Chapter 82: I’m Worried About You
She had been in such a rush to get to the training grounds that she hadn’t even noticed she was carrying an umbrella. Now that she had a spare, she figured she might as well hand it over to them.
Duan Xiaolin adjusted his umbrella to fully shield her head from the downpour. “Why didn’t you stay inside under the eaves just now?”
“I’ve been worried about you,” she said, a faint trace of a pout appearing on her face. “I was terrified that he would hurt you.”
To her, nothing else mattered. Duan Xiaolin was a non-ability user, which meant he would be at an immediate disadvantage in a physical brawl against a top-tier ability user like Gu He. Along the way, her mind had continuously simulated horrific scenes of him getting violently injured.
She quickly guided Duan Xiaolin forward.
The main training field had completely cleared of spectators, leaving the concrete stage vacant. Ling Lang and Ying were standing motionless out in the pouring rain.
Ying nudged the dazed vanguard captain with his elbow. “Take the umbrella.”
Ling Lang blinked, his processing units finally snapping back online. He reached out to accept the handle. “Thank you.”
Pei Xiqing stood close to Duan Xiaolin’s side, offering them a warm, relieved smile. “I’m just glad everyone cleared the field without hitting a critical danger threshold.”
Ling Lang nodded flatly. “It was a minor baseline problem. A piece of trash like Gu He should have been permanently deleted from the registry winters ago. My only regret is not crushing his uniform harder today.”
Pei Xiqing tilted her head, her curiosity flaring. “What specific crime did he actually commit?”
“To secure his promotion to Major General, he deliberately orchestrated and executed the systematic massacre of an entire agricultural village,” Ying added, his voice dropping into a chilling frequency. “And our data sheets confirm it wasn’t a singular settlement.”
Pei Xiqing’s breath caught, her mind struggling to process the sheer depravity of the text. “Has your office verified the archival logs?”
“The verification is absolute.”
As the data settled in her brain, she realized it mathematically lined up with the lore. Although the pre-written novel hadn’t explicitly mapped out Gu He’s past military massacres, his behavioral patterns during his pursuit of her elder sister, Pei Yanting, had strongly hinted at his dark undercurrents. In the original text, he had routinely forced Pei Yanting into compliance, even covertly administering chemical restraints to lock down her movements. If the villain group hadn’t collapsed, the heroine would have never cleared his perimeter or secured her own survival.
She had harbored zero positive metrics for Gu He from the start.
When humans prioritize the accumulation of institutional power above all else, their moral compliance bars completely hit zero, driving them to execute actions that violate the absolute laws of nature.
The global human population in this post-apocalyptic timeline was already critically sparse. The author had noted in the world-building files that the survival rate for newborns over the next decade of the apocalypse would only cap at a mere hundred thousand.
That metric was a complete tragedy. It didn’t even equate to one ten-millionth of the active zombie population.
Yet, faced with an absolute demographic collapse, Gu He had still possessed the audacity to liquidate entire civilian cells simply to pad his record.
“The rain is intensifying,” Duan Xiaolin murmured, his large arm sliding over her shoulders to pull her shivering frame tightly against his chest. “I am routing our column back to the villa.”
Pei Xiqing nodded obediently, turning her head to wave at the two men. “Then my line is clearing the sector first. Secure your own transits, Ling Lang, Brother Ying. Accelerate your return vector before the cold rain compromises your immune systems.”
Duan Xiaolin let out a quiet, internal chuckle. Squeezing her shoulder gently, he noted, “Your own insulation layers are critically lacking today.”
“My system was dealing with a sudden panic surge,” she mumbled.
As she spoke, her fingers accidentally brushed against his palm, and her sharp eyes instantly locked onto a series of raw, bleeding lacerations scoring his knuckles. The tissue damage wasn’t structurally deep, but the dark crimson fluid smearing his fair skin was highly noticeable.
She quickly drew a clean tissue from her pocket, carefully absorbing the fluid as she wrapped the cloth around his fist. Her voice vibrated with intense worry. “Your office genuinely initialized a manual brawl against him? He commands a reinforced biological baseline from his elemental core. Refrain from executing a rash physical strike next time; delegate the kinetic combat to an active ability user. Isn’t Commander Ying permanently attached to your flank to handle these parameters?”
Ying let out a dry, helpless laugh. “Under the strategic parameters governing that platform just now, Brother Duan had to execute the strike personally. If my own uniform had initialized the assault script, the structural output would have returned a flat zero.”
“Why?”
Ying simply offered a faint, cryptic smile. He easily could have managed the logistical arrest of a dirty general, but the target had vocalized data regarding a specific civilian girl he had zero authorization to mention. If anyone was going to crack Gu He’s skull for that specific line, it had to be the Chief Judge.
Noticing the crimson fluid beginning to bleed through her makeshift tissue wrap, Pei Xiqing urged, “Let us accelerate our transit back to the quarters. Your wounds require immediate chemical sterilization.”
To her, navigating this brutal wasteland without the passive biological shield of a superpower seemed exponentially hazardous. A regular human’s skin couldn’t magically regenerate from trauma.
Ling Lang tracked her intensely worried expression, his lips pressing into a silent, complicated line.
Ying waved a gloved hand. “Safe transit.”
He watched their trailing shadows vanish down the avenue before shifting his gaze to the white-haired captain flanking his side. “Captain, my analytical models suggest a prolonged exposure to this downpour would do your current emotional volatility a world of good.”
Ling Lang shot him a lethal, sideways glance. “My system requires zero coverage from that umbrella. This downpour lacks the volume to register on my sensors.”
“Fine, remain exposed then,” Ying shrugged, pulling the black fabric entirely over his own head. “But my own line is retreating. My elemental core has registered a minor stability fluctuation over the past few shifts, leaving my baseline biology somewhat weak.”
Ling Lang marched forward two heavy paces through the rain. Then, his boots abruptly froze. Turning on his heel, he stomped straight back to Ying’s coordinate, violently snatching the umbrella handle from his grip.
Ying blinked in mock outrage. “Captain Ling Lang, what precise protocol is your uniform executing? Hey! My internal parameters are critically unstable today, yet your station casually plunders my structural protection…”
Monitoring the captain’s broad shoulders as he marched away down the lane without offering a single look back, a soft, highly amused laugh escaped Ying’s lips.
Pei Xiqing and Duan Xiaolin navigated the final leg of their return transit, passing through the grand cloistered corridor connecting the high-command residential sector. Several middle-aged women anchoring the adjacent quarters had just stepped onto their porches to harvest their drying clothes and fresh porch vegetables before the storm hit. Tracking the couple’s rapid march through the downpour, the housewives immediately huddled together to release a wave of low-frequency gossip.
“Did your husband’s reconnaissance sweep return a clean file? Which specific high executive owns that detached villa at the apex of the hill? Who is that girl?”
“The data remains completely encrypted. Gathering intelligence on that specific coordinate introduces an extreme hazard. My husband notes that if an asset mishandles the query, the high court will automatically route their timeline straight to a death warrant inside the water dungeon.”
“But they just cleared our rear parameter. Did your scanners extract a visual signature?”
“The black umbrella completely blocked my optical sensors. It’s impossible to read their faces.”
Pei Xiqing trotted up the steps, rapidly punched the biometric bypass code into the interface, and stepped beneath the dry overhang of the porch, waving her arm at the administrator. “Accelerate your entry vector!”
Duan Xiaolin calmly shook the pooling water droplets from the fabric of his umbrella before stepping through the threshold. “Understood.”
The exact millisecond the secure blast door slid open, Xiaobai lunged into the foyer like a furry torpedo.
Pei Xiqing dropped to her knees, burying her hands in the Husky’s thick coat to anchor his momentum. “Hey, good boy, our columns have safely returned! Did your internal tracking radar log an anxiety spike while I was absent?”
When she had evacuated the villa earlier, her panic meters had been running too high to manage his lead properly. The intelligent hound had clearly interpreted the severity of her aura; rather than causing a domestic disruption, he had sensibly closed the main gate himself, remaining anchored in the yard to monitor the perimeter for threats.
Xiaobai whined happily, attempting to bury his snout against her neck.
But before his excitement could cycle through a secondary run, Duan Xiaolin’s large hand calmly clipped a training lead onto his collar. The administrator’s voice was perfectly level and unbothered. “The canine’s kinetic reserves are currently running too high. I shall detail an orderly to execute a complete exercise run across the lower sectors for his system. Route your frame straight to the master bath to initialize a hot shower protocol; my own hands will manage the kitchen grid.”
Pei Xiqing’s eyes crinkled into a soft smile. “Be a good boy, Xiaobai. Comply with the training run.”
The Husky immediately dropped his belly flat against the floorboards, his ears pinning back in absolute, instant obedience under the administrator’s gaze.
By the time Duan Xiaolin had transferred the lead to the security courier at the outer gate, Pei Xiqing had already assembled a medical tray packed with chemical disinfectants, fresh gauze, and healing salves on the living room table.
She lightly patted the empty leather cushion beside her hips, signaling the man to anchor his coordinates.
Duan Xiaolin shed his wet suit jacket, rolled his crisp sleeves neatly over his forearms, and sank onto the sofa. “The skin damage lacks any structural significance.”
“The parameter registers as minor to an ability user,” she countered strictly, gently catching his large hand to stabilize the skin. “But since neither of our systems commands an advanced biological tier, our boards must treat even a microscopic laceration with maximum seriousness. Has your memory completely purged the severe disciplinary protocol your office deployed when my own skin sustained a scratch last week? My internal psychology preserves the exact same metric for your safety.”
She clearly retained a vivid log of the event inside his private office—she had merely nicked her palm with a glass fragment, and Duan Xiaolin had executed a terrifyingly intense wave of behavioral corrections against her station.
Duan Xiaolin smoothly reversed his hand, his long fingers securely locking around her wrist to pull her hand into the firm, unyielding center of his palm.
“The data sheet contains an error,” he murmured, his green eyes locking onto her face.
“Mhm?”
“Regarding the non-ability parameter.”
Pei Xiqing was entirely focused on unscrewing the antiseptic solution. Hearing his vocal track release the statement, she quickly cut across his line without looking up. “Alright, halt the philosophical assertions for a second and release my wrist so my hands can clear the wound.”
Despite her verbal directive, the iron leverage running through his long fingers remained completely static, locking her arm in place.
Duan Xiaolin paused for a brief microsecond, before his grip smoothly adapted to her positioning.
Once the antiseptic solution had neutralized the bacteria, Pei Xiqing methodically wrapped clean white gauze around his bruised knuckles. Inspecting the thick layers of linen obscuring his fist, she let out a quiet, self-deprecating laugh. “My manual wrapping technique runs a bit unpolished…”
“The execution is flawless,” he noted, his features entirely unmoving as he evaluated her work.
Pei Xiqing’s lashes fluttered, her clear eyes looking up into his face. “Shifting back to your previous data stream—what precise assertion were your lips trying to release earlier? My audio receptors failed to extract the meaning.”
Duan Xiaolin stared directly into the depths of her eyes, his deep voice dropping into a level, chillingly calm cadence. “My office is stating that our domestic cell does not consist of two ordinary humans.”
Pei Xiqing’s internal logic completely short-circuited. “What?”
A sudden, electrifying thought hit her systems. “Did your collapsed elemental core just clear its recovery script?!”
The administrator slowly shook his head. “Negative.”
“Then why did your tongue release that specific assertion? If your old superpower remains permanently locked out of the matrix…”
Before she could finalize the query, Duan Xiaolin calmly raised his free hand, his large palm dropping to rest flat against the center of her chest, right over the hidden contour of the green snake tattoo.
His voice was a low, smooth vibration in the quiet room.
“The asset commanding the active superpower is you.”
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