Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 157: Iron Lion, Cover the Rear

The sequence of events happened so fast that human cognition simply couldn’t keep up.

Captain Chu Che stood frozen in the snow, his eyes wide as he watched the massive, blood-red scythe punch through the reinforced steel of the Doomsday Pickup, pinning Chen Ye’s body to the driver’s seat.

Chu Che had always believed, with absolute certainty, that if anyone in this doomed convoy was going to survive to the bitter end of the apocalypse, it would be Chen Ye.

He never expected Chen Ye to be the first one to die.

Chu Che, who had been halfway through opening the door to his off-road vehicle, simply stood there, his mind completely blank. He didn’t know what to do next. Was he supposed to feel grief? Perhaps a sliver of it existed beneath the overwhelming, paralyzing shock.

Standing right behind Chu Che, Xu Lina felt her knees buckle. She collapsed into the snow.

In her dilated pupils, the image of the ruined pickup truck was perfectly reflected. Through the shattered window, she could clearly see the man pinned to the seat, the impossibly large scythe blade protruding from his chest, and the torrent of crimson blood rapidly soaking his clothes.

Her eyes trembled violently. Her brain categorically refused to accept the visual data.

How could a man with a heart forged of absolute iron and stone die so easily?

Was it grief she was feeling? Maybe a fraction. Relief? Perhaps. Xu Lina couldn’t process the twisted knot of emotions in her chest.

She wasn’t Chen Ye’s girlfriend. They weren’t lovers. If the apocalypse had never happened, even if Chen Ye was decently handsome, she wouldn’t have given a ruthless thug like him the time of day. But the apocalypse had inverted the world. Now, despite her undeniable beauty, she couldn’t get Chen Ye to look at her twice.

She had honestly believed that with enough persistence, she could eventually earn the right to sit in the passenger seat of that armored truck. But nothing she did had ever cracked his armor. She had even started to doubt her own allure. It was only when they arrived at the school, and the cultists began fawning over her, that her confidence had returned.

And now, he was just… dead?

Xu Lina’s pale lips trembled. “He… he’s dead?”

“How is that possible? They say a scourge lives for a thousand years… a bastard like him is supposed to outlive us all!” she muttered, her voice breaking. “It’s… it’s impossible. Absolutely impossible!”

Xue Nan, standing nearby, was experiencing a similar emotional short-circuit.

Watching Chen Ye die, Xue Nan was perhaps the only person on the battlefield feeling genuine, unadulterated sorrow. To her, Chen Ye was the only pure element in this twisted world.

From the very first day they met, Chen Ye had treated her with cold indifference. After her face was horribly disfigured by the acid rain, his attitude hadn’t shifted an inch. He was still coldly indifferent. From beginning to end, Chen Ye was the only person whose gaze hadn’t changed with her appearance.

Nearby, Sun Qianqian had just swept her blazing longsword in a wide arc, forcing back a tide of Crawlers to drag the crippled Ding Dong upright.

When she saw the scythe pierce the truck, Sun Qianqian froze completely.

Supporting Ding Dong’s weight, Sun Qianqian stared at the macabre scene, the roaring battlefield around her fading into dead silence. It felt like time had stopped.

“He’s… dead?”

“How… how could he just die like that?”

The world tilted. Sun Qianqian felt like she was trapped in a hyper-realistic nightmare. The freezing wind, the screaming monsters, the smell of blood—none of it felt real.

Even the half-conscious Ding Dong, bleeding heavily in Sun Qianqian’s arms, went rigid. Her right arm was shattered, and her body was covered in deep lacerations; if Sun Qianqian hadn’t intervened, she would have already been devoured.

She had followed Wu Jianshan’s orders to stop Chen Ye. But she harbored no true malice toward him. They were simply on opposite sides of the chessboard; she had chosen Uncle Wu.

Even after Chen Ye had ruthlessly tried to run her over, she didn’t hate him. She knew exactly what kind of man he was, and she had accepted the consequences of standing in his way. She just never expected him to actually be killed.

If the apocalypse hadn’t happened, Ding Dong’s only dream was to find a quiet mountain courtyard, grow some vegetables, and practice her martial arts in peace. She was a woman of profound calm.

Back in the desert, she had only allied with Chen Ye because Mo Huairen’s faction had crossed an unforgivable line.

She had tried to stop Chen Ye, but she had never wanted him to die.

As for Mad Lion? The hulking giant stood in the center of the courtyard like a blood-soaked statue, holding a shrieking Crawler in each hand. He stared blankly at the truck, slowly tightening his grip until the monsters’ skulls popped like overripe melons.

Wu Jianshan watched the Death God’s scythe plunge into Chen Ye’s chest.

Slowly, inevitably, the corners of his gaunt mouth curled upward into a grotesque smile.

Chen Ye’s death flooded his veins with pure, unadulterated euphoria. No one who betrayed Wu Jianshan was allowed to live.

But… Wu Jianshan frowned slightly. Why does my neck feel so cold?

He reached up to touch his throat.

Suddenly, his perspective violently shifted. The ground rushed away as his vision launched upward, tracing a perfect parabolic arc through the snowy air.

He felt a hand roughly grab him by the hair.

Wu Jianshan blinked, his severed head coming face-to-face with a terrifyingly familiar gaze.

It was… Chen Ye!

How?! Wu Jianshan’s severed head frantically swiveled its eyes toward the Doomsday Pickup. Inside the cabin, the “Chen Ye” pinned to the seat was rapidly dissolving into a cloud of thick, gray smoke. There was no blood. There was no corpse.

Then, the endless, suffocating darkness crashed down.

A human brain retains consciousness for a few agonizing seconds after decapitation. In those final moments, Wu Jianshan saw the Death God wrench her scythe from the truck and turn to save him.

But as she moved, her steps faltered. The terrifying, divine grace vanished from her movements. She staggered, her perpetually closed eyes snapping open to reveal hollow, chaotic voids. She looked like a supercomputer that had just had its hard drive violently corrupted.

The entire courtyard fell dead silent.

Chu Che, Iron Lion, Sun Qianqian, Xu Lina, Xue Nan—everyone watched in stunned disbelief.

They watched the corpse in the truck vanish into smoke. They watched the real Chen Ye step smoothly out of the shadows directly behind Wu Jianshan. They watched the flash of the Heavy Machete cleanly sever the cult leader’s head from his shoulders.

It took seconds to describe, but the execution happened in the blink of an eye.

With Wu Jianshan dead, the tether anchoring the Death God snapped. The crimson-clad entity froze completely, standing aimlessly in the bloody snow between Chen Ye and the truck.

She dropped to her knees, clutching her head with her free hand. The mental corruption was agonizing.

“AHHHHHHH!—”

An ear-splitting, impossibly shrill scream ripped from her throat, the sonic wave hitting with enough physical force to make everyone’s ears bleed. The terrifying, invincible deity was now thrashing in the snow like an inmate in a psychiatric ward.

“Damn it! Are you people waiting for an invitation?! Move!” Chen Ye roared, discarding Wu Jianshan’s head and sprinting full-tilt toward the Doomsday Pickup.

SNAP.

Inside Chu Che’s mind, a heavy, invisible shackle violently shattered.

The implanted memories of “Uncle Wu” rapidly dissolved, replaced by the true face of the man who had actually saved him and led him through the apocalypse.

It was Uncle Bao. He was the true captain!

As for Wu Jianshan? Chu Che realized with a jolt of horror that he barely even knew the man.

A wave of ice-cold dread washed over the captain. It wasn’t just him. Across the courtyard, Sun Qianqian, Iron Lion, and Ding Dong all violently gasped, the mental fog of the Abyssal Control evaporating the second Wu Jianshan died.

Ding Dong’s pale face flushed with deep embarrassment. “What… what a terrifying Sequence ability,” she breathed.

“Everyone! Evacuate immediately!” Chu Che bellowed, snapping back into command. “Follow your Markings! We scatter now! Do whatever it takes to survive until I find you!”

Without another word, Chu Che vaulted into the driver’s seat of his armored SUV.

There were a million questions burning in his mind, but none of them mattered right now. The apex Anomalies had been temporarily scattered by the Death God’s pressure, but the thousands of Crawlers infesting the school were still very real, and very hungry.

Sun Qianqian bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. Hauling Ding Dong over her shoulder, she sprinted toward their designated vehicle.

The surviving convoy members, having run this drill a dozen times, scrambled for the transports. Even Mad Lion snapped out of his daze, turning and charging toward the reinforced school bus.

Captain Chu’s SUV was instantly packed to capacity.

Xu Lina, Xue Nan, and several others were left stranded in the snow, frantically looking for a ride.

Chen Ye’s Doomsday Pickup was idling less than twenty feet away.

The two women ran toward it—then abruptly stopped, their faces paling as they remembered who was behind the wheel. They instantly pivoted and sprinted toward the school bus instead.

A few panicking survivors, desperate to escape, scrambled into the bed of Chen Ye’s truck. But the second they realized whose vehicle they were in, they screamed in terror, vaulted back over the tailgate, and ran for the other cars.

A group of fleeing Death God cultists, sprinting alongside them, looked at the convoy members like they were insane.

Are you people actually braindead?! The monsters are eating us, and you’re being picky about your Uber?!

Without hesitation, the cultists scrambled up the tires and threw themselves into the back of Chen Ye’s truck.

Chen Ye slammed the truck into gear. The Doomsday Pickup roared, smashing through the remnants of the front gate and hurtling out onto the apocalyptic streets of Rong City.

The school grounds were a cacophony of shrieks, roaring engines, and the sickening crunch of bones.

A massive tidal wave of pale Crawlers poured out of the gates, relentlessly chasing the fleeing vehicles into the dark.

“Iron Lion! Cover the rear!” Chen Ye roared out the window.

“You got it, Yezi! Leave it to me!” Iron Lion’s booming, simple-minded voice echoed from the back of the school bus.

“You absolute moron!” Mad Lion’s furious, overlapping roar instantly followed. “Cover the rear?! Do you have a death wish?!”