Ch137.1 – Raising a Big Cat in the Apocalypse (16)
Over the past two years, Gu Xinzhi’s chest had always felt like it was blocked with cotton wool. This long-term blockage had left a lingering scent of blood, so much so that he always felt a suffocating sweetness at the back of his throat.
This sentence from Ding Qiuyun was the same as throwing a match onto the cotton wool, causing his entire chest to burst into flames. It made him feel both happy and desperate.
Just now, he’d spent several months in a dream that only lasted for as short as three minutes. It had finally ended with Ding Qiuyun’s death.
When he woke up again and found that he wasn’t in the supermarket warehouse where he used to wake up in, he was stunned for about a quarter of an hour before recalling that he’d been brought to this town by a truck ‘a few months ago’.
… Ding Qiuyun had been in the truck.
Ecstatic, he rushed out of the room, pulling up the Sun Bin who was sleeping on the sofa, and demanding to know where Ding Qiuyun was.
Sun Bin had been sleeping soundly and was given a scare when he was plucked out of his warm quilt, opening his mouth to yell, “Brother! Brother!”
Sun Bin’s voice was too harsh, and at first, Sun Yan thought that it was a chicken crowing. However, that didn’t seem right, and when he came out to check, Sun Bin’s face was already pale as he pounced at him.
Figuring out what Gu Xinzhi wanted to do was easy. Sun Yan drove him over to Ding Qiuyun’s dormitory.
But when he was really sitting in front of Ding Qiuyun, the fire in Gu Xinzhi’s chest burned colder and colder.
Ding Qiuyun didn’t even look at him. He pulled on his sweater, coat, and gloves, and it seemed that he was preparing to go out.
“Qingyun…” He had to repeatedly remind himself that this wasn’t a dream, and that it was all reality. Gu Xinzhi didn’t dare to act as radically as he did in his dreams any more and only dared to speak each sentence after considering it in his heart a hundred times, “Let’s talk about it.”
“Talk?”
Ding Qiuyun turned his back to him, his voice carrying a touch of irony, “Talk about when you plan to start making your move this time?”
If this was the Gu Xinzhi who hadn’t suffered through two years of nightmares, he would never have understood what Ding Qiuyun meant.
For two years, he’d often wondered about why he’d had the same dream for two consecutive years.
If it was just a dream, then why did the plot remain the same over and over again in these two years?
The only explanation for this was that it wasn’t a dream, but rather a punishment on the metaphysical level.
Gu Xinzhi had always believed that this dream was a type of mysterious omen, giving a foreshadowing of what would happen in the future.
But after meeting Ding Qiuyun and seeing his att.i.tude, Gu Xinzhi had a very bad premonition:
Ding Qiuyun picked up the thermos from the head of the bed and slowly drank his hot water, “Could it be that you want me to forget?”
“Ever since I came back to life, I’ve always wanted to find a companion like me who remembers what happened before.” While Gu Xinzhi was still speechless, Ding Qiuyun set down his water. “But I didn’t expect that this companion would be you.”
Gu Xinzhi only felt that it was difficult to breathe. “Then, why did you go to the supermarket? You clearly knew that I was there…”
“Old humans pa.s.s by or stop here in our town every day.” Ding Qiuyun turned his face back halfway, his eyes cold, with a smile that wasn’t really a smile. “If I didn’t go to you, I was afraid that you would come to me yourself.”
Gu Xinzhi’s heart, which had always been cold and hard, was stung painfully by every sentence.
Ding Qiuyun was never like this to him before…
He gritted his teeth. “This time, I don’t have anything to do with the new humans.”
Ding Qiuyun acted like he’d heard a funny joke. “Ha. This time.”
Gu Xinzhi’s mood grew even worse. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
Even if this was something he’d done, he knew nothing about it in this life. He couldn’t tolerate Ding Qiuyun treating him like this for something that had never actually happened.
Those people were clearly still alive. Wasn’t that a good thing?
Ding Qiuyun looked at him, then suddenly started laughing.
“I was just saying it casually. I didn’t expect to hurt you so badly. Sorry.” Ding Qiuyun said, “In the future, I’ll be more careful.”
This sentence had been repeated nearly 400 times in Gu Xinzhi’s dreams.
Gu Xinzhi was the one who used to say this, but this time, it was Ding Qiuyun.
Gu Xinzhi felt like he’d been struck by lightning. He had a splitting headache, and he bent down and trembled, unable to say a word.
Any sentence that had appeared before in his dreams became a magic barrier that he couldn’t stand to hear at all.
He was afraid that Ding Qiuyun would fall from a high place in the next second, breaking into pieces of flesh and bone, using his own death to thoroughly break off any remaining ties with him.
“Don’t say that…” Gu Xinzhi gritted his teeth and said weakly, “Please.”
Ding Qiuyun set down the water cup, went over to Gu Xinzhi, and reached out his hand to pinch the back of his neck, forcing him to look up at him.
The leather gloves creaked from the friction as they stretched, and Ding Qiuyun looked down into Gu Xinzhi’s eyes from above. His lips, which were so pale they seemed to hold no color, parted slightly, “Your att.i.tude doesn’t seem like someone who is begging.”
Gu Xinzhi was stunned. His heart, which had finally calmed down with some difficulty, once again leapt back up.
He’d never seen Ding Qiuyun like this. He was totally different from the person in his dream, but he had an unusually moving and strange charm to him regardless.
Gu Xinzhi tried his best to suppress his emotions, asking, “How do you want me to beg you. … How can I make it up to you? I can give you whatever you want.”
Ding Qiuyun smiled, “No need. I’m afraid that anything I get from you will bite me.”
With that, he let go and pressed his hand lightly against his chest. He frowned slightly, his breathing uneven, and looked reproachfully at Gu Xinzhi as though Gu Xinzhi was the one who’d made him feel uncomfortable.
Gu Xinzhi tried to grab Ding Qiuyun’s hand, but Ding Qiuyun seemed to have expected it. His wrist twisted and pulled back slightly, causing his hand to pull off his glove completely.
Beneath the black gloves were fingertips that were white with cold, the colors contrasting sharply with each other.
Ding Qiuyun put his hand into his coat pocket, which held a bulge shaped like a gun. From the shape, it looked like a Browning.
Ding Qiuyun bowed his head and fiddled with the gun in his pocket, then directly told him the purpose behind his actions. “I went looking for you because I can’t trust you somewhere I can’t see you.”
Ding Qiuyun pressed the gun in his pocket against the fabric. “The range of this gun is 50 meters. You can choose to get killed by me now or stay within my range at all times in the future.”
Gu Xinzhi was only stunned for a moment before a light of surprise flashed across his eyes.
… He was willing to let him stay?
Noticing the change in his expression, Ding Qiuyun seemed to guess that he’d chosen the latter option. He pushed the door open and went out.
Even before Gu Xinzhi had caught up, the sound of Ding Qiuyun’s explanation to Sun Yan drifted in from outside.
Ding Qiuyun’s voice was as warm and pleasant as Gu Xinshi remembered, and it didn’t hold any of the coldness it held when he spoke to him, “It’s okay, there’s no need to worry. I had some misunderstandings with Vice-captain Gu when I left the team. … Yes, my injury is fine. Boss, go downstairs and wait in the car, enough, don’t rub…”
Gu Xinzhi’s expression changed slightly. He couldn’t help the malice that rose up in his heart.
But as soon as he stepped out of the door and came face to face with Sun Yan, even before he could make any special moves, Ding Qiuyun turned his head back from six or seven steps away and raised his eyebrows slightly in a commanding manner. His eyes shifted, and the hand that was in the pocket of his coat pressed against his gun again. He used the mouth of the gun to draw out an arc that was at the same angle as his eyebrows.
… Keep up. Stay within shooting range.
Gu Xinzhi’s heart was numbed by his cold eyes, and he felt both excited and sour. He suppressed the bad ideas in his heart, ignored Sun Yan, and caught up with Ding Qiuyun.
Ding Qiuyun didn’t wait for him, lifting his feet to head downstairs.
…… Gu Xinzhi’s regret value, which had been frozen solid for a long time, finally broke through the ice. The results were gratifying, rising from 0 to 17.
After glancing at the data panel, Chi Xiaochi exhaled almost imperceptibly.
061 asked, “Are you really going to keep him?”
Chi Xiaochi replied, “Keeping him around is useful.”
For a man like Gu Xinzhi, his regret value wasn’t easy to build up, and he also couldn’t be fully trusted to follow the right path.
Even though Chi Xiaochi knew that according to Gu Xinzhi’s character, he would never form an alliance with the new humans again after having nearly 400 nightmares, his existence would always be a problem. If it wasn’t for the task, Chi Xiaochi might have simply left him there and let him die off.
061 was still a little uneasy after hearing Chi Xiaochi’s reply, “Keeping him here is okay, but is your att.i.tude towards him too tough?”
Chi Xiaochi asked him back, “For a person like Gu Xinzhi, would he understand why I hate him if I put on a victim’s att.i.tude and condemned him?”
061 thought about it and felt that he had a point.
Chi Xiaochi had indeed chosen a good method of fighting poison with poison.
The best way to deal with a madman whose thinking was hard to understand was to be even crazier than he was. This was the legendary ‘random fist throwing to kill the old master’.
As for Chi Xiaochi, he had a clear plan for the future.
He had to ensure the safety of the whole town during the period when he worked on Gu Xinzhi’s regret value, closely monitor his every move, and kill Gu Xinzhi immediately if the situation went wrong.
The bottom line for his tolerance of Gu Xinzhi was that he must never hurt anyone in the town.
As for what to do after he left, he’d let the real Ding Qiuyun decide.
What Chi Xiaochi could do, was to create more initiative for Ding Qiuyun.
After he gave this body back to Ding Qiuyun, regardless of whether he intended to kill Gu Xinzhi to eliminate a hidden danger, keep him as a usable team member, drive him away, or even get back together with him, it would all be according to Ding Qiuyun’s wishes.