Chapter 20

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Seeing that terrified look on Luo Xiyun’s face, Chen Xu’s hands froze. After pausing for a second, he placed the coat that he just took off on the table, pulled out the chair beneath it, and sat down. He said, “Have a seat, I have something to discuss with you.”

Luo Xiyun was somewhat befuddled by his attitude. She fumbled her hands along her bed and sat down. After a moment’s silence, whispering, she asked, “What’s the matter?”

Chen Xu’s eyes scanned the room. This was the first time he had entered this room after moving into the villa. The room was clean and tidy, and at the same time, saturated with a faint fragrance.

Seeing that he was not talking but looking around, Luo Xiyun felt nervous as if she was waiting to stand for trial. It made her very uncomfortable. When she could stand it no longer and was about to talk, Chen Xu finally spoke, “The heater in my room is broken.”

Heater, broken?

She looked at him dumbfounded with her mouth half-opened.

Chen Xu spread his hands and said, “It is some minus tens of degrees outside. There’s no way I can sleep without a heater, so…”

So?

Luo Xiyun was still staring at him blankly and had a very bad feeling.

“I’ve decided to move in here.”

When she heard this sentence, she felt only the numbness in her scalp and was stunned for a few seconds before she could understand what it meant. At a loss for words, she stuttered, “B-but…”

Chen Xu had already stood up and said, “I’m going to go get my quilt.”

When he walked out of Luo Xiyun’s room, a sneer spread across on his face.

He had wanted to rage at her just now, but based on that guilty look of hers, if he were to snap, she might have cried on the spot. If that happened, it would seem like he was bullying her.

But letting her go just like that and forcing her to suffer in silence? Of course, he wouldn’t let it be that easy either. So, he had thought of this type of revenge.

For a neat freak like her, she would quickly be driven into insanity if she were to live in the same room as him.

“You ruin my pleasure, I grant you misery.”

Having thought about that, he returned to his room, unplugged the heater, rolled up his pillow and quilt, and returned to Luo Xiyun’s room. She was still sitting by the bed as if she were oblivious to what was going on.

He shut the door with his hand, laid out a quilt on the ground, positioned his pillow nicely, laid down, and tucked himself into the quilt. When he reached his hands out to turn off the lamp, he suddenly remembered Luo Xiyun who was still sitting beside the bed. He looked up and asked, “Are you not going to sleep yet? I’m going to turn off the lights.”

“Uhm, okay…” Luo Xiyun responded and moved.

Following a tap, the lights went out, and the room fell into darkness.

It was pitch black. Since he was young, Chen Xu had been a little afraid of darkness. He felt very unaccustomed to such an environment. After coming into this dream world, he would leave a night light on whenever he went to sleep at night.

This night was an exception. Perhaps because he couldn’t see her, his other senses were heightened. He could even hear Luo Xiyun’s slightly strained breathing.

Lying down over there and thinking about her all tensed up, he closed his eyes in bliss. As usual, he quickly fell asleep.

……

On the second day, Chen Xu woke up naturally. When he opened his eyes, the room was still dark. He reached for his cell phone under his pillow and looked at the time. It was 5:09 in the morning.

He was already wide awake. Yet, he doesn’t want to leave his warm blanket immediately.

Luo Xiyun was probably still sleeping. He could hear her slow breathing.

“What happens to this dream world when I’m asleep?” he thought out of the blue. In this world, he never dreamed. It seemed that night would go by in a flash when he closed and opened his eyes. He couldn’t feel the passing of time in its entirety.

He got up eventually after staying in bed for a while. He tidied his quilt and left the room.

It was not easy to sustain a living with water and electricity in this empty world. A lot of work had to be done.

He first went to the basement and topped off the two generators with oil. Then, he filled the water tank next to them. Now that it was freezing cold, keeping the water in the barrel from freezing was already quite troublesome by itself.

It took him two hours to finish these trivial matters, which drained him. His whole body was covered in sweat.

At this time, the sky was already bright. It was a rare day of good weather. He carried a rectangular box and walked to an open space several hundred meters away from the villa.

At one end of the field, there was a pile of glass bottle shards. He took ten intact bottles and laid them on the ground. Moving away for more than ten meters, he opened the rectangular box. There were two guns inside.

He took out a pistol, loaded it with bullets, adjusted his stance, aimed, and fired.

Bam bam bam…

He fired all the bullets in the pistol after stretching and swinging his hands, which were slightly numbed by the vibration. Looking at six empty bottles that were still intact, he shook his head slightly. He was not satisfied with his performance.

In continuous firing, recoil had too great of an influence on accuracy. When he came to the last few shots, the muzzle had already adjusted to nobody knows where.

In the past few months, he had been practicing with guns almost every morning, firing hundreds of bullets a day. His accuracy was already pretty good. In a case like this with distances at more than ten meters, even if he didn’t hit the target with all the bullets, he would normally still have at least a 90% hit rate accuracy.

He was also lucky to have found a firearm storehouse a while back, so he could use a lot of bullets and pull the trigger to his heart’s content.

Of course, no matter how good he had gotten at shooting, it would have no use at all after he returned to the real world. He was not a policeman and might very well not get to touch a gun ever again in his life.

He practiced with guns purely out of interest. In this post-apocalyptic world deprived of entertainment, this was practically his only source of enjoyment.

An hour later, when he had depleted all the bullets he’d brought with him, he reluctantly put the gun back into the box and walked towards the villa.

Back in the villa, Luo Xiyun did not come out to greet him this time but was in the kitchen. He snickered in his heart, not caring at all. After changing his clothes, he walked out to the dining table.

As soon as he sat down, Luo Xiyun came out with breakfast.

Seeing her bloodshot eyes and the slightly swollen bags beneath them, Chen Xu asked deliberately, “Did you sleep well last night? I might snore when I sleep. I didn’t bother you, did I?”

Then, he saw her spoon pause for a significant amount of time in midair.

After a few seconds, she asked, “Can your heater be fixed today?”

Chen Xu shook his head and said, “I think it’s unrepairable.”

She paused for another two seconds, and after filling up a bowl of porridge, she said, “Clear up the room at the corner then.”

There was a total of three rooms on this floor. Aside from the two they were living in, there was another one that had been made a utility room.

Chen Xu looked at her and nodded. He said, “Okay, but I’m a bit tired. I want to take a two-day break. Let’s wait another two days.”

Luo Xiyun said with a blank expression, “It’s fine, I can clean it up for you.”