Embracing Again!
The dark world Ning Yi was trapped in stretched endlessly.
Across time and space, it left behind an entrance.
This was the most random turning point the invisible mechanism had left them—
And when Ning Yi realised their emotions could be transmitted, she immediately understood that the swapping mechanism was ultimately a circle.
So Gu Cheng would definitely be able to hear her voice again.
And eventually, they would return to their own bodies.
But Ning Yi couldn’t see. She could only wait. She wasn’t even sure which of her words could reach the other side, so she could only keep talking and talking.
Talking to herself endlessly in the darkness.
As Ning Yi spoke, she thought—it was a good thing speaking in her mind didn’t tire her mouth.
It was just lonely.
Too lonely.
By the end, she could only say nonsense that didn’t require her brain either.
After waiting in the darkness for so long it felt like a century, she finally heard a response.
“A Yi—”
Gu Cheng’s voice, crossing worlds to reach her.
That voice was blurry and abstract, but it was the first real sound Ning Yi had heard in the darkness for who knew how long.
In that instant, sound felt like light.
So Ning Yi instantly forgot that time flowed differently between them and that there was a delay. She happily said, “I’m here! I’m here!”
“Hello, hello—”
“Hello, husband!”
After a while, Gu Cheng’s next voice came.
“I—”
But after a single syllable, the sound suddenly cut off.
Ning Yi froze.
No one knew better than her how dangerous the apocalypse was, how easily accidents could suddenly happen.
She didn’t know what he had run into.
Would he be alright?
Her happiness only lasted a few seconds before sinking back into worry. So she could only dig through memories she had buried under several layers of dust, trying to recall what exactly she had experienced during those three years, and what Gu Cheng might now be facing.
In the second year of the apocalypse, the massive zombie tide caused by animal infection. Back then, their team had struggled to break through with gunfire, losing half their people, and Captain Wan had led them with difficulty to the supply point at those coordinates.
…
Actually, every step had been dangerous.
So what was Gu Cheng facing?
Under the dark, oppressive sky of the apocalypse,
Gu Cheng was about to rush into the oncoming zombie tide.
Even in the apocalypse, this scene was absurd.
Beneath the ominous black entrance, the tide of zombies crushed forward like an army, full of twisted, rotting, roaring faces. Their hissing formed the final song of doomsday.
And he was charging in alone.
This was something Ning Yi had never experienced even in the apocalypse. Of course, she would never need to experience it in the future either.
The closer Gu Cheng got to the pitch-black hole, the faster his speed became—the flow of time was changing, and he was gambling with his life.
The zombie tide drew closer and closer.
Gu Cheng was only a hundred metres from the foremost zombies.
Fifty metres.
Ten metres.
The almost-bursting eyes of the apocalypse zombies, their filthy, stinking mouths, were already right before him.
And the dark entrance was only a few metres away.
His heart pounded wildly from the high-intensity sprint, the thudding hidden amid the sky-filling shrieks.
Gu Cheng held onto a reckless calm and fearlessness.
One gamble.
If he won, he would see her.
Behind him, someone roared, “01—”
But Gu Cheng did not stop. He continued sprinting, firmly reaching out toward the zombies before him, toward that dark, lightless world—
“Hisss—”
“Ghhk—”
Human flesh approaching them drove all the zombies mad. They surrounded Gu Cheng crazily.
But in the instant the frontmost zombie was about to bite him—his hand also reached into the darkness.
And in that instant, he narrowly misaligned with the zombie!
He clenched his fist hard.
—He had guessed right.
The moment he stepped into the darkness, he was already in another space-time.
Wander thought he really was fucking crazy.
Originally, he had only wanted to grab 01 and drag her away quickly. But he hadn’t expected that even with his peak running speed, he still couldn’t catch up?!
That person’s back looked like they were fleeing for their life, rushing toward whatever they were pursuing.
That instant was somehow mad and free.
Wander watched as he charged straight into the zombie tide, and now he had no retreat either.
Damn this fucking world.
If it was destined to swallow all good people, then let it die!
Wander simply shouldered his gun and charged forward while firing.
Blood and flesh exploded into the sky, and his vision turned scarlet. At one moment, when the artillery fire left him temporarily deaf, he seemed to truly feel freedom too.
The zombies were getting closer and closer. The ominous black hole in the sky seemed to be narrowing constantly.
Finally, it became only the size of a doorway.
Wander ran faster and faster. Later, when his bullets ran out, he threw away the gun and only then realised the scenery around him was changing.
In a daze, it seemed he had only run a few hundred metres, yet it felt as though several years had passed.
It was as if an invisible flow of time shifted in the air, letting him see scene after scene from later—
Wander saw that after he rushed out to save 01, Fourth fired his gun to seize the supply vehicle, causing infighting in the team. A stray bullet blasted his leg. In those circumstances, death was certain.
Then he saw that this entire area was completely swallowed by the zombie tide, and fewer than a hundred people escaped.
He also saw himself, who should have barely survived this zombie tide, then endured another year in the apocalypse.
Then, 01 disappeared.
After that, he disappeared too.
Later, he suddenly left this place and arrived in another world.
There, he became a famous esports player. In that world, he saw 01 again.
And so they really lived another kind of life—peaceful, wealthy, never worrying about food or drink—
Amid those scenes, Wander gradually stopped running.
Was that the future?
Or was it the next life after reincarnation?
Could such good days really exist?
The fast-forwarded timeline brought confusion to his memories, and his mind began to doubt.
In the end, Wander unknowingly stopped in the middle of the roaring zombie tide—
He thought, perhaps he had already mutated into a zombie, and that was why he was seeing these lantern-like hallucinations before death.
And even though he had rushed here, he couldn’t save 01. They would all die in this zombie tide today.
Wander’s vision was almost blurred by blood.
The zombies were already right in front of him.
He could vaguely see countless zombie hands reaching toward him, like an invitation from hell, leaving him to completely rot in this world—
But just as he was about to fall, among all those blue-black, purple hands, a clean hand suddenly shot out—
“Wake up!”
Gu Cheng, who had been running toward the darkness and never looked back, had somehow rushed back. He shouted at him—
“Give me your hand!”
Wander looked up amid the chaos and instinctively reached toward 01’s face.
Finally, just before that narrow door of darkness was about to close, Gu Cheng grabbed Wander and yanked him in hard.
—“Go!”
Wander’s eyes flew open.
In this space, the timeline crossed over the old node. The Wander from the apocalypse overlapped with his memories, and he remembered everything—
He was both Captain Wan and Wander.
The choice he made before the zombie tide had taken him away from the apocalypse.
And perhaps it was because, on the future timeline, he chose to save 01 that he was able to go early to a new world without zombies and hunger.
On the arc of time, what had happened would certainly happen.
Wander looked up at “01,” who only paused for a breath before turning to leave.
He finally understood. The person who had returned to the apocalypse carrying 01’s body, who had fearlessly gambled with his life and charged through the zombie tide with him—
“You’re not 01. You’re—”
But Gu Cheng had already continued running into the deepest part of the darkness, leaving only one sentence behind.
“I’m the person she loves.”
And the person who loves her.
After all this pain, only love could cross everything.
Gu Cheng kept running.
The zombie tide had already been cut off outside the world.
He ran into darkness, and deeper into darkness.
Long ago, Gu Cheng had been trapped in this endless despair. But this time, the blood in his body surged through the darkness.
By coincidence, just like when Ning Yi had crossed over from the apocalypse, when Gu Cheng gained the chance to return from the apocalypse to his own world, he also completely understood the world he was in—
So this was a brainless, idiotic world revolving around two idiots.
The protagonists were actually Ding Ziyue and Jiang Linyi, those two fools.
Apparently, this was called a pampering novel.
And the reason Gu Cheng had been trapped in a vegetative body for three full years was because the plot required it. The reason Ning Yi had been holding a needle to stab him when they first met was also because of the character setting.
But Ning Yi, who should have abused him while he was a vegetative patient, did not do so. They swapped bodies, went through everything, and Gu Cheng, who should have been cold and ruthless all his life, fell in love with his wife.
Because she came from the faraway apocalypse, full of life, bringing him out of the darkness early, and then— gave him a different life.
That was their plot.
Gu Cheng knew he was getting closer and closer to her. As their time flow gradually aligned, he clearly heard Ning Yi’s voice from his heart—
“I’m here! I’m here!”
“Hello, hello—”
“Hello, husband!”
Full of vitality. Full of hope.
Just as she hadn’t been defeated by all the suffering of the apocalypse, even while bearing the living-dead cage of darkness alone, she was still vivid and bright.
Gu Cheng’s heart burned. “Hello—”
You are so, so good.
He was already almost exhausted, but he did not stop.
The dimension around Gu Cheng kept changing. He and Ning Yi drew closer and closer, and the time gap between them finally shrank shorter and shorter.
“Wait a little longer. Just a little longer—”
This time, Ning Yi heard his answer only a few seconds later.
Ning Yi, who had counted to ten million sheep, opened her eyes in the darkness—
He was here!
That meant Gu Cheng and Brother Wan were both safe.
He told her to wait.
And he really was coming.
Ning Yi opened her mouth, wanting to say something. Their severed connection had finally crossed again, yet she didn’t know where to begin. Since meeting Gu Cheng, she had said so many beautiful words, but in this moment, she only felt solemn.
She knew he had seen all her hardships.
And she had experienced the life he had suffered through.
At this moment, words no longer seemed necessary—Ning Yi had already tucked her heart safely away.
Gu Cheng finally saw a faint light in the distance.
A returning circle should have no endpoint, but in the process of running toward her, the beginning was the end.
At the final stretch of the arc—
they shared memories again.
Memories of this world, fragments of them together.
Then they shared emotions again.
After suffering each other’s pain, the anticipation of reunion became a heartbeat resonating at the same frequency.
And at the very, very end, they found each other’s bodies.
Gu Cheng reached the endpoint and found he had returned to that hospital room.
The place where they first met.
The place where he proposed.
The place where they had separated.
Gu Cheng was almost exhausted.
He walked to that hospital bed, to himself from years ago lying there praying someone could hear his voice, and also to Ning Yi, who was waiting for him.
Then he lowered his head and saw a needle beside his hand.
When they first met, Ning Yi had held it and said, “Honey, finger heart.”
And now Gu Cheng picked it up and bent it into a heart shape again.
That was his heart, shattered across the apocalypse, shaped once more and placed into her hand.
And so the beginning and the end connected—
Their souls passed through their bodies again. The memory fragments that had churned between them when they separated, every detail of two worlds and two kinds of pain, finally merged into the present you and me.
The swapping mechanism completed an entire circle.
This long setup from beginning to end finally concluded.
The darkness receded like a tide. The moonlit night remained just as it had been when they parted.
The flowers were still there.
The diamonds were still there.
This world was still running as usual—brainlessly, happily.
And they were still embracing.
Ning Yi’s lashes trembled slightly. In Gu Cheng’s arms, she opened her eyes, as if waking from a long dream.
One second had felt like ten thousand years.
No one knew the worlds and time they had crossed. Only they could prove it to each other.
Gu Cheng held her extremely, extremely tightly.
As if holding a treasure lost and found.
The hunger she had endured, the blood she had shed, the hair she had lost, the certificate hidden beneath the hard plank bed… the life she had lived before meeting him—all of it was hidden in his heart now, becoming scars he could never erase.
Ning Yi rubbed her head against Gu Cheng’s chest like a cat who had already licked her wounds clean and returned to peaceful days.
There were a thousand words, yet she didn’t know where to begin. After thinking for a long time, she raised her head.
“…Hello, husband. You worked hard. Good—good morning? Gu de Mo Ning —”
“—I love you.”
Gu Cheng’s voice was completely hoarse, so he only said those three words.
Ning Yi looked up at him.
Gu Cheng had already closed his eyes, lowered his head, and gently pressed his lips to hers.
Thank you for carrying an undying light from the apocalypse into my world.
And if this world was a pampering novel, then the cold emperor in the story had ultimately stepped into the river of love.
From now on…
I will make pampering you the rule.
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