Picking Up My Ex-Wife in the Apocalypse - Chapter 26

On the second day of the Great Purge, the primary resource points had already been occupied by the stronger Awakened. The weaker ones began digging into the woods or hunting whatever they could find.

At this stage of the simulation, the animals had not yet mutated. Si Qi sat on the hillside, watching a small deer get its heart pierced by an elemental strike. It collapsed instantly.

Blood pooled around the animal, spreading across the soil. Si Qi focused her gaze, and for a fleeting second, the shape of the blood seemed to mimic those blood-red patterns she knew so well. Then, it returned to normal.

Frowning, she glanced at Luo Fenghe.

“I think the blood on the ground just formed a very familiar pattern. Do you think I’m losing my mind, or is there a real connection?”

“The odds are fifty-fifty,” Luo Fenghe replied with a thin smile. In just half a day, nearly a third of the small animals in the woods had been slaughtered. The Awakened were dragging the carcasses back to their territories, erecting high walls of stone and metal.

The scene mirrored the early days of the actual apocalypse, with one key difference: back then, people hunted in groups. Now, everyone acted alone.

*****

During that time, Si Qi had been too weak to leave her room, surviving on meager rations of rice and water. She hadn’t known how cruel the outside world was, but Luo Fenghe did.

Luo Fenghe sat down slowly, watching tree after tree being toppled. A complex, messy look of distress flickered in his eyes.

“Si Qi, in the early days, the animals hadn’t mutated. Neither had the plants. Only humans were affected.” He looked lost, uncertain of the future. “First, humans turned into zombies—stronger bodies, but losing their minds. Then, Si Luoheng released the virus, and humans began to awaken abilities.”

“Stronger humans started hoarding every resource to survive. Later, animals and plants slowly began to mutate. And finally, the natural disasters arrived, targeting every species, as if trying to erase the world.”

“So you think human cruelty toward other species caused ‘Him’ to redesign everything here?” Si Qi asked directly.

Luo Fenghe nodded, then shook his head. “I’m not sure. But if it weren’t for Si Luoheng’s virus, humans would have all become zombies or died out by now. In a way… she’s a savior.” He gave a bitter laugh.

Si Qi gave him a long, meaningful look. A flicker of red appeared in her vision, and she saw that Luo Fenghe’s energy wasn’t concentrated in a core—it was flowing through his entire body. His core was shattered, just like Si Ruxu’s.

She shouldn’t have been able to see that. But inside the Purge, she felt a natural, home-like familiarity. She realized she could now use her second ability at will.

She didn’t understand why Luo Fenghe was hiding his condition. Like Si Ruxu, they were partners, yet they kept secrets. Was it because they feared she was a spy for “Him”? Did they think she was a threat to civilization?

As night fell, the air turned murky. The sounds of scavenging continued late into the night. Si Qi drifted in and out of sleep. There were no nightmares this time, and no Si Ruxu to provide “electrotherapy.”

Instead, she felt His killing intent.

She looked down. Half the forest had been leveled. The blood on the earth had formed a massive, grotesque totem. She felt her power growing stronger with every act of destruction below.

She wasn’t even sleepy. she just sat there and watched them pierce hearts and skulls, dragging life back to their wooden shacks. She watched the green “blood” of the trees weep into the soil and saw them dump waste into the rivers as they hauled away the fish.

It’s too loud.

The world was screaming. A chorus of faint, desperate pleas for help echoed from every direction. Si Qi’s face went ashen. What could she do? She felt so small, yet her heart ached as if a piece had been carved out.

Watching the greedy, desperate crowd below, her pain turned into a cold numbness. She reached out. Blood-red energy poured from her fingertips, sinking into the earth, the trees, and the shivering survivors of the animal kingdom.

In her blurred vision, animals began to sprout lethal horns. Tree branches grew at a frantic pace, twisting and consuming everything around them.

Satisfied, she let out a faint smile and fainted.

“Si Qi, wake up!”

The world spun as she opened her eyes. She nearly vomited and irritably slapped away Luo Fenghe’s hand.

Luo Fenghe was pale. He pointed down the hill. The forest was now a graveyard of Awakened corpses, tangled in the roots of the very trees they had tried to cut. Si Qi stared, memories of the night before flickering back.

She looked at her hands. Her energy had been drained, but it was recovering at a staggering speed. The screaming had stopped.

She saw the mutated plants pulsing with blood-red energy—the same energy as hers. As they absorbed it, they released a brand-new, vibrant green energy.

The countdown showed five days left. There was no death toll this time; it was impossible to tell how many were left, but most of the victims were low-level Awakened who had tried to scavenge under the cover of night.

Luo Fenghe wanted to go down and investigate, but he turned to see Si Qi staring blankly at the carnage.

“Luo Fenghe,” she said, her voice quiet as she met his eyes with a faint smile. “‘Enough food.’ How much do you think is ‘enough’?”

Luo Fenghe went silent. The definition of “enough” belonged to the one who set the rules—and they knew nothing about Him. He looked into her eyes, seeing a glimmer of dark light that made him hesitate. He felt a strange mix of fear and hope, like a starving animal approaching a human for the first time.

Si Qi thought of the cries in the night. Humans and nature rarely spoke. They communicated through seasons—blooming in the spring, fading in the winter. Some preferred the snow; their life was destined for the cold.

But humans… humans had stopped listening.

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