Surviving the apocalypse with a wife and a system! [GL]

Bai Li had no intention of letting anyone get close enough to test that theory. Still, a gun in Yan Cijin’s hands would give her an extra layer of safety, and Bai Li liked that. She liked the thought of Yan Cijin having something she could rely on if Bai Li was not right there beside her.

Bai Li sighed after a moment, not out of frustration this time, but out of the strange mix of feelings that always came when she thought too much about Yan Cijin.

She really was thinking about her wife more and more these days. More than just thinking. More than just caring. It had become natural. Automatic. Like her mind drifted that way on its own whenever there was a pause. Even now, after a fight, after blood, after danger, after killing zombies and watching a man die from a fall, Bai Li still found her first real soft thought going toward Yan Cijin. That was just how it was. She could be cold to enemies, sharp in a fight, and completely without mercy when someone crossed her line, but when it came to Yan Cijin, there was always this warm spot in her chest that would not stay hidden for long.

Her gaze shifted over the courtyard again.

Bodies lay scattered around her. Zombies, mostly. Hu Xuecheng farther off. The blood had already started to make the summer air feel heavier. Heat in this kind of weather could turn the whole place foul fast. Bai Li had no intention of leaving a body like that in the open where it would start rotting, swelling, and stinking. In a place where the electricity was failing and the whole building was already on edge, a corpse left out in the heat would become a worse problem than just something unpleasant to look at. It would smell. It would attract insects. It would make the whole floor unbearable. If the residents were already stressed, the last thing she needed was for Hu Xuecheng’s body to turn the corridor and courtyard into a mess.

Bai Li pushed herself up from her crouch, brushing a bit of blood and dust from her knee as she rose.

Her expression had already gone back to calm.

The small smile she had worn while thinking about Yan Cijin faded into something more practical again, though it did not disappear completely. She still wanted to laugh a little at the image of Yan Cijin reacting to the gun. She still wanted to see her face when she handed it over. But that could wait. Right now there was work to do, and Bai Li preferred not to let a corpse sit around and rot any longer than needed.

She glanced once more at the body.

Hu Xuecheng was beyond help. Beyond comfort. Beyond any kind of dignity now. There was no point in standing there and overthinking what kind of person he had been before this. The end had already happened. The only thing left was cleaning up the mess he had made of himself. Bai Li had no interest in feeling sorry for him. He had brought a gun to a world where he did not understand what real power looked like, and he had tried to use it on the wrong woman. That was the whole story.

She moved closer to the body and reached out as if to confirm the position, then stopped, deciding there was no need to touch him more than necessary. Even dead, he was still just an annoyance. A dangerous one before, a filthy one now. The blood on the ground had begun to spread in a thin dark line, and the heat would only make the smell worse soon. Bai Li could already imagine the sour, rotten stink that would start rising if she left it there too long. She wrinkled her nose faintly at the thought. The summer heat was relentless. Nothing stayed fresh for long in this weather, and a human body left out in the open would become a problem almost immediately.

So she made up her mind.

Bai Li sighed, got up, and prepared to throw the body into the corridor to prevent it from rotting and stinking in the sweltering summer heat.

Yan Cijin was still worried, so she kept sending messages to Bai Li on WeChat one after another. She knew Bai Li might not be looking at her phone while she was outside, but she still could not stop herself from typing. Every time she sent a message, she felt a little better for a second, even if nothing came back right away. At least it meant she was trying to check. At least it meant she was not sitting there and doing nothing while Bai Li was downstairs dealing with a building full of zombies, a stupid gunman, and all the messy danger that came with this world.

At first, her messages were simple. Just asking whether Bai Li was okay, whether she had been hurt, whether she had taken care of the situation outside. Then, as time passed and Bai Li still did not reply immediately, the messages became more anxious. Yan Cijin stared at her screen with a tight look on her face, reading the last message over and over as if that might somehow force a reply to appear. She knew Bai Li was strong. She knew Bai Li was careful too. But knowing that did not make her worry any less. If anything, it made her worry more, because she knew exactly how dangerous it was outside and exactly how many things could go wrong in a few seconds.

She kept glancing toward the security door, half expecting to hear footsteps in the hallway and half expecting to hear a scream from downstairs. Every tiny noise made her body tense. The sound of someone moving a chair, the faint thump of a door closing somewhere else in the building, even the low hum of the air or the drag of someone’s slipper across the floor all made her heart jump a little. She hated that feeling.

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TO BE CONTINUED.