"But you, I can't hear a single thought in your mind. Your long hair, as bright as spring, your smile dazzling." Shang Qi closed his eyes, the scene of his first meeting with Su Ling from his past life still vividly etched in his mind.
"You extended a friendly olive branch to me. Do you know how beautiful your eyes are? Clean and pure, with a clarity untainted by the world, a purity I had never seen before. Looking at you, I felt cleansed, redeemed."
"I was used to being alone, but that day, by some strange impulse, I agreed to join your team..."
To this day, Shang Qi was incredibly grateful for his past self's choice to follow Su Ling.
That choice lasted for five years.
Shang Qi stopped speaking, holding Su Ling as if she were a treasure.
"Then I am very fortunate," a soft voice emerged from the darkness.
Following that, the sound of rustling fabric could be heard.
Su Ling opened her eyes in the darkness, lying in Shang Qi's arms, looking at him at close range. "I often feel fortunate, fortunate that I was struck by your beauty and invited you to join our team, to face the apocalypse alongside us for five years."
Even though she hadn't had the chance to confess her feelings to him before he left.
But fortunately, heaven had been kind, allowing them another chance.
Shang Qi had thought Su Ling was deeply asleep from her drunkenness, but he didn't expect her to have been listening to him the whole time. He buried his head in her warm neck and chuckled softly, "I'm thankful for the self I was back then, for catching the olive branch you threw, and not missing out on my future destiny."
Holding Su Ling, Shang Qi buried his head in her neck, content and relieved. "I don't have many ambitions. If I do, it's to find a pure land with Ah Ling in this apocalypse, to spend the rest of our lives together, and to live deeply in this heartless post-apocalyptic world."
His hands were not clean, stained with too much bloodshed and slaughter. Therefore, he would atone by helping survivors in need.
He atoned so that the sins he carried would not implicate or affect his Ah Ling. She was so pure, and he should be pure as well, accompanying her.
Su Ling stirred. She reached out her hand, encircling Shang Qi's neck, her fingers stroking his hair. "Okay, that's what we'll do."
"But before that, perhaps we need to go see your elder brother," Su Ling said, her head resting on the sofa cushion. She stroked Shang Qi's hair and looked at the ceiling of the control room. "If he couldn't find you and 'terminate' you, he absolutely won't give up."
"Instead of constantly defending ourselves and waiting for him to find us, why don't we go find him ourselves?"
As for whether to kill him or not, she would leave it entirely up to Shang Qi.
Shang Qi lifted his head from Su Ling's neck. He looked at her still rosy face and reached out to playfully tap her nose. "I'll handle it. This matter is too dirty, and Ah Ling shouldn't get involved in this mess with me."
It was his family business, extremely messy.
His Ah Ling, he thought, shouldn't see how dirty his family was.
Su Ling held Shang Qi tightly. She looked at him. "I might be very pathetic. After experiencing my past life, I'm not greedy. I just want to stay with Shang Qi and Sister Na and the others. Wherever Shang Qi goes, I go."
"In your past life, you were unwilling to take me with you, leaving me behind, which led to our subsequent..." Su Ling didn't finish. She closed her mouth, pressing her lips together, and simply held Shang Qi tighter.
The tragedy of her past life, though over, still sent shivers down her spine whenever she recalled it.
"Okay, we'll go together," Shang Qi said. He picked Su Ling up, placed a soft sofa cushion behind her, and then put her down again. He leaned down, closing the distance between them, their foreheads touching. "After we establish a new base for Uncle Zhang and the others, we'll go, alright?"