I am the Zombie King of the Apocalyptic World
Chapter 984 - 981: You’ve Changed a Lot

Chapter 984: Chapter 981: You’ve Changed a Lot

The sense of intimacy he felt towards Li Qingtian grew stronger by the day, almost consuming his entire heart.

"Sister, I can’t find my keys. Where did you put them?"

"How would I know? Mine are always right here."

"Why aren’t mine here?"

"Where did you put them just now?"

"I don’t know."

"Go check the sofa, they might be there."

"..."

"Wow, found them!"

He remained silent for a long time, merely nodding. Honestly, he didn’t even know how to respond to Li Qingtian’s words.

Tang Ye’s head tilted slightly, but his eyes flashed with an unusual light.

The words from Li Qingtian seemed to convey an incredibly unusual piece of news, or rather, good news—that she did not confirm Li Henian’s death.

As his eyes lit up, Tang Ye sneaked a glance at Li Qingtian and quickly looked away. She didn’t immediately sit in the sofa opposite him but first tidied up the mess Tang Ye had carelessly thrown around before sitting down.

Afterwards, the atmosphere between them turned quiet again. Tang Ye didn’t know what to say, and it seemed that Li Qingtian was waiting for him to say something before she would speak.

The two sat in silence for a while until Tang Ye could no longer hold back.

"Actually..."

He had barely uttered two words when he was quickly interrupted by Li Qingtian.

"Brother, you’ve changed a lot."

The address that came from Li Qingtian’s mouth made Tang Ye’s armored heart shudder fiercely. The term was so familiar, as if traveling through vast, boundless space, passing through barrier after barrier, unable to turn back or find any direction, when suddenly a call from one direction made him realize which way to go.

The nerves that had just relaxed immediately tensed again, and Tang Ye decisively chose to keep his mouth shut.

Changed? Maybe he really had changed. The current him was completely different from the Tang Ye before the Apocalypse.

One was a demon who killed as easily as eating or drinking, capable of watching vibrant lives vanish before his eyes and even considering it normal, knowing that before the Apocalypse, the sight of a bloody crash scene was unbearable to him.

Moreover, he wasn’t the person Li Qingtian knew well; he wasn’t even him, just someone who provided her with familiar affection, especially the doting look in Li Qingtian’s eyes that made Tang Ye feel guilty. He didn’t want to see Li Qingtian before him.

Aside from the warmth felt upon seeing Li Qingtian, violent emotions were also brewing within him, each contending with the other.

He despised this feeling, this environment that made him feel uneasy but was unable to break away from it. If Li Qingtian were to leave now, Tang Ye would feel like a terminal cancer patient who knew death was his only outcome but was suddenly cured one day.

The microsecond mental activities within Tang Ye’s heart did not show any indication on his face. He just appeared somewhat dazed, and to Li Qingtian’s words, he simply nodded.

"What about me has changed?"

He just asked casually, not expecting Li Qingtian to give him any special answer, but unexpectedly, she chuckled, laughing so hard that she trembled, making it seem as if all color had drained from the world. She raised a hand towards Tang Ye, her fingers slender and soft, dreamy shades illuminated by the golden twilight.

Her sudden movement made Tang Ye instinctively lean back, which caused Li Qingtian’s action to freeze as well, her fingers hanging in mid-air like green onions, her smile solidifying on her face.

After a moment of thought, Tang Ye leaned forward again, and her smile seemed to unfreeze while time flowed regularly; her hand continued towards his face and finally, as if achieving her intention, rested on Tang Ye’s face.

The slender fingers, the delicate skin felt like a beautiful piece of art. Feeling the cool touch of her fingers, that familiar sensation surged back like a tide.

It was like when he was younger, after getting into a fight with other kids at school and ending up with a bruised face, she would crouch in front of him at the school gates, stroking his face with the same pair of hands, comforting him.

After a while, Tang Ye finally heard Li Qingtian’s voice again.

"You’ve grown up a lot, you don’t need... the care of others anymore."

Light flickered in Tang Ye’s eyes a few times. The car accident flashed through his mind. Before darkness engulfed everything, the car’s steel-like front loomed before him, that face turning into the most tragically beautiful pattern. The world began to redden, a center of severely polluted black emerged, and previously delicate and beautiful patterns began to show ugly, centipede-like scars as that face, which he should have remembered for a lifetime, was repeatedly slashed with a sharp, blood-stained blade.

The face’s support completely collapsed with a loud "bang". The excruciatingly pained faces of his parents, along with the driver covered in teeth across his back, kneeling on the ground, his shoulders jerking as if he were crying, yet the sound that emerged was the most psychotically extreme laughter.

An ice cream made with a continually beating heart, a belt wrapped with chains, a bowl of bloodied green onion soup, and pairs of blood-red eyes around him as the driver got up, looking at him as though they were looking at themselves.

The world was no longer beautiful; it had turned from vibrant colors into red and black, filled with monsters and polluted everywhere. And there he stood in the center, his home filled with tentacles, his parents’ desperate voices turning into the most venomous curses in the world, while that face, that figure, turned into a firefly emitting the faintest glow, completely locked by countless chains far larger than itself!

All of this was what Li Henian saw, or perhaps not what he really saw, but these were the visualizations in his mind after he lost normal cognitive abilities.

This was everything he saw, everything he lost. He went from being the pride of his parents to a burden on his family. After the accident, he couldn’t even manage the most basic parts of life on his own; someone had to sacrifice their freedom to look after him.

And that person was Li Qingtian. In Li Henian’s memory, the world he saw post-accident contained a largest and blurry distorted portrait; although Tang Ye knew that this was Li Qingtian, this was his internal world. This painting also illustrated that Li Qingtian occupied the biggest place in Li Henian’s heart.

Tang Ye merely nodded without any further action. At that moment, the elevator doors outside emitted a "ding" again.