Apocalypse King: Recruiting S-Tier Beauties With My Ruler System
Chapter 50: Mu Qinglan

Chapter 50: Mu Qinglan

The Kiss...

... Was not a romantic

Or magical...

...Like novels would make you believe.

The sour taste of blood, mixed with the strange black ichor that carried a sticky, bitter taste that flowed into my mouth, my throat.

A taste that lingered on my tongue.

A scent scorched the back of my nose.

Yet the semi-conscious Qinglan didn’t care—her hands gripped the back of my hair, pulling on it hard enough to tear a few clumps out.

"Ngh...!"

Our eyes met...

...but her pupils weren’t there.

Only two thin slits swimming in murky grey, barely human. Her jaw quivered. Black ichor leaked down her chin and into my mouth. The taste became worse. Hot copper. Sour rot and burning bile mixed into a foul concoction.

My stomach tightened, but I didn’t pull back.

Instead, I pushed deeper.

My tongue slipped past hers, pressing the vial’s broken red core fragment into her throat. The marrow washing potion mixed in my saliva burned on the way down—fiery, sweet, sharp. Like cherry syrup spiked with alcohol and acid.

I forced her to drink using my mouth.

She gagged.

Her throat convulsed.

Her whole body shuddered like she was being electrocuted. Nails dug into my back. Her tongue writhed wildly against mine, trying to spit it out.

I didn’t let her.

I gripped her cheeks with both hands and kept the seal between our mouths tight.

And then—

CHHK.

Pain exploded in my skull. She bit down.

Her jaw locked shut, teeth sinking deep into my tongue, crushing through flesh like soft leather. It didn’t feel like a clean cut.

No—it ripped.

A tearing, grinding crunch. Like a frozen fish being snapped in half with bare hands.

I tried to scream, but only blood came out., Hot, fast, filling my throat.

Stars burst behind my eyes as I fought not to pass out.

Mu Qinglan didn’t stop. Her mouth trembled against mine, jaws grinding, still clenched on me as the heat of the red core began to seep into her gums through mine.

The ichor that poured from her mouth began to steam.

Bubbles formed along her lips.

Her blackened veins started turning red again, then glowing faintly gold, weak pulses racing down her neck and across her chest.

Almost like a core was going to form in the centre of her bosom.

And then, just as my endurance reached its limit—

She violently spasmed.

A scream shredded through her throat—not sound, but air, pressurised, and wrong.

She tore away from me and vomited a thick stream of black sludge across the cracked tiles. It hit the ground with a splatter, hissing as if acid met metal.

My tongue hung torn in my mouth, throbbing and numb, while I choked on my blood.

She curled on the mattress, half-naked, back arching.

Her skin seething with a visible steam and raw energy, twitching like a live wire under her skin, slamming the ground with her feet.

I collapsed beside her, red-hot pain flashing through my skull. Something inside me cracked. The marrow potion was working on me now, too. Every muscle in my body seized.

And then—

Everything went white.

***

White.

At first, I thought it was just the pain, searing through my jaw, tongue numb, body in full shutdown.

But then I realised it didn’t hurt anymore.

I was sitting on cold concrete. The breeze was blowing through my hair. Not foul, not heavy. It smelled faintly of smog and wet stone, with a faint, familiar perfume.

A nostalgic scent and feeling.

I opened my eyes.

Grey skyline. Empty rooftops. That cracked neon sign still flickering across from us like it always used to, spelling "SHOE PLAZA" with the Z permanently dead. The view from our office building’s rooftop. Ten stories up. Somewhere in the city. The old world.

And next to me—

"...John."

’This has to be a dream, I’ve only came to the roof alone... How sad to be dreaming of her even after she almost ate my tongue.’

Her voice was as clear as day.

I turned my head slowly and somehow managed to smile.

Mu Qinglan sat beside me, knees pulled up, arms wrapped loosely around them. Her hair swayed gently in the wind. Fair skin. Blue eyes. The colour was so unnatural now I almost didn’t recognise her.

Bright, electric blue.

Not glowing—but awake in a way that made the rest of the world look faded.

She blinked at me, calm and quiet like always.

We were still wearing the same clothes, stained and torn, a complete mess, but thankfully all the blood and mess were gone.

No ichor.

No fever.

No madness.

"Where are we?" I asked.

She didn’t answer right away. Her eyes wandered the skyline like she was trying to place the city from memory. The wind pulled a strand of her hair into her mouth, and she tucked it behind her ear.

"I don’t know," she finally said in her usual tone. "A dream, maybe?"

"Feels like one, seeing you here."

"Not the worst one," she added quietly, almost to herself.

I looked around.

It was strange—everything was so sharp. The clouds, a cracked vent cover near our feet, even the pigeons across the way, perched like statues. This world looked real, but... distant and untouched by human hands.

I let my head lean back against the wall behind us. "I haven’t been up here since Winter."

"I liked Winter," she said. "Before everything smelled like death."

"Before I got fired, haha."

She looked at me, tilted her head and then curled her lips into a smile. "Fool."

We fell into a silence, but it didn’t feel awkward.

Just the kind that happens when neither of you wants to wake up yet.

"I can taste your blood," she said suddenly, with a glance.

I snorted. "You bit my tongue."

"You were trying to shove something down my throat."

"Yeah. A cure."

"A very romantic cure," she said dryly.

Then she looked away again. Pulled her knees in a little tighter. Her bare shoulder brushed mine, but she didn’t move.

"Sorry," she said, voice small. "For... everything. The biting. The vomiting. The undead thing."

"You looked terrible," I said.

"I felt worse."

She laughed under her breath. It didn’t last long, but it sounded real.

"You always did act like nothing scared you," I said.

She hesitated, then looked up at me. "You think I wasn’t scared?"

"You didn’t look it."

"I was terrified," she said. Her voice wasn’t shaky—it was matter-of-fact. Honest. "I just didn’t want you to see it."

"Why?"

"I don’t know." She frowned, throwing me a sharp gaze, before turning away, her cheeks a light pink. "You already carried too much. It didn’t seem fair to give you more."

We sat in that for a minute.

Listening to the cooing of birds, the howl of wind that brushed the edge of the roof.

Distant sirens—no, not sirens. Wind chimes? Or maybe neither. Sound acted strange here.

"You always smelled like gunpowder," she said softly.

I blinked. "That’s... specific."

"Not in a bad way," she added. "Like... old smoke. Heat. Kind of steadying. Like something that didn’t break when everything else did."

I didn’t know what to say to that.

So I said nothing.

Two awkward people, each broken in their way—I couldn’t help but watch her, this version of Mu Qinglan in my mind.

Was she this way because of my feelings, or... was this my ideal image of her?

I still didn’t have an answer.

She glanced over at me, hair dancing lightly across her cheek. "Do you think I would’ve turned? If you hadn’t... done what you did?"

"Maybe."

She nodded. "I think so too."

Mu Qinglan didn’t ask anything else, not why I saved her or if I would be sad.

The sky above was dimming slightly. A violet tint bled through the clouds. Her legs stretched out beside mine, one boot tapping softly against the rooftop gravel.

"I used to think I’d die alone," she blurted.

"You still might," I replied.

She smiled. "Thanks."

We sat there longer than we should’ve. In a dream that didn’t feel like mercy, but didn’t feel like punishment either.

Just a moment that wasn’t supposed to exist.

"John," she said softly.

"Yeah?"

She paused for a moment, turning to face me head-on.

I must have wished for that gust of wind.

The way it blew her hair—framing her face like a painting the world didn’t deserve.

She was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen.

Then her lips parted, glossy and red.

"I like you."

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