Chapter 71: No Taste

Chapter 71: No Taste

Only when Shu Hanqing softly said "okay" did Yan Shenyun's taut nerves finally relax completely, allowing him to sink into a deep sleep with peace of mind.

Yan Shenyun had always been a loner.

He held immense power and was stunningly brilliant.

Perhaps having gone through a life-and-death experience together, the distance between them had quietly narrowed, bit by bit.

Shu Hanqing no longer deliberately avoided looking at Yan Shenyun as he had when he first arrived; occasionally, his gaze would drift toward the man absorbed in his data. He would remind him to eat and rest on schedule.

Sometimes Yan Shenyun was too busy, waving his hand to indicate "later," not even having a moment to pick up his chopsticks. Shu Hanqing couldn't stand it. Knowing that "later" could mean who-knows-how-long, he'd pick up a bite of rice with his chopsticks and feed it to him. Yan Shenyun's gaze shifted half an inch from the research report in front of him, landing on Shu Hanqing's face, and he actually cooperatively opened his mouth.

Sang Mai had witnessed this bizarre scene once.

His eyes nearly bulged out of his head, and he asked Shu Hanqing in disbelief: "Is Professor Yan unable to move on his own?"

Shu Hanqing: "...I told him to eat on time, but he wouldn't listen, so I had no choice but to do it this way."

Sang Mai's expression instantly turned extremely complicated.

Until the apocalyptic virus broke out without warning, and cities across the country fell one after another.

Shu Hanqing remembered to his dying day the moment the lab collapsed and fell apart—the alarm blaring through the air, their entire guard team fighting desperately to break out with Yan Shenyun, corpses littering the road along the way. Far too many people died.

When they finally reached a safe spot, amidst the rubble, Yan Shenyun sat on the ground with his back against a brick wall, one long leg bent, one hand casually resting on his knee.

Dried crimson blood still lingered on his face, and his eyes were hollow and vacant.

"Professor," Shu Hanqing called out to him in a low voice.

Yan Shenyun looked up, a little dazed. A bottle of water was offered before him. He stared at the bottle, motionless, for several seconds before stiffly raising his hand to take it.

Shu Hanqing casually twisted the cap off for him and handed it to him.

Yan Shenyun asked hoarsely, "Are you thirsty?"

Shu Hanqing gently shook his head. "There's still a day's journey to the real shelter. We've undergone rigorous wilderness survival training—we can hold out. You drink, Professor."

The two exchanged a look in the air thick with smoke and gunpowder, but Yan Shenyun stubbornly reached out and pressed the bottle directly to Shu Hanqing's dry, cracked, pale lips: "...You drink first."

A strange expression flickered across Shu Hanqing's face, but under Yan Shenyun's gaze, he obediently took a small sip.

The air grew unnervingly quiet.

Behind them lay a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, yet the two of them said not another word.

To safely escort Yan Shenyun to the secure base, Shu Hanqing suffered unimaginable hardships along the way, with people dying continuously on the road.

In the dead of night, with the biting wind cutting through them, Yan Shenyun leaned heavily against Shu Hanqing's shoulder, curled up in a damp, crumbling corner, and drifted off without realizing it.

They crossed thousands of miles across that zombie-overrun land, desperately searching for that faint, elusive thread of hope.

Until the modified vehicle finally roared to a halt at the last safe zone.

The moment the vehicle stopped, Shu Hanqing jumped out of the cargo area and hurried back in three quick steps, reached out both hands to firmly grasp Yan Shenyun's ice-cold hands, and helped him down from the vehicle.

After that, they each went their separate ways, onto completely different battlefronts.

Yan Shenyun stayed in the most heavily guarded rear, working day and night on various reagents.

Yan Shenyun said to Shu Hanqing, "...You have to survive."

Shu Hanqing nodded.

It was then that the supremely proud Yan Shenyun finally realized just how insignificant he truly was—no matter how hard he fought, he couldn't grasp even a single thread of fate's turning point, forced to watch helplessly as countless people around him died one after another, watching how, in this hopeless apocalypse, all of humanity's futile resistance turned into a mocking joke.

This was utterly different from the later timeline, where time was reset multiple times and superpower catalysts were rapidly manufactured, creating a scene of thriving prosperity.

In that original timeline, the true antidote had cost the blood and lives of countless top-tier researchers. They extracted live genes bit by bit from deeply infected, violently mutated mutants, enduring over a year of long, desperate time before it was finally developed to maturity.

Shu Hanqing and the other battle-hardened soldiers with exceptional physiques naturally became the first batch of clinical trial subjects.

That was their first meeting in a long time.

When Yan Shenyun saw Shu Hanqing, a smile broke across his perpetually expressionless face.

Shu Hanqing stepped forward, rolled up his sleeve, and exposed his arm.

"Professor..." Shu Hanqing looked at him, a hint of familiar teasing in his bright, clear eyes. "When the needle goes in, can you be a little gentler?"

Someone nearby tried to step forward and explain that Yan Shenyun didn't give people injections.

Yan Shenyun nodded.

He picked up the syringe beside him, disinfected Shu Hanqing's arm, and injected the agent into his vein.

At that time, Yan Shenyun could never have predicted that these light-colored pupils, gazing at him with such clear warmth, would appear in both his nightmares and sweet dreams far into the future, becoming his obsession.

Then waves of superpowered individuals emerged, and catalysts came into being.

After successfully evolving top-tier superpowers, Shu Hanqing was assigned to the most dangerous frontline combat units, so busy he barely had a moment to breathe.

Until one rare break period came around.

That day, Shu Hanqing brought a fist-sized, high-purity, advanced crystal core to Yan Shenyun's lab.

No matter how the world changed, no matter how many times it reset, in the long, desperate years ahead, Yan Shenyun would always recall that scene with crystal clarity.

A young man as blazing and vibrant as the scorching sun held that pure crystal core, which refracted brilliant, diamond-like light. His eyes and brows brimmed with radiant smiles as he solemnly presented it to him: "...This is for you."

In that instant, Yan Shenyun felt as though his soul was floating weightlessly on clouds, unable to find solid ground.

He steadied himself and asked Shu Hanqing quietly why he had suddenly come here.

Shu Hanqing raised an eyebrow and said that during their last high-risk mission, they had happened to hunt down a mutant beast, and it yielded this rare crystal core of astonishing purity.

It was Shu Hanqing's spoils of war.

He had made a special trip to bring it to Yan Shenyun for his research.

Yan Shenyun held the crystal core, his lips moving slightly as he said a restrained thank you. At the same time, emotions he could barely suppress surged within him. He had just opened his mouth to ask Shu Hanqing to stay for a simple meal that evening when Shi Lei's rough, booming voice suddenly rang out from the end of the corridor.

"Xiao Wu! Are you done talking? Let's go! Let's go!"

Shu Hanqing turned at the sound, quickly gave Yan Shenyun an apologetic wave, and said in a low voice that they might have an emergency assembly soon, so he had to go.

With that, he turned and ran off toward the other end of the corridor without a second thought, not giving Yan Shenyun a chance to stop him.

The sounds of shoving and teasing grew fainter as they moved away, then vanished abruptly at the end of the hallway.

Yan Shenyun clutched the crystal core in his palm, watching as Shi Lei casually hooked an arm around Shu Hanqing's neck.

Shu Hanqing, uncomfortable from the rough force, struggled a bit, but Shi Lei only tightened his grip. Shu Hanqing then gave up helplessly, saying, "Let go," and raised his hands in a playful surrender.

Yan Shenyun pressed his lips together slightly. After awakening his terrifying psychic powers, his hearing had become several times sharper than an average person's.

From around the corner of the corridor, Shi Lei's gruff voice drifted over faintly: "Weren't you always avoiding him before? How come you don't hate him anymore?"

Shu Hanqing's voice was gentle: "Professor Yan is a good person."

The safe zone was surrounded by virus-contaminated zombie hordes, requiring periodic purges to keep the defenses from breaking down. The military would regularly organize its most elite troops for a large-scale cleansing operation.

During one perilous mission, a teammate of Shu Hanqing's was unfortunately scratched on the arm by a zombie's claw. Because his ability had been catalyzed by a chemical agent, he couldn't resist the zombie virus's erosion.

Like Shu Hanqing, he was a special talent cultivated at great expense, and he had a soldier's pride running through his bones. Before his body fully turned into a mindless monster, that teammate, without a moment's hesitation, forced Shu Hanqing to send him to the lab as a live research subject. After cooperating with the research, he secretly stashed a weapon and then shot himself without hesitation.

Shu Hanqing personally sent his comrade's cold body to be cremated, and Yan Shenyun was there at the scene.

The redness and dampness in Shu Hanqing's eyes lingered, while Yan Shenyun, quietly watching him from the side, felt only a heavy, suffocating bitterness in his chest.

Shu Hanqing, dazed and dejected, walked ahead and slumped onto a step, as if drained of all strength.

Yan Shenyun took off his jacket, stepped forward, and got Shu Hanqing to stand up. He then folded the jacket neatly and laid it flat on the damp, cold ground before letting Shu Hanqing sit back down.

Shu Hanqing looked at the jacket beneath him, a hint of hesitation in his eyes.

Yan Shenyun pulled him down and squeezed in tightly beside him.

Shu Hanqing wasn't naturally pessimistic or fragile, but having endured so much life and death, his eyes now held a heaviness and melancholy. He tilted his head somewhat blankly and asked in a hoarse voice, "Professor... how many more people have to die?"

He knew Yan Shenyun couldn't answer that either.

In the face of such a vast calamity, no one could answer that.

Shu Hanqing shook his head and switched topics with a self-deprecating tone: "Professor, can you smell something on me?"

Yan Shenyun asked, puzzled, "What smell?"

Shu Hanqing looked at his fingers and said, "...The smell of blood."

Since the day the apocalypse broke out, Shu Hanqing felt he had never been able to fully shake off that rotting, bloody stench that clung to him like a curse embedded in his bones. It was an unwashed foulness that had soaked into every inch of his flesh and blood, impossible to scrub away.

Yan Shenyun didn't speak. Instead, he reached out his arm, pulled the young man closer toward himself, and brought Shu Hanqing's palm to his lips.

The distance between them closed in an instant.

In the quiet crematorium, only the sound of each other's breathing interwove clearly against their eardrums. After a long moment, Yan Shenyun slowly released Shu Hanqing's hand and spoke in a low voice: "There's no smell."