40: Chapter 40 Men are all the same, none of them are any good!

Chen Chen sat on the edge of the bed.

Shen Wanxing stood in front of him.

Her fingers twisted the metal puller of her assault jacket's zipper.

She pulled it down an inch.

Then she stopped.

"Lift your feet."

Chen Chen's command brooked no refusal.

Shen Wanxing obediently lifted her right foot.

Chen Chen grasped her ankle.

His thumb pressed the quick-release buckle on the side of the Stealth Walker Boots.

He pressed and flicked it outward.

The tactical boot fell off.

A foot so fair it seemed to glow was exposed to the air.

The bruises previously rubbed by high heels had mostly faded.

The curve of her arch was pulled tight.

Her toes were painted with a light nude-pink polish, shimmering with fine glitter under the silver light of the bed frame.

Chen Chen threw the right boot to the foot of the bed.

He switched to the left foot.

Same movement.

Both tactical boots hit the floor.

Chen Chen's palm did not let go.

His rough finger pads slowly slid up along her smooth instep.

Past the ankle, stopping at the edge of the calf.

Shen Wanxing's breathing rhythm was completely disrupted.

Her chest rose and fell violently within the confines of the assault jacket.

"Brother Chen Chen..."

She called out in a tiny voice, her throat feeling soft.

"Do you... have some kind of little fetish?"

She lowered her head, her chin nearly touching her collarbone.

"Every time, you have to... rub my feet..."

Chen Chen did not answer.

He reached his arm forward.

He directly wrapped his arm around Shen Wanxing's slender waist and pulled her whole body forward.

The zipper was pulled open.

The oversized assault jacket slid down to her elbows.

The silver backless evening gown inside, which had been through several days of turmoil, already had its shoulder straps slipped down to her arms.

A large expanse of snow-white, delicate skin of her neck and shoulders was exposed to the constant 24-degree air.

The lines of her collarbones were clearly visible.

Chen Chen exerted force with his arm.

Shen Wanxing lost her balance entirely and fell backward.

Her back hit the large 2.5-meter mattress.

The memory material of the bed surface perfectly accepted her weight.

A micro-soothing force field seeped in against her spine.

The fear accumulated over several days, the psychological shadow after killing, and the oppressive feeling of the polar night environment...

Were completely shattered at this moment.

Her entire body went completely soft.

The mist in her eyes was too thick to disperse.

Chen Chen leaned down, bracing his arms at her sides.

Outside the window, the polar night of the wasteland was boundlessly dark.

Inside the window, the sequins of the silver gown spread out a field of fragmented light on the mattress.

"Here,"

Chen Chen spoke clearly against her ear.

"You don't need to maintain your sanity."

Shen Wanxing closed her eyes.

She wrapped both hands around Chen Chen's neck.

...

First-floor living pod.

Shen Wanbing was wrapped in a blanket, lying on her side on the folding bed.

Jiang Yanxue was beside her, leaning her back against the cold armored wall.

Her long legs stretched out casually on the moisture-proof mat.

She held the Shadow Instant-Kill Blade in her hands.

Neither of them was asleep.

Lv.10 mobile heavy RV, with a chassis weight of thirteen and a half tons.

Six B-rank all-terrain self-healing tires.

Military-grade shock absorbers.

With these hardware specs...

Even if a magnitude four earthquake occurred outside, the perceived displacement inside the cabin wouldn't exceed two millimeters.

But now, the ceiling overhead.

Which was the floor of the second-floor levitation pod.

Was producing an extremely faint, rhythmic vibration.

The B-rank soundproofing material filtered specific sounds very cleanly.

The noise reaching the first floor had been compressed to the physical limit.

But in this narrow, enclosed cabin...

The more it was like this, the clearer those occasional muffled sounds that leaked down became.

Interspersed with certain extremely restrained fragments of syllables forced from deep in the throat.

Shen Wanbing faced the armored wall.

Motionless.

Her fingers tightly gripped the edge of the blanket.

The concentration ice heart necklace rested against her collarbone, continuously emitting cool energy.

The efficiency of her mental power recovery was extremely high.

But her heart rate was racing in the opposite direction.

The first night.

She had sat in the passenger seat and endured all night.

She had heard the noises coming from the mattress in the back row.

The second night.

Separated by the sliding partition.

The distance was even closer.

Tonight was the third night.

Separated by a thin ceiling.

The soothing force field of that C-rank bed on the second floor had a wide radiation range, its afterwaves directly penetrating to the first floor.

The soothing effect that should have made one fall asleep faster had, in this current context, played an extremely fatal counter-role.

It dismantled all of Shen Wanbing's psychological defenses.

The most secret perceptions were magnified to the maximum.

That indescribable tingling sensation crawled all the way up from the base of her spine.

Shen Wanbing bit her lower lip.

She rolled over.

She wrapped the blanket tighter.

The billionaire CEO, who was decisive in the business world, could only rely on physical means to block out the vibration frequency coming from above.

Nearby.

Jiang Yanxue opened her eyes.

Her dark red pupils flashed in the afterglow of the cabin's cold light.

Her hearing wasn't as sharp as Shen Wanbing's, which was bolstered by a god-level talent.

But she was someone who had grown up amidst the swords and guns of the Black Dragon Society.

Her judgment of any movement in any environment was extremely precise.

The vibration frequency of the ceiling changed.

Denser.

Heavier.

What exactly was the weight limit of that C-rank bed's metal frame?

This nonsensical thought flashed through Jiang Yanxue's mind.

She closed her eyes tightly.

She hugged the Shadow Blade in her arms a bit tighter.

Her teeth bit the corner of the blanket.

Her heartbeat hammered loudly in her eardrums.

"Men truly are not good things."

Jiang Yanxue buried her face in the blanket.

She cursed a very soft profanity.

The movement on the ceiling lasted for a long time.

It stopped once in the middle.

Then it started again.

The second round of vibrations was longer and more violent than the first.

By the time everything fell completely silent.

Jiang Yanxue glanced at the time in the upper right corner of the virtual panel.

2:17 AM.

She let out a long breath and rolled over.

Opposite her, Shen Wanbing...

Happened to roll over as well.

Their gazes collided directly in the dim cabin.

Neither had slept.

...

Second-floor levitation pod.

Constant temperature 24 degrees.

The micro-soothing force field of the c-rank mental soothing bed was still operating, silver halos slowly flowing along the surface of the mattress.

Chen Chen opened his eyes.

The explosive sounds coming from deep within his bones had ended.

The settlement of the god-level talent [Physical Overlimit] had completed at midnight, but that power was still surging in his muscle fibers even now.

Sixty points of Constitution.

He clenched his fist.

His knuckles cracked, every tendon taut like steel wire.

After tossing for nearly three hours last night, an ordinary person should have been paralyzed on the bed, unable to get up.

He, on the other hand, was overly energetic, with no trace of weakness anywhere on his body.

He looked down.

Shen Wanxing was curled in his arms, shrunk into a small ball.

That silver sequined backless evening gown was completely ruined.

One shoulder strap was broken, the side zipper had been torn off its tracks, and sequins were scattered on the mattress like broken stars.

Large patches of snow-white skin were exposed to the air, from her shoulders to the small of her back, covered in dense red marks, some even turning faint purple.

Tear stains that hadn't dried yet hung from the corners of her eyes. Her eyelashes were still wet.

Those feet were tucked outside the blanket.

On the fair insteps, five toes were curled, and the light nude-pink polish sparkled under the silver light.

There was a bruise on the inside of her ankle—grasped by a large hand, the outline of five fingers clearly visible.

Chen Chen reached out, brushing away the stray hairs clinging to her cheek.

His finger pad rubbed against her cheekbone.

Her skin was burning hot, still carrying the temperature that hadn't fully receded from last night.

This face.

Before the apocalypse, it was printed on every LED advertising screen in Jiang City.

Worshipped by tens of millions of fans, pampered by management companies, and fought over by variety shows.

The title of National Goddess was built with real gold, silver, and national traffic.

Now she was nestled in his arms, her eyes swollen from crying, her body covered in marks he had left.

As obedient as a cat that had its belly rubbed.

Chen Chen stared at the ceiling for a few seconds.

Images flashed through his mind.

In his past life, the musty smell of the rental house.

The disinfectant in the hospital corridor, the scribbled signature on the critical illness notice.

The sound of the door lock turning as his fiancée emptied the furniture, the busy tone of friends' phones being turned off.

The hypocritical, nauseating concern of relatives gathered around the bed, inquiring about the ownership of the property.

Back then, he lay on the hospital bed, thin as a skeleton, the blood he coughed up soaking through the pillow, without even the strength to roll over.

And now.

Sixty points of Constitution.

Thirty-one points of Agility, twenty-eight points of Perception and Spirit.

The Lv.10 mobile heavy fortress parked outside, a thirteen-and-a-half-ton steel beast with two 12.7mm heavy machine guns mounted on the roof.

The back of the RV was stuffed with enough high-grade rations and pure water to last two months.

He held the most beautiful woman in his arms.

In the passenger seat sat a billionaire ice-cold female CEO.

In the back row was the young miss of the Black Dragon Society, who could make the entire underground world of Jiang City tremble.

Chen Chen smiled.

The exhilaration surging from the depths of his chest was impossible to suppress.

This damn apocalypse...

Is my paradise.

A burning ambition pumped from his heart, rushing through his blood vessels into his limbs.

Survive?

Not enough.

Far from enough.

He wanted to trample the rules of this wasteland under his feet.

He wanted every person struggling to survive on this highway to feel their legs go weak at the mention of the name "Chen Chen."

He would take his women and stand at the very top of the food chain.