Chapter 1: Busy Farming in the Last Days

READ THIS BEFORE YOU BEGIN: ML is obsessed with MC and a little creepy in the beginning, but there is no non-consensual stuff involved. However, such a character setting might upset some readers so, if you don’t like this kind of characters, please do not continue reading this novel. Otherwise, enjoy 🙂

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Although the Wujiang River runs through the entire city A, this small section of the road is not particularly beautiful. The sellers from the food stalls on the side of the street are ushering in the potential customers.  The noises from the diners’ chatter and the clinking of cheap beer bottles indicate that it is the busiest time of the day.

Ji Cha stood in front of the grill, watching the squid skewers releasing a burst of aroma in response to the boss’s skillful flipping movements over the charcoal stove. If you’re not reading this on h olo lo novels, the ending will be missing..

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

The spices combined to create a rich and appealing fragrance that rushed into the nasal cavity, almost made the intestines churn together from the increasing appetite.

This kind of hunger comes from the bones and is hard to suppress.

When he was being intoxicated, the squid skewers on the grill suddenly morphed into a fat and oily human leg. The aroma from the spices could not cover the rotten flesh and sores atop, and the maggots squirmed and fell together with the decayed flesh. The charcoal fire emitted a foul odor.

Even the boss, who had been agile in his grilling actions, became a living dead with muddy eyes and a dull complexion.

“This… meat… you… want… more… less?” His voice abnormally lengthened and slowed down, his eyeballs rolled around in the eye sockets and eventually fell out.

Ji Cha was so frightened that he took two steps back. When he looked up, he noticed that the surrounding landscape had changed to an unimaginable state of degradation and depression.

People who were sitting in their seats and happily eating barbeque have all turned into expressionless zombies holding various parts of the human body and devouring with relish. Blood, rancidity, and the familiar stench filled the air.

His expression ultimately relaxed. After so many years of living in hell, he was constantly being frightened, hungry, and worried whether he would die at any moment. He lived his life one day at a time after the end of the world. If you’re not reading this from the original source, there will be extra, unnecessary parts embedded throughout the chapter.

He had a lucid dream. Ji Cha woke up and smiled bitterly. He tried his best to wake himself from this nightmare, but he suddenly wondered, “Where did I fall asleep?”

In the tenth year after the end of the world, even sleep has become a luxury that must be done with much caution. If you don’t pay attention, you may be killed. Only then did he truly felt terrified, and desperately wished to wake up from this nightmare.

In the dim university dormitory room, a young man was half-rolled with a quilt on a narrow bed less than one meter wide. The worn-out air conditioner was blowing cool wind, ignoring the scorching temperature outside. Ji Cha took of his clothes and laughed like a fool.

His brows were furrowed, and he looked as if he was having a bad dream.

Unexpectedly, the phone under the pillow vibrated.

The young man’s body jumped up in haste. He opened his eyes at once, shrank to the corner of the wall subconsciously, and then scanned his surroundings with vigilance.

The phone continued to vibrate, and the air conditioner emitted a low, inaudible noise. Three of the four desks in a row opposite the bed were empty, and only one was left with a laptop on it, with the power source fleshing regularly.

The heavy blackout curtains were pulled, revealing a dim light in the gap and a faint reflection of the sun outside.

Ji Cha’s eyes widened; his shoulders gradually relaxed from the stiffness. He couldn’t believe his own eyes and stretched out his hand to touch the metal railing beside the bed. It was cold to touch by the air-conditioning wind, and there were brand-new scratch marks on the bottom. It was when a student was hurt when he accidentally rolled from his upper bunk to the ground while sleeping last year.

The phone eventually stopped vibrating, but it stubbornly rang again two seconds later.

Ji Cha grabbed the small piece of metal with a little uncertainty and awkwardness, and then he lowered his head to see the caller’s name displayed on the screen: Wang Ergou.

What exactly is going on……?

He swiped in unfamiliar movements to answer the phone, but before he even put it by his ear, there was a loud male voice speaking in a hurry, “Ji Cha, the train will leave in half an hour, don’t tell me you are still in bed sleeping!”

“Train?” Ji Cha whispered softly, with a questioning tone. Where is the train coming from?

The nation’s transportation system has been entirely paralyzed less than a month after the emergence of the virus that brought the apocalypse, and the intricate transportation network such as a train was the first to die.

Wang Qinxue, on the other end of the line, heard Ji Cha’s stunned tone, and his voice suddenly climbed an octave, and he yelled, ” Ji Cha, are you serious? You’re going to miss the train because you were sleeping? Do you no longer wish to practice? Let me tell you, it’s not that easy to get this internship. Believe it or not, if you act like this on the first day, they can kick you out without saying anything.”

What seemed to be a recollection of long-term memories slowly poured into Ji Cha’s mind. This seems to be about two months before the end of the world. He just finished the second semester of his junior year and found a very good internship with his three dormmates. The three of them went by themselves that morning and made an appointment to meet at the train station. He overslept before receiving a call from Wang Qinxue, and when rushing to the train station, he accidentally lost his phone.

“I … you go, I won’t go.” Ji Cha returned to his senses and said to Wang Qinxue who was still anxiously urging on the other end of the phone.

Is he truly lucky enough go through a rebirth, or is the current situation a dream, or has he arrived in a parallel time and space? Regardless, Ji Cha doesn’t feel that he can really be happy.

Purgatory on earth is destined to come. Who would want to go through it all over again!

“What are you talking about?” On the other end of the line, Wang Qinxue thought Ji Cha was sleep-talking, so he paused and tried to soften his tone, “no, Ji Cha, you hurry up. It’s still not too late to take a taxi, and the school is only 20 minutes away from the train station…”

“I really don’t plan to go, Ergou … you guys …” Ji Cha climbed down from the top bunk while holding his mobile phone. He wanted to tell Wang Qinxue and the others not go either, but stopped without saying anything.

He just gave up an excellent internship opportunity that others would kill to get. That was crazy enough. Now, if he asks his roommates to give up this opportunity too, he’s afraid it would not just be considered crazy.

They are all poor students, and they want to seize every opportunity to take one step further. No one will be stupid enough to listen to his nonsense.

“Are you really not coming?” Wang Qinxue’s voice became calmer; he didn’t want to force Ji Cha. “Ji Cha, it’s a pity, really.”

“Yeah, I know.” Ji Cha had walked barefoot to the window at this moment, holding the curtain, he pulled it open. The sunlight outside the window was dazzling, illuminating the narrow bedroom in an instant. Under the blue sky, the green foliage waved softly outside the window, and the cicadas cried.

Ji Cha hung up the phone and put his palm on the glass sliding door. The sliding door isolated the temperature inside and outside, but still making it slightly hot. He looked at his hands, his fingers slender and the neatly trimmed nails still pink. They didn’t have the rough and dark appearance he had been familiar with for many years.

Did the apocalypse really happen? He entered the attached toilet in the room and stood in front of the small half wall of the mirror. The reflection showed a youth with his appearance still immature, but his expression perplexed, as if he had just woken up from a sleep and had a bad nightmare.

In his dream, he and his companions went to City A for an internship, but an ordinary trip suddenly became another experience with the sudden virus outbreak that swept the world at the end of the internship. Two of his dormmates were infected with the virus, and they almost ate him and Wang Qinxue when they woke up in the middle of the night from the noises. As the capital, City A is too densely populated, and the number of people who were not infected with the virus is less than half of those infected with the virus. He and Wang Qinxue tried their best to escape from City A. They ended up joining a team and staying with the same team for ten years. Human society has almost returned to its original state in the later few years.

Such primitiveness entails not only a separation from modern technology, but also the fragmentation of the concept of modern society, revealing the raw reality within.  Everyone wants to survive, everybody wants to live, and everybody is for themselves. In addition to small groups formed by families, suspicion and mistrust inevitably exist in larger settlements.

In the modern society, distrust can lead to emotional breakdown, business failure, or hypocrisy. However, during the last days, distrust can lead to murder, brutality, and sufferings.  You live with constant fear of someone might take away your supplies and even your life. So, for self-protection, it is better to take the other person out first.

In the face of survival, the word morality is meaningless, and the bottom line has shifted even more.

Ji Cha opened the glass door and took a deep breath. The lawn downstairs was just trimmed in the morning. At this moment, the air is mixed with a faint smell of grass, making him feel peaceful.

It seems to be just a terrible dream. Ji Cha touched his stomach, he’s a little hungry, but it wasn’t the endless hunger he was familiar with.

Ji Cha turned around and walked back into the dorm. On the balcony behind him, no one saw three or four sparrows falling weakly from the sky, twitching and twisting on the lawn.

🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

Translator has something to say:

Hello, hello, hello. This is Iron Thandar. Why iron, not steel? LOL If you’re an avid C-novel reader, you’d know what I mean 😉

Anyway, I’m a new translator. I’ve never done translating before and a little intimidated. Please let me know if there’s something I need to fix or improve. Appreciate constructive criticism at any time 🙂

As of now, I don’t have an update schedule. I’m still trying to figure things out. Thank you in advance for your understanding :D:D:D