Rushing Towards Her——!
“Recently, experts have found abnormal weather phenomena appearing in many places…”
“Since the apocalypse descended, behind these supernatural phenomena… perhaps there may be other possibilities…”
The old television in the basement was blurry, the announcer’s voice crackling through the static. Only the general meaning could be heard.
“Damn it, what a broken TV.”
Fourth kicked the old television, watched the screen hiss with snow, then turned to look at the person sitting in the corner with folded arms.
“01, don’t you know how to fix this?”
Gu Cheng looked at him expressionlessly and ignored him.
Of course he couldn’t fix it.
So he had quickly turned himself into one of the team’s fighters.
The whole team had discovered that “01” was actually very accurate with bows and guns, and now carried a ruthlessness she hadn’t had before. In the past, 01 had always acted opportunistically during missions. Since strength wasn’t her winning advantage, she had always protected herself wisely. But recently, in several team activities, 01 had suddenly started fighting with her life on the line, showing no mercy when grabbing supplies and not caring whether the others were unhappy.
Fourth had once thought about secretly teaching her a lesson, only to find that this person was also very good at close combat—clearly trained. So had she been pretending to be weak all along?
But in the apocalypse, strength was everything.
Fourth resentfully kicked the TV again and sat to the side.
The other teammates didn’t react much to their exchange. This broken TV was the same whether they watched it or not. Was the world going to change anyway?
Fourth could only shift his irritation onto the speaker on TV. “What bullshit is he saying? The government’s useless. If they were any help, where were they earlier?”
“This damn world might as well end.”
Gu Cheng glanced at the TV.
Without Ning Yi there to fix the equipment, the image was far too blurry and abstract. So he didn’t look further.
He silently stood and returned to Ning Yi’s little compartment.
Wander glanced in the direction he left, opened his mouth, but in the end said nothing.
He had noticed. Recently, 01 had become especially silent. In the past, 01’s situation certainly hadn’t been good, but she had survived through her intelligence and effort, and her whole person had been positive and resilient. Now, however, 01 seemed completely detached from the people around her, even from the world itself. The smile that used to often hang on her face was gone too.
Could the apocalypse truly destroy a person’s heart in the end?
Even someone like Wander, ruthless and vicious in the apocalypse, felt… that would be such a pity. Little 01.
After Gu Cheng returned to the compartment, he sat on the hard plank bed, feeling the softness beneath him.
He really had been somewhat mad recently. Young Master Gu, born into a top wealthy family, had lived a noble life and had never experienced such madness—but the benefit was that he had obtained sanitary pads, and even found a pack of safety shorts. He could wrap Ning Yi up securely, so not a single drop of humiliation would leak out anymore.
Throughout the entire period, Gu Cheng properly handled the embarrassment Ning Yi had once endured.
But he couldn’t deal with the longing.
Gu Cheng had flipped through Ning Yi’s books, but he was not a specialist in that field after all.
In the end, he still took out Ning Yi’s certificate from his coat pocket and lowered his head to look at the photo under the dim light.
He was waiting.
All of this had to be meaningful.
The swapping mechanism had sent him here to experience her suffering. There had to be meaning.
Gu Cheng held his chest.
Don’t hurt. Wait a little longer.
When Ning Yi slept until she couldn’t sleep anymore, she began counting sheep.
In the end, she counted sheep into the millions and could no longer tell whether she was asleep or awake. Either way, it was all the same.
Ning Yi could only talk to herself more, because when she didn’t speak, the surroundings were far too quiet.
Too quiet.
Once a person stayed in darkness for too long, they began to hallucinate sounds.
Rustling.
Like sounds buried deep in memory.
It was very much like the sound she used to catch in the apocalypse when zombies approached from far away, making the originally quiet darkness terrifying too.
Until chaos and gloom began occupying normal consciousness, dragging a person into madness born of self-fear.
Because ultimate silence became loneliness.
And eternal loneliness drove people insane.
In the end, it stripped away the clarity of reason.
Thinking of Gu Cheng enduring three years in this darkness, Ning Yi even began to feel that this seemed harder to bear than the apocalypse.
She lived like this for several days, trying hard to maintain her mentality. But while talking to herself, she still couldn’t help—
“Wuwu.”
“Wuwuwuwu.”
Ning Yi couldn’t help feeling sad.
She really wanted to eat.
Gu Cheng’s three years of suffering were set by the brainless pampering-novel plot. He was forced to remain conscious in the darkness, while his bodily functions did not decline, and he felt no hunger—yet for Ning Yi, that was actually torture too.
Ning Yi couldn’t help feeling grateful that she had treated every meal with enthusiasm and reverence, never wasting a single bite. Now all of them had become memories she used to resist the darkness.
Western food, Sichuan cuisine, Huaiyang cuisine, regional specialties, revolving restaurants, state-banquet restaurants, all kinds of banquets…
Ning Yi began missing every meal Gu Cheng had taken her to eat.
Then she began missing Gu Cheng.
She felt a little sad.
But she quickly pushed it down again.
Even if the situation was terrible, the spirit had to remain free. She had always done this.
After she had lain there for who knew how many days, one day, while half-conscious and dazed, she suddenly felt someone lift her hand and gently hold it.
Ning Yi’s spirit suddenly jolted.
After falling into long-term absolute isolation, even the smallest feedback from another person could make that heavy, muddled state clear up quite a bit.
Ning Yi began wondering who had come, and even joked to herself that according to the current timeline, it definitely wasn’t the Goddess of Light.
This hand felt like a woman’s hand, so it was probably Song Lan from a few years ago.
Song Lan didn’t know that the consciousness inside Gu Cheng’s body was actually extremely awake. She could only sadly hold her child’s hand.
Maybe she was sighing, maybe she was crying, but Ning Yi couldn’t hear or see anything. Only her hand could feel a little warmth.
At that moment, Ning Yi really wished she could write in Song Lan’s palm like Ding Ziyue had done, even if it was just to talk about the weather.
But she couldn’t.
Song Lan only held her hand briefly before leaving, unable to bear the sadness.
Then the dark world returned to silence.
Even darker and calmer than before the brief disturbance.
So calm that it almost made a person feel that the short contact just now had also been an illusion.
Ning Yi was silent for a long time. She finally fully understood exactly how much Gu Cheng had endured.
For three whole years, his body had been cut off from every possible way of communicating with the outside world.
That was why, when he finally saw light again, he had carried so much darkness, his heart filled only with endless malice toward fate’s cruel games.
This world had forced him to become a powerful, gloomy king who hated everyone for no reason and crushed everyone beneath him.
He truly was a lonely city.
Yet in the end, within that dark and icy heart, there had still been a small cluster of tenderness.
How had he managed that?
Ning Yi spent who knew how many days in the confused darkness.
She didn’t know how much time had passed on Gu Cheng’s side either.
Endless.
No end.
No hope…
Ning Yi had never liked despair.
But despair quietly grew along every crack, like wild grass.
Then one day, amid that overgrown wilderness, she suddenly felt a strong… heartache.
It was as if that feeling had crossed mountains and seas, travelled through countless hardships, and finally reached her chest.
Ning Yi suddenly woke fully.
Whose heartache was that?
Gu Cheng.
Time flowed differently between the two worlds.
By the time Ning Yi felt that heartache, Gu Cheng had already survived many more days in the apocalypse.
He became more and more silent.
He only acted. He did not speak.
Because the unrest was worsening, Wander’s team prepared to temporarily ally with another team.
Among everyone, the silent 01 stood out especially.
“Yo—what are you hiding in your pocket?”
Gu Cheng’s coat was suddenly grabbed. When the zipper broke open, the senior engineer certificate he had kept in the pocket flew out and was picked up by the other person.
The glue behind the photo had long dried. It slipped out from the inner page and fluttered down onto the dusty ground.
“Hahaha, someone still carries a certificate around? What certificate is this? Model primary school student?”
Gu Cheng expressionlessly lowered his head. Just as he bent to pick up the photo, someone else snatched it away.
“How many years ago was this photo taken? Hahaha, your hair was shorter than now—”
Gu Cheng’s brows were cold. He held out his hand. “Give it to me.”
The men passed it around, laughing and crowding together. “Come get it yourself.”
Gu Cheng walked over indifferently. Just as he reached out, the other person threw it onto the ground. The instant Gu Cheng bent down to pick it up, someone quickly approached from behind—
Gu Cheng dodged sideways instantly, but a handful of hair was still cut off.
Soft black strands drifted down onto the dusty ground.
This world always found all kinds of malicious ways to torment a girl.
The other side succeeded and burst into laughter. “How’s that? Now you look more like the photo. No need to thank us—”
Gu Cheng had already punched him.
He really wanted to admit that his heart was not as strong as Ning Yi’s.
After experiencing everything she had experienced, he could not be as positive and sunlit as her.
His heart was full of deep darkness.
The moment it hurt, he went mad.
That day, Gu Cheng beat the other side like a madman and ripped out half of his hair. Later, the violence escalated. Wander directly joined in to help, and in the end, it turned into a brawl between two teams.
By the end, they parted unhappily.
The scene was as chaotic as if they had just fought a wave of zombies.
Gu Cheng zipped up his coat and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
Wander leaned behind him. After a long while, he caught his breath and spat out bloody saliva. “You… went crazy, didn’t you?”
Gu Cheng held the hair tie in his teeth and tied Ning Yi’s hair back up.
“Mm.”
There was only one cure.
He was still waiting.
…Waiting.
Until one day, rain fell in the apocalypse.
Although order had vanished from the human world, the order of nature remained the same. Rain pattered down, covering the earth.
All smoke and blood temporarily settled.
Gu Cheng smelled the damp, cold air of the basement. With his eyes closed, he suddenly felt an inexplicable happiness.
He lowered his head and looked at his roughened palm, worn from frequently drawing bows and practising with guns.
He had nothing to be happy about.
Yet that eager, joyful feeling lingered in his heart.
When he walked.
When he closed his eyes.
When he missed her.
His heart kept telling him: I’m happy.
So Gu Cheng wondered, have I really gone mad?
He closed his eyes and simply lay down fully clothed on the hard plank bed.
But three seconds later—
Gu Cheng suddenly sat up.
—Ning Yi!
This was her emotion.
Ning Yi’s emotion was being transmitted to him!
The emotional exchange had started again.
Perhaps Ning Yi had received it first, and now Gu Cheng was receiving it, with a time difference between them.
But no matter what, this sent an important signal—
The random swapping really had not stopped.
And now—
The mechanism was moving backward.
Gu Cheng’s mind almost instantly began racing through logic and guesses.
If being sent into each other’s three years was the extreme point of the swapping mechanism, then perhaps this fusion was the endpoint turning back toward the beginning—
In that case, it was a circle.
The forward order was: they swapped bodies, then heard each other’s voices in their minds, then their control shifted… then they exchanged emotions, exchanged memories, and finally personally lived in each other’s body and circumstances.
And once this circle reached the end, their bodies would definitely switch back again.
Then looking at it in reverse—
Now they were in each other’s bodies and in each other’s situations. Since he could already feel Ning Yi’s emotions being exchanged over, then the next step—
He would be able to hear her voice.
Gu Cheng had guessed that time flowed differently between the two worlds, so there would be a delay in transmission. He still needed to wait.
But that moment still felt like seeing light at the end of the apocalypse. It was as if Gu Cheng had once again experienced walking out of the darkness.
Anticipation flowed through his body like healthy blood.
Gu Cheng waited for a very, very long time.
Still while he walked.
While he closed his eyes.
While he missed her.
He used all the patience of his life.
Then he heard—
“Nom nom nom.”
…
“Bloop bloop.”
…
The voice was very blurry, as if distorted by time, space, and dimensions. Only after a while would a few syllables come through.
“I’m super… strong—I’m super amazing!”
“La, lalala—”
It was like a phone call with a terrible signal.
All of it was Ning Yi talking to herself.
And that was her alone in the darkness, keeping herself company.
Only after a long time did Gu Cheng raise his hand and half-cover his eyes, his gaze slightly red.
He listened to her soft self-talk, transmitted faintly and painfully across misplaced time and space.
Only after a long while did he struggle to find his voice.
“A Yi—”
“I—”
Before he could finish, alarms rang across the entire city.
Gu Cheng instantly stood up.
“Fuck, run, run—”
“The city defence ten kilometres out has broken. Damn it, those zombies aren’t human—no, not all human—”
The largest zombie tide in history was approaching.
Alarms echoed across the land.
Since the apocalypse descended, humanity’s situation had only retreated again and again. Yet amid mutation, new dangers always emerged.
Wander remained very calm, directing the team to orderly take all supplies from the basement and leave through the escape passage.
At this moment, all surviving humans had run out.
Because this time, hiding would not mean survival. The zombies could penetrate everywhere, because—
“It’s birds! Damn it—and snakes too?!”
The zombie bird Gu Cheng had shot before had not been wiped out by humans. So the bird bit a dog, then the dog continued biting other dogs, spreading in groups into a larger biological layer.
And so, at the end of the second year of the apocalypse, humanity faced a massive zombie tide caused by infected animals.
No one could stay safe in such a flood. If they didn’t run fast enough, everything within a ten-li radius might eventually be blasted into dust by the military.
Gu Cheng shouldered a bag, tucked away Ning Yi’s engineer certificate, and continued listening to Ning Yi’s broken voice in his ear.
“If you hear… don’t hurt—”
“I think… there’s a way—”
“Gu Cheng!”
“I’ll wait…”
Gu Cheng clenched his fist, closed his eyes, then opened them again with sharpness filling his gaze. “Okay.”
He had almost understood.
Wander’s expression was cold as he led the team out through the escape passage. They didn’t have enough vehicles, only one off-road vehicle for transporting supplies. Its five seats were now being fought over like mad.
—Who in the apocalypse wouldn’t fight for a vehicle loaded with supplies?
The team instantly fell into infighting. Especially Fourth, who was almost about to pull a weapon.
At such a critical moment, Wander directly suppressed them with force, smashing two people’s heads. In the end, he forced several teammates he trusted into the vehicle and gave them a private coordinate.
“Guard the supplies and wait for me there.”
“Got it, boss!”
“Captain, don’t worry!”
Everyone left would have to march forward carrying weight, then later rush to the flat road and randomly seize vehicles.
Fourth stared fixedly at 01. If Captain Wan left 01 a seat, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t do something.
The team was full of dissatisfied voices.
Only Gu Cheng slowly raised his head and looked at the sky hidden behind tree branches—
But Wander suddenly grabbed him and rapidly whispered a string of numbers.
Gu Cheng was very familiar with that string of numbers—
“This is the real coordinate of the supply point.”
In this entire team, the only person Wander truly trusted was 01.
“Listen, 01. You won’t be able to run later. Get in the car with them—when you reach that coordinate, if they don’t wait for me like I said, then find a chance to act, or steal the supplies and go to the location I gave you. Got it?”
Gu Cheng looked at him in silence.
The pressure of the zombie tide was already approaching, carrying a foul, indescribable stench in the air.
Wander spoke quickly and urgently.
“And one more thing—be happy,” he said. “If you make it through, maybe there’ll be better days ahead—”
Amid the chaos of war and smoke, Gu Cheng finally understood the meaning of Wander’s long-ago silent entrustment.
In this world, the two of them were the ones who most wanted to protect 01.
So Gu Cheng finally reached out and patted his shoulder.
“Thanks.”
But no.
Gu Cheng adjusted his backpack and walked toward the open road.
He looked into the distance.
—“Wait, what the hell!”
—“What is that!?”
In this moment of chaos, in the distance, above a city on the brink of destruction— a massive black hole appeared.
Pitch black.
Ominous.
Directly beneath it lay the direction from which the zombie tide was advancing.
From afar, the rotting, grotesque faces could already be seen—dense and endless.
People ran as they panicked.
“Damn it, is the world really ending?”
“We haven’t even finished dealing with zombies, and now there’s some other dimension too??”
Gu Cheng stared at that darkness.
—Their entire journey of swapping bodies had now returned to the stage where they could hear each other’s voices.
Gu Cheng could now confirm: the mechanism was a circle—from beginning to end, then back to the beginning. Only when they returned to their own bodies would it be complete.
And if it was a circle— then the worlds would connect end to beginning—
Then…
That silent, endless darkness was—
Gu Cheng stopped, turned around, and looked at the surging zombie tide rushing in the distance.
Everyone around him was running, shouting, trying to escape a carnival of life and death.
Only Wander noticed he had stopped and turned back, roaring, “01! What are you doing!? Run—!”
Gu Cheng raised his hand without turning back.
It was unclear whether it was a farewell wave or a gesture asking him to come along.
Gu Cheng gave him a choice.
Then, before anyone could react— he suddenly sprinted toward the black hole and the zombie tide.
“01—!!”
Wander nearly tore his throat shouting, “Are you fucking trying to die?!”
The zombie tide was closing in fast. The black hole seemed to be shrinking as well.
Gu Cheng ran forward without a single moment of hesitation.
Old Fourth wiped his face. “Fuck, that idiot—leave her! If she wants to die, who can stop her?!”
“Let’s go, boss!”
“Boss, you’re not thinking of saving her, are you?!”
Wander felt like he was about to split apart.
Forward—he could lead the team to break through and seize a vehicle, escaping this area.
Backward—01 charging alone into the zombie tide was certain death.
Gu Cheng ran faster and faster, merging into the wind.
Ahead, the zombie tide surged like an army, their terrifying faces now clearly visible.
But in Gu Cheng’s eyes, there was only burning clarity and freedom—
If the end of the swapping was a circle, then the worlds between him and Ning Yi must be connected.
So— that darkness was where Ning Yi was.
Her space.
Her dimension.
The only entrance out of the apocalypse and back to that world.
Facing the zombie tide, Gu Cheng ran like the wind.
Behind him, Wander clenched his teeth tightly.
“Boss—there’s a car over there!”
“Captain Wan! Are we going or not?!”
“Run!”
Wander took two steps forward.
At the moment of life and death he gritted his teeth, turned, and sprinted after 01.
“—Fuck!”
The entire world was collapsing into chaos.
But within the rushing wind, Gu Cheng said silently to the other side:
“Wait a little longer.”
Very soon.
I’m coming to find you.
Leave a Reply