Quick Transmigration: Why did you provoke him? He's love-struck!

Realizing that Yan Zhen had seen through his clumsy excuse, Xu Songfeng, who had been pretending to be calm, suddenly felt a lump in his throat and couldn't hold back his emotions any longer.

He clutched Yan Zhen's sleeve, tears streaming down his face, and sobbed, "I can't bear to leave you... I agreed to go to the military region before because Jing Chen was there, and he would unconditionally stand by your side and protect you. But now he's gone. What will you do if I leave too?"

Although I don't have Jingchen's skills, nor can I protect you like he does, I will stand by your side no matter what happens. If... if the base runs out of supplies someday, I will take care of myself before I become a burden to you.

Yan Zhen: "..."

She bent down and pulled Xu Songfeng out of her arms. Seeing his pitiful state as he cried uncontrollably, all her emotions finally turned into a flick on his forehead.

"Fool." Yan Zhen said, both amused and exasperated. "You have never been a burden to me, not in the past, and not in the future. If you don't want to go to the military region, then don't go. As long as I live, you will never die."

Having received Yan Zhen's affirmative answer, Xu Songfeng was completely relieved.

As soon as his tense nerves relaxed, the fatigue from days of traveling overwhelmed him. Without even taking a shower, he went back to his room, climbed into bed, closed his eyes, and fell asleep immediately.

Yan Zhen went back to her room, washed her hair, took a shower, tidied herself up, and quickly fell asleep.

After an unknown amount of time, Yan Zhen noticed someone enter her room and sit quietly on the edge of the bed, watching her.

She opened her eyes. The room was dark, but by the moonlight streaming in through the window, she recognized the person as Jing Chen.

Has Jing Chen returned?

But he was already dead.

The clash of these two perceptions caused Yan Zhen a moment of confusion, and she reached out tentatively to touch him.

Jing Chen smiled as he watched her actions and took the initiative to interlock his fingers with hers.

The feeling of their hands clasped together was so real that Yan Zhen's heart couldn't help but race.

But she knew very well that Jingchen was already dead.

Is the thing in front of me a human or a ghost?

"You're back?"

Jing Chen looked at her, a gentle smile on his lips, and nodded slightly.

"Mirror sinking?"

Jing Chen opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

Yan Zhen stared intently at him, and when she saw that his lip movements were the same as those she had seen in front of the airplane windshield that day, she sat up abruptly.

Startled awake, Yan Zhen realized that he had just been dreaming.

The room was quiet and pitch black.

Today is the second day of the Lunar New Year. There is no moonlight outside the window, and no mirror in the room.

Jingchen is dead; he will never come back.

A feeling called "sadness" belatedly welled up in Yan Zhen's heart.

To stop this emotion from spreading and festering in the middle of the night, Yan Zhen threw off the covers, got out of bed, and went to the bathroom to wash his face with cold water.

Yan Zhen splashed several handfuls of cold water on his face, shivering from the cold. As his emotions quickly subsided, reason and thought gradually returned.

She closed her eyes, recalling the day Jingchen died, when she saw his lips moving through the windshield.

If she wasn't mistaken, the message he was trying so hard to convey to himself was—wait for me to come back.

Wait for him to come back?

But how can he come back?

Being bitten by a zombie and then dragged into a horde of zombies is a dead end with no chance of survival.

For some reason, Yan Zhen remembered what he had said about "Quick Transmigration Division", "System" and "Transmigration".

If these things are true, Jingchen might be able to come back...

As soon as the thought popped into his head, Yan Zhen immediately shook his head.

It's not a good time to overthink at night, otherwise feelings of despair can breed all sorts of unrealistic ideas, giving yourself unrealistic hopes that are impossible to achieve.

Yan Zhen interrupted her thoughts, wiped her face, went back to bed, and forced herself to fall asleep.

-

The next day, Yan Zhen got up early, ate two cold steamed buns that Xu Songfeng had brought from the canteen, and began to arrange for the application of constant temperature paint to the walls and for children under twelve to go to the military region.

After a busy day, the list of children going to the military region was finalized.

To Yan Zhen's surprise, only one-third of the families were willing to send their children to the military region, while the majority of the others chose to let their children stay.

Yan Zhen thought about it again and realized he could understand.

It's the end of the world, there's no absolute safety anywhere, and the military region is unfamiliar with the area, so no one can guarantee that the child will be properly taken care of there.

Rather than sending them away, where they might never see each other again until they die, it's better for the whole family to be together, even in death.

In the afternoon, the remaining third of the children packed their belongings, boarded military vehicles, and left the shelter, watched by their families.

After discussing with the people in the shelter, Yan Zhen decided to apply a thick layer of temperature-regulating coating inside the air-raid shelter.

The extreme cold could last for one or two years, and no one knows how long the temperature-regulating coating will last. If it fails midway, the air-raid shelter can become the last line of defense for refuges.

By the time a detailed plan was finalized, it was already dark outside.

Yan Zhen walked out of the room that was being used as a meeting room. As soon as he opened the door, he was hit by a blast of cold wind and shivered.

It wasn't too cold when she went out in the morning; she was only wearing a light jacket. But just one day later, the temperature dropped by more than ten degrees.

Yan Zhen shrank his neck and walked towards the cafeteria.

After eating a bowl of cold noodles in the cafeteria, Yan Zhen added a lot of vinegar, hoping to neutralize the alkaline taste of the noodles with the sourness. However, this method was obviously unreliable, as the noodles still tasted very alkaline, and she also swallowed a lot of vinegar.

After finishing his noodles, Yan Zhen prepared to return to his residence.

But as she walked, she inexplicably ended up at the main gate.

There were sentries on duty at the gate. They greeted Yan Zhen warmly: "Boss, it's so late, are you going out?"

Yan Zhen shook his head, gazing at the tightly closed door from afar, vaguely feeling that Jing Chen would push open the door and walk in at any moment.

After standing there for more than ten minutes, Yan Zhen felt chilled to the bone by the increasingly biting wind before turning around and going back to his residence.

In the days that followed, the temperature dropped lower and lower each day.

In just half a month, the temperature plummeted from 20 degrees Celsius to minus 10 degrees Celsius.

After the temperature-controlled paint was applied to the walls of the air-raid shelter, Yan Zhen and Lao Mao arranged for everyone to move in one after another.

During this time, Yan Zhen led the convoy out twice to search for supplies.

After searching for five days in the freezing cold, the supplies they found couldn't even fill half a train car. On the way back, they even encountered a group of survivors who tried to rob them.

The group of survivors were clearly driven to desperation by the cold weather, and they were robbing like they had no regard for their lives. Yan Zhen didn't hold back either, shooting them one by one, blowing off three heads before scaring them away.

Back at the base, Yan Zhen took stock of the supplies in the warehouse, saving enough food to last the entire shelter for a year and three months.

If the extreme cold has not eased after a year and three months, they can only leave it to fate.

Having prepared for the winter in temperatures of minus 80 or 90 degrees Celsius, when the temperature dropped to minus 35 degrees Celsius, Yan Zhen ordered the various entrances and exits of the shelter to be reinforced, and then led all the survivors into the air-raid shelter.

As temperatures continued to drop, the effect of the temperature-regulating coating became very apparent. Outside, water would freeze instantly, and the temperature would plummet to nearly minus seventy degrees Celsius, while inside the air-raid shelter, the temperature remained consistently around zero degrees Celsius.

Although it still feels cold at this temperature, wearing more clothes will help you survive.

It's the fourth month of winter, and the Lunar New Year is just around the corner.

However, no one was in the mood to celebrate the New Year this year. The low temperatures plunged the entire shelter into an unprecedented slump—due to the prolonged exposure to low temperatures, a cold virus broke out in the air-raid shelter.

In peacetime, a cold is a minor illness that can be cured with a few packets of cold medicine or a few days of IV drips at the hospital. But in the post-apocalyptic world where medical care and medicine are scarce, a slight oversight can lead to pneumonia and eventually death.

A nine-year-old child had been coughing for half a month and had a persistent high fever; none of the medicines available in the shelter were effective.

When the child coughed up his first mouthful of bloody phlegm, the exhausted parents started fighting.

Yan Zhen and Lao Mao rushed over after receiving the news. Pushing through the crowd, they found the couple locked in a fierce fight, pulling each other's hair and slapping each other.

"It's all your fault! If you hadn't prevented the child from going to the military region, the child wouldn't have gotten so sick!"

"Blame me? What right do you have to blame me! You stay in bed all day, even smoking in bed, and I do all the cooking and childcare. If you had just paid a little more attention to the child, she wouldn't have caught a cold!"

"Shut up! If Nier dies, I will never let you get away with this!"

"I should be saying that. If our daughter dies, I don't want to live, and you have to die too!"

Yan Zhen looked at the couple fighting like chickens, then at the unconscious child curled up in the blankets beside them, and said with a stern face, "Shut up! Let go!"

Startled by her outburst, the couple sheepishly released their grip. The man immediately scrambled to his feet: "Boss, is there any other medicine? The child is coughing up blood; if this continues, it might..."

Old Cat stepped forward and said, "We've brought out all the medicines the base has."

"What should we do?" The man looked at Yan Zhen pleadingly. "Boss, can you still contact the military region? I regret it. Can we send the child to the military region now? As long as the military region can save my daughter, I will do anything for them, even my life."

Old Cat said helplessly, "We can't contact the military region. Even if the military region is willing to accept you, how are you going to get to the military region in the minus eighty degree temperature outside? You'll freeze to death before you even leave the shelter."

Upon hearing this, the man covered his face and broke down in tears.

The woman silently crawled to her daughter's side, hugged her tightly, and patted her gently, her face filled with despair.

The onlookers either looked reluctant or sighed.

For a time, the shadow of death loomed over the air-raid shelter.

Yan Zhen squatted down in front of the woman, checked the girl's condition, and said, "I can't contact the military region, and you can't go there in this temperature. We can only do our best now. I'll go and discuss with Mr. Sun, a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, later, and try to treat her with the available Chinese medicine. You should keep her warm. Things haven't gotten to the worst point yet."

The woman lowered her eyes and didn't speak, but instinctively hugged the child in her arms tighter.

Yan Zhen went to find Old Sun, the only traditional Chinese medicine doctor in the shelter.

When Old Sun saw her, he knew her purpose before she could even speak. He preemptively said, "That child probably already has leukemia. Our shelter doesn't have the resources to treat her. I suggest we give up treatment. First, we shouldn't waste medicine, as many people are sick lately. We should save resources for those who have a chance of being cured. Second, we shouldn't give the parents hope only to disappoint them again. That would be a form of torture for the family."

Yan Zhen frowned: "Let's try again, prescribe some medicine for her."

“There’s no need for that,” Old Sun said earnestly. “Even if she can barely pull through now, being this sick will definitely leave lasting effects. You know the conditions here. If she doesn’t get enough nutrition, the child will die young. Giving up treatment is the best option for her, her family, and the shelter.”

Yan Zhen: "..."

She knew that what Lao Sun said was true, but that child had survived even the worst early stages of the apocalypse, and now she had to watch her die here. Yan Zhen couldn't describe how she felt.

After hesitating for a while, Yan Zhen scratched the back of his head in frustration and began to pester Old Sun: "Prescribe a few doses of medicine, let her take them first, what if she gets better? I know we don't have much medicine left. I've been making some cold-weather gear for outdoor use recently, and it's working quite well. I'll go out in a few days and check with a traditional Chinese medicine shop in a nearby city to see if they have any in stock..."

Old Sun was taken aback: "Are you crazy? Going out in this weather is suicide!"

“I know what I’m doing and I won’t risk my life.” Yan Zhen waved his hand. “Just prescribe a few doses of medicine. We’ve done everything we can. Whether the child survives or not is up to fate.”

Old Sun, worn down by her nagging, reluctantly agreed. Just as he turned to get the medicine, a patrolman carrying a gun, covered in snow, ran in: "Boss, someone's here outside. He says he's looking for you."

Yan Zhen frowned, guessing that they were survivors who had come to seek refuge.

The shelter is currently struggling to survive, so it has no extra supplies to take in other survivors.

"Just give them a few packets of instant noodles and a pack of hand warmers and send them away," Yan Zhen said. "Tell them we can't take in any more survivors here."

The patrolman was clearly taken aback, and hesitated.

Yan Zhen asked, "What's wrong?"

"...That person said he brought a lot of antibiotics, all of which were within their expiration dates."

Yan Zhen was stunned. When she came to her senses, her heart raced: "It's a man?"

The patrolman nodded: "Yes."

"Very tall?"

"That's right, he looks to be at least 1.9 meters tall..."

Yan Zhen turned and ran outside.

The patrolman quickly followed, saying as he chased after Yan Zhen, "Boss, that guy seems to know you. He said you'd definitely make me give him something to get rid of him, and he even guessed that it would be instant noodles and hand warmers..."

Yan Zhen had no time to listen to his rambling and rushed out of the air-raid shelter like a gust of wind.

Outside, breath turned to ice, and the wind stung her face like knives scraping flesh. Yan Zhen rushed to the outside of the shelter and saw a tall figure standing in the snow and ice, dressed like a bear. She almost thought she was dreaming.

Yan Zhen stopped about ten meters away from the man.

The man was talking to the patrolman in the guard post when he heard the noise, turned around, and met Yan Zhen's gaze.

He smiled and exhaled a puff of white breath: "I'm back."

Yan Zhen stared at him intently with a straight face for a long time before finally smiling.

She walked over step by step, and when she got close, she punched him in the chest.

"Why are you only getting back now?"

Jing Chen naturally took her hand and walked towards the air-raid shelter: "The Quick Transmigration Division was delayed a bit because of data repair."

Yan Zhen couldn't break free from him, and the next moment, something warm was stuffed into his hand.

She picked it up and saw that it was a roasted sweet potato, oozing honey and emitting heat and a sweet aroma.

"..." Yan Zhen held the roasted sweet potato, his eyes shining, and he couldn't help but swallow.

Who knows what Jingchen ate every day during those days?

"Eat up," Jing Chen said. "I have some more here."

Yan Zhen immediately took a big bite, and the sweet and fragrant taste instantly spread on her tongue. If it weren't for the fact that they were still outdoors in the freezing cold, she would have liked to spin around on the spot.

After finishing the roasted sweet potato in a few bites, the two went into the air-raid shelter.

Jing Chen took off his heavy black coat. Yan Zhen watched his movements and noticed that he had nothing hidden under his clothes, no bag on him, and he hadn't seen any cars outside.

So how did he get here in the extreme cold of minus seventy or eighty degrees Celsius?

And it also came with hot roasted sweet potatoes.

Yan Zhen asked whatever came to mind, "How did you get here?"

“No need to go, I just transmigrated in,” Jing Chen said. “Most of the data has been repaired, and I have all the necessary features for a transmigrator.”

Yan Zhen responded to his words with a skeptical look.

Seeing that she didn't believe him, Jing Chen turned his palm down and then up, and a hot, fragrant meat pancake appeared out of thin air in his hand.

Yan Zhen: "!!!"

Meeting Yan Zhen's shocked gaze, Jing Chen placed the sesame seed cake in her hand and said smugly, "Didn't you complain before that I, as a transmigrator, didn't have any cheat codes? Now I do! Not only do I have a storage space that can hold enough rice, flour, oil, meat, and medicine for the shelter to last for ten years, but I also have a teleportation function. Oh, and I also had someone open a channel for purchasing daily necessities with points. From now on, I'll take care of all your food, clothing, shelter, and transportation needs in the shelter."

Yan Zhen held the sesame seed cake in his hand, speechless for a long time.

The problems that had troubled her for so long, and the emotions that had been building up in her heart, began to dissolve and disintegrate rapidly with the arrival of Jing Chen.

Surprisingly, she found the feeling of having someone to help share the burden and provide support to be extremely pleasant.

After a long pause, she asked hesitantly, "Why?"

"what why?"

"You said we are mission takers, just passing through this world. You should go back first and wait for me at the Quick Transmigration Division. Why did you have to come back here to suffer?"

Jing Chen reached out and hugged her: "Because, I love you."

(End of the article)