Chapter 181

Zhang Lesi found it unbelievable. “What are you talking about?”

“Isn’t it all just coincidence?” she said. “You’ve only got a few samples, and you’re already drawing conclusions? The development zone is so far from the city center. Maybe the surviving civil servants are all somewhere else. Your conclusion doesn’t hold up at all. The sample size is too small.”

Zhao Yi knew that not everyone could understand.

He didn’t insist that Zhang Lesi do so.

Now that Zhang Lesi couldn’t see, she was bound to have fears of her own.

They had all wanted her to find an empty room on the first floor so she wouldn’t have to climb up and down the stairs. She had refused.

Because she couldn’t see, her other senses had become more sensitive. She didn’t want to go somewhere with completely unfamiliar surroundings and scents. She felt safer staying in her own home.

He rolled over and hugged her. “You’re right. I was just letting my imagination run wild.”

Zhang Lesi scoffed. “You’ve just read too many comics. If what you’re saying is true, what kind of power could do something like that? If a foreign power were really that incredible, it could just wipe out our country. Why go to all this trouble? What would be the point? Do they want our land? Our resources? War reparations? There has to be something they’re after, right?”

What Zhang Lesi said wasn’t unreasonable.

But Zhao Yi had another, even more absurd theory in mind.

If Zhang Lesi couldn’t even accept this possibility, then there was no way she would accept the even more absurd one.

He gently patted her back and coaxed her to sleep.

As for this matter, Zhao Yi felt that he could only discuss it with Gao Yuxuan.

When Gao Yuxuan saw him, he asked, “Where’s Lesi?”

“Sunbathing.” Zhao Yi glanced back.

Zhang Lesi had set up a chair and was basking in the sun. Whenever Zhao Yi was working, Zhang Lesi would sunbathe.

Her friends were all around her, so there was no need to worry.

Besides, being unable to see didn’t stop her from treating other people. She could still use her superpowers.

Gao Yuxuan asked, “What’s wrong?”

This sort of thing wasn’t suitable for discussing in broad daylight. But Zhao Yi didn’t have time at night, so he could only find whatever spare moments he could.

He told Gao Yuxuan all the information he had gathered, along with his own thoughts.

Under the sunlight, Gao Yuxuan met his eyes.

Zhao Yi waited for him to digest it all.

Unlike Zhang Lesi, Gao Yuxuan didn’t dismiss the idea outright. Instead, he followed Zhao Yi’s line of reasoning and continued extrapolating.

“To be capable of doing something on this scale, it couldn’t possibly be any Western country, let alone any of the countries around us. There are only so many countries in the world, and everyone knows what they’re like. So...”

Gao Yuxuan lowered his head and thought it through aloud. “So this is a power beyond every country on Earth. Which means it’s a power beyond this planet. Which means it can only be an extraterrestrial civilization.”

Anyone else hearing such a statement would have burst out laughing, but neither of them did.

They weren’t joking. This was a serious discussion, made in earnest and with careful consideration.

It was something Zhao Yi could only discuss with Gao Yuxuan.

With Li Jiangbing, he would probably have to spend ages explaining everything.

With Song Jingshuo, he might already be rubbing his forehead and laughing helplessly.

Only Gao Yuxuan could truly match his wavelength, their imaginations moving in sync.

Zhao Yi said, “There’s another possible direction.”

Gao Yuxuan lifted his eyes. “Dimensional reduction from a higher-dimensional world?”

Zhao Yi said, “Exactly.”

Gao Yuxuan asked, “So we’re living in a lower-dimensional world?”

“Possibly.”

“Fuck.”

Zhao Yi let out a long breath.

Gao Yuxuan put his hands on his hips and sucked air through his teeth. “Jeez. Jeez...”

He kept saying it for a while.

Zhao Yi asked, “You’re not afraid?”

Gao Yuxuan kept his hands on his hips. “Afraid of what? What’s there to be afraid of? At worst, we die. We’re damn hard to kill, anyway!”

The fear in Zhao Yi’s heart suddenly dispersed.

“True,” he said, relieved. “At worst, we die.”

They had already witnessed so many deaths and brushes with death that, when he thought about it, there really wasn’t much left to fear.

The fear he’d felt before had mostly come from the unknown. Fear born from imagining what might be hidden in the unknown was the greatest fear of all.

Now that he had realized the worst that could happen was death, he was no longer afraid.

Gao Yuxuan noticed the way he lowered his eyes.

In just a few short months, they had gone from being unfamiliar neighbors to comrades fighting side by side, and then to kindred spirits who understood one another.

Now, they were close friends.

Gao Yuxuan saw through him at a glance. “There’s something else you haven’t told me, isn’t there?”

Zhao Yi looked into the distance.

Following his gaze, Gao Yuxuan saw several people gathered around Jiang Cheng, talking to her.

“There’s something I thought Jiang Cheng would mention,” Zhao Yi said. “But she didn’t, so I don’t know whether I should bring it up.”

“If that’s the case, don’t tell anyone else. But”—Gao Yuxuan changed tack—“I’m not ‘anyone else.’ Out with it!”

Zhao Yi was silent for a long time before saying, “The sky was purple that day. Did you see it?”

“...” Gao Yuxuan asked, “Which day?”

“October fifth.”

October fifth was the day they had thought they were finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, only to suddenly plunge back into darkness.

The entire city had been rocked by massive explosions. S City had burned in a sea of flames and been reduced to ruins.

Gao Yuxuan said, “...The kind of purple sky Jiang Cheng mentioned?”

Jiang Cheng had said that the sky had turned purple during both the first and second outbreaks of the zombie virus. She had also experienced something strange, which was why she had dared to conclude, presumptuously, that the zombie virus had returned.

People could accept the idea that something was wrong with their bodies.

But when it came to omens in the sky, many people had secretly refused to believe it. It sounded too superstitious. After hearing it, they hadn’t taken it to heart.

“Holy shit! I didn’t see it!” Gao Yuxuan couldn’t believe it. “What did I miss? I actually missed it!”

“No, wait—what was I doing at the time?”

“Oh, right, right! We crashed! The car exploded!”

“Mo Li even stood up naked and flashed his junk at us!”

“Who the hell would be looking at the sky under those circumstances?”

At the time, the city had been a sea of fire, explosions going off one after another. Everyone had been injured and bleeding.

A black cat had transformed into a human.

Every single thing that happened had been enough to seize anyone’s attention.

Even so, Gao Yuxuan was still annoyed with himself for missing such an important moment. He turned his frustration on Zhao Yi instead.

“Why didn’t you tell me then? You bastard!”

He had actually kept the sight all to himself!

But Zhao Yi was completely innocent.

With so many things happening at once, how could he have gone over and grabbed Gao Yuxuan by the collar to say, “Hey, look! The sky’s turning purple!”

By the time they had finished finding a new vehicle, making Mo Li a skirt and armor to cover his nakedness, and examining him from every angle while holding him by the arms and ears, the sky had already returned to its normal overcast gray when Zhao Yi looked again.

Zhao Yi explained, “Mainly because I thought Jiang Cheng would mention it.”

But Jiang Cheng hadn’t said anything at the time, nor had she mentioned it on the road.

Then Zhao Yi found out that something had happened to Zhang Lesi. He hadn’t had the slightest capacity left to think about the color of the sky.

Jiang Cheng hadn’t brought it up after she returned, either.

Zhao Yi had assumed that there had simply been too much going on at the time, and that she would mention it later.

In the blink of an eye, it was already the end of October.

Jiang Cheng clearly had no intention of saying anything.

And everyone else, just like Gao Yuxuan, had focused only on what was happening right in front of them and had failed to notice the sky.

Only he and Jiang Cheng knew that the omen had appeared again.

“So you held it in all this time, and now that you finally couldn’t hold your shit anymore, you remembered I existed, huh?” Gao Yuxuan complained. “From now on, I’m calling you Old Turtle.”

With his hands on his hips, Gao Yuxuan squinted and ground his teeth as he glared at Jiang Cheng from a distance.

Mo Li went over.

He walked up behind Jiang Cheng and spread his arms, clearly intending to drape himself over her shoulders.

Jiang Cheng swung around and smacked him across the forehead.

Mo Li looked aggrieved.

He obediently stood off to the side.

The clothes Mo Li was wearing had been personally picked out for him by Song Jingshuo from the storeroom.

They weren’t exactly designer brands, but the outfit was well coordinated. Combined with his incredible physique, Mo Li looked exceptionally handsome.

Besides, the high school girls called Mo Li “Mo Li,” while they called Song Jingshuo “Uncle Song.”

After all, youth was the most precious thing of all.

“If I were Jiang Cheng, I wouldn’t say anything either,” Gao Yuxuan said. “Just think about what happened the first time, and what happened the second time. Then what about the third time?”

The first time, someone became a zombie for the first time in human history.

The second time, the virus erupted again. Not only did the zombies become more powerful, but humans also began to evolve.

But the third time...

The third time, Mo Li evolved into human form.

The first two incidents concerned all of humanity.

But by the third, the focus had suddenly narrowed.

To Gao Yuxuan and Zhao Yi, it didn’t seem like a big deal. As the heroine’s summoned beast, Mo Li was incredibly powerful. Continuing to evolve was simply his destiny.

But not everyone would see it that way.

There would definitely be people saying, “Could she—it—be the calamity that brought the zombies here?”

Throughout history, people who thought that way had actually been in the majority.

“Keep your mouths shut,” Gao Yuxuan said.

“You too,” Zhao Yi said.

Zhao Yi continued, “Actually... I just want to know whether our world is real.”

Compared to the human world, a comic was a lower-dimensional world, and so was a novel.

People in a higher-dimensional world could manipulate the development of a comic or novel with nothing more than a pen.

“I just want to know...” Zhao Yi said. “Am I real?”

“What a load of crap,” Gao Yuxuan said. “Reality and unreality are relative.”

“To us, a comic is fictional.”

“But to the characters in that comic, this is their ‘reality.’”

“You don’t have the ability to shatter the void and ascend to a higher-dimensional world, so just honestly be ‘real’ in this world of yours. Stop daydreaming about impossible nonsense.”

Zhao Yi gazed at Zhang Lesi in the distance.

She had her eyes closed, quietly basking in the sunlight.

She seemed to be glowing.

She was so beautiful.

Then he turned his head and looked at Gao Yuxuan.

Silly.

Loud.

But still his soulmate and his closest friend.

He had once been nothing more than a lonely otaku working away from home in a big city.

Despite being well past his youth, he was still criticized by his parents and older relatives for “watching things meant for children and playing with children’s toys.”

Every day, he went to the office and pretended to be an adult.

Then he returned home to eat alone, keeping himself company with his figurines.

But now, he had a lover, a dear friend, and a whole group of companions who trusted one another.

If some person in a higher-dimensional world was writing all this into existence, then he was grateful for every stroke of that person’s pen.

He felt happy. He felt blessed.

Why obsess over whether any of it was real?