The Art of Playing Innocent - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“Team, move out!” The leader on the platform commanded. Below, the people trembled, helping each other along. Everyone was terrified, but no one dared to run away. They could only muster their courage and walk to the devastated city walls to begin the repair work.

This was the eleventh year of the apocalypse. As a non-ability user in S City, Pei Ruoling was forced to follow the crowd to patch up the city walls. After the monsters broke through the wall, the city was cleared out, creating this brief window for repairs. Before this, she had never participated in such a large-scale city-filling operation.

No one knew when the monsters would launch a second attack. For low-level workers like them, running into a monster was tantamount to suicide. While nervously raising her dirty hands and using a heavy hammer to pound the components into the wall, she kept a constant eye on her surroundings.

After a while, no monsters had appeared, and everyone breathed a small sigh of relief. Pei Ruoling also exhaled, and her repair work sped up. She heard some girls’ forced, lighthearted chatter, but their voices still held an unmistakable tremble.

“I heard a big shot from above was passing through our area, which is why the city gate was broken through,” one girl said.

Another girl asked with a stiff tone, “How do you know that? And where is this big shot?”

The first girl, surprised that someone was talking to her, relaxed a little. “The person who came down was apparently here to hunt a seventh-level monster. I heard the monster is in our area right now. Who knows what happened.”

Hearing this, Pei Ruoling couldn’t help but interject. “Do you know who came down from above? And what about the monster?”

Pei Ruoling’s mood lightened with the chattering girls, but then the chatter abruptly stopped. Only the howling wind answered her. Her heart suddenly began to race, beating wildly and telling her to run.

Pei Ruoling didn’t even have time to turn around. She dropped the heavy hammer and ran, but a soft, sweet voice suddenly came from behind her: “Were you looking for me?”

Before Pei Ruoling could react, she felt a sharp pain in her chest. She looked down and saw a hand piercing her body, tightly gripping her still-beating heart. Against a high-level monster, she had no power to resist. The “person” behind her withdrew their hand, and she felt the world spin. She fell backward, straight into a pool of her own blood.

People around her screamed and ran, and no one paid any attention to her. As she lay there, she saw the monster that was about to devour her heart get knocked away by a powerful gust of wind. She struggled to open her eyes and saw someone standing on the high wall. She thought she had seen this person somewhere before. That person knelt down, held her already-cold body, and said, trembling, “Don’t go…”

Pei Ruoling fell into an unconscious darkness. She only remembered the face of that person, which seemed a little familiar…

“Ruoling, Ruoling, wake up. You’ll miss the graduating senior’s lecture if you don’t get up.”

A strange yet familiar voice was calling to her. Pei Ruoling thrashed and then sat up abruptly. The spot on her chest where her heart had been torn out was throbbing faintly. She instinctively felt her body. Her heart was beating steadily in her chest. She looked around blankly and saw a person by her bed, looking at her with concern. Her friend Zuo Xun, who had died repeatedly in her dreams to save her, was standing right in front of her.

Pei Ruoling’s eyes welled up with tears, and she started crying instantly. Zuo Xun frantically looked for tissues, grabbing a box from Pei Ruoling’s desk. “Ruoling, what’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare?”

Pei Ruoling looked at the unfamiliar university dorm room, the clean, old desk piled with study materials, and all the things Zuo Xun had given her. Because she was always busy with her studies, she didn’t have time to work part-time, so she shared many things with Zuo Xun. Her old sweater and various other belongings were neatly arranged in the dorm room.

“It’s nothing. Let’s go. We’ll go to the senior’s lecture,” she said.

Pei Ruoling let Zuo Xun pull her out of the dorm. She quickly stopped crying. As they walked, people greeted her, but she was too embarrassed to say anything. It had been so long that she couldn’t recognize some of her classmates, and it would be strange to greet the wrong person. Her personality was always quiet anyway, so no one found her silence strange.

Walking on campus, the past eleven years seemed like a dream. She looked at the old phone in her pocket and listened to Zuo Xun’s voice. Everything felt so real. The phone screen lit up, and her eyes focused on the screen. It was 3:23 PM on November 25, 2025. She had returned to two days before the apocalypse.

Zuo Xun was skipping along, greeting classmates she knew. The campus was peaceful and harmonious. The calm before the storm—the exact scene before the human-made hell had arrived. After the apocalypse, Pei Ruoling had watched her classmates turn into monsters and eat her beloved teachers. Zuo Xun had sacrificed herself to stall the monsters so Pei Ruoling could run away.

Pei Ruoling’s eyes were sore and dry, but she couldn’t cry anymore. She and Zuo Xun had grown up in the same orphanage. The old headmistress had been extremely kind to them but had passed away a few years ago. Now, only she and Zuo Xun were left to rely on each other. Pei Ruoling breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing had happened yet. As long as she took the right precautions, her life would not be the same as it was before.

With this thought, Pei Ruoling steeled her heart. “Ah Xun, let’s skip the lecture and go grab something to eat. I’m hungry.”

Zuo Xun looked at her in surprise. “What’s wrong, Ruoling? It’s still too early for dinner.” Pei Ruoling had always been the image of a good student. She never missed a class. The graduation lecture was something the school had paid a high price for, and it included detailed career planning. Given Pei Ruoling’s personality, she would never miss it.

Pei Ruoling rarely smiled, but she did now. “Let’s go. My treat today. Oh, and I’ll be busy with something, so I probably won’t be in class for the next two days.”

Zuo Xun looked at the Pei Ruoling who was walking ahead and couldn’t help but gasp. She ran to catch up. “What? Pei Ruoling, are you crazy? You’re doing this just before graduation? You know how weird Professor Wang is. He’ll deduct your grades if you can’t answer his questions in class.”

Seeing that she was unmoved, Zuo Xun grabbed her arm. “He has five classes this week alone! How can you just say you’re not going? He always takes attendance. You can’t flunk at this crucial moment!”

Pei Ruoling had completely calmed down. She took out her old phone and her eyes scanned the contact list, stopping on a specific number. Without hesitation, she dialed. As Zuo Xun continued to nag her, the phone rang three times before a very enthusiastic voice came through: “Hello, Classmate Pei? Can I help you?”

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