She really was once a righteous heroine. The moment words like “male concubines” and “enemy of humanity” were thrown out, her little face immediately turned bright red—whether from embarrassment or anger, it was hard to tell.

An Muning rested his chin on one hand thoughtfully.

Back when they were enemies, why hadn’t he thought of using words like that to provoke her?

Though, to be fair, he had managed to piss Fan Ningyue off plenty already.

“Look on the bright side.” He turned to glance at the gloomy woman sprawled on the sofa. “The two of us are both defeated generals now… Think of something positive. Like the fact your face wasn’t injured.”

“A woman keeping her face untouched during the apocalypse…” Fan Ningyue muttered. “Is that supposed to be a good thing?”

“That was back then. The apocalypse is over now.” There was a trace of wistfulness in An Muning’s voice. “Still, it feels like it only ended yesterday.”

“I feel that way too,” Fan Ningyue murmured. “Feels like I only defeated you not that long ago.”

“…You make me sound like some kind of demon king. We were just on different sides.” An Muning spread his hands helplessly. “Do you know why it feels that way?”

“Why?”

“Because both you and I lived pretty well during the apocalypse.” An Muning said calmly. “If we’d spent eight years wandering homeless, suffering so badly that death would’ve been preferable, then you’d truly feel that ‘the apocalypse is finally over.’”

Fan Ningyue sighed.

He wasn’t wrong.

Her life during the apocalypse had never really been difficult.

The man in front of her seemed much the same.

Espers were divided into ten ranks: Tian shu, Tian xuan, Tian ji, Tian quan, Yu heng, Kai yang, Yao    guang, Dongming, Yin yuan, and Gouchen.

There were two ways to level up.

The first was by using crystals extracted from evolved zombies.

The second was by killing other espers and extracting the ability crystals from their bodies. If the crystal came from someone with the same ability, it would simply strengthen one’s existing power. But if it came from an esper with a different ability, the user could obtain that person’s power as well.

Thinking about it carefully, the things both sides had done weren’t actually that different.

The Survivor Alliance collected zombie crystals, and they also extracted ability crystals from dead espers.

An Muning was simply more “direct” about it—he usually took them from espers who were still alive.

The irony suddenly struck her.

Back then, despite how fiercely their factions opposed one another, things had never become completely irreconcilable. But after the Survivor Alliance was established, she and her companions had been elevated as humanity’s saviors, tightly bound to the Alliance itself, and negotiations with An Muning’s faction had begun.

That was when the relationship truly froze over.

“Tell me,” An Muning said with a faint smile, propping up his cheek, “were you really that certain I wasn’t dead? If I had died, what were you planning to do by coming here? You were injured so badly that if I hadn’t come out, you’d have died outside.”

“Yeah…” Fan Ningyue murmured softly.

Truthfully, she hadn’t held much hope.

After being hunted out of human territory, there had been nowhere left for her to go except places like this.

She had run into the borderlands, using the last of her strength to avoid zombies, and finally collapsed outside An Muning’s door.

This was the only place in the entire city that still had lights on. Her darkness-type ability had sensed it with ease.

When she collapsed at his doorstep, she had hesitated for a long time.

She’d thought she might simply die there.

Humans were contradictory creatures. She didn’t want to die, but during that desperate escape, part of her had also thought… maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad.

In the end, it all came down to one thing—

She had never imagined she would end up like this, stabbed in the back over and over by the people she had once trusted most.

A bitter smile appeared on Fan Ningyue’s face as she repeated her thoughts aloud.

“I just… never thought I’d end up like this.”

According to An Muning, it was all because she trusted people too much.

But when you’d fought side by side with someone for eight years, who could possibly imagine things ending this way?

An Muning glanced at her but said nothing.

The two sat in silence for a while before Fan Ningyue spoke first.

At the moment she could barely move, so talking was the only thing she had to pass the time.

Besides, she had a stomach full of questions she wanted answered.

“What do you think the Survivor Alliance will do next?” she asked.

An Muning blinked. “If my guess is right, before long you’ll probably start seeing familiar faces in these borderlands.”

“Why?”

“In the public’s understanding, this is the only place left in the world that still has zombies.” An Muning pointed at the floor beneath them. “So, Miss Fan, if the Survivor Alliance wants to stir up another wave of apocalypse panic, shouldn’t they first redirect humanity’s attention outward?”

“They’ll need to control the scale of the disaster, after all. They’ve got their own little factions and interests to protect.”

Fan Ningyue nodded slowly.

“So this place is perfect.” An Muning smiled. “Drive the zombies over here. And tell me—during the reconstruction of the human settlements, who do you think lived on the outskirts?”

Fan Ningyue frowned. “Obviously the upper class.”

“Bullshit. That’s what television told you.” An Muning yawned lazily. “Did you ever actually see any of the real upper echelon of the Survivor Alliance living there?”

“The people truly sent to the outskirts were powerless refugees and figureheads outside the inner circle. Human infighting started up again the moment the apocalypse ended.”

Perhaps Fan Ningyue actually agreed with An Muning’s words, because she couldn’t say a single thing in response.

After a long silence, she finally asked slowly, “You’d already thought about all this long ago?”

“Of course.”

“And that’s why you opposed humanity.”

“Don’t get it twisted. Zombies and the apocalypse were just the backdrop of this world. A lot of people were blinded by that backdrop and started believing their only enemy was the zombies.” An Muning pulled out a cigarette pack. “That included the old you.”

“I opposed humanity?” He held the cigarette between his fingers and pointed it at himself. “Am I not human? So what exactly am I?”

“Sorry, I meant most of humanity.” Fan Ningyue instinctively tried to raise a hand to scratch her head, only to remember she was wrapped up like a giant rice dumpling and couldn’t even get her hand out. “You should understand what your position looked like back then.”

“I only ever stood on my own side. And compared to you, I understood them better as their enemy.” An Muning lit the cigarette and took a deep drag, the tobacco burning rapidly. “After all, most of their methods were used on me.”

Thick white smoke poured from his mouth, weaving into a suffocating haze.

“Slander, false accusations, framing me for things…” He shrugged. “Didn’t matter. Nobody would’ve believed me anyway. And they dressed it all up so nobly.”

“Did you really not care?” Fan Ningyue sighed softly. “Back during those negotiations, I must’ve said plenty of things—offers, promises, idealistic speeches… Did none of it get through to you at all?”

“Oh, I listened.” An Muning nodded with a smile. “I was deeply moved. Love for humanity, saving the world, honor—those things are wonderful. What you said was inspiring too. Enough to make people tear up.”

“But I’m simply a bad person.”

The woman before him seemed to think of something, the corner of her mouth twitching faintly. “This is the first time I’ve heard someone openly call themselves a bad person.”

“You can only do more once you admit what side you’re really on.” An Muning exhaled another cloud of smoke. “I don’t do that hypocritical ‘wanting both the reputation and the benefits’ crap.”