Novels online

Chapter 712: Starting Over

"Are you willing to embark on a new life?" Lun Qin, waking from a haze, suddenly heard this question.

She remembered her last memory before falling unconscious: strange, alien invaders filled the sky, and a massive spaceship hovered above her city. The entire sky kept changing colors—yellow, then white, then purple—like a fireworks display.

With great effort, she propped herself up from the ground where she lay, only to suddenly see a man-like being towering over her, looking down.

He seemed a little familiar...

Yet, she couldn't recall where she had seen him before.

Wait, what did he actually look like?

Lun Qin discovered something terrifying: she couldn't remember what the man's face looked like!

But every time she looked at that face, a familiar sensation would surface in her mind.

Her memory, when confronted with such a face, seemed to switch into a "read-only, no-save" mode.

She wasn't entirely sure if this was truly her own thought.

Coupled with her memories of over ten years spent in a mental hospital, she even wondered if there might truly be something wrong with her now.

"Then, what kind of person do you wish to be?" the man asked Lun Qin.

"Who are you?" After taking a moment to calm down, she seemed to regain some of her composure.

"A god."

"..."

"If you truly are a god, then I actually just want to be an ordinary person, the most inconspicuous kind of ordinary person, living peacefully with Heping." Faced with such a pleasant-sounding voice, Lun Qin, completely unguarded, spoke her true thoughts.

"As you wish."

A ray of light emanated from his hand, descending into Lun Qin's chest. Then, her vision went black, and she lost consciousness entirely.

...

"If I let you start over, would you still love me~~~"

"Love brings both joy and torment~~~"

The familiar ringtone blared, and Lun Qin woke up from her daze once more, casually turning off her phone's alarm.

Her head ached a little, and her chest seemed to ache as well.

Hooking a bathrobe from a corner by the bed, she pulled it on. Lun Qin decided to wash her face first, to clear her head and ascertain whether she was still dreaming.

The "dream" she had just experienced felt incredibly real; she could distinctly remember every single detail that transpired.

Whether it was the man's attire or the environment she lay in upon waking, every memory felt exceptionally vivid, except for his face.

"Sis, you're awake?" Dressed casually in a black T-shirt and jeans, Lun Heping stood up from the sofa. "I've already made breakfast. Today, it's bread and eggs."

"Where's the Origin Stone?" After glancing around the familiar home, Lun Qin noticed that the Origin Stone, which had previously protected Lun Heping from her bad luck, had vanished without a trace.

"What Origin Stone? Sis, did you stay up all night reading novels until you got confused?" Lun Heping looked at his sister with an innocent expression, seemingly having never heard of an Origin Stone.

"Nothing, I just got a bit confused from sleep, that's all." A chill ran down the girl's spine.

Something's wrong with this world!

Not only was there no Origin Stone, but her constitution for attracting disaster had also disappeared. Lun Heping wasn't even affected by misfortune.

Could that dream have been real?

She recalled her conversation with the "god" in her dream.

"—I just want to be an ordinary person." That's what she had told the "god".

"Had her bad luck truly vanished?"

There were no aliens in the sky, Lun Heping wasn't some student assassin, and they were just an ordinary pair of siblings, relying on each other...

After more than an hour of gathering information, Lun Qin finally confirmed that this was an entirely new world. There were no Origin Stones, and she possessed no supernatural bad luck. Yet, the geographical environment was almost identical to her original Water Blue Star world.

"Sis, I'm off to school." A door closing could be heard in the distance.

Lun Qin's current "setting" was that of a university student recovering from a serious illness, still recuperating at home, while her younger brother was a second-year student at the neighboring New York High School.

The history of her time spent in the mental hospital had completely vanished.

"Which one was the dream, after all?"

For the better part of the day, she compared the differences between the two worlds.

This world had no Origin Stones, nor did it have Origin Energy. Everything ran on coal and hydropower. All the amenities of modern society were present, yet Lun Qin felt that something was subtly off.

She just couldn't quite pinpoint what exactly felt uncomfortable about it.

...

"Apocalypse, survive?" On the other side of the New Water Blue Star, a homeless man sleeping under an overpass suddenly opened his eyes, muttering a few words he'd brought back from a dream.

"Wasn't I a Reincarnator?! How could I have become such a good-for-nothing?" The grimy homeless man looked at his malnourished body and the blackened, foul-smelling ragged quilt beneath him, immediately feeling a headache coming on.

Along with his head, his stomach also ached—or, more accurately, he was starving. He had no idea how long he had slept, but his stomach had been growling for ages.

In his dream, he was Yu Nan, the unlucky captain of a certain Reincarnator team, who had been blown sky-high because an idiotic teammate lit a cigarette in a natural gas leak zone.

"This body is truly awful, and I have no money!" Yu Nan rummaged through the tin can in his ragged quilt. He only had thirty yuan in total. According to the prices he remembered, thirty yuan wouldn't even last a week, even if he ate only the cheapest steamed buns for three meals a day.

Piles of wine bottles lay scattered around him, all cheap, low-quality liquor. It seemed the homeless man had been a drunkard before.

But he clearly remembered that in his dream, the entity named Main God had ultimately told him that the apocalypse would begin in fifteen days, and their only mission was three words: "survive."

"Was the apocalypse a dream or not?"

This question lingered in his mind, dictating Yu Nan's next course of action.

If there was no apocalypse at all, then he, reborn, should turn over a new leaf and climb the social ladder step by step using the knowledge in his mind.

But if the apocalypse the Main God spoke of in his dream was real, then the most important task for the next two weeks would be to find a safe place, stockpile enough supplies, and then survive.

The current him was no longer the Yu Nan from his dream, who could fly and burrow through the earth. He was merely a teetering invalid, half-crippled from alcoholism and prolonged malnutrition.

If he didn't prepare beforehand, it was highly likely he wouldn't even survive the first day of the apocalypse.

"First step, money. Without money, no preparations can even begin." Yu Nan's head started aching again.

He was a homeless man too weak for anything, and time was so pressing. Where was he supposed to get money? He didn't even have the strength to rob someone.

PS: A recommendation, {Walk Among the Myriad Heavens Without Bounds}. I've "nursed to death" three or four of this author's books already...