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Chapter 20 — Gift
Li Chen was having a nightmare.
The moment Mo Chu realized it, she also realized she had fallen into a misconception.
The Li Chen in front of her was not the slaughtering demon god from her previous life. In the beginning, he had simply acted out of kindness and responsibility—rescuing an entire rock climbing gym. Only then did he suffer betrayal from his so-called brothers, abandonment by the very people he saved, and a desperate struggle through a horde of zombies. He barely survived.
For an ordinary person, whether they could even live through all that was uncertain.
He wasn’t the ruthless killing machine who would later emerge after catastrophe—powerful, cold, and soaked in blood. Right now, he was just an ordinary person. So why had she assumed he wouldn’t feel fear? Why had she assumed he wouldn’t be shaken?
In the end, she had unconsciously been treating him as the Li Chen of her previous life.
But for ordinary people, fear was instinct.
In her past life, countless people hadn’t died to disasters or zombies. They had survived everything fate threw at them, only to collapse in the end under the weight of their own fear. Even she herself had spent half a year plagued by nightmares, too afraid to fall asleep night after night.
So of course Li Chen would be afraid too.
She had simply ignored that fact.
Mo Chu pressed her lips together. She didn’t pull her hand free from his tightly clasped grip. Instead, she quietly moved to the front seat, crouching beside him.
“Li Chen,” she called softly.
He didn’t respond.
He was clearly trapped in the nightmare. Normally so alert, he didn’t react at all to her voice, his eyes still shut tight, his expression twisted in pain and struggle.
Her voice didn’t wake him—but it did wake Xiao Jin. The little creature opened its eyes, immediately alert, about to bark before Mo Chu quickly silenced it.
Xiao Jin tilted its head in confusion, looking between her and Li Chen.
Mo Chu glanced down at her hand still firmly held in his, then called his name again, her voice soft as silk.
“Li Chen.”
This time, something seemed to shift.
His furrowed brows slowly relaxed, and the pained expression on his face eased slightly.
Mo Chu let out a small breath of relief.
Then she heard him murmur, almost like a whisper drifting from a dream.
“…Don’t leave me.”
Mo Chu froze.
Don’t leave me?
What… was he afraid of in his dream?
Her brows tightened slightly. She tried, carefully, to withdraw her hand just a little.
But that small movement triggered him again.
His grip tightened instinctively, as if refusing to let go even in sleep.
Mo Chu suddenly thought back to the warehouse in Lin City—when he had been unconscious that night, he had also held her hand so tightly it hurt, refusing to let go.
What was he afraid of?
Was he afraid of being abandoned by others… or afraid of being abandoned by her?
The thought only flickered for a moment before she pushed it away.
No. She couldn’t overthink it.
The Li Chen of this life was not the Li Chen of the past life. They were different.
After a moment of silence, she leaned closer and whispered, just like she had in the warehouse before:
“I won’t leave you.”
But this time, the promise didn’t seem to reach him.
He only held on tighter, as if even death couldn’t make him let go.
Mo Chu stared at his profile for a while, then finally sighed.
She climbed back into the back seat, awkwardly settling into a position where their hands were still clasped.
Forget it.
Sleep mattered more.
If she didn’t rest now, she wouldn’t have the energy to travel tomorrow.
So she closed her eyes.
Strangely, although she had no intention of sleeping, drowsiness still crept in almost immediately—even with her hand still tightly held by him.
Xiao Jin, who had been shushed into silence, looked between the two of them, then at their joined hands. It let out a soft whine and curled up to sleep as well.
—
The next morning, Li Chen woke up.
The moment he opened his eyes, he realized the entire car was empty—except for him.
His gaze immediately snapped toward the back seat, searching instinctively, but there was no sign of the person he expected to see.
A sharp, uncontrollable panic rose in his chest. He scanned the empty vehicle, suddenly unsettled.
But he quickly forced himself to calm down.
Mo Chu’s backpack was still there. Xiao Jin was gone as well. And outside, daylight had already fully broken.
He paused.
Then he let out a self-deprecating breath.
She must have taken Xiao Jin out.
He had simply overslept.
As his tension eased, he suddenly realized his head was heavy and dull.
It felt like he hadn’t slept at all, even though he clearly had.
He pressed a hand to his forehead. As his hand moved across his line of sight, he paused slightly.
His fingers were long and strong—but oddly unfamiliar, like something was missing.
He flexed them once.
A faint sense of emptiness lingered in his chest, though he couldn’t explain why.
Li Chen closed his eyes, suppressing the dizziness, then pushed open the car door and stepped out.
The moment he did, he saw her.
Mo Chu was running back along the riverbank under the morning sun, Xiao Jin circling her feet happily.
Her clothes were slightly damp, her ponytail loosely undone, hair half-wet and scattered down her back. She must have just bathed.
When she saw him, her eyes lit up.
“Li Chen.”
He couldn’t help but smile.
He reached into the car and took out a clean cloth, originally intending to wipe her hair for her—but halfway through, he stopped himself.
Instead, he simply handed it to her.
“Dry your hair,” he said softly.
Mo Chu didn’t notice his hesitation. She took it casually and ruffled her hair a few times before handing it back.
“It’s fine now.”
Then she smiled at him.
“I even counted the time while running back, wondering when you’d wake up. Didn’t expect you’d wake right on cue.”
“I overslept,” he said. “It delayed our travel.”
Mo Chu shook her head.
“What travel? We leave when we leave. It doesn’t matter.”
Then, suddenly, she held something behind her back out in front of him.
A crystal lay in her palm, glimmering faintly in the morning light.
Li Chen’s eyes widened slightly.
“This is the crystal core from that level-two zombie yesterday,” she said. “I already have one. This one is yours. You’ll need it when you break through to the second level.”
Li Chen stared at it.
Something unfamiliar stirred in his chest again—something like uncertainty, or hesitation.
“…For me?” he asked.
Mo Chu laughed lightly.
“How can you say ‘for you’? You contributed the most yesterday.”
For some reason, those words—not a gift—made something faintly sink in his chest.
A quiet, inexplicable disappointment.
He looked at her for a moment, then shook his head.
“You keep it. I don’t—”
Before he could finish, she had already shoved it into his hand.
“Take it. What’s yours is yours.”
Then she added calmly, almost matter-of-fact:
“Besides, I’m only a support-type ability user right now. No matter how strong I get, it’s limited. Only if both of us become stronger will we have a better chance of survival.”
Li Chen looked down at the crystal in his hand.
His fingers tightened around it.
“…Alright.”
—
They didn’t leave immediately.
Mo Chu wanted Xiao Jin to absorb its first crystal core before heading to the next survivor zone.
She wasn’t sure how to help an animal absorb a crystal core. In her past life, she had never even heard of anyone raising mutated animals.
Before she could figure it out, Li Chen had already casually taken out a level-one crystal core and tossed it in front of Xiao Jin.
Mo Chu hurried to stop him, but he caught her wrist.
“Animals are more sensitive to power than humans,” he said calmly. “You don’t need to overthink it. Let it try on its own.”
Xiao Jin sniffed the crystal cautiously, then slowly picked it up and swallowed it whole.
Mo Chu: “!”
It actually… ate it?
Her eyes widened in shock.
Although crystals could technically be absorbed by ingestion, this method was unstable and risky. One wrong move and it couldn’t even be interrupted.
She stared tensely.
Xiao Jin trembled, collapsed briefly, then struggled back up after a few seconds, coughing hard.
Then—it stabilized.
It had succeeded.
Mo Chu finally relaxed, smiling as she crouched down to pat its head, rewarding it with a sausage.
Xiao Jin wagged its tail wildly, clearly proud of itself.
Li Chen stood behind her, silent for a long moment.
Then, as she stood up, he spoke.
“Mo Chu. I’m going to absorb a second crystal core.”
