Chapter 29.2

Han Yanyan leapt to her feet suddenly and ran down the stairs, barefoot. Her old father, sitting in the living room downstairs reading a newspaper, got quite a fright.

“Dad! Hurry, run! It’s an earthquake! ” she exclaimed anxiously, dragging him to his feet.

“Nonsense, what earthquake?” Father Han asked, dumbfounded. “I’ve been sitting here this whole time, and I didn’t feel anything.”

Wheezing and panting, Han Yanyan looked up at the ceiling in shock. It really wasn’t shaking. There were no signs of an earthquake. But…

“It was just swaying so badly! The walls of my room cracked!” Her heart was still gripped in lingering fear. Anyone who had been lying in bed when the earth suddenly shook and big cracks opened in the wall would have been scared.

Skeptically, Father Han went upstairs with her. The room was completely still, and the wall still covered in gorgeous wallpaper, smooth, whole and normal.

Han Yanyan was at a loss for words.

“But I really… I really saw…” she murmured.

“Were you having a nightmare?” Father Han had no words. “Have you been too tired recently? M&A1 cases are quite detail-heavy, so you have to be here for awhile to keep an eye on it, but when this case is over, go abroad, find your mother, and have her take you shopping and relax. Oh, and remember to bring her back with you when you come home, or she’ll be gone all year. Hmph.”

Her old dad left sorrowfully, leaving Han Yanyan still sitting in her room alone, bewildered. How could she possibly be hallucinating?

A little while later, there was a change in her eyes.

Closing her bedroom door, she returned to the center of the room. She had a very large room. Her closet alone was the size of an ordinary person’s bedroom. After walking around the center of the room a few times, she looked up at the ceiling and shouted, “Hey! Are you there? Hello! That…! That… robotic voice!”

But the robotic voice didn’t answer. Han Yanyan shouted a few more times to no avail. The only thing that happened was her looking like a fool.

Han Yanyan summoned her resolve, pulled out a knife from the drawer, and cut her wrist. She had killed both zombies and men in the three years she had lived in the apocalypse, and her hands neither wavered nor shook. Deep red blood flowed.

In her head, she counted silently: ten, nine, eight…

“Han Yanyan! What are you doing?!”

She was only three numbers in when she heard the ear-piercing, flustered sound of the robotic voice.

A bright light flashed in Han Yanyan’s eyes. She immediately staunched her bleeding. She had often been injured during the apocalypse, and she was very good at stopping bleeding. Aside from her powers, everything she had learned in that apocalyptic world she had retained.

I should go to a dojo later to test my skills, Han Yanyan thought to herself. Why didn’t I think of that before?

Did ‘Eldest Miss Han Yanyan’ retain ‘Apocalyptic Han Yanyan”s  skills?

“What did you call me out for?” asked the robotic voice, seeing that she was not in danger and sounding rather disgruntled. No face or body appeared, only its voice floating in the air.

“Were you here all along?” she asked.

“I told you I would be monitoring the whole process,” it answered.

“Then,” she asked, her voice chilly, “Why didn’t you come out just now when I called?”

The robotic voice answered a little unnaturally. “You were doing so well. What was there for me to do?”

“I just felt an earthquake, and I saw the walls crack with my own eyes. But no one else felt it, and everything I saw disappeared afterward, ” she said. “And I just remembered that something exactly like this has happened before. I was alone in the office and felt an earthquake, but no one else did. What’s going on? ”

“Is this world… also going to collapse?” Han Yanyan, who had once experienced a world collapse, asked the ceiling.

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a collapse…” the voice said vaguely.

“Answer me clearly!” Han Yanyan ordered. She had fully assimilated the setting of ‘Eldest Miss Han’, and been the darling daughter and successor of the group for over a year. Her imposing manner had been cultivated from her very bones.

The robotic voice couldn’t help but quail a little, and let slip, “It’s not collapsing, it’s almost concluded.”

“Concluded?” she asked, startled.

Since it had already admitted the truth, the voice seemed to give up.

“Yes, the world is coming to an end. I was very surprised too,” it said. “This world isn’t difficult, but you’re a novice at this. I didn’t expect you to pick things up so quickly.”

Han Yanyan let her eyes droop before raising them again. “Is this related to Qiao Wenxing?”

“Yes. He’s the target. He’s the key.” The voice actually sounded happy. “But really, you impress me. You’re truly an excellent architect.”

“Step it up, Han Yanyan! You’re almost there! You’re so close to this world’s mission being completed! Come on, you can do it, use your true skills and give Qiao Wenxing a little excitement! If you do well, I promise you a reward!”

But Han Yanyan hung her head, deep in thought. After a while, she looked up and asked, “Will this world disappear when the mission is over?”

“Yes,” the robotic voice replied.

“Then what was the point of its existence?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“Why do you need to know?” came the perfunctory answer. “Just work hard.”

“Could the world exist alone without the mission?” she pressed.

The robotic voice didn’t answer her immediately. Han Yanyan understood. These worlds… were born only for the sake of the mission.

Suddenly, the voice became impatient. “What do you need to think so much for?” it asked rudely. “Have you forgotten why you’re here doing missions? Your life is still in my hands! Work hard and quickly get this job over with! You’ve still got serious work waiting for you. No matter how much you think, you’ll never get out of here!”

Every word it said was the truth. Han Yanyan’s life and fate were suspended in it’s hand. Who was she to interrogate and question it?

“Alright, alright, if there’s nothing else, I’m cutting off communication!” the robotic voice roared anxiously.

“Hold on a minute,” Han Yanyan stopped it. “You must have a name. What should I call you? I can’t just keep saying ‘hey you’ forever.”

“Ah,” said the voice. “My name is Leo.”

“Leo,” she smiled, “Are you younger than me?”

“Nonsense!” Leo snapped back without thinking. “I’m three times your age.”

When the words came out of his mouth he paused, shocked to have been fooled. “You…” But then he glanced at the dark gun muzzle behind him. Not daring to admit that he had been tricked by Han Yanyan, he bit the bullet and said, “Don’t prattle on so much, work hard!”

After shutting down the communication system, he turned and smiled ingratiatingly. “It looks like she’s well-rested. It’ll be over soon and then I’ll have her get down to business…”

When the room was once again devoid of Leo’s voice, Han Yanyan pressed down on her wrist wound, a sneer lifting her lips.

Sure enough, the one hiding behind that microphone… was a human.