Picking Up My Ex-Wife in the Apocalypse - Chapter 31

Si Qi felt as though every one of her internal organs had been ground to dust. She struggled to lift her head, her vision tunneling through the mist of energy and blood. The crowd around her seemed to blur into transparency, leaving only one thing in focus: a pair of cold, detached eyes.

It was the woman she loved, the one she was obsessed with, the knot in her heart she could never untie—Si Ruxu.

Si Qi had had many dreams, good and bad, but mostly she remembered waking in the dead of night to stare at the moonlight filtering through the curtains. Since meeting Si Ruxu, her dreams had been reduced to those amber pupils: shallow, gentle, cold, and finally, indifferent.

She lowered her head. Her last will had long been settled; her “estate” of snacks and kindness had been distributed to the strays and the poor. She carried nothing but the clothes on her back, waiting for the method of execution they were currently debating. She was ready to die.

Si Luoheng produced a small sphere from a spatial pouch. It was pitch black and emitted a chaotic, distorting magnetic field. Feeling the inquisitive gazes of the crowd, she spoke with measured calm: “This is a Black Hole. Anything that enters it will be shredded into nothingness. I offer no opinion on how to handle Si Qi; I am simply placing the weapon here. You decide if you need to use it.”

She sat back down with practiced grace. “Of course, whatever consequences follow, you will be solely responsible for them.”

“Wait,” Luo Fenghe, who had been silent until now, suddenly spoke. “There’s no rush to deal with her; she can’t run far in that state. Why don’t you listen to me first?”

Luo Fenghe held significant prestige—a teenage genius ruling the largest and most unpredictable base. The room went quiet. The calculating high-level leaders, happy to let someone else take the lead so they wouldn’t have to bear the burden of the decision, sat back to watch.

Luo Fenghe took a step forward. Suddenly, his energy condensed and slammed into the spatial cage with explosive force. Sparks flew, some landing on Si Qi’s hand with a stinging heat.

“What are you standing there for? Run!” Luo Fenghe grabbed Si Qi and lunged toward the side. The floor-to-ceiling windows shattered with a deafening roar. They plummeted from the heights of the building. Luo Fenghe manipulated the metal in the structure to cushion their fall, but it was only enough to ensure they survived the impact.

Si Qi hit the ground hard after two bounces, coughing up a spray of blood. Every breath felt like a jagged blade in her lungs.

“Maybe you should just… let me die here,” Si Qi wheezed, feeling as though her organs were leaking air.

“Relax. I’ll die before I let you,” Luo Fenghe grunted. He wasn’t in good shape either. He wiped blood from his lip with his left hand while his right hand manifested metal barriers to intercept the elemental attacks raining down from the broken window above.

He hoisted Si Qi onto his back. The jolting movement made Si Qi wish for death even more. Explosions erupted all around them, yet none of the fire or debris managed to strike them directly.

“I told you they were old fossils,” Luo Fenghe laughed breathlessly. “They want to kill you, but they’re terrified of the ‘karmic’ blowback and my base’s retaliation. Conspiring with people like that isn’t worth it.”

Si Qi caught the scent of blood on his breath and thinned her lips, finally swallowing her pleas for him to leave her.

“Now do you believe your ex-wife and Si Luoheng are on the same side?”

Si Qi turned her head, hiding the raw pain in her eyes. She had already rehearsed this ending a thousand times in her mind.

“How did you get me out? What is your power?” Si Qi watched him create one metal barrier after another, trying to use her own Space ability to help deflect the attacks, but his metal was becoming more brittle, shattering under the barrage.

“I planted a bug on you. When I heard the commotion, I rushed in to grab you. They didn’t stop me. I don’t know why,” Luo Fenghe explained. “I’m a Metal-type. I can condense the metal in the air instantly.”

He knew this was his chance to truly connect with her, so he held nothing back. Si Qi felt his ragged breathing against her back and reached out to tug gently at his collar.

“Luo Fenghe,” she whispered. “I’ll remember you, but not like this. I don’t want anyone to take care of me, and I don’t want to live with the weight of someone else’s life on my conscience. It’s too heavy.”

“Go back to where you belong. I have my own path to walk. Let’s part ways here. If I live, and you ever need help, I will give you everything I have.”

Luo Fenghe’s arms tightened around her as if to argue, but in the next second, Si Qi teleported him away.

*****

A group of high-level Awakened surged forward, finding only Si Qi collapsed on the ground, her clothes soaked in blood. Only the faint rise and fall of her chest proved she was still alive.

Si Ruxu stood in the crowd, watching from a distance once again. It hurt. Her heart felt as though the very veins were snapping one by one. She breathed deeply, trying to suppress the taste of copper in her mouth.

She wasn’t unaware that she loved her. She had believed that if it were for the future of humanity, she could keep walking even if Si Qi died. But in this moment, she began to doubt herself.

Could I really?

The world was too noisy. Schemes within schemes, a game board outside a game board. If there was no love left, if the person she loved was gone, and if every breath in the future was mixed with the blood and bone of her lover… what was left to love about this scarred world?

She felt like a candle flickering in the wind; melting herself with her own heat while swaying between two impossible distances.

The crowd deliberated for a long time. Finally, a woman stepped forward and approached Si Luoheng. The movement seemed to slow down into a series of frames in Si Ruxu’s vision.

The woman whispered something to Si Luoheng. The researcher laughed; a light, genuine, joyful sound. Then, the woman took the black sphere from Si Luoheng’s hand and walked toward Si Qi.

She knelt. The sphere expanded rapidly as if inhaling the surrounding air. Si Qi’s clothes fluttered in the resulting draft.

Only she was affected. No one else felt a thing.

Si Ruxu watched in a daze as the black hole began to swallow Si Qi. At the very last second, she unleashed her energy. Lightning slammed into the edge of the black hole, and the boundary shattered like glass, cracks spider-webbing across the void.

A violent, chaotic surge of air erupted from the rift, throwing the surrounding crowd back. Si Ruxu was nearly crushed by the atmospheric pressure. She looked up just in time to see Si Qi fully consumed by the collapsing black hole.

The sphere shrank back into its original size. Si Ruxu collapsed onto the floor, coughing up blood. She crawled toward the small sphere and pulled it into her embrace, her disheveled hair hiding her face.

Her body shook with a massive, primal terror—like the day of the Great Frost, as if her internal organs were being frozen solid. But this time, there was no one to pick her up.

“Sister!” Si Luoheng hurried over and grabbed her shoulder. She felt water droplets fall onto her hand and froze. Through the curtain of hair, she saw the vivid redness in Si Ruxu’s eyes.

“You…”

Si Luoheng had so many questions. Why break the black hole? Why save her? Why did she still have powers that seemed independent of the virus?

But the words died in her throat. For the first time, seeing Si Ruxu’s pale, trembling lips, she felt she had made a terrible mistake.

Si Ruxu’s weight slumped into her. She coughed up more blood and fainted, her hand still gripped tightly around the small sphere. No one dared to approach or question them. This was the Research Institute—the last hope of the apocalypse.

*****

Si Luoheng carried Si Ruxu away. The chaotic winds from the shattered black hole had destroyed the surrounding architecture, but she didn’t care. She only cared about her sister.

Just like the red wine she drank, she didn’t like it, but she saw Si Ruxu drink it when she was in pain, so she learned to drink it too. She mimicked her sister’s clothes, her speech, her makeup. She thought that by doing so, Si Ruxu would always be with her. It was a twisted, shadowed kind of love.

She had been jealous of Si Qi. She wanted her dead. She wanted her sister to stop loving her. But now, as she carried Si Ruxu and felt the woman’s bones poking painfully against her arms and the scent of blood on her breath, she realized how much her sister had suffered.

Si Ruxu had grown so thin.

Si Luoheng felt a crushing weight in her own chest. She began to cough violently, her eyes burning. Her sister’s body felt so cold.

“Luoheng…” a weak breath came from her arms. Si Luoheng looked down to see Si Ruxu’s amber eyes open, looking hollow and lost. She wasn’t crying anymore. She spoke in a whisper: “Where does the black hole send people?”

Si Luoheng was silent. She didn’t know. Si Qi should have been killed instantly, but because the black hole was shattered, she might be dead—or she might be alive somewhere else.

Receiving no answer, Si Ruxu tightened her grip on the sphere and tucked it into her pocket. Her tears began to fall again, heavy and silent.

“I have to go find her.” Si Ruxu shifted, and Si Luoheng’s grip tightened briefly before she let go, setting her sister down.

Si Ruxu walked away in the opposite direction, her footsteps staggering as if she might fall at any moment. But she didn’t.

Si Luoheng had watched her sister’s back many times, always with a sense of longing. But this time, she took off her own matching grey trench coat and looked at the thin, fragile silhouette one last time before turning toward the Institute.

She had been so wrong. She realized then that even if she tried for a lifetime, she could never love Si Ruxu as much as Si Qi did.

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