Picking Up My Ex-Wife in the Apocalypse - Chapter 42

The soft spot in her heart hadn’t even finished basking in the joy of finding Si Qi before it was pricked by a dense, aching bitterness.

“Does it hurt?” Her fingers brushed lightly over the wounds on Si Qi’s face. Pale green energy flowed slowly, healing the bleeding scars and leaving behind a faint, tingling sensation.

Si Qi shook her head. Her fingers were stiff from gripping the dagger for so long. Si Ruxu firmly took her hand, interlacing their fingers in a tight grip.

“What is the rule this time?”

“Within five days, eliminate the anomalies.”

Eliminate the anomalies. Another ambiguous rule. Yet the Awakened outside hadn’t hesitated for a second to label Si Qi as His target.

A bunch of frantic, mindless fools.

The small orb of energy from the little zombie remained huddled near Si Qi’s heart, though it was noticeably more active than before, as if it had returned to a long-lost home. Perhaps this was home for the little zombie, but it wasn’t home for Si Qi.

As Si Ruxu treated Si Qi’s wounds, she mused on the task. The subject of these missions should be Him, not humanity. If humanity considered Si Qi the “anomaly,” then to Him, the anomalies were the Awakened themselves.

Therefore, this time, the Awakened would still be the ones to die. Conversely, as long as a single Awakened remained alive, Si Qi would be the one to die.

At this thought, confusion flickered in Si Ruxu’s eyes. What about me? Am I an anomaly? She lowered her gaze, masking her darkness. When she looked at Si Qi again, her eyes held an unreadable complexity.

“What do you think an anomaly is?” As she asked, Si Ruxu abandoned all hope. Si Qi was connected to Him; if she could think of this, Si Qi surely had as well.

But Si Qi’s eyes curved at the corners. she looked toward the faint, rising flames ahead and laughed softly. “It’s them.”

“Them” did not include Si Ruxu. “Those with twisted thoughts, those whose humanity has been eroded by the apocalypse, those who have lost the ability to think… they are the anomalies.”

“But if I am one too…”

“Then we’ll set fire to this place and burn it all down.”

Si Ruxu froze. In her memory, Si Qi had always been gentle and steady. But now, under the dim light, Si Qi wore a shallow smile that didn’t reach her eyes, her expression carrying a hint of mania. Her messy hair fell over her tattered, blood-stained clothes.

“What apocalypse? What savior? Anomalies shouldn’t be defined by power types or species,” Si Qi said, staring into Si Ruxu’s eyes. “Only those who treat human life like grass, those who are insane and depraved—they are the lives that fall outside the normal scope.”

“If that’s not the case, if the Purge’s goal is to kill all Awakened regardless of good or evil, then He simply wants us all dead. So what if we burn it down? Even an ant knows how to resist.”

Si Ruxu remained silent. She knew the apocalypse had suppressed Si Qi for too long. Her sense of right and wrong remained, but it had been sharpened into a blade. She finally understood that hiding and yielding, allowing herself to be a piece of floating duckweed, only made Him more aggressive.

*****

“Quick! She’s here! Kill her!”

“Go, go!”

Noisy voices reached their ears. Various elemental orbs crashed into the surroundings. Some splashed, searing the side of Si Qi’s face. She lightly wiped the blood away.

She took Si Ruxu’s hand, her voice turning tender. “Let’s go. They will pay the price.”

Before Si Ruxu could speak, the two vanished.

“What happened? Where did she go?”

“Probably teleported. This place is cursed, and so is she.”

“Dammit! I told you to move faster! Now she’s gone and we have to track her again!”

“You weren’t exactly fast either! If you were quicker, we would’ve caught her!”

Chaos. Si Qi felt that even if she didn’t deal with them, if she just hid a few more times, they would crumble from the inside.

When they landed, the wounds on Si Qi that had nearly healed tore open again. Si Ruxu’s fingers dug into Si Qi’s shoulders, her knuckles white. “Can your wounds not heal?”

Si Qi shook her head. “I don’t know. At first, it was just people finding and ambushing me. Later, I realized every time I use my ability, the wounds rip open.”

“How many times have you used it?”

“Three times.”

“Including this one?”

“Yes.”

It felt like Si Qi was always injured, ever since they first met. Yet she was the one who feared pain the most. Si Ruxu let go.

*****

They had teleported to a mountain peak. Si Qi seemed to have a special fondness for high ground. It was closer to the moon and further from the crowds.

“Your energy hasn’t recovered yet. How do you plan to kill them?” Si Ruxu had intended to settle it herself. Even if her energy was low, she still had one last resort in her space—a bomb the base had given her as a “secret weapon.”

But looking at Si Qi’s calm profile, she felt a rare sense of peace. She wanted to hear what Si Qi had in mind.

“We wait a day. They are so full of hostility; an internal conflict is bound to erupt.”

“Just wait?”

“Of course not.” Si Qi’s lips curled enigmatically. “We need to go and bait them a little.”

“No,” Si Ruxu said, her face darkening.

“I haven’t even told you how, and you’re already saying no?” Si Qi looked at her innocently, blinking her harmless “puppy” eyes, though her dark pupils made the act less convincing.

“You’re just going to teleport over, let them almost touch you or graze you, and then teleport back, aren’t you?”

Si Qi’s smile deepened. She clapped her hands. “Indeed. As expected of you.”

Si Ruxu thinned her lips, her gaze heavy. From gentle and quiet to silent and withdrawn, to this almost manic vibrance. Si Qi had changed so much. She took a deep breath and stepped closer to the girl.

The familiar scent hit Si Qi’s cold lips, making her take a small step back. This distance allowed her to see Si Ruxu’s expression: pained, sorrowful, and dead serious.

“Tell me how I can save you. Please,” Si Ruxu whispered.

She was forcing herself to stay calm. In truth, she had been broken by the apocalypse much earlier than Si Qi—it started the moment Si Qi was swallowed by the black hole. Every word she spoke struck Si Qi’s heart like the bite of a thousand ants. Si Qi thinned her pale lips and looked away.

“Si Qi, listen to me, just this once. Okay?” Si Ruxu’s voice was almost a plea. “What we know right now is a secret. The Awakened don’t know, and the ordinary people don’t know. The apocalypse has assimilated many, but there are those who remain unchanged, who keep their original intentions. Luo Fenghe, you, and I… aren’t we examples?”

“When this Purge ends, I’ll go back. I’ll have Luoheng use the Institute’s name to broadcast the truth: the relationship between Him and humanity, the contradictions, and the results of our trials.”

Si Qi’s numb expression shifted slightly. She turned her lifeless eyes toward Si Ruxu. “Why do all this?”

“To clear your name. Even if it’s just a temporary stall, we have to throw the blame onto those high-and-mighty Awakened first.”

Si Ruxu paused, her tone growing even softer. “Think about the first two Purges. The first one showed us the late-stage apocalypse, but because He interfered, the world didn’t actually turn out that way, did it? What changed the timeline?”

Si Qi’s sluggish brain began to grind into gear. “Because… two Purges killed nearly twenty thousand Awakened.”

“Yes. Because there are fewer Awakened, there is less destruction to the world, so the progress of the ‘pollution’ has slowed. And the second Purge? The one about ‘enough’ supplies? Why were you the only one to survive?”

Si Qi recalled the mission. When looking for supplies, she had looked at the plants and animals, then at the greedy humans. She had been angry. Enough meant enough for survival, not greed. So she had instinctively given energy to the flora and fauna, causing them to mutate and resist humanity’s endless plunder.

“Because I followed the rule. ‘Enough’ meant just staying alive.” Si Qi felt a blockage in her mind slowly being pried open.

“So, regardless of the truth, we can tell people that He descended because some people are destroying the environment and are consumed by greed. We can say you were controlled by Him and felt His emotions. We can tell them that after five Purges, the apocalypse ends—and you are the only one who can clear them because you can sense His energy in the air.”

Si Ruxu’s words broke the final dam in Si Qi’s heart.

“Si Qi, trust me. Trust the Institute’s influence. People in this world are used to following the wind; the Institute is the thread that controls their thoughts. Whatever the Institute says, goes. Once we get out of here alive, we won’t have to hide anymore. We can rest, heal, and no one will try to hunt you. Trust me, okay? We have to survive this.”

Si Qi looked at Si Ruxu’s hand gripping hers, then up at her face. Those beautiful “peach blossom” eyes were misty, as if she were about to cry, yet they were fixed on her with a stubborn, desperate need for an answer.

After a long silence, a single word escaped Si Qi’s parched, raspy throat.

“Okay.”

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