Chapter 47: Shu Hanqing Must Never Forget Him; He Wants Him to Find Him Again

Chapter 47: Shu Hanqing Must Never Forget Him, He Wants Him to Find Him Again

Shu Hanqing opened his eyes, and the first thing his gaze landed on was still the familiar room from before.

The memories suddenly crammed into his brain flooded him with emotion, his chest heaving violently as his eyes welled up.

Lei Zheng was holding him tightly in his sleep, gripping him hard.

They clung to each other, leaning on one another.

Shu Hanqing touched Lei Zheng's forehead, and under his fingertips was the warmth of a living person.

Not a dream.

The veins on Lei Zheng's temples bulged as he was trapped in some inescapable nightmare.

The man's thin lips twitched and pressed together nervously, pained murmurs escaping his throat as he kept repeating "no."

Shu Hanqing stayed frozen in place, feeling like all the blood in his body had turned to ice. The memories he'd just seen in the dream—of that night when Lei Zheng attacked him—weren't his own.

They were Lei Zheng's memories, sealed inside the Thunder Mark, and when the Mark was fully stripped away, both Shu Hanqing and Lei Zheng absorbed them completely.

From Lei Zheng's perspective, Shu Hanqing saw what happened after his death—Lei Zheng sat like a condemned prisoner, despairing and numb, in a room as cold as a freezer.

Not far away on the bed lay Shu Hanqing's body, his face pale as paper, his mouth and nose long still, with no breath or sign of life.

Whenever he saw the living, breathing Shu Hanqing, Lei Zheng's mind conjured up every beautiful word tied to life and vitality.

His eyes, for instance, were always clear and determined, stunningly beautiful. Though he could be a bit arrogant with others, he radiated warmth and sincerity, and deep down kept a sharp alertness like a wild animal.

But if someone just stroked his fur and treated him kindly, Shu Hanqing would easily let his guard down and trust them completely, almost absurdly naive in some ways.

But now, those lively, vivid details were gone forever.

Shu Hanqing's lips, usually as rosy as roses, were now dry and pale, like a precious flower slowly withering and rotting in someone's palm.

Lei Zheng sat there like a sinner awaiting judgment, his left hand hanging limp at his side, soaked in blood. The bright red blood flowed down his hand, pooling on the cold floor in a shocking red line.

His hands were actually quite beautiful. Though they'd held guns and fought for years, leaving hard calluses on his fingertips and palms, his fingers were long, his knuckles well-defined, and faint blue veins showed on the backs of his hands when he used them.

They were the perfect blend of beauty and strength, like the Creator's most flawless work of art. In idle moments, Shu Hanqing used to love sitting in Lei Zheng's arms, playing with his fingers.

But now, Lei Zheng had hurt his own hand horribly—ragged flesh and crimson blood mixed together, deep enough to show bone.

Lei Zheng's face was filled with unprecedented confusion and devastation. He stared at his own left hand with nervous intensity, muttering to himself, "It's this hand..."

This very hand had killed the one he loved.

Before Lei Zheng encountered the down-and-out Shu Hanqing at Central Base, he'd worked with Mu Ye's team many times on official business.

Lei Zheng actually had a fair amount of respect for Mu Ye—strong in superpower, low-key and reserved, extremely efficient, and most importantly, not greedy or short-sighted.

Naturally, Lei Zheng had seen Shu Hanqing plenty of times.

In Lei Zheng's impression, Shu Hanqing, who always stayed by Mu Ye's side, had a decent superpower level and a particularly cheerful personality. His eyes were always sparkling, like a bird that never tired, never leaving Mu Ye's side.

Whenever Shu Hanqing lifted that young, clean face to look at his captain, his gaze was so clear it held no trace of impurity.

Anyone who saw that look could hardly miss that he'd long since given his heart to someone.

Later, Lei Zheng ran into him at Central Base on a drizzling, overcast day.

Through the heavy rain on the car window, Lei Zheng saw Shu Hanqing hugging his arms tightly, huddled alone in a doorway to stay out of the rain.

He looked like a fox soaked through by the rain. His soft black hair was wet from the rain, curling and drooping, making you inexplicably feel like a pair of drooping fox ears should've sprouted from the top of his head. Pitiful.

Lei Zheng looked away, telling the driver up front he wanted to get out for a smoke. As he pushed open the car door, he grabbed a black umbrella from the back seat.

The slender figure in the distance flickered in and out of view through the curling smoke and pouring rain.

Lei Zheng narrowed his eyes, pressed two fingers together, and put out the half-smoked cigarette. He tossed it aside, opened the umbrella, and strode through the mud toward Shu Hanqing.

At that moment, Lei Zheng felt a malicious curiosity—how could Mu Ye, that captain who handled everything with meticulous care and was notoriously protective of his people, have been heartless enough to leave such a beautiful little fox stranded here all alone?

The sound of leather shoes splashing through puddles startled the person taking shelter from the rain. As soon as Lei Zheng got close, Shu Hanqing looked up at him with sudden wariness.

That face had a unique quality between youth and young adulthood—the contours of his cheeks were impossibly smooth, and his pupils were dark and moist, like ink-black jade soaked in water.

Probably recognizing a familiar face, Shu Hanqing pressed his lips together and said nothing, but the grievance in his eyes was impossible to hide no matter how hard he tried.

Lei Zheng stood under the umbrella, looking down at him for a full two seconds.

Shu Hanqing slowly lowered his arms. As he did, Lei Zheng looked down and saw the faint blue veins on his neck, along with his delicate collarbones, clearly visible.

It was a youthful allure that was lethal to Lei Zheng.

The emotion in Lei Zheng's eyes deepened to something vast as the sea in an instant, but his face stayed indifferent. He shoved the umbrella handle into Shu Hanqing's ice-cold palm, slid his other hand into his trench coat pocket, and turned to leave.

But he'd barely taken a few steps when Shu Hanqing's voice came through the rain behind him.

The voice called out to his retreating back, saying he was actually really good at fighting.

Lei Zheng smiled.

What kind of superpowered individual didn't he have under his command? Who wasn't good at fighting? Besides, this little fox had clearly already belonged to someone.

But that shout just now—it was too brave, and too sad. Lei Zheng thought to himself, if he refused now, would Shu Hanqing be really upset?

He told him to come along.

He heard footsteps behind him.

Lei Zheng himself hadn't expected to agree so easily.

Back in the car on the way home, Lei Zheng turned his head, looking at the nervous young man beside him, sneering coldly in his heart: Mu Ye, this is a treasure you lost yourself. If you regret it later, don't blame me for taking him away.

Lei Zheng had lived thirty years, and "honesty" had never been in his dictionary.

From then on, Lei Zheng hid all traces of Shu Hanqing's whereabouts and kept him right by his side.

But Shu Hanqing seemed unwilling to just rely on him, always holding back a stubborn determination to work hard in secret. Lei Zheng became sort of a half-mentor to him.

That was when Lei Zheng discovered just how much Mu Ye had spoiled Shu Hanqing. Deep down, Shu Hanqing couldn't fully accept the bloody rules of survival of the fittest in the apocalypse.

This showed just how clean the world Mu Ye had brought him into really was.

Mu Ye had actually managed to preserve for Shu Hanqing the last patch of unsullied, pure ground in this barren, rotten wasteland of the apocalypse.

Every time Shu Hanqing put on a stern face and seriously, solemnly told Lei Zheng to be wary of this or that person.

But more often than not, after saying something like that, catching Lei Zheng eyeing him with that knowing, half-smirk, Shu Hanqing would suddenly get flustered and snap, half-embarrassed, half-annoyed: "Lei Zheng... why do you always stare at me like that?"

Lei Zheng genuinely found Shu Hanqing pretty damn cute.

But when Shu Hanqing actually got mad, he was a real handful.

The first time Shu Hanqing completed a mission under him, he didn't even bother changing out of his uniform, just crashed face-first onto the couch in Lei Zheng's office and fell into a deep sleep.

When Lei Zheng pushed the door open, that's the sight that greeted him.

Shu Hanqing was sleeping soundly, half his face squished against the cushion, giving him a strangely boyish look. He was dead tired—his long, thick lashes fanned out dark and curled against his cheeks, with faint shadows smudged underneath. His cheeks were flushed from the room's heat, and that face, usually carrying a stubborn edge, now looked as docile as a pretty doll, completely harmless.

Lei Zheng stood by the desk, staring down at him for a long moment.

His gaze lingered on the side of Shu Hanqing's face, where a distinct red crease was pressed into the skin.

Lei Zheng narrowed his eyes, turned away, and took two deep breaths, but his gaze still snapped right back to Shu Hanqing's face.

The guy lying on the couch had jet-black hair, fair skin, and rosy lips. In the dim, hazy glow of the setting sun, he looked like a brush painting come to life—so exquisite it felt almost surreal.

How could someone stir up such a raw urge to possess just by lying there?

Lei Zheng scooped Shu Hanqing up and settled his head onto his thigh.

The firm muscles of his thigh suddenly registered the warmth of another body. This vulnerable, clinging dependence weirdly gave Lei Zheng a sense of power, like their souls were vibrating on the same frequency.

It didn't take long before he realized Shu Hanqing was already awake.

Shu Hanqing probably still thought he was pulling off the perfect fake-sleep act.

Lei Zheng looked down at his twitching eyelids and couldn't help but say, "Come with me."

Shu Hanqing's dark, glossy eyes flew open in an instant, wide with shock.

Lei Zheng ultimately couldn't wait for this fledgling bird to grow up and spread its wings—he wanted to hold him in his palm right then and there.

And Shu Hanqing, in some ways, was a surprisingly good student.

Lei Zheng had taught him everything he knew about shooting.

At an underground shooting range in the inner city, where gunfire thundered, Shu Hanqing stood at the firing line in a sharp black uniform, posture straight, waist slim, legs long. He held a heavy modified military firearm steady in his hands, black noise-cancelling earmuffs over his ears.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Sharp, clean gunshots rang out in rapid succession. Amid flying shell casings and gunsmoke, Shu Hanqing's wrists snapped with each shot, hitting dead center every time—every distant bullseye shredded to pieces.

The harsh white light poured down from above, casting him in a brilliant glow.

His young, lithe body was brimming with raw vitality in that moment.

As he lowered his weapon, Shu Hanqing seemed to sense something and glanced up with barely concealed pride, flashing a triumphant look.

Lei Zheng, sitting behind the glass railing upstairs, clapped his hands in approval. Shu Hanqing raised an eyebrow and shot him a smug, provocative grin.

The secret, brazen intimacy got even more heated on the ride back.

In the back seat of the armored car, the partition was firmly up, blocking out the outside world.

Shu Hanqing was forced to tilt his head back, his already rosy lips now a swollen, tempting pink. He gasped for air, his nose filled with Lei Zheng's familiar tobacco scent, mixed with a cool hint of mint.

The smell was so intoxicating it made his head swim.

Shu Hanqing looped his arms around Lei Zheng's neck and pressed, "Am I good?"

Lei Zheng stared at his thoroughly wrecked face, his deep eyes churning: "Good... baby's so good."

Shu Hanqing's whole body went weak at the word "baby." He tried to push himself up to say something else, but the next second, his belt was yanked off.

Shu Hanqing tried to grab Lei Zheng's wandering hand, but Lei Zheng caught both his wrists and pinned them behind his back with one hand. Then, the fitted uniform shirt underneath was yanked up roughly, with zero tenderness.

Shu Hanqing had meant to say, not here.

＊＊

Lei Zheng nuzzled affectionately and possessively against Shu Hanqing's flushed, overheated face.

Their scorching breaths tangled by their ears as Lei Zheng let out a wicked chuckle and coaxed in a hoarse, viciously sweet voice, "Baby's the best."

Later, things started to get turbulent. Under pressure from all sides, Lei Zheng agreed to Rong Hua's father's request and sent someone to bring Rong Hua back.

After all, Rong Hua's one-of-a-kind superpower talent was a rare weapon for the Central Base.

After several private talks, Rong Hua finally gave in and agreed to return to the base's inner circle.

But somehow, Mu Ye had shown up at the Central Base too.

Around the same time, word reached Mu Ye that Shu Hanqing had been hiding out at Lei Zheng's side for the past year, even becoming his trusted right-hand man.

Stealing someone away wasn't exactly a classy move.

Mu Ye, as expected, came knocking the moment he got the news, cutting straight to the chase: he wanted to take Shu Hanqing away.

Like hell Lei Zheng would agree to that.

"It's been this long, and I haven't chained him up or locked him away. Captain Mu, if he really wanted to see you, he'd have gone back on his own. He doesn't want to see you—don't you get that by now?"

Mu Ye left, his face dark as thunder.

During that time, Lei Zheng kept a calm front but was privately scheming on how to get rid of this clingy nuisance for good.

But what really got under his skin wasn't Mu Ye's pestering—it was that he'd known from the start that Shu Hanqing liked Mu Ye.

That thought stuck in Lei Zheng's chest like a fishbone in his throat—couldn't swallow it, couldn't pull it out.

Sure enough, a few days later, that bastard Mu Ye snuck around the base's surveillance to meet Shu Hanqing in private.

When Lei Zheng got wind of it, he sped all the way back. The moment he saw Shu Hanqing, he grabbed his wrist and asked if Mu Ye had just been there.

Shu Hanqing said, "Yeah."

The second he heard that, Lei Zheng—a man who never flinched even if the sky came crashing down—had a flicker of tension flash through his eyes. "...What did you say?"

Shu Hanqing said, "I'm not going with him. He's the one who disbanded the team in the first place."

Lei Zheng let out a long, silent breath of relief. Seeing the red mark his grip had left on Shu Hanqing's wrist, guilt hit him, and he quickly pulled the man into his arms, going along with his words: "Then it was definitely his fault."

Lei Zheng had a mischievous streak, and in the days that followed, he deliberately whispered half-truths and made-up gossip about Rong Hua and Mu Ye into Shu Hanqing's ear.

Some of the lies were full of holes, and after a while, even Lei Zheng himself almost started believing them.

But seeing the cold look on Shu Hanqing's face every time he finished, Lei Zheng thought, whatever, as long as it got the job done.

For a while after that, under strict orders from above, Lei Zheng had no choice but to personally throw himself into designing a training regimen for Rong Hua, going all out to enhance his superpower.

Because the sole purpose of the Central Base's high command in cultivating Rong Hua was to send him against the devastating Corpse King deep in the wasteland—a zombie that had mutated and evolved into something apocalyptic.

The mission was urgent, and under the relentless grind of nonstop work, Lei Zheng inevitably ended up neglecting Shu Hanqing in some ways for a while.

It was during those days when Lei Zheng was running himself ragged for Rong Hua, practically living at the training grounds, that a close friend joked, asking if Officer Lei was planning to personally mold another right-hand man who could shake the world.

Lei Zheng replied flatly, "Not even close."

He had no idea Shu Hanqing overheard those four words.

"I can't be at the beck and call of a spoiled brat like Rong Hua. The reason I'm risking my life to help him is just to repay a debt of gratitude from back in the day. The people by my side are my real treasures—how could anyone else compare?"

Lei Zheng had always known Shu Hanqing was quietly competitive, and he was well aware that Shu Hanqing had been quietly stewing over the fact that his superpower wasn't strong enough.

But he never imagined that in a moment of carelessness, Shu Hanqing would pull off a bold move and go work for his sworn enemy, Jiang Gu.

Not only that, Shu Hanqing even moved out, refusing to see him, dodging him completely.

It was only then that Lei Zheng realized, with a sinking feeling, that Shu Hanqing's temper was like a dormant beast—docile and mild when kept close and pampered, but the moment it was neglected even slightly, it would wait for the right moment and bite back hard when you least expected it.

Things quickly spiraled out of control.

Rong Hua, with his spoiled temperament, had long been at odds with his own father in private. Before long, he stirred up considerable trouble in the inner city, hinting at rebellion against the base.

Meanwhile, Jiang Gu's faction had strong objections to Rong Hua's defiance, repeatedly declaring at military and political meetings that resources shouldn't be poured into a madman who couldn't be controlled and might turn on his masters at the drop of a hat.

Caught in the middle, Lei Zheng had to deal with pressure from the higher-ups while always trying to find a way to win Shu Hanqing back. Even if he couldn't coax him, he'd entertained the wild idea of hog-tying him and hauling him home.

But now Shu Hanqing was thick as thieves with Jiang Gu, not even bothering to give him a second look.

Lei Zheng was torn between love and hate for Shu Hanqing, yet whenever he met those eyes, he couldn't utter a single harsh word, scared that pushing too hard would only hurt him again.

The infighting at the base escalated further.

Rong Hua's father, one of the base's nominal leaders, learned of his son's suspected rebellion and, to save his own skin, refused to say a word in his defense, subtly letting the military go ahead with the purge.

Lei Zheng had been shown great kindness by Rong Hua's mother when he was a kid. He was a man who valued old bonds to his core, and in his heart, old debts weighed more than mountains. He couldn't stand by and watch Rong Hua walk to his death inside the inner city.

With no other choice, he had to secretly maneuver between the major factions while everyone eyed him with suspicion, and he had people planted within the rebel ranks.

In the end, Rong Hua pulled off something that blew the lid off everything.

That madman somehow stole classified intelligence and planned to flee the base overnight with a band of loyal followers. When it was exposed, Jiang Gu got the arrest warrant right away and took charge of the purge operation.

In the dim corridor after the meeting just let out, Jiang Gu stopped, turned to look at Lei Zheng, and with a phony smile, said slowly, "For this siege, I'll have Shu Hanqing lead the team. He's been doing really well lately. By the way... Officer Lei, you wouldn't mind, would you?"

Lei Zheng replied flatly, "No."

Because he'd long since had it with this damn place!

The so-called leaders sitting in high positions at the Central Base had their thinking completely off the rails. Day in and day out, they were consumed by infighting and scheming over how to rule the masses and consolidate power in the apocalypse, while the zombies covering the mountains and fields outside, and the question of reclaiming their lost homeland, had long been forgotten.

Different paths, no common cause.

He and Jiang Gu were doomed to be mortal enemies with clashing ideals.

Lei Zheng rarely used his superpower at the base. No other reason—it was simply because his lightning level was too high and its destructive power too great. Once unleashed, it left nothing but charred remains, not even a complete corpse.

But in that siege, the violet lightning tore through the night, becoming the one thing he regretted most in his life, powerless to undo.

Because Shu Hanqing lay there quietly among the scattered corpses, silently and coldly condemning his crime, and Lei Zheng knew Jiang Gu's hand was behind it.

After Yan Shenyun flatly declared Shu Hanqing beyond saving, Lei Zheng, in a frenzy, carried him back by force.

Shu Hanqing's body had always housed a soul tougher than anyone's.

So why did Shu Hanqing still die?

After that, Lei Zheng dared not sleep. When he did, his dreams showed Shu Hanqing exactly as he was at their first meeting. But the moment he saw Lei Zheng approach, those eyes would turn murky, instantly flooding with overwhelming terror and despair.

When Lei Zheng killed Shu Hanqing with his own hands, he killed himself too.

A man like him—an ambitious schemer who had seen mountains of corpses and seas of blood in the apocalypse, whose bones were already rotten to the core—ended up kneeling on the cold ground, repentant and tormented by the slaughter he himself had wrought.

Countless times, he knelt trembling in the darkness, praying to the gods like the humblest of devotees, begging for mercy, hoping to trade his own worthless life for Shu Hanqing's.

Shu Hanqing had died so young and beautiful. He should have lived freely under the sun, not been cut down in vain by Lei Zheng's hands, filled with resentment.

But this damned apocalypse had no gods.

So Lei Zheng gambled his faint hope on the rumored crystal core of the Corpse King.

Deep down, Lei Zheng knew better than anyone that facing the Corpse King alone with his superpower depleted meant certain death.

But he went anyway.

He went to die.

Until the final moment, surrounded by zombies and about to detonate his reversed superpower, he heard a voice from the air, telling him they were merely living in a book whose ending was already written.

As long as he died, Shu Hanqing could live again.

Lei Zheng wanted nothing more.

In an instant, the world around him began to collapse and unravel violently.

That cold electronic voice told him their data was about to undergo a complete reboot. When they next opened their eyes, he wouldn't remember any of the love or hate from this life, and he was to stay away from Shu Hanqing.

In the moment his consciousness was about to be extinguished, Lei Zheng selfishly left behind one final measure, using every ounce of his soul's strength to forcibly seal his memories as a brand deep within the soul of Shu Hanqing, who was about to be reborn.

Shu Hanqing absolutely could not forget him. He wanted him to come find him again.