After wrangling with the disaster zone that was the closet, Tang Li Yue made her way to the living room, where she was greeted by a mountain of unopened boxes—Li Yue's latest cleaning gear. It seemed Past Li Yue had gone on a cleaning spree before, well, imploding emotionally.
"She really went all out with this haul," Tang Li Yue muttered, eyeing the neat pile of brand-new gadgets. "I wonder if these things are as magical as she made them sound. She was pretty poetic about it."
With a dramatic sigh, she found a cutter and began slicing through the boxes, unleashing her inner cleaning enthusiast.
The first box revealed the holy grail of modern housekeeping: The Shark Eco Vacuum Cleaner. Cordless, sleek, and boasting a 60-minute runtime, this baby could glide over floors better than the Young Heir of Kunlun's Eight Great Steps of the Dragon Treading the Clouds.
Tang Li Yue couldn't help but feel a little giddy. "Lightweight, handy… and look at these attachments!" she marveled as she found a stubborn dirt brush, a mattress tool, and even a soft dusting brush.
Li Yue might have been spiraling into existential dread, but at least she'd gone out in style.
The next boxes held equally impressive treasures: a Multi-Surface Steam Cleaner, an Automatic Steam Mop, an Electric Power Scrubber (for those hard-to-reach crevices), and a Pet Hair Removal Brush—because Sir Edmund Pawtipurr's fluff obviously wasn't going to clean itself.
"Wow, this is like the Five Orthodox Saints of cleaning equipment," she muttered, half-expecting the tools to assemble themselves into some kind of robot butler.
Sir Edmund Pawtipurr, sitting regally by the window, flicked his tail in judgment. He eyed his strange human who seemed to have a habit of flipping faces faster than coin toss. His gaze seemed to say,
This human is so weird. Just a few days ago, she was in hysterics, and now she's serenading a vacuum cleaner.
Alas, he was stuck with this faulty poop shoveling official. Who else would put up with her?
Tang Li Yue, blissfully unaware of her fluffy critic who slapping its tail contentedly, finished assembling her cleaning army. She grabbed the vacuum first, ready to make her apartment shine.
But then her eyes landed on the pile of papers she'd previously ignored in favor of the chaotic closet.
"Ugh, fine, fine, I'll deal with you next," she grumbled, scooping up the scattered documents.
Her attention zeroed in on a sleek black journal on the bedside table, with a piece of paper neatly folded on top. The words Read Me stared back at her in bold letters, tempting.
Curious, Tang Li Yue flipped the paper open. The neat handwriting inside began with:
Dear whoever you are,
If you ended up reading this, then you might be the one to have found me. Sorry to inconvenience you. But I hope you could reach out to Manager Bo of Yue Yue Cleaners. He will make the necessary arrangements for me.
And if you see my cat and found him cute as hell, you can also proceed to adopt him. He's an obedient little darling. You won't regret. If not, please find him a kind and loving new owner.
Anyhow, I know that as you read this, I've officially deleted myself from the world. I wish I could say that I left peacefully, but if you know anything about what's coming, that's probably not gonna be the case. Peace is going to leave this world just as I did.
As Tang Li Yue read on, her brows furrowed. "Oh. It's that letter," she muttered, the one Li Yue wrote before her unfortunate exit.
Sugarcoating wouldn't even cut it. The apocalypse is coming. The world is going to end, and we're all going to die.
Tang Li Yue sighed. "Well, that's uplifting." A sardonic smile in her lips as she continued on reading.
A month. That's all you have. you only have a month. Get your shit together in a month before all hell breaks loose.
How do I know that? Because I fucking lived through it. Yeah, I know how it sounds. Crazy. Delusional. What am I? A time traveler? A regressor? Whatever it is, it doesn't even matter.
All I know is that I died gruesomely, and when I woke up, I was back in a peaceful time again, with all the memories of a world torn apart by death, violence, and despair. I felt relief and then even more despair.
What's the point of a month? It's not going to change anything. Some God might have been fucking joking with me, throwing me around in an emotional rollercoaster.
Well, newsflash, I already know that everything is pointless. There's no point in coming back when everything is destined to crumble anyway. The people I know will become monsters, and I'll have no choice but to kill them myself.
Fucking gods don't even know what they're doing.
"Charming. Apocalyptic Li Yue was quite the ray of sunshine." Tang Li Yue chuckled darkly.
This letter wasn't just a warning—it was a full-blown rant. Li Yue had gone through hell and back, and it showed. But as morbid as it was, Tang Li Yue couldn't help but like her. She had guts. She would have survived even in the Central Plains with this kind of attitude.
Bits and pieces of memories flashed in her mind and Tang Li Yue tried her best to stop them. She'd rather not vomit again today, thank you very much. But at this rate, it felt inevitable.
How could you stop the world from falling apart?
Well, the answer to that is, you don't.
You don't stop it. You can only survive. You can only fight until you can't anymore, and even then, it will never be enough.
That's the part no one would want to hear. You will fight disgusting monsters both dead and alive.
You will struggle so much and still lose.
People will turn on each other as resources run out. And the zombies—they will keep on coming, faster and stronger every single fucking day—there's no stopping them. They won't get tired like you will.
They will keep coming until everything is gone.
It's tiring. I'm so damn sick of it. Sick of running, of fighting, of watching everything I know falling apart.
Sick of surviving when there's no hope left. Cure? Those fucking scientists and power- hungry bozos don't want a cure. The apocalypse gave them ability users to experiment on and to use for their benefit.
The apocalypse is their chance to rule the world. Albeit, a dying world.
I don't want to face that again. I can't. That's why I'm leaving on my own terms, before it all restarts again. Who the fuck wants this second chance? Not me.
Maybe that makes me a coward. Maybe I should've kept going, but I just… I don't have it in me anymore. Not this time.
But before I go, there's something I need to leave behind. I don't want my death to be completely meaningless, so I'm leaving you, my journal. It has everything you need to know about the apocalypse, about the disgusting zombies, and about what's coming next.
It's not much. But it's all I have left to give.
There's also a small storage ring that I created, I managed to awaken space abilities, you see. Neat. But I still died. Anyway, it's a special ring you can bind to your soul. I took inspiration from the novels that went popular before the apocalypse. Just smear it with a little blood and no one can steal it anymore. Thieves are dime a dozen in the end of the world.
Tang Li Yue pursed her lips in wonder. Space abilities? There was such a thing? And the storage ring Li Yue said she created, isn't that exactly the same as the storage rings in Central Plains?
Tang Li Yue held in her questions.
Inside, I've stockpiled as many supplies as I could manage: food, water, medicine, weapons, and all other supplies I could get my hands on. With it, maybe you can last a little longer than I did. Have it easier in the beginning than I did.
Maybe you can make it through what's coming and even find a way to live in the ashes.
But remember this: trust no one. People are the worst kind of monster in the apocalypse. Even more than zombies. The ones who smile like it's fucking spring, the ones who insist on helping you, they'd turn on you faster than you can blink.
So, watch your back. Always. The only thing you can rely on is yourself.
Good fucking luck. You're going to fucking need it.
- Li Yue
The letter's bleak ending hit hard. Tang Li Yue reveled in silence for a moment letting every word sink in.
"Welp. Guess, I'm fucked," she muttered bitterly, tossing the letter aside.
Better start stockpiling cat food and cleaning supplies. Must take all my cleaning gadgets with me.