From the end of the world

Chapter 16: The Beginning of Doomsday 1
After finishing the fried rice, Ma Zao touched his stomach again.

This time she was no longer hungry, but had already filled her stomach. But she seemed to be still a little reluctant to leave, her eyes still staring at her plate. The plate was so empty that there was not even a grain of rice left.

At first I thought she would be surprised like a primitive person, but now I feel flattered to see that she cherishes the rice I cooked myself. This is the first time in my life that someone has valued something I made myself.

Is it really my own cooking? I just threw the finished takeaway food and rice into the pot, heated it up and mixed it together. I probably didn’t make even 10% of it myself.

"This is the only food I can prepare tonight. I will prepare it carefully tomorrow." I decided to learn from my mistakes and then be brave. "So there is no need for you to feel bad. There will be something better next time."

"really?"

She suddenly raised her head, her eyes shining, and then realized that she was too excited and coughed shyly.

"Really." I revealed my true purpose. "If you stay a few more days, you can eat more different delicious food."

Hearing this, her face turned gloomy.

"...You are very kind to me. Although I don't know what you think of me, you did entertain me and care about me so much. I must thank you. Thank you." She said slowly, "Because of this, I must stay away from you. Otherwise, sooner or later you will spit on me, curse me, regard me as an enemy, and regret why you have any contact with me."

"I would never do that." I tried to make my promise sound sincere.

"If you didn't do that, it means you'd be dead before you could do that."

She seemed to have erected thick walls around herself, and my voice could not reach her closed heart.

I just hated myself for not being a playboy who was good at coaxing and tricking people into flirting with the opposite sex, and for not being able to use words to open her heart at such an important moment. Even though I was extremely unwilling, I could only give up persuading her temporarily.

Besides, I don't have any more free time now. The sun has completely set outside, and the sky is completely dark. From the beginning, my purpose of going home was just to report my itinerary to Ma Zao and ask her about her jinx physique and the form of crossing. I must complete the investigation of the cave in the room on the fifteenth floor before tomorrow morning.

As I stood up, I said, "I have to go out again. I may not be back tonight."

"Where are you going?" she asked warily.

"I'm going to a bath center with my friends. After taking a bath, maybe we'll have a midnight snack there and spend the night there." I started to talk nonsense. "If conditions permit, I actually want to take you with me, but it shouldn't be convenient for you to go out now, right?"

"Yes, I am now wanted by official forces." She nodded with great regret.

"So you can just rest and recuperate at my house. Like I said before, you can use whatever you want at home. You can watch TV, use the computer, or read my collection of novels."

Later, I walked to the cabinet next to the TV, took down a suspense novel, handed it to her, and asked tentatively: "Have you read this type of book before?"

She looked at the cover of the book, flipped through the contents, and then shook her head: "I haven't read it. But since you recommended it to me, I'll take a look."

After saying that, she got up from the dining table, sat on the sofa not far away, and then really lowered her head to read.

It seems that she is literate.

Assuming the apocalypse is real, what is the literacy rate of people in the apocalypse era? Can she understand the many modern concepts mentioned in suspense novels? When she talked to me, she didn't seem to have any problems. Maybe she received a good education in the apocalypse era.

There should be no such thing as "calling the police" in the apocalypse era. When she first met me, she asked me not to call the police. This can still be explained by her previous contact with the police, but there are other difficult to explain parts. For example, even in a peaceful society, people from different eras will have a generation gap in communication, let alone people from the civilized era and the apocalypse era. But when I communicated with her, I rarely felt the existence of a generation gap.

Having said that, she does reveal the shadow of a doomsday survivor in some details...

I felt once again that I was willing to believe her from the bottom of my heart. That was why I had unconsciously turned a blind eye to many doubts before. Even now, I am still actively looking for evidence that she is a doomsday traveler. Unconsciously, I became more and more fascinated by her - this mysterious girl.

I picked up my backpack, walked out of the house, and then turned back to close the door. Through the increasingly narrow gap in the door, I quietly stared at her petite figure who was reading on the sofa with her head down, until the gap was completely closed.
-
I once again entered the neighborhood where the room on the fifteenth floor was located.

At the same time, he controlled the "Firefly" to investigate the surroundings of the room on the fifteenth floor.

Although I heard that this place would be protected as a crime scene again, it was obvious that it was just an excuse to drive away ordinary citizens like me and Changan. There was no one protecting the scene at all. It seemed that in Luo Shan's view, there were no clues that needed to be searched again, only negative relics that had to be dealt with tomorrow morning.

I also used Firefly to do a preliminary investigation around the community, and I didn't see anyone suspected of being Luo Shan watching nearby. Was he hiding, or was there really no one? If it was the latter, it would be a bit negligent and careless. Even I could realize that the fallen demon hunter might still be paying attention to the room on the 15th floor, so if it was a serious policeman, there would be no reason to miss it.

But Luo Shan is not a public security department, and the demon hunter woman has also admitted that Luo Shan lacks criminal investigation experience. Putting aside the combat aspect, at least in terms of criminal investigation, he is far from being comparable to the professionals I have come into contact with when investigating feudal superstition forces outside the province.

So what about Agent Kong, who calls himself a police officer?

I tried to confirm the movements of Agent Kong and Chang'an.

Agent Kong called himself a "probe" to the witcher woman. Judging from his words and the literal meaning, his duty in the supernatural organization Luoshan is to detect supernatural events and report them to the organization, which will then send witchers to the front line to handle the incidents.

"Policeman" should be just his superficial identity, or to be more specific, it is probably just a fake identity. The information obtained through the "Firefly" monitoring shows that he is not doing the work that is consistent with the identity of a policeman.

In the morning, he seemed to be tracking Ma Zao in the name of tracking a serial killer, but now he was walking around the city, occasionally entering some uninhabited places to observe, and taking out a pen and paper to record something. Maybe he was fulfilling the duties of a "probe".

I couldn't help but realize this possibility: Could it be that the ones who are currently actively searching for Ma Zao's whereabouts are not the public security department, but the Luoshan organization?

Why? Could it be that Ma Zao had unknowingly exposed his identity as a doomsday traveler, and Luo Shan was looking for the traveler?
I suppressed my confusion for the moment and turned my attention to Chang'an.

Changan is currently in the hospital with his sister visiting his mother. I won't go into details about his sister and mother here. In short, I noticed a few suspicious men near him. Those men were not following Changan, but following Changan's surroundings. Although their actions were covert, they still exposed a few flaws due to their lack of awareness of guarding against "fireflies".

I think they are probably Luo Shan's people. As for the whereabouts of the demon hunter woman, I can't find it at all. According to what she said to Agent Kong on the phone, she should have arrived by now.

But on second thought, this situation is very reasonable. Agent Kong said that she had fought off the fallen demon hunter head-on. Maybe the enemy remembered her appearance and hid in the dark to avoid alerting the enemy.

If the fallen demon hunter (serial killer) was really Ma Zao, then their defense was in vain because Ma Zao was now unable to fight or even move normally.

While observing and thinking, I had arrived at the door of the room on the fifteenth floor.

Since Chang'an has someone to protect him, I will be responsible for investigating the cave. Chang'an has come into contact with this strange phenomenon with unknown reasons before, and he doesn't know whether this strange phenomenon will be like the curse in some supernatural stories, entangled with the person involved in a mysterious way until he is dragged into the bottomless abyss.

So, for my friend's sake, I had to find out.

No, I still have to be honest with myself. I am doing this for my own desires...it is me who wants to explore this.

I am a bad person who puts my own desires before my friends.

I grasped the doorknob of the room on the fifteenth floor. The door was locked, and I didn't have the key to the room. But I never worried about how to get in. Under the effect of my superpower, the lock core melted quickly. I opened the door and walked in as if I were entering my own home.

There was no light in the room, it was night, so it was naturally dark inside. I stretched out my hand and a few "fireflies" that had come here beforehand flew out from the corners, emitting a bright orange glow, lighting up the living room like candlelight, full of mysticism.

I closed the door behind me, then walked over to the plush black carpet and leaned over to lift it open.

The black ritual array still appeared before my eyes as before.

The wooden lid that had disappeared unexpectedly reappeared on the floor.

(End of this chapter)