Ch 114: TGCIR

Li Weilan set off alone in the direction of the J City base.

In the hamster cages of Noah Base, there was now one more person. Previously, there were several ex-convicts who had admitted their guilt and repented, leaving several empty cages. Lin Xiu never expected to be forcibly brought here. In the brightly lit room, beside a treadmill-like apparatus, a group of men stood panting.

She was about to curse Li Weilan for being despicable, but the woman who brought her here coldly snorted at her. “Save your energy. This machine will measure your athletic potential. Until you complete your quota of laps for today, you won’t even get food to eat.”

“What is athletic potential?”

Lin Xiu looked at the other people panting beside the apparatus and then at the muscular bodies of the group. She couldn’t believe that this place was really like what the woman said, a power station. Who had ever seen power station staff with such muscular bodies?

This was the wasteland of the apocalypse, where food was already limited. How good must the food be to have enough energy to run laps?

This was madness.

“Li Weilan, you bastard. Let me out, I’ll tell you, Jiang Qiu sees how you’re treating me like this, he’ll definitely never rest in peace. Just wait for him to come to your bedside tonight,” Lin Xiu ranted crazily. The woman who brought her here was about to shake her head and leave, but when she heard Lin Xiu cursing Li Weilan, her expression suddenly turned sharp. “Who are you cursing? Watch your mouth.”

Everyone here had a stable life today, all thanks to Li Weilan and a lady named Shen Cheng. Lin Xiu could curse anyone, but not Mr. Li. Wasn’t this asking for trouble?

“What’s wrong, did I hit a nerve?” Lin Xiu heard her defending Li Weilan so fiercely and looked critically at the woman who brought her here. She sneered, “You’re so dignified that it’s ugly to look at. What, do you have a secret crush on Li Weilan, you ugly bitch? But he wouldn’t even look at someone as ugly as you.”

Shen Cheng, seeing this word, finally relaxed her previously furrowed brows. The reasons Lin Xiu and Li Weilan had given her before never quite made sense to her logically.

Even if Lin Xiu felt that Li Weilan had really stolen Jiang Qiu’s attention and she was no longer his priority, it still shouldn’t have driven her to want to kill him out of such deep resentment.

Unless Li Weilan mentioned that he and Jiang Qiu were originally college roommates, and Lin Xiu was their classmate. Could it be that her initial target was actually Lan Lan, but she was rejected, and Lan Lan never noticed her interest, so she grew resentful out of unrequited love?

The woman listened to Lin Xiu’s words, angrily shook her hand, and said, “This is just incomprehensible.”

Glancing at the sentence on the treadmill that displayed Lin Xiu’s sentence length and daily exercise quota, her initial anger at being slandered faded. Why bother arguing with someone who hasn’t tasted the bitterness yet? Didn’t she see the other people around, coldly watching, not even having the strength to speak a word more?

Since she was here, her only way out was to understand early on where she went wrong, sincerely repent, and then there would be hope of leaving sooner. Seeing Lin Xiu’s current state, she might not even be able to leave if she ran the treadmill into the ground.

She closed the door and left.

The room was now filled with only men. Lin Xiu, still fearful, shrank back and scanned the room with frightened eyes. With hysterical ferocity, she warned, “I’m warning you, don’t touch me. I’m Li Weilan’s classmate, entrusted to him by his good friend.”

“Save it,” as a sharp bell rang, Lin Xiu was abruptly pulled onto the treadmill. She screamed and almost fell onto the treadmill. Just then, another man beside her, looking listless, whispered softly to her, “No need to say it. We don’t have the strength or the inclination to touch women.”

“What do you mean, no strength?”

Lin Xiu soon experienced the feeling of having no strength.

This damned treadmill.

Translated on ho lo lo novels dot com.

The treadmill, from speed to steps, everything was calculated. By the time she finally stepped off the treadmill during her rest time, she found her brain had turned into a peaceful blank after prolonged exercise.

She lay on the floor like a limp fish, gasping for breath, completely unconcerned about her appearance.

Until the next bell rang, she only wished that this break could last forever.

Shen Cheng ran over to poke Li Weilan. “Lan Lan, you better not lie to me. Do you really not know Lin Xiu?”

She hesitated, unsure whether to directly admit her feelings for him.

Li Weilan frowned. “Are you saying, she has feelings for me?”

He knew.

Shen Cheng was taken aback. “Um, so you knew all along?”

Li Weilan nodded, a faint trace of annoyance between his brows. “A long time ago, during a sports event, girls would come to deliver water. Although she always brought several bottles, the icy one was always given to me first.”

Shen Cheng felt a pang of jealousy.

That was cub’s youth, a past I wasn’t part of.

Humph, feeling a little jealous, huh?

Li Weilan’s gaze shifted, and he winked at her, smiling. “But I didn’t take it. I would bring my own water, and after finishing my run, I’d rather drink at room temperature.”

Shen Cheng’s mood instantly went from cloudy to clear. “So, Lan Lan, you used to be so unresponsive.”

Li Weilan chuckled. “Not really. It’s just that if I drank something others had teased about, I’d be very troubled. It’s better not to give that chance from the beginning.”

Shen Cheng inexplicably remembered the candy she had given him at the beginning and the clothes she had exchanged for him. In the beginning, all these things she gave could be considered imposed on cub.

Her mood dampened again. If cub had a choice, would he refuse?

“But then I realized,” she heard his clear voice, but the words in his voice were unbelievably sweet, almost instantly causing her heart to bloom, “it wasn’t that the gifts were wrong, it was that the person was wrong.”

He looked in her direction, smiling. “I didn’t accept her water because I didn’t like her. I didn’t respond to her because I didn’t want to know her thoughts. I avoided embarrassment by pretending not to understand.”

So it wasn’t like she thought, because I’m straight, or because I’m hard to get, it’s just that person, she’s not the one I love.

“Then let me ask another question, okay? Don’t lie to me,” Shen Cheng suddenly said with a smile.

“Sure, I won’t lie to you.” His gaze was tender and unbelievable.

“When did you start liking me?” Shen Cheng asked curiously.

Li Weilan thought for a moment, then honestly said, “I don’t remember.”

“What?” How could he not remember?

“I don’t remember when I started liking you. Maybe it was from the moment I saw the Noah Base. Maybe it was when I got that knife in the research institute,” Li Weilan fell into thought, and finally shook his head, frowning as if encountering a very difficult question. “I can’t accurately measure when I started to have feelings for you, because it’s always been there. By the time I realized it, it had become my whole life.”

If there were no feelings, when I found out I was just a game character, maybe my worldview would collapse.

Although he didn’t say this sentence, Shen Cheng could feel his true meaning.

Her heart trembled, wishing she could—

But she couldn’t do it now.

All she could do was quietly press her lips against the screen, make a soundless kiss, and before he could say anything, Shen Cheng jumped up like a rabbit with its tail on fire. “Okay, when you arrive at the J City base, I’ll come see you. Be safe on the road and don’t go to any messy places again.”

The tone of instruction, however, was clearly that of a soft and fluffy little bun.

Li Weilan smiled silently, nodding his head, with a hint of spring water rippling in his eyes and brows. “Okay.” He had already guessed what the soft touch just now was.

For a little rabbit stretching out its neck to confirm its territory and cautiously exploring the boundaries of alertness, the best approach, of course, was not to scare her away.

And then, when the time was right, simply take the rabbit and the grass together, bring them back to the nest, and never let go again.

She rarely took the initiative to kiss, and now he guessed that she was probably blushing again. Li Weilan naturally showed tact and discretion by letting go of the topic, not harping on it any longer.

Shen Cheng breathed a slight sigh of relief and logged off.

In the game, Li Weilan smiled and touched his lips, where the soft touch seemed to linger.

The J City base was one of the largest bases in the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

As a former major city, J City’s location itself was very precarious, easy to defend and difficult to attack, perched high and overlooking the surroundings. Moreover, the city itself had ancient city walls and moats left over from ancient times. After the apocalypse, all these defense measures were rebuilt, and tall electric fences were erected, protecting only the area within the fences. This measure could block 90% of the zombies, and the remaining 10% were cleared repeatedly by superhumans to ensure the safety of the residents inside the city.

And the entrance and exit of the J City base were located at the positions of these electric fences.

Li Weilan did not enter the base directly by reporting the name of Tang Lu as per his agreement with Tang Lu. Instead, he chose to quietly line up at the entrance of the base like any other ordinary person, and rightly so, as he was not a superhuman, but an ordinary person without superpowers.

Ordinary people entering the J City base needed to undergo very strict inspections, with a daily quota limit. Only 200 people could enter each day, and those exceeding the limit would have to come back the next day to queue again.

After all, the area and food supply of the J City base were limited, and it was not possible to support as many people as came, so some selection had to be made.

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