Reborn As A Doomsday Villainess
Chapter 201

Chapter 201: 201

Hours later, the firestorm had finally passed.

The sky above the city was an ashen gray, heavy with smoke and soot.

Clouds of it still curled lazily through the streets, the scent of burning flesh and ruin soaked into every breath.

Buildings stood like blackened husks, windows shattered, steel warped, concrete charred and crumbling.

Trees had become skeletal fingers clawing at the sky, some had even turned to dusk.

The world outside the community center was no longer a place for the living.

Inside, only silence reigned.

The barrier had held, both the building and the it’s occupants had survived the dreadful ordeal.

Its glow had faded to a pale shimmer, flickering weakly like a dying ember. Cracks had spread along the walls where the worst of the heat had struck.

The protective seal from Caocao was intact, but soon cracks had started to appear . One more hour, perhaps, and it would have collapsed.

Feng Yizhou stood near the entrance, the thick steel doors groaning as he pushed them open for the first time since sealing them shut.

Smoke poured in immediately, curling around his feet. He stepped out, one boot crunching on scorched gravel.

The heat had lessened, but the air still burned in his lungs. He coughed and brought up a hand to cover his face, only to realize it was shaking.

He hadn’t realized how long he’d been holding his breath not literally, but in spirit.

Every second inside, he’d been waiting for the storm to end.

Now that it had.

what remained was worse than he’d imagined.

Behind him, Haoyu appeared at the doorway, his face pale and drawn, his eyes wide as he took in the devastation.

"Oh my god..." he whispered.

The streets were filled with blackened corpses, twisting in agony.

Families who’d died clinging to each other. Children curled beneath their parents’ arms.

Strangers locked together by death.

There were no screams anymore. No crying.

Just dreadful silence.

A silence so complete it roared in Feng Yizhou’s ears.

"Start checking for survivors," he said hoarsely.

His voice was rough from smoke and disuse, but it cut through the air like a commandment.

Others began to rise behind him, dazed and shaking, but moving.

Some of the younger ones wept as they stepped outside and saw the place for the first time since the flames came.

Others vomited.

Some dropped to their knees and prayed.

The sun tried to peek through the smoke-choked sky, casting a dull, blood-orange light over the devastation.

It was morning, but it felt like the end of all things.

Yizhou moved through the ruins like a madman, stepping over charred furniture, collapsed beams, the occasional human limb blackened beyond recognition.

He found a woman crouched against a wall, her face burned to the point you could see he bones, she had similar unsightly burns on her body, but her heart was still beating but her conditions were too critical to try and save her.

He dropped to his knees beside her and gently touched her shoulder.

Her eyes fluttered open, wild and bloodshot. She recoiled at first, but when she recognized him, recognized someone still alive, she burst into tears.

"My baby.." she sobbed. "Please, my baby, he was right here.."

Feng Yizhou looked around.

There was no child. Only ash and bone and cloth melted into the pavement.

"I’m sorry..." he whispered, and the words cut him like knives.

The woman screamed.

It was the first sound of the new day. A raw, keening wail that sliced through the smoke-filled air and echoed across the dead city like a ghost refusing to rest.

And then others began to scream too.

People finding what remained of their homes. What remained of their neighbors, their friends, their loved ones.

The city was a graveyard now. And grief poured out like water breaching a dam.

Feng Yizhou didn’t move. He knelt there, eyes burning, his hands clenched in his lap.

"Rest well."

He closed her eyes gently, the last scream must have been her finally breath.

Haoyu reached him minutes later, he crouched beside him, wordless.

"They didn’t make it, none of them could.." Yizhou said softly.

"I know, we saw it."

"I saw a man carrying his daughter..." Yizhou went on. "And his wife. He held them like they were the last things that mattered. I thought... maybe..."

He trailed off. Maybe they would survive somehow.

Haoyu didn’t reply. There was nothing to say.

They sat in silence as the survivors spread through the streets, searching the remains, calling names into the ruins.

By noon, twenty-seven new survivors had been found. Some were badly burned. Some barely alive. But they had lived through it.

The community center opened its doors to them, bandaging wounds, handing out the last of the clean water, splitting rations meant for ten among thirty.

No one complained.

Feng Yizhou helped carry a little girl with second-degree burns up to the medical room. She stared at him with hollow eyes the entire time.

"Where’s my mom?" she asked.

He paused.

"Rest first..." he said gently. "We’ll find her."

She nodded. But she didn’t believe him, she knew what she had seen outside.

Outside, ashes drifted down like black snow.

The sky was still gray. Fires still smoldered in places where gas lines had ruptured or wood continued to feed low flames.

The earth smelled scorched and the air felt oppressive.

They buried the dead by evening.

Some were named. Most were not.

The survivors stood in a silent line as shallow graves were dug along the edge of a scorched field that had once been a park.

A few children placed melted toys beside the mounds of earth.

One woman laid a ring. Another, a sweet she had with her.

Yizhou spoke, because someone had to, someone to tell them, that if they were not careful, they would all die.

"We remember them, remember what you’ve seen today.." he said, his voice carrying. "We have to honor them. And we have to survive... because of them. We have to survive because we must."

But they bowed their heads. And when he walked away, no one stopped him.

Back inside the center, the lights flickered, electricity was dying.

The generator had fuel for maybe one more day.

"We need to relocate, we can no longer stay in this zone. We have to move to the 4th zone, with the air here.. it’s not safe, there’s barely oxygen around. There’s nothing here, even the zombies have been burnt to crisps."

Feng Yizhou stroked his chin, he didn’t know how what laid in the 4th zone, or how long it would take to get there.

"Just calm the crowd, we’ll have to leave some people here, we can’t also take the injured people with us as well."

Feng Yizhou scratched his head as he turned to window, there was no way he could carry this many people to a different location, he knew nothing about.

When he got to the 4th zone, he would use his brainwashing ability to control the zombies there. To control everyone in that zone rather.

The apocalypse was too unforgiving, for him to be too nice.

"Caocao, how dangerous is the 4th zone and how far is it from here."

[I cannot guage the danger levels at the moment but the distance from the 5th zone to 4th zone is 1000km. Approximately 10 to 12 hours of nonstop driving.]

Feng Yizhou sighed, that means he was going to cut the people he was taking a long into two.

[It would be best to only carry 50 or less people]

He hated that he wasn’t shocked by it.

Wasn’t horrified at the idea of leaving over a hundred to fend for themselves in this ruined husk of a zone.

He wanted to be horrified. He really did.

But the apocalypse had eaten away the softness in him. Stripped it down to bare steel and calculation.

Survival wasn’t about kindness. Not anymore.

It was about decisions.

And Feng Yizhou was very, very good at decisions.

"Haoyu.." he said, voice calm. "Make a list. Forty of the strongest. Ten of the injured, only those who can still walk."

Haoyu blinked. "That’s it?"

Yizhou nodded.

Haoyu didn’t argue. He just swallowed and left to begin sorting names.

Outside, the sky darkened further, twilight staining the smoke a deep, suffocating crimson.

Ash continued to fall like snow. In the distance, a building groaned as it finally gave way and collapsed, a thunderous crash that rolled across the hushed city like a closing coda.

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