Recap
Yan Zhao still did not move; his whole body was stiff as if he were a level one zombie.
Rong Yu lowered his eyes and looked at him. “You are a level seven, right?”
Yan Zhao nodded hesitantly.
“You have your own thoughts, right?”
“…Yes.”
Rong Yu nodded, and his cold palm stroked his cheek. “Do you not love me?”
Yan Zhao did not respond.
___
Yan Zhao was silent for a long time.
Rong Yu said, “Speak.”
“Love is love, not loving is not loving, is this question so difficult to answer?” Rong Yu pressed closer.
Yan Zhao subconsciously dodged, “I don’t know.”
Rong Yu’s movements stopped.
“Don’t know.” Rong Yu calmly repeated, sneering, “A damn good answer”
Memories instantly flooded Rong Yu’s mind like a revolving lantern.
In the bathtub, clinging to him, Gu Minghuai held his hand: “When I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t think about having a future with you. After I fell in love with you, I regretted not loving you earlier.”
In the punishment room, Fu Qianzhi confessed and asked again and again, fervently and madly: “I love you, do you love me?”
Waiting in the coffin underground for a thousand years, the Ghost King, in order to keep him, didn’t dare to marry him: “I’m very happy to see you.”
In the deep palace, Chu Zhuo painted red lotuses and called him Little Lotus with a smile. He asked why there was a “little” character, and Chu Zhuo said: “Because you’re cute.”
Finally, finally, back to this life.
“Do you not love me?”
“I don’t know.”
…
Actually, he should be glad that Sun didn’t flatly say “yes.”
This couldn’t be blamed on Sun. In his timeline, he did love me more and more. Rong Yu thought with his head bowed.
In my timeline, I also hated him less and less.
He should have expected this situation.
But after hearing Sun’s hesitation, he still felt a little sad, and this sadness was mixed with helpless anger.
His lover loved him less and less, but he couldn’t blame him.
…Why?
The Demon King was unreasonable and insisted on venting his anger.
Rong Yu straightened up with a blank expression and slowly put on his clothes, “Then forget it, you go to the front and drive.”
Yan Zhao looked at him, “Then you…”
“Tired.” Rong Yu buttoned the top button, lowered his eyes and said lightly, “I want to lie down in the back seat and sleep, you drive steadily, don’t wake me up.”
Yan Zhao pursed his lips.
He could see that Rong Yu was in a bad mood.
For some reason, seeing Rong Yu unhappy made him unhappy too, with a slight dull pain in his heart. Even though this body didn’t have a human heart and shouldn’t feel pain.
Yan Zhao didn’t say anything, opened the car door on the other side and got out, returning to the driver’s seat.
Rong Yu lay on his side in the back seat and closed his eyes, using sleep to dispel all his troubles.
Yan Zhao slowed down the car and looked back at him several times along the way. Rong Yu was sleeping soundly and showed no sign of waking up.
Yan Zhao turned his head back, but he still couldn’t help but frequently look up, paying attention to Rong Yu behind him through the rearview mirror.
The ride was stable.
His heart was in turmoil. Rong Yu was gently woken up by Yan Zhao.
He had a bad temper when waking up, and his expression was extremely impatient the moment he sat up, “Didn’t I say don’t wake me up!”
Yan Zhao looked at him and unconsciously stretched out his hand, smoothing down a strand of Rong Yu’s hair that was sticking up.
This action made both of them pause.
For them, who had been estranged for several days, this action was too intimate.
Yan Zhao also realized his transgression and calmly withdrew his hand, “It’s dark, let’s rest in this town for one night.”
Rong Yu got out of the car and looked up at the dark sky. He had actually slept all afternoon.
He looked around, confirming that he was around a parking lot, and there was nothing else in his vision except cars, “There’s not a single house around here, where can we rest?”
“We can find one if we walk a little further.”
“Still have to walk?” Rong Yu turned around and was about to open the car door and get back into the car, “Why not just drive in?”
Rong Yu couldn’t open it. Yan Zhao had locked the car door.
“There was a chain car accident ahead, we can’t drive any further.” Before Rong Yu could lose his temper, Yan Zhao explained in time.
He also woke Rong Yu up after confirming that they couldn’t go any further.
He knew how delicate Rong Yu was. He would lie down if he could, sit if he could, and never walk if he could.
But such a delicate and clean-loving person… took him, who was even disliked by his current self, all over the city, took out the crystal nuclei from the zombies’ brains, and fed him one by one until he regained his senses.
Also, for him, he gave up everything and switched to walking.
Yan Zhao had all those memories.
He also had those… in bed.
This was also the reason for his complicated mood.
So complicated that he didn’t dare to let Rong Yu know to what extent he had recovered.
…
This area was a parking lot. In the early days of the apocalypse, many people wanted to escape by car, but after encountering zombies, it resulted in many chain car accidents. Even after so long, one could still see the tragic situation at that time.
The gaps between the deformed vehicles were narrow, and the ground was covered with dried blood and severed limbs, making it almost impossible to walk.
Rong Yu could have burned the car accident scene with a fire and cleared all the roadblocks.
But he was unhappy with this Sun now and didn’t want to make it easy for him.
He hated the smell of rotting corpses and the bloodstains on the ground, and Sun didn’t like them either.
If it was disgusting, then they would be disgusted together.
Rong Yu resigned himself to stepping over it.
Yan Zhao stopped in front of him.
Rong Yu looked up, “What? You won’t let me go again?”
“The ground is dirty.” Yan Zhao said, and added, “I remember you love cleanliness.”
“Not as dirty as you.” Rong Yu sneered, “I didn’t throw you away when you were that dirty, and now that I think about it, I kind of regret it. If I had known I would raise an unfilial son, I might as well have thrown you away earlier.”
Yan Zhao pursed his lips and squatted down in front of Rong Yu.
Rong Yu: “What are you doing? Although this place is already dirty, it’s still immoral to urinate and defecate everywhere.”
“…” Yan Zhao endured it and didn’t let his expression become too strange, “Come on, I’ll carry you on my back.”
Rong Yu was surprised, “The son suddenly wants to be filial to his father?”
Yan Zhao: “…”
Why on earth did he want to carry this person on his back?
He knew how unforgiving this person was.
“Forget it.” Yan Zhao had just stood up halfway when a heavy object suddenly pounced on his back, pushing him back to the ground.
Yan Zhao almost lost his balance, “You—”
If it weren’t for having a zombie’s body, he would probably hear the sound of his spine breaking by now!
“What do you mean ‘what’?” Rong Yu hooked his arms around his neck, his legs unapologetically wrapping around his waist. “Get moving already! Giddy up!”
A vein popped on Yan Zhao’s forehead. “Are you treating me like a horse?”
Rong Yu leaned in and whispered, “I rode you for three days; what’s wrong with me saying ‘giddy up’ once?”
Yan Zhao’s ears quickly turned red.
Right now, the last thing he wanted to remember was what happened over those three days. And yet, Rong Yu kept bringing it up, openly and boldly.
So shameless.
Yan Zhao endured it and carried Rong Yu on his back.
But he couldn’t say anything. After all, he was the other main participant, and it seemed he was the one clinging to him, dragging him back whenever he tried to escape… which made things even more indescribable.
Why exactly did he do that?
The previous version of him would only act on instinct.
Was it his instinct to treat Rong Yu like that?
___
Yan Zhao carried Rong Yu across a field of blood and debris, finally finding a small house.
Rong Yu frowned. “No, the conditions here are too poor. Pick another place.”
So Yan Zhao found another one.
“This one has a creepy decor.”
“The bed’s too hard; I can’t sleep on it.”
“The wallpaper is hideous; I’ll have nightmares looking at it…”
With all his nitpicking, Yan Zhao stopped in his tracks. “What exactly do you want?”
Rong Yu replied, “At least something on par with Shengjing Hotel.”
Yan Zhao understood now—pure nonsense. How could a tiny, backwater town have a hotel worth 100,000 yuan a night?
He tossed Rong Yu onto the bed. “We’re staying here. If you’re still picky, you can find somewhere else on your own. I’ll be in the next room.” With that, he left without looking back.
Rong Yu called after him, “Wait a second.”
He pulled a cup of instant noodles out of thin air. “Add some hot water, please.”
After eating compressed biscuits and snacks for days, he was ready for a change.
Yan Zhao frowned. “You’re really going to eat this?”
Rong Yu countered, “Haven’t I always eaten this?”
Yan Zhao replied reflexively, “You’re not supposed to…”
The Rong Yu he remembered only ate delicacies, never bothering with common food.
“What am I not supposed to do?” Rong Yu asked curiously. “This is a post-apocalyptic world with a food shortage. Does the average person have any choice?”
But you’re not an average person.
Yan Zhao considered, then recalled that Rong Yu now lived like any ordinary person, with no special powers or tools. It was his command that stripped him of everything. Although Rong Yu had somehow regained some abilities, they clearly didn’t include cooking skills.
With Rong Yu’s abilities, he could have joined any base as a top-ranked guest and received the best treatment.
However…
“If it were you, the S-City base would have a 99% chance of accepting this… this person you’re with. We really need strong individuals to stay here.”
“And the other 1%?”
“… What?”
“That 99% chance you mentioned is where they accept him to win me over. The other 1% is where they’d control me by threatening him, or worse, harm him under the guise of appeasing public opinion, or quietly kill him out of distrust.”
“…”
“So, it’s not happening.”
The things he couldn’t understand before now made sense to Yan Zhao.
Rong Yu refused a comfortable life within reach to protect him.
But… why?
Yan Zhao looked at him, saying slowly, “I thought you couldn’t bear these hardships.”
Rong Yu sighed. “I can’t, but there’s no other way—my son isn’t very filial.”
Yan Zhao didn’t understand. “What does that have to do with me?” though he knew it had everything to do with him.
He unknowingly accepted the role of a “son.”
“You once said you’d learn to cook for me,” Rong Yu asked. “Does that promise still stand?”
Learn to cook?
Did the old version of him really say such a thing???
Yan Zhao, who had never been in a kitchen since he didn’t need to eat, thought carefully. Yes, that memory seemed to exist.
But to cook???
Him, cooking for Rong Yu???
It was surreal—only slightly less surreal than waking up and discovering that he’d slept with the demon lord he had been hunting across hundreds of worlds.
“Oh, I get it. That promise doesn’t stand anymore.” Rong Yu chuckled indifferently. “You won’t even make me instant noodles now.”
At the thought, Yan Zhao’s fingers skillfully summoned water from his powers, then heated it with fire abilities, pouring it into the cup of noodles.
Yan Zhao: “…”
Is this just the instinct of this body?
Rong Yu blinked. “Using someone else’s chopsticks is unhygienic.”
What good would it do to tell him that? Did he really expect him to wash the chopsticks with his powers?
Yan Zhao, who had been thinking this, produced a pair of wooden chopsticks using his wood powers.
Yan Zhao: “…”
What exactly did he use these powers for before? Why was he so adept at this?
Rong Yu felt greatly satisfied, his earlier displeasure suddenly fading.
Good, still my obedient son.
___
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