RIACMET chapter 222

 

As the saying goes, “Whoever waves first gets into trouble.” Jiang Nian often experienced that—but the intensity of the waving varied each time.

Generally, the more reckless the beginning, the worse the ending. Thankfully, they had all developed their physical fitness.

Unbearable tremors made people lose their minds. Meanwhile, the deep anxiety, fear, and irreparable regret from the previous life were soothed by the impact of physical and emotional union.

“…”

“Niannian?”

After everything settled down, Cheng Jing carried the silent man back to bed from the bathroom and kissed him.

“If you’re tired, go ahead and sleep. We’ll talk about the rest tomorrow.”

“It’s fine, really. Nothing happened.”

Jiang Nian answered in a muffled voice, lowering his head slightly to let Cheng Jing towel his hair. Then he pouted his lips.

“It felt great, especially since Brother Jing’s skills are so good now.”

Cheng Jing wrapped his arms around Jiang Nian and looked at the kiss marks on his neck from behind, smiling.

“As long as you liked it.”

Having an honest and considerate partner really did make daily life so much easier.

“Yeah, I love Brother Jing the most.”

Jiang Nian pinched his arm. He knew this guy might be pretending to be quiet, but he was probably thrilled inside.

He had once said that Brother Jing’s skills weren’t great at first, which hurt the man’s pride. Now that he was doing well, he had to praise him twice as much.

After drying his hair, Jiang Nian found a comfortable position and curled up in Cheng Jing’s arms. At around eleven o’clock, he sent a group message to their teammates and friends saying that Brother Jing was awake. Then, he put down his phone, looked up, and asked,

“Brother Jing, tell me about your dream.”

Brother Jing had gained memories of his past life, and now their memories were synchronized.

“Yeah.”

Cheng Jing leaned against the headboard and laced his fingers together as he recounted everything he’d seen in his dream.

As they’d guessed, he had awakened his superpowers in his previous life, informed Liang Yunhao, and left for Beicheng. He quit his job in Qingyun City and gave Zhao Lei and the others time off.

Since they couldn’t contact the “Experimental Research Base for Special Phenomena,” where the accident had occurred, they were examined temporarily at a research institute in Taipei City.

After the apocalypse began, Cheng Jing immediately joined Base S. However, all of his colleagues became part of the first wave of zombies after getting caught in the rain while on vacation.

The situation was chaotic and urgent. As someone with high-level superpowers, he had too many responsibilities and couldn’t spare the time, so he never returned to Qingyun City.

While participating in rescues, he constantly asked about Jiang Nian in Taipei City.

However, the distance was too great, and communication was severely cut off. In his previous life, like most people, Cheng Jing couldn’t take care of everything—not his parents, not his family, and not Jiang Nian.

Once the extreme cold weather passed, the base’s rescue teams began searching the country for survivors. That’s when he was finally able to leave Taipei and Base S, and he tried to locate Jiang Nian during rescue missions.

However, by that time, Xia Weiwei and her father, as well as Chen Yue’s family, had already learned about Jiang Nian’s superpowers. They used their influence to hide him, employing both soft and hard tactics, plus emotional blackmail, to imprison him at Base Z.

“…”

With the privileges that Xia Weiwei’s family held in their previous lives, plus the backing of Base S, they practically ruled Base Z, and Jiang Nian, whose powers weren’t offensive, never had a chance to escape. From the moment he tried to save Chen Yue out of kindness on the road, tragedy began.

When the apocalypse hit, Jiang Nian was with Chen Yue and the others. Thanks to Xia Weiwei’s connections, they survived the extreme cold despite their limited supplies. Under those conditions, it was only natural that he’d want to save Chen Yue.

But what followed was human nature at its worst.

It wasn’t until the zombie tide forced Base Z to retreat and collapse — and with the intel gathered by Yang Kai and Liang Yunhao — that Cheng Jing finally learned the truth.

After finding out, however, Yang Kai, Liang Yunhao, and their families were placed under house arrest at the base.

Cheng Jing refused all reconciliation attempts from Base S and contacted Base Nancheng to rescue his friends and family.

With Xiaoya’s help, he extracted Jiang Nian’s crystal core from Xia Weiwei, a man-made dual-attribute mutant. He brought Xia Weiwei and Chen Yue’s family back to Qingyun City, where he imprisoned them for revenge.

After torturing Xia Weiwei and the others until they were beyond hope of survival, Cheng Jing took Jiang Nian and, with Xiaoya’s help, returned to Base S, where they all perished.

Before heading to Base S, Xiaoya said that after helping them, she would destroy herself.

He didn’t see what happened afterward, but the events were connected to something Chen Yue had once said.

Xiaoya had exposed the zombie king’s identity and brought news that Base S had been destroyed back to Qingyun City. This wiped out the last shred of hope for rescue, and then she brutally killed them and blew herself up.

“Oh…”

Cheng Jing sighed, turned his head, and kissed the person in his arms.

“The events involving us in our past lives were basically just as Chen Yue said, but the situation with Xiaoya’s family turned out very differently from how we handled things in this life.”

Jiang Nian nodded and asked,

“In the previous life, was Xiaoya infected by her mother? What happened to her parents afterward?”

“No… She was expelled from a temporary shelter and became infected after that incident…”

Cheng Jing shook his head, pausing mid-sentence as he recalled things he’d investigated in his past life and what Xiaoya had personally told him. After a long moment of thought, he continued:

“In her previous life, Xiaoya was under her mother’s control. She overused her superpowers, causing a premature breakthrough and mental instability. Then, she killed her parents and turned herself in.”

She killed her father, who had turned into a zombie, and her mother, who had gone mad, with her own hands. She tried to turn herself in, but she was driven out of the relocation site. Ultimately, she became infected, mutated, and rose to become the zombie king of Qingyun City.

She became obsessed with getting revenge on humanity. However, after helping him, she felt relieved and blew herself up, wiping out the largest zombie horde in Qingyun City.

“Huh?”

Jiang Nian’s eyes widened in shock.

“She…”

He had imagined many scenarios surrounding the “Room 1805” incident in their past lives, but he never expected it to turn out this way. This revelation was even more shocking than learning that Xiaoya had become a zombie king.