WMSR — QT Chapter 135

 

WMSR – QT Chapter 135

By

siofra

Chapter 135: The Senior of the Apocalypse

These ordinary citizens were naturally oblivious to the fact that she had been dispatched by Xiao Yi to seduce another man. For reasons unknown, a heavy wave of restlessness suddenly gripped Qi Yuanyuan's heart, stripping away any lingering desire to browse the commercial street. After a brief internal struggle, she opted to head back.

To Qi Yuanyuan's surprise, upon arriving home, she discovered that Xiao Yi was nowhere to be seen—he hadn't returned yet.

A faint, involuntary sigh of relief slipped past her lips. After all, the suffocating, aggressive interrogations Xiao Yi subjected her to every time he saw her were an agonizing ordeal. The distress stemmed not merely from his cold hostility, but from the brutal realization drilled into her with every single questioning session: the undeniable truth that Xiao Yi did not love her.

Because any man harboring even a shred of genuine romantic affection for a woman would never actively push her into the arms of another.

From beginning to end, Xiao Yi cared solely about her operational progress; his eyes had never truly held her.

Relaxed yet deeply fatigued, Qi Yuanyuan prepared to seek out a room to rest in. Just then, a thunderous crash echoed from the direction of the study, followed instantly by a panicked shriek.

What happened? Qi Yuanyuan frowned instinctively and strode toward the noise.

Arriving at Xiao Yi's study, she discovered that the commotion was caused by the new hire making a blunder. She stared in slack-jawed astonishment as Xiao Yi's private, strictly off-limits bookcase lay toppled flat on the floor, its contents scattered everywhere in a chaotic mess.

Standing beside the wreckage was a deeply panicked, trembling woman looking on the verge of tears. Gazing at her, Qi Yuanyuan's expression spelled out a single, definitive verdict: You are completely dead.

The woman had been recruited shortly after Xiao Yi assigned Qi Yuanyuan her mandate. Because Xiao Yi demanded she devote her entire energy to that mission, her former domestic duties—cleaning and meal delivery—had been reassigned to a newly hired replacement. Qi Yuanyuan had naturally harbored an intense dislike for the woman who usurped her position; yet she never imagined this clumsy fool would commit a catastrophe of such magnitude.

Seeing the woman stand paralyzed in sheer terror, Qi Yuanyuan felt a mixture of malicious schadenfreude and sharp irritation: "Hurry up and clean this up!"

Snapped back to reality by the command, the woman immediately dropped to her knees, frantically gathering the scattered items.

Qi Yuanyuan stood by and watched without lifting a finger to help. Since this fell under the woman's designated domain—and was entirely her fault—Qi Yuanyuan had zero intention of dirtying her hands or risking collateral damage. However, that mindset shifted abruptly the very next moment.

As the woman picked up a book that had landed face-down on the floor, a photograph-like slip of paper fluttered out, drifting precisely toward Qi Yuanyuan's direction and landing right at her feet.

The instant that photograph materialized, Qi Yuanyuan's gaze locked onto it with lethal fixation. Moving faster than the flustered maid rushing over to clean up, Qi Yuanyuan snatched the photograph up off the floor.

This is... Qi Yuanyuan stared in absolute disbelief at the image. It captured a youthful Ling Mengchen holding a basketball and flashing a brilliant smile during his school days. Even though years had dissolved into the past, she recognized it at a single glance—wasn't this the exact photograph she used to slip inside her phone case? If memory served correctly, hadn't she thrown this very photograph away right in front of Xiao Yi several years ago?

Yet why on earth was a photograph discarded years ago resurfacing inside this room?

...This is deeply bizarre.

Qi Yuanyuan remained frozen, staring blankly at the photograph, entirely deaf to the maid's hesitant, timid calls.

After an indeterminate duration, her thumb drifted instinctively to flip the photograph over. The next instant, her eyes widened to their absolute physical limit, locking onto the bottom right corner. Originally, she had scrawled a personal tag there: Meng love Yuan. But now, while the core marker remained, the character "Yuan" representing her name had been aggressively slashed out with a black marker, replaced directly beside it by a bold character: "Xiao"!

In a fraction of a second, Qi Yuanyuan experienced a spike in her heart rate unlike anything she had ever felt—her pulse surging so violently it felt as though her blood pressure was skyrocketing. Her eyes remained glued to the modified tag reading Meng love Xiao, as a terrifying hypothesis flashed across her mind with the blinding speed of a lightning strike.

No, that's impossible!

How could this be possible?!

Qi Yuanyuan's mind instinctively revolted, desperately attempting to reject the absurd deduction forming in her consciousness. She prayed with every fiber of her being that the evidence before her was a cruel illusion. Yet, cascading fragments of memory began flashing rapidly across her mind—including many minor details she believed she had long since consigned to oblivion.

Those chaotic fragments ultimately coalesced into a single defining scene: the exact moment at the dawn of the apocalypse when she was pursued by zombies and rescued by Xiao Yi for the very first time in the campus grove.

She recalled with sudden, blinding clarity that after saving her, Xiao Yi's very first words had been: "Where is Ling Mengchen?”

Author's Note: Only a few chapters left in this world arc~

Chapter 70: The Senior of the Apocalypse (26)

Qi Yuanyuan stood rooted in place, staring blankly for a prolonged stretch, utterly incapable of pulling her consciousness back to reality. Her mind replayed that specific scene on an endless loop, sending an icy shiver straight through her bones.

Such was her perspective in the present; yet back then, upon hearing that inquiry, she had simply and naively assumed Xiao Yi knew Ling Mengchen was her boyfriend, leading him to ask why her partner hadn't stayed by her side to offer protection. After all, she and Ling Mengchen had been an exceptionally prominent couple on campus.

Furthermore, she now recalled that during their grueling escape along the migration route, Xiao Yi hadn't singled her out for exclusive special treatment. Alongside her, Xiao Yi had extended deliberate, protective accommodations to several of Ling Mengchen's close campus associates. At the time, wrapped up in her own self-importance, she had assumed Xiao Yi was merely being accommodating because those individuals were her acquaintances and fellow alumni. Reviewing it now, the singular common denominator uniting her and those favored individuals was their intimate association with Ling Mengchen.

In that single, devastating microsecond, Qi Yuanyuan felt profoundly foolish. It took her this long to finally pierce the veil of truth. Across all those preceding years, she had lived under the utterly delusional narcissism that Xiao Yi harbored a soft spot for her—which was why he kept her by his side, afforded her preferential treatment, and ensured she was the primary target of his protection during every crisis.

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