allow Bai Yichen to accompany them outside, Lin Jiawen experienced a brief, awkward vacuum over how to bridge the conversational gap. Fortunately, Bai Yichen proved remarkably understanding, offering a reassuring smile: "Go ahead, I'll wait here for you."

The wave of warmth that flooded Lin Jiawen—who had been braced for misunderstanding or irritation—prompted a soft, reciprocal nod.

Watching the harmonious exchange from the sidelines, Xiao Yi felt an unadulterated, blinding sting of jealousy pierce his chest.

Due to Xiao Yi's unexpected intrusion, what was supposed to be a leisurely stroll shared exclusively between Bai Yichen and Lin Jiawen devolved into a guided tour hosted by Xiao Yi himself. Yet from the instant they crossed the threshold, the dynamic between the two companions remained profoundly strained.

Though Xiao Yi exerted every ounce of his social bandwidth to project friendly warmth in a calculated bid to bridge psychological distance, his mental processing kept projecting the irritatingly intimate snapshot of Ling Mengchen smiling and telling Lin Jiawen "I'll wait here for you." Compounded by the raw, grinding reality that the wielder had monopolized Ling Mengchen for half a decade, his external friendliness clashed violently with his internal torment. No matter how meticulously he masked his expression, the hyper-acute perceptual radar native to ability wielders easily flagged the underlying dissonance in his demeanor.

Lin Jiawen's behavioral posture, by contrast, remained transparently hostile. Intuitively recognizing that the stranger harbored predatory designs on his cherished treasure, how could he possibly manufacture casual goodwill? Though forced to accompany him out of reluctant deference to his administrative rank within the base, Lin Jiawen maintained a glacier-cold, perfunctory front throughout the outing.

Thus, Xiao Yi escorted Lin Jiawen through a routine perimeter sweep, culminating in an unprompted invitation to share a meal—which met with an unsurprising, flat rejection before he was forced to escort the wielder back to his villa.

Upon depositing Lin Jiawen at the doorstep, Xiao Yi attempted to angle his head to peer past the threshold, only to have the heavy wooden door slammed directly in his face with a resounding bang.

A deep, vertical crease formed between Xiao Yi's brows. Was this strategy genuinely viable?

Across the ensuing days, Xiao Yi persevered with rigid discipline, returning every morning to pitch his tour invitations. Yet after nearly a week of relentless effort, he registered zero progress in thawing their relationship; instead, the atmospheric tension grew increasingly bizarre and suffocating.

Ultimately, Xiao Yi elected to abandon a tactical path proven to be a dead end. Over the past several days, he hadn't managed a single glimpse of the individual occupying his dreams—not even a sliver of shadow through a cracked door, as Lin Jiawen systematically erected an airtight quarantine.

Since indirect maneuvering yielded zero leverage, persisting with a roundabout strategy represented an inefficient waste of time. Shifting to absolute transparency served his interests far better: he would table explicit terms on the table. Whatever Lin Jiawen desired—provided it remained within his capacity to procure—he would gladly yield as currency to purchase the human being.

Moreover, through days of behavioral observation, he had deduced that Lin Jiawen undoubtedly harbored romantic affection for Ling Mengchen; yet the depth and magnitude of that emotional attachment remained unverified. Fundamentally, he refused to believe that Lin Jiawen's investment in Ling Mengchen rivaled the catastrophic, all-consuming devotion anchoring his own soul.

From his adolescent years onward, Ling Mengchen had reigned as the singular muse of his fantasies. Gazing upon that luminous youth had marked the precise juncture he realized his own pulse could accelerate with such violent intensity, spending consecutive sleepless nights tossing and crashing through dry-throated dreams fixated on the exact same face, awakening to the earth-shattering reality that his orientation leaned toward his own sex.

Back then, shackled by societal convention, rigorous domestic upbringing, and the painful awareness that Ling Mengchen's inclinations skewed strictly toward women, he knew that baring his soul through a confession would yield zero emotional return, inviting only disgust or alienation. Hence, he had restricted himself to admiring him from a safe, untouchable distance.

Then the apocalypse descended. Even though he mobilized reconnaissance assets the exact second logistical anomalies surfaced, he arrived a step too late. Fate played a cruel, labyrinthine trick: he located Ling Mengchen's former girlfriend; he located Ling Mengchen's close campus associates; but the singular person he craved above all else remained completely vanished.

Yet the heavens ultimately refused to deal him absolute cruelty. Five years had dissolved into the past, and after half a decade of mourning, he had laid eyes on him once more. This time, no restrictive social gaze governed their reality. Within a world where power-wielders commanded supreme privilege, a pre-apocalyptic girlfriend possessed zero power to halt his trajectory. This time, by any means necessary, at the cost of any sacrifice demanded, the youth would finally become his.

He operated under the firm conviction that if Lin Jiawen's sentiment was merely standard romantic infatuation, any attachment—no matter how profound—possessed a financial threshold where sufficient compensation outweighed sentimental value. The maneuver he required now was deploying a bargaining chip heavy enough, and sincere enough, to trigger Lin Jiawen's greed.

He calculated that extending an appointment as the Lingxiao Base second-in-command—his personal executive vice-administrator—would pack sufficient economic and political weight to crack Lin Jiawen's resolve.

Buoyed by that calculated certainty, Xiao Yi formally requested a private rendezvous with Lin Jiawen the following morning. Yet withholding his true intentions might have functioned smoother; the moment Xiao Yi verbalized the elaborate compensation package he had spent the entire previous night meticulously structuring, the ambient temperature surrounding Lin Jiawen plummeted into sub-zero winter, converting his ambient water-system ability into a lethal, frigid imitation of a ice-system manifestation.

Naturally, Xiao Yi caught the drastic micro-expressions twisting Lin Jiawen's features, recognizing instantly that negotiations were veering dangerously off-course. Yet utterly unwilling to fold prematurely, he pressed forward with his pitch: "Mr. Lin, I recognize that you hold deep affection for Mengchen; however, weighed against the sovereign authority of co-governing the Lingxiao Base as its second-in-command, I trust you realize such a political asset carries vastly superior weight. Beyond the foundational guarantees I've outlined, I am additionally prepared to cede—"

"Bang!"

The remainder of the sentence vanished into the ether. Reaching the absolute maximum threshold of his psychological endurance, Lin Jiawen unleashed a violent, fury-laden right hook directly into Xiao Yi's chest. Caught entirely off guard while consumed by his impassioned sales pitch, Xiao Yi failed to deploy defensive barriers in time; caught squarely by the kinetic shockwave, he was blasted straight through the second-story glass window of the villa, hurtling outward into open air.

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