WMSR — QT Chapter 133

 

WMSR – QT Chapter 133

By

siofra

Chapter 133: The Senior of the Apocalypse

Just like that, Xiao Yi offered a polite farewell and departed as smoothly as he had arrived—leaving behind only the fractured wooden door lying in two halves across the floor to attest that this home visit had been anything but friendly.

The instant Xiao Yi stepped beyond the parameters of the villa, the warm, polite smile plastered across his face dissolved entirely. Halting abruptly in his tracks, he turned back, fixing Qi Yuanyuan with a sharp, piercing stare.

Frightened by his dark intensity, Qi Yuanyuan froze, her whole body stiffening as she racked her brain over what mistake she had committed this time. Yet Xiao Yi merely subjected her to a long, icy silence before dropping a single, freezing evaluation: "How is it that you can't even measure up to a man?"

"Huh?" Staring at Xiao Yi's receding back as he pivoted and strode away, Qi Yuanyuan stood rooted in place, thoroughly bewildered. What did that even mean? What did he mean by saying she couldn't even measure up to a man?

And why on earth was he comparing her to a man in the first place?

Author's Note: I did my absolute best...

Chapter 68: The Senior of the Apocalypse (24)

Following Xiao Yi's departure, Bai Yichen remained standing in place, staring blankly at the gaping entrance missing its door panel. Although Xiao Yi had reassured them before leaving that repair personnel would arrive shortly to replace the door, Bai Yichen still found the whole ordeal utterly bizarre. Realizing he lacked sufficient context to decode the underlying motives driving the situation, he turned to Lin Jiawen, inquiring if any hidden interactions had transpired without his knowledge.

Prior to this moment, Lin Jiawen had never breathed a single word to Bai Yichen regarding Xiao Yi's private propositions or trade offers. But now that the man had directly crashed their residence, further concealment served no purpose. Hearing Bai Yichen probe for details, he laid out the unvarnished truth.

Listening to Lin Jiawen's account, Bai Yichen confirmed once more that Xiao Yi had indeed targeted him directly from the very beginning. Yet why go to such incredible lengths? Within the original canonical plotline, direct interactions between Ling Mengchen and Xiao Yi were virtually non-existent, save for... Bai Yichen's train of thought ground to a sudden halt. No way... Surely it couldn't be... Not after five whole years, right?!

Indeed, at that exact juncture, Bai Yichen finally recalled the underlying premise: pre-apocalypse, Ling Mengchen had actually been the senior schoolmate Xiao Yi harbored a quiet, secret crush on. In the primary storyline, however, contact between Xiao Yi and Ling Mengchen was practically non-existent, and Xiao Yi's unrequited crush on his senior served merely as a throwaway background detail.

Furthermore, in the original plot, Xiao Yi had personally witnessed Ling Mengchen being torn apart and killed by zombies at the onset of the outbreak. Shocked into recognizing the brutal reality of the wasteland, he had fought tooth and nail for survival, eventually crossing paths with Lin Jiawen amidst shared tribulations and initiating a new romance. Throughout that entire process, Xiao Yi had never mentioned his former crush to a soul—even Lin Jiawen remained completely oblivious to the person's existence.

Consequently, Bai Yichen had unconsciously operated under the assumption that after five grueling years in a zombie-infested wasteland, Xiao Yi would have long forgotten a senior who had presumably perished early on. Thus, he had never considered the possibility that Xiao Yi was still clinging obsessively to his secret crush.

So where exactly had the timeline diverged? Was it because Xiao Yi never witnessed him being bitten and killed by zombies with his own eyes? Or was it because he never encountered Lin Jiawen during his early survival struggles to weather hardships together?

Unable to untangle the paradox, Bai Yichen set the puzzle aside. Yet he maintained absolute clarity on one foundational truth: there was zero possibility between him and Xiao Yi.

Even if Xiao Yi had never let go of his feelings, even if he had spent these five years waiting for his secret crush, Bai Yichen was not the true Ling Mengchen—nor did he harbor a single shred of romantic inclination toward Xiao Yi. Moving forward, his sole course of action was to actively avoid crossing paths with Xiao Yi.

As for Xiao Yi's persistent attempts to recruit him as a dependent follower, looking back now, it was nothing short of a trap—one he would absolutely never agree to step into.

Meanwhile, after confirming that Bai Yichen harbored zero intention of agreeing to become Xiao Yi's follower, Lin Jiawen finally released a long-held breath of relief.

While Bai Yichen and Lin Jiawen wrapped up their discussion, Qi Yuanyuan felt as though she had been cast directly into a cold, desolate abyss.

Yes, a desolate abyss. While Xiao Yi had never been particularly intimate with her in the past—maintaining a strictly professional, transactional distance—she now felt that without a high tolerance for icy temperatures, she would have long been frozen solid by the sheer chill radiating from him.

In truth, Qi Yuanyuan's instincts were spot on. Following the catastrophic breakdown of his grand strategy—compounded by Qi Yuanyuan's egregious verbal blunder in the middle of it—had Xiao Yi not clung to a final thread of baseline rationality, he would have likely hurled her straight into the base's impoverished slums.

Yet after a few days, Xiao Yi managed to force a semblance of composure back into his psyche before summoning Qi Yuanyuan to his presence once more. Ultimately, the singular reason he hadn't discarded her was that he still harbored a lingering sliver of expectation regarding her utility.

After all, Qi Yuanyuan's breathtaking beauty was by no means an exaggeration—her visual metrics ranked among the absolute top tier across the entire safe zone. More importantly, given that Ling Mengchen had chosen Qi Yuanyuan out of a sea of campus beauties back at university, his aesthetic preference for this specific type was absolute and undeniable.

Thus, despite his intense fury over the initial failure and Qi Yuanyuan's foolish outburst, Xiao Yi clung to a thread of hope. In his analysis, the strategic breakdown stemmed partly from Qi Yuanyuan's ill-timed remarks, but also from the reality that five years was simply too long a separation, causing their romantic bond to fade. While the decay of Ling Mengchen's feelings for Qi Yuanyuan was a cause for secret celebration, Xiao Yi recognized that bringing the youth back to his side still required leveraging Qi Yuanyuan as a bridge.

The fact that Ling Mengchen was a complete, unyielding straight man was something Xiao Yi—having secretly yearned for him across countless nights—knew with absolute certainty. And could a straight man truly alter his orientation permanently simply because he had spent a few years surviving alongside another man? Xiao Yi violently rejected that premise. In his eyes, Ling Mengchen hadn't stayed with that wielder out of genuine romantic love, but simply because the man was a powerful supernatural ability wielder whose protection was impossible to refuse.

At that thought, Xiao Yi clenched his fist tightly in secret once more. After a long pause, he forced himself back to absolute calm, fixing the trembling woman before him with a dark, unreadable expression before uttering a sentence that contradicted his icy posture entirely.

"What?" Hearing the sudden declaration, Qi Yuanyuan's eyes widened in sheer shock, almost suspecting her hearing had suffered a complete hallucination.

--