Apocalypse Star House Hoarding-Chapter 188

Yu Xi’s memories of her rebirth were only about 70% complete.
She had always been puzzled as to why the original “Yu Xi” had only stayed in this secure, resource-rich building with uninterrupted utilities for about a week before leaving in a hurry. Worse still, she left with minimal supplies, putting herself at a significant disadvantage later on.
Now she understood—it was due to an unforeseen incident.
This world had enjoyed two to three centuries of peace, and while its technology was advanced, its weaponry lagged behind. Compared to Yu Xi’s original world, it wasn’t regressive, but the variety of weapons was noticeably limited.
For example, there were missiles but no nuclear weapons. Automatic rifles existed, but nothing as sophisticated as modified AK-47s, nor were such weapons widely manufactured.
That said, guns were not entirely unfamiliar to her assailants. However, seeing a woman wield one distracted them entirely.
Earlier, when the celebrity neighbor had tearfully confessed that a corporate president lived across the hall, they had imagined a middle-aged, balding, pot-bellied man.
Instead, the door opened to reveal a young woman—a stunning beauty with a curvaceous figure and delicate features.
Despite wearing simple loose-fitting clothes, with slightly messy long curls and a cold expression, she was captivating enough to make their hearts itch.
“Rich people really are different, even their hair is impeccably maintained,” one man thought.
The leader of the group tapped his iron rod against the ground, producing a crisp clang. “Why so eager to open the door? Were you charmed by us handsome fellas?”
Yu Xi: …??
She lightly tapped the barrel of her gun with her left index finger. “Blind, are you?”
The men weren’t blind—just taken aback by the absurdity of the scene. A corporate president holding a gun that even law enforcement couldn’t access seemed too far-fetched. If she’d been holding a toy gun, it would have made more sense to them.
Tonight, they had stormed the opulent, secure building with ease. The wealthy residents, once envied and despised, proved pathetically weak. This triumph had swelled their confidence to the point of arrogance.
Initially, they had no intention of going too far. But now, someone couldn’t help themselves.
The leader, gripping his iron rod, slowly approached her. “Don’t be scared. We won’t kill you. But since you’ve opened the door, how about inviting me in? Don’t worry, as long as you cooperate, we won’t hurt you, and you can even keep your supplies—AHHH!”
Before he could take a few steps, a deafening crack filled the air, accompanied by the smell of gunpowder. His leg was struck as if hit by a truck, and he collapsed with a scream, clutching his thigh and writhing on the ground.
A 7.62mm bullet had torn through his flesh, shattered his femur, and exited through the back of his leg, leaving a spray of blood that stained the floor.
The men behind him were frozen in shock. They had expected the residents here to be terrified by their weapons—iron rods and knives—just as all the other wealthy people they’d confronted had been.
They had reveled in their newfound power. But now, in a matter of moments, the tables had turned.
No one had expected this delicate-looking woman to wield a real gun—and fire it without hesitation.
“How coincidental,” Yu Xi said with an indifferent expression, her gun now trained on the rest of them. “I don’t like killing either. But pain is far scarier than death. Care to try?”
The men shivered violently.
It wasn’t until they saw her retreat into her apartment that they dared to check on their fallen leader.
He hadn’t passed out; the bullet had hit his leg, not his torso. However, the excruciating pain was unbearable. He wished she had just killed him outright—it would have been less agonizing.
Terrified, the group scrambled to drag him into the celebrity’s apartment. They locked the door, barricaded it with furniture, and prayed she wouldn’t change her mind and shoot them all.
She claimed she didn’t like killing, but they now believed she wouldn’t hesitate to leave them half-dead, writhing in pain and wishing for death.
One man tried to press a towel against the wound to stop the bleeding, but the moment he applied pressure, the leader let out a piercing scream that made everyone’s hair stand on end.
Unable to bear the sound, another man stepped forward and knocked their leader unconscious with a blow from his rod. Only then could they continue dressing the wound.
“Damn, that was terrifying…”
“That celebrity must’ve set us up! He knew she was dangerous and sent us there to die so he could escape!”
“Hell, I’m going to beat him up again!”
The man who had just silenced their leader spoke up. “Fine, vent your anger, but don’t kill him. And make sure everyone, especially Ah Wei, understands—don’t treat Subordinates lightly. Killing one is still punishable. If the disaster ends and the authorities restore order, the consequences for murder will be far worse than for sparing lives.”
“Got it. Don’t worry!”
Across the hall, Yu Xi listened clearly to the conversation of the group inside the apartment.
She truly didn’t want to kill anyone. The people who had broken into the building tonight numbered over a hundred, and for now, they didn’t seem intent on killing. If she started killing them, the consequences could spiral out of control.
As the saying goes, a cornered dog will leap over a wall.
These people couldn’t overpower her, but there was no guarantee they wouldn’t take out their frustrations on others. She had no intention of going door to door to rescue every resident, nor was she about to kill all these intruders. All she wanted was for them to heed her warning and leave her alone.
If the man earlier hadn’t had impure intentions, her shot would have only hit the wall.
As it stood, taking an AK-47 shot at close range had all but rendered his leg useless.
When Yu Xi stepped into the living room from the foyer, she found her four Subordinates awake, lined up in silence, staring at her—or rather, at the gun in her hands.
“Apologies, President Yu. I just woke up!” Jin Shou said, his brows furrowed in self-reproach. As her bodyguard, ensuring safety was his responsibility. That she had to deal with the trouble herself was an inexcusable mistake.
“It was just a minor issue, no need to blame yourself. The world is different now; we’ll need to face it together. There’s no need to divide roles so strictly anymore.”
“Yes,” Jin Shou replied, though his furrowed brow remained.
“It’s fine now. Go rest. Tomorrow morning, start organizing and packing everything in the apartment. Don’t worry about the car’s weight limit—sort everything useful into boxes.”
“Understood.” Both Jin Shou and Hei Mu were accustomed to following orders without question, even if they didn’t fully understand them.
Yan Shang, introverted as ever, simply nodded silently. Previously, he had spoken up only because he thought Yu Xi intended to send them away. Beyond that, he considered it his duty to obey.
Xi Yuan didn’t say anything, his gaze lingering briefly on her fingers wrapped around the gun before settling on her face. He seemed momentarily lost in thought until she looked at him, causing him to quickly avert his eyes and shield his expression with his long lashes.
How should he describe it? Yu Xi holding a gun looked… different.
There was something about her that made his heart race erratically. As he turned to head to his room, he instinctively pressed a hand to his chest.
What was this feeling?
By morning, the once-pristine corridors and apartments of the luxurious building had descended into chaos and disarray.
Some residents had been caught off guard and forced to open their doors, while others had their doors broken down after futile resistance.
A few particularly stubborn households had managed to hold their doors against the intruders with barricades and help from their Subordinates. Seeing this, the intruders gave up on breaking through and instead installed signal blockers outside their doors, cutting off mobile communication.
These households were trapped, unable to call for help or escape, but the intruders ignored them for now.
For these intruders, the immediate priority was to enjoy the spoils of their conquest: luxurious apartments, exquisite furniture, and food and wine beyond anything they’d ever dreamed of.
With society in chaos, what they consumed now was the only thing that truly mattered.
As for the future, how long they could occupy the building or what would happen tomorrow—they hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Everyone in the building knew by now that the apartment on the 18th floor was a no-go zone.
Inside that “no-go” apartment, Yu Xi’s Subordinates were diligently following her orders, packing and organizing supplies.
Jin Shou, still recovering from his injury, had been ordered by Yu Xi to rest, but he couldn’t sit idle. He stood on the balcony, observing the activity in neighboring and lower-level apartments.
On the 16th floor, a man was also scanning the building from his balcony. When he noticed Yu Xi’s low-altitude hovercar parked outside her apartment, he shouted up at Jin Shou, claiming to recognize him and offering a large sum of money if he would use the car to help him escape.
Jin Shou glanced at the man briefly before turning away without a word, heading back into the living room.
At the dining table, Hei Mu asked Yu Xi, “President, are we leaving today?”
“No, we’ll wait for two, maybe three days.” The exact timing wasn’t clear in her memory, but around that period, the first official evacuation routes were announced.
The authorities published information on known approximate “bloom” timings for the Red Lotuses, marking routes that would be absolute safe zones between them. Additionally, they opened all known and unknown underground shelters and passages as designated safe havens against the suction force of the blooms.
In her fragmented memory, the original “Yu Xi” had left hastily in the middle of the night. Poor lighting and a rushed departure caused her low-altitude hovercar to get caught in the suction of a blooming Red Lotus. The car was fortunately thrown against a sturdy wall as the bloom was nearing its end, sparing the lives of everyone inside.
However, their luck ran out when the hovercar was destroyed. For the following days, they had to traverse ruins and hide in basements with other refugees until they finally encountered a rescue team.
Shortly after, the authorities released a map of safe evacuation routes for the city. The routes branched into four directions—east, south, west, and north—aligned with the future establishment of major evacuation zones.
At that time, “Yu Xi” had thought that if they had waited a few more days before leaving, they wouldn’t have lost the hovercar. In times like these, having a low-altitude hovercar was invaluable. It could carry supplies, provide shelter from the elements, and most importantly, serve as a highly convenient mode of transportation, far superior to ground vehicles.
This map of safe evacuation routes was another reason Yu Xi chose to stay temporarily in the city apartment, aside from her desire to observe the Red Lotuses up close. In her memory, while hovercars couldn’t maintain flight at altitudes above 300 meters for extended periods, they had to ascend to 350 meters to escape the suction force of a bloom. This still presented a degree of risk when leaving the city.
The map was in digital format and could be directly uploaded into the hovercar’s system to automatically chart a safe flight path.
That day, after packing their belongings, Yu Xi instructed her Subordinates to reinforce the apartment door. The method was simple but effective: they nailed boards across the entrance and stacked heavy cabinets and furniture against it, completely sealing off the foyer.
They also dismantled the glass door between the living room and the balcony, allowing Yu Xi to park the hovercar directly in the living room to protect it from damage by intruders accessing balconies from neighboring apartments. Fortunately, the building’s balconies were far apart due to differences in floor layouts, making it impossible for anyone to jump across without a hovercar.
Conditions outside had worsened in the past two days. Medical and rescue services were overwhelmed, unable to manage all the disaster zones. Rescue workers were constantly at risk of being trapped by new ground collapses or wandering into death zones in the ruins.
Inside the building, chaos reigned. More intruders arrived, this time hardened criminals armed with more advanced weapons, including firearms.
Finally, on the third day, the safe evacuation route map was released.
Jin Shou, waiting by the computer, quickly downloaded the map and uploaded it to the hovercar system.
“Everyone, get in the car and wait for me on the platform outside the balcony,” Yu Xi instructed. Once the hovercar left the living room, she quickly entered the gym, where she had temporarily stored over a dozen boxes, and moved them all into her Star House storage space.
Next, she went to the cold storage room and transferred all the vegetables, fruits, eggs, dairy, fish, meat, seafood, wine, and drinks from the freezers and refrigerators into the Star House.
The Star House’s 888 cubic meters of space was almost completely filled.
Satisfied that no supplies had been left behind, Yu Xi quickly walked onto the balcony and entered the hovercar.
The evacuation route charted by the system was highly convoluted, but the computer-generated flight path made navigation straightforward—just follow the plotted course.
As they flew over the ruins of collapsed buildings, they saw rescue teams still hard at work, evacuees being forced to relocate yet again due to new ground collapses, and overcrowded hospitals where even parking lots were filled with tents and makeshift beds.
The apocalypse was as brutal as ever.
It stripped people of the peaceful lives they once had, robbing them of control over their own destinies, much like the devouring jaws of the Red Lotuses, endlessly consuming every glimmer of hope in people’s hearts.
Over two hours later, they were finally about to leave the city.
From the backseat, Xi Yuan suddenly let out a soft “Huh.”
“What is it?” Yu Xi asked from the front passenger seat, turning around.
Sitting alone in the last row, Xi Yuan had been peering through a pair of binoculars, his first time in a hovercar filling him with curiosity.
“There,” he said, pointing in a specific direction within the city. After lowering the binoculars for a moment, he raised them again. “There’s a patch of fog.”
“Fog?” Yu Xi frowned.
“It’s very dense, but it’s only covering a small area. It’s strange.”
Yu Xi got up, maneuvered to the back row, and looked in the direction Xi Yuan was pointing. She didn’t need binoculars to see the dense fog he was talking about.
He wasn’t mistaken—there was indeed a patch of unusually thick, gray fog in a part of the city they had just left.
“What’s going on?” Hei Mu asked, joining them to look.
But within moments, the fog began to dissipate and then completely disappeared.
“Gone already?” Xi Yuan muttered, raising his binoculars again and double-checking several times. “Was that really fog?”
Yu Xi didn’t respond. She was rifling through “Yu Xi’s” fragmented memories.
Nothing.
In the 70% of the rebirth memories she had pieced together, there was no mention of any fog.