Picking Up My Ex-Wife in the Apocalypse - Chapter 27

But as the apocalypse descended and survival became a threat, the theories of a shared world that humanity had built during peaceful times collapsed in an instant. They blocked out the voices of all other living beings, choosing instead a path of relentless slaughter and plunder.

Luo Fenghe, being human, could not immediately grasp the weight of this.

Si Qi lowered her gaze, recalling the ambiguous words Luo Fenghe had said to her days ago: How could a Creator not love their child? But the Creator hadn’t just made humans; He had made flowers, trees, sea creatures, and beasts. When one powerful child tried to exterminate the weaker ones, He reached out to offer the vulnerable some help.

But then, why turn humans into zombies? Why bring Awakened into the Purge while sparing ordinary people? And why did I exist?

Si Qi sat on the hillside. She didn’t want to speak, and Luo Fenghe didn’t ask. Suspicion was the natural state of the apocalypse; they lacked a moment of absolute shared vulnerability to truly trust each other. If Si Qi were truly their enemy, words would be useless anyway.

*****

For the past few days, Si Ruxu had practically lived in front of the screen. She ate only hurried bites, her eyes greedily measuring every inch of Si Qi’s transformation.

The girl looked thinner. Her gait was slightly stiff, like a patient undergoing physical therapy, and her complexion was hauntingly pale.

Si Luoheng maintained a regular schedule. She didn’t act like a frantic researcher; she slept at nine and woke at eight, occasionally sipping red wine or coffee. Si Ruxu could tell she didn’t actually like the wine.

So, for most of the night, Si Ruxu was alone with the screen. That was how she saw it last night: Si Qi sitting up, the blood-red patterns crawling across her eyes, and that eerie energy flowing out of her like crimson rivers to nourish the plants and animals.

Only the two of them knew about that moment.

Si Luoheng was still observing now, lounging lazily and theorizing whether Si Qi was human, a messenger, or a piece of the Creator Himself. She didn’t notice how pale Si Ruxu’s lips were; Si Ruxu only managed a forced smile and told her to keep watching. Instinctively, she didn’t want to tell anyone, not even Si Qi of what she had seen.

But she knew. Si Qi was on His side. Whether a clone or a messenger, they could never be friends.

Si Ruxu sat through the night. She realized the original, innocent image of Si Qi was fading from her mind, along with the memories of their love. What remained was the girl in the blue-and-white uniform holding an umbrella for a cat, and the cold, guarded eyes of the woman she had met again.

She admitted it: to love the same person in a different form, she first had to blur her memory of who they used to be. She realized she was starting to like Si Qi again. Freshly.

She couldn’t ignore the months of insomnia, the desperate search for news, the nightmares of Si Qi being taken away. But she couldn’t respond to it, either.

Forget it, she told herself. No one is truly irreplaceable.

******

Two days remained until the end of the Purge. The low-level Awakened had been weeded out by the increasingly powerful mutated flora and fauna. Only the high-rankers remained. Now, those survivors began hunting the mutated life, even though the food they had hoarded was already rotting and stench-ridden.

Every day, Si Qi went to the convenience store to grab a few snacks—just enough for one day. Afterward, she sat on the hillside, indifferent to the world. She teleported away anyone who tried to climb the hill, allowing no one near.

Luo Fenghe sat a few meters behind her. They hadn’t spoken in days. Si Qi felt like a different person—cold and detached.

On the morning of the sixth day, the sun rose, and the restlessness below began anew. Luo Fenghe walked to Si Qi’s side, following her gaze to a tree where two Awakened were preparing for a bloody struggle.

“Starting today, they’ll begin hunting each other,” Luo Fenghe said, watching Si Qi’s face for any reaction.

But Si Qi said nothing. She looked like a human turned to wood, refusing to participate in the world’s events.

“Brother, have you retired from the living?” Luo Fenghe finally snapped, his tone sharp but laced with helplessness.

“Hm?” Si Qi finally turned her head, meeting his eyes properly for the first time in days.

“I thought you were planning to exit the biosphere and die,” Luo Fenghe said with a sincere, dry smile.

Si Qi shook her head. “I’m not. But they might be.”

Luo Fenghe: “???”

Then, he heard her voice—cold and devoid of emotion.

“The disaster is coming.”

The second the words left her lips, bolts of celestial lightning slammed into the ground below. The noisy camps went silent instantly. No screams, no struggle; they were simply reduced to ash in a heartbeat. Those who weren’t hit didn’t shout; they hid their presences, terrified of being next.

Luo Fenghe ran to the edge of the hill, watching fires erupt across the plains, consuming humans and beasts alike.

“They’re all going to die,” Si Qi said flatly. “Not a single soul down there will survive.”

“What do you know?” Luo Fenghe grabbed her shoulders, his fingers digging into her clothes. The slight pain made her look at him.

Luo Fenghe was a man who should have just started college before the world ended—honest and bright, without the jadedness of society. Two years of the apocalypse had given him patience and courage, but he was still human.

“Don’t you see? This simulation evolves based on human behavior,” Si Qi said, using her space to gently push him away. “He is using these mutations to warn humanity, over and over, to stop being greedy. He gave them chance after chance, and they chose not to listen.”

Luo Fenghe noticed she used the word “they,” not “us.” He wondered if she meant the people below, or all of humanity. Is she even human?

“So ‘enough’ food meant only what was needed for survival. No excessive hoarding, no needless killing. They kept food in their shacks until it rotted—just like the ‘strong’ did in the early days of the base.”

Luo Fenghe’s throat felt as if it were glued shut. After a long silence, he whispered, “Can’t we… save them?”

“Go talk to the animals they killed.”

Luo Fenghe said no more. Si Qi understood everything—good, evil, right, and wrong. She just chose not to speak of it.

*****

Si Qi stood and walked toward the blood-red horizon, where a building was faintly shimmering. Luo Fenghe followed her, and with a shift in space, they were inside an apartment building.

According to the timeline of her memories, this was the moment a younger Si Qi had returned here, trapped and starving. She had eventually fainted from hunger and woken up inside the base. For years, she had wondered who had moved her there.

Si Qi isolated a space for her and Luo Fenghe and watched her younger, skeletal self.

The girl was curled in a corner. The house was empty of food. The living room was decorated exactly as it was when she lived with Si Ruxu. In the bedroom, every photo and every gift Si Ruxu had ever given her was laid out carefully.

She suddenly remembered: back then, she had lost all hope and wanted to die. She had surrounded herself with everything related to Si Ruxu, praying that if there was an afterlife, her soul would remember to look for her.

As she hovered at the edge of death, she remembered hearing a soft sigh—one so familiar she had fantasized it was Si Ruxu coming back.

Now, she stood in the same room from a different dimension, watching that younger version of herself, still and silent as an object. Only she knew that in that moment, her life was flashing before her eyes, and the only thing she saw was Si Ruxu’s face.

She remembered a sunset train, and a girl with a gentle, clear smile who had used pepper spray to take down two boys who were harassing her. The light had hit Si Ruxu’s shoulder, and in that perfect moment, Si Qi had known she could never stop loving her.

The girl on the bed was motionless. Si Qi stepped out of the spatial rift, looked at the house where no one had ever entered, and let out a soft, helpless sigh.

She picked up her younger self, stepped across space into the newly built base, and placed her in a relatively safe corner before turning away.

If Si Ruxu was the reason that girl lived, Si Qi wouldn’t break that illusion. She would learn the truth eventually, but tearing off that bandage now would only leave her heart exposed to the cold before she was ready.

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