Apocalypse Star House Hoarding-Chapter 314

“Mian Mian, I have a name. I’m A Tai,” the boy’s voice drifted over, carrying a hint of grievance. Wounded as he was, his voice trembled slightly with pain, making him sound all the more pitiful.
“…” Yu Xi raised an eyebrow. “A Tai? As in ‘perverted Tai’?”
The boy’s gaze snapped toward Yu Xi, sharp and brimming with unrestrained killing intent.
Leng Mian subtly lifted her scythe, and another spinning energy blade shot out, grazing the side of the boy’s face and leaving a thin, bleeding cut.
It wasn’t a deep wound, just a warning.
Yu Xi felt another wave of satisfaction rising within her. She had the urge to clap her hands in applause, suddenly understanding why Yu Zhenzhen would often cheer her on with shouts of “amazing, amazing!”
The boy whimpered softly, retracting his killing intent and instead turning his pleading gaze toward Leng Mian.
“Mian Mian, when did you get here? How come I didn’t notice?”
“Everyone entered this world, so why weren’t you suppressed? You’re so strong now, even stronger than me…”
“Mian Mian, what kind of nails are these? I have no strength left…”
“Mian Mian, can you take the nails out? It really hurts…”
“I was wrong, I shouldn’t have attacked her. Will you forgive me?”
…
The boy’s dark, beautiful eyes shimmered with mist as he begged Leng Mian over and over.
But Leng Mian was busy examining Yu Xi’s wounds, not even sparing him a glance.
His initial grievances quickly turned into resentment and anger.
“You should like me. Why were you so good to me back then? And now you treat me like this?”
“Back then?” At last, Leng Mian spared him a brief, indifferent glance. “Back then, I thought you were just an ordinary person—a wounded child who had lost his family in a disaster and needed care. But were you? From the very beginning, you were nothing but a lie.”
“I wasn’t lying to you, and I never meant to deceive you…” He had explained this many times before—ever since she first learned his identity and distanced herself from him.
“I was just bored, so I would sometimes live as an ordinary person in different worlds for a while… Back then, we were great together. You treated me so well. We went through so much together. Why would you just discard me like this?”
“You’re sick. That doesn’t mean I have to be sick too.”
After checking Yu Xi’s injuries, Leng Mian left her scythe’s shield around her for protection. She then pulled out another long black iron nail and approached the boy, who had managed to struggle free from some of the previous nails.
Without hesitation, she hammered the new nail into place, pinning him down again.
“My family, my world, everything that was once peaceful and beautiful was destroyed by disaster. And you—” her voice turned cold, “—you were the cause of it all.”
“So many worlds have fallen into apocalyptic ruin. So many people have been dragged into the System Tower’s world, forced to become mission operatives. Do you think a few explanations can erase all the evil you’ve done?”
Each time a nail was driven in, his flesh tore apart, blood gushing from fresh wounds. The boy trembled uncontrollably, soaked in cold sweat.
Yet, even as he lay there, he refused to take his eyes off Leng Mian.
Even though her presence meant excruciating pain, he still craved it.
“Mian Mian, we haven’t seen each other in so long… Did you miss me? I kept my promise—I didn’t go into the Inner Tower to disturb you.”
“Kept your promise? You just couldn’t get in.”
It was only after entering the Inner Tower herself that she learned there was another presence residing within it.
“Mian Mian, I missed you. I always think about back then… It was so cold, and you held me as we slept…”
Leng Mian’s expression didn’t change, nor did she pause her movements.
“…You really want to bring that up?” she said flatly. “Even back then, I never liked you. I only saw you as a child.”
“Your so-called love disgusts me. You talk about love, but you only see me as a toy. You want to possess, but you don’t know how to let go. You knew how long I searched for her—”
She suddenly stopped, pressing the tip of the black iron nail against his face.
“You knew all along. You knew where she was, yet you never told me. Worse, you even went behind my back and attacked her multiple times! For that alone, I will never forgive you.”
The boy’s eyes reddened, his gaze fixed on her.
This wasn’t the first time she had said she wouldn’t forgive him.
It wasn’t the first time he had sensed her disgust toward him.
But it was the first time he truly felt her killing intent.
Not a threat.
Not a warning.
She was serious.
A surge of resentment and helplessness filled his heart. He had compromised so much for her. He had given so much. So why couldn’t she see it?
He wasn’t willing to accept this.
He didn’t want to believe it.
His voice turned soft again, laced with pleading. “It hurts, Mian Mian. Take the nails out, please?”
“Take them out?”
Leng Mian lowered her gaze. Without hesitation, she hammered the final nail into his arm.
“I’ve waited for this moment for so long. Do you think I’d let you go?”
She slowly stood up, looking down at the now completely immobilized boy.
Stretching her hand back, the black scythe that had been standing before Yu Xi suddenly flew into her grasp.
Raising it high, she declared, “It ends here.”
The boy didn’t struggle.
The nails suppressed him, but if he truly fought with all his might, he could still break free.
After all, this was a world controlled by the System Tower. Though the world’s rules currently restricted him, if the entire world were to collapse, he would still be able to escape.
But if the world shattered completely… Leng Mian might not be able to leave safely.
He no longer wanted to struggle. The immense sorrow in his heart was far more painful than his physical wounds.
“…Mian Mian, you can shut me down, but can you at least let me look at you one last time? I miss you. I want to see the real you, not just this form you’re in now…”
Her ability, Reveal the Truth, could be used on others—but it could also be used on herself.
Leng Mian’s lips moved slightly. “This is how I appear in this world.”
A simple statement.
Yu Xi might not fully grasp its meaning, but the boy did.
His eyes widened in sudden realization. “You’re insane! No wonder you weren’t suppressed by this world. No wonder I didn’t notice when you entered—you turned yourself into an NPC of this world!?”
“You really have lost it. You know that if you don’t awaken through your own power, you’ll be stuck here forever! You’ll be trapped in this cycle, moving from station to station, existing as nothing more than an NPC—thoughtless, unaware, reset every time a station collapses and reforms. All for her… just for her?”
The boy thrashed violently, the iron nails embedded in his flesh tearing at his wounds, spilling even more blood.
Jealousy burned inside him, an overwhelming rage consuming his mind.
“I don’t care about ‘ifs.’ I’ve already awakened.” Leng Mian’s expression didn’t change as she brought the massive scythe down.
**
The floor was covered in blood.
The boy’s body lay there, but his head was in another spot.
Yet the gruesome scene didn’t last long. Yu Xi soon noticed that his body was beginning to crack apart, dissolving into gray fragments of light before vanishing completely.
“He’s dead?” Yu Xi found it hard to believe. Such a massive existence… just gone?
“For now, yes—shut down, deleted. But this is the first time I’ve successfully killed him. I don’t know how long it will last. You should know, System T isn’t a real human. Killing him once in a mission world doesn’t mean he’s truly gone for good. And the timelines of mission worlds are uneven—what feels like minutes here could be years elsewhere. We need to move fast.”
Leng Mian’s previous composure shifted. She pulled out a small laptop and began typing rapidly. “While System T is offline, I’m going to transfer part of the System Tower’s main control authority to you!”
Yu Xi was stunned. “Main control authority… to me?”
“Yes!” Leng Mian glanced at her. “Out of everyone, only you come from a world outside of the System Tower. I don’t know how your system projected you into this place, but if I transfer part of the authority to you, we can prevent these apocalypse worlds from being further corrupted.”
Hearing this, Yu Xi immediately understood.
It was like inserting a backdoor into a computer. No matter who took control in the future, as long as the backdoor existed, the control could always be reclaimed.
Or even better—because of her presence as an “external factor,” the control might never be fully taken away in the first place.
Leng Mian’s fingers stopped typing. She stared at the screen as if communicating with someone.
“A Qing, begin,” she said.
Yu Xi looked at the laptop screen. The display was completely black except for a single blinking cursor.
As soon as Leng Mian spoke, the cursor began generating an endless stream of characters and code at an astonishing speed, cascading downward.
At first, Yu Xi thought it was an optical illusion due to the rapid movement. But then the characters started to flow like liquid, spilling out of the screen.
Line by line, they detached from the display, materializing into three-dimensional streams of symbols. It wasn’t an illusion.
The glowing code wrapped around Yu Xi’s arms, spiraling upward.
“Don’t move.” Leng Mian looked at her. “Do you trust me?”
Yu Xi met her gaze.
For a brief moment, she saw not the man standing before her, but the resilient young girl from years ago.
That girl had been covered in wounds, speaking in a calm voice about everything she had endured. She had told Yu Xi that ever since she had accepted her world’s apocalypse, she had never cried.
And she hadn’t shared her story to ask for sympathy—she had done it to prove her own strength.
Even if she was battered and scarred, she could still fight, still kill zombies, still push forward without dragging anyone down.
She had wanted a chance. She had wanted to follow Yu Xi, to grow in adversity, to never look back.
And now, that girl had grown into a towering force, strong enough to shield others.
Yu Xi smiled at her.
“I trust you.”
**
Before the gray fragments of the boy’s disintegrated body completely faded, Leng Mian finished transferring part of the control authority.
The instant the last piece of gray light disappeared, the invisible barrier separating the carriage from the outside world vanished.
The carriage door burst open.
Yu Xi’s teammates rushed in, their expressions grim and urgent.
Each of them had their weapons drawn, ready to dive into a brutal battle.
But what they saw inside the wrecked, chaotic observation carriage was not what they had expected.
Yu Xi was standing there, holding the hand of an unfamiliar man, speaking to him with an expression of shock and concern.
Holding hands?
Yu Zhenzhen blinked and let out a playful “Whoa.”
Ya Tong scanned the surroundings, confirming that there was no one else in the carriage before lowering her guard and eyeing the man in front of Yu Xi. “Oh wow, he even looks like a mixed-blood…” Saying that, she turned her head to glance at the men on their side.
Xing Min: …
Xi Yuan: …
Lin Wu: …
“You’re here?” Yu Xi turned to her teammates, pulling Leng Mian along as she stepped forward. But before she could move, the glowing characters and lines of code that had merged into her body suddenly reappeared, surging toward Xing Min.
The symbols wrapped around his hand just as they had around Yu Xi earlier, coiling up his arm, along his neck, and finally vanishing into the center of his forehead.
The entire process happened in an instant—so fast that no one could react in time.
“This is…” Xing Min barely managed to speak before pressing a hand to his forehead, his expression shifting into shock as new information flooded his mind.
“What’s happening?” Yu Zhenzhen immediately drew her weapon.
Leng Mian also became alert, her massive black scythe appearing in her grip in an instant.
“It’s fine! The control authority is still intact—it just automatically duplicated itself!” Yu Xi quickly explained.
At the same time, Xi Yuan and Yu Zhenzhen both blurted out in shock as they recognized something familiar.
“Leng Mian-jie!?”
“Mian Mian-auntie!?”
A moment later, Yu Xi recounted everything that had happened in the carriage, though she deliberately left out the private history between Leng Mian and System T.
After listening, Lin Wu and the others finally understood that their previous concerns had been justified. A fierce battle had indeed taken place in the carriage.
Though Yu Xi claimed she had only suffered minor injuries, the blood covering her made it clear that the fight had been extremely dangerous. And yet, they hadn’t even been able to open the door.
“There was no avoiding it. System T suppressed the restrictions and entered personally… Luckily, Leng Mian was prepared.” Yu Xi reassured them.
During the transfer of control authority, she had asked Leng Mian about the NPC issue, and Leng Mian had told her not to worry.
Everything had been planned.
Her awakening and System T’s restraints had been secretly designed to trigger as a chain reaction before she even entered this world.
If System T had kept his so-called promise—if Yu Xi had managed to survive the only unavoidable failure route in the System Tower’s mission worlds, the SSSSS-grade apocalypse—then he would have left her alone, even ignoring the system that had sent her here.
If that were the case, then Leng Mian, as “Luo En,” “Kao,” and “Ling Feng,” would never have awakened.
In fact, aside from the stations where Yu Xi had met “them,” Leng Mian had always been present in every station Yu Xi had visited, though they hadn’t always crossed paths.
Just as System T had said—if she hadn’t awakened, she would have continued wandering endlessly through these stations as an NPC, oblivious to everything.
But Leng Mian understood System T far better than he understood himself.
She knew he would never keep his promise.
She also knew that the moment he decided to break his vow, lifting his restraints to personally intervene, the world itself would reject him.
And that would be his weakest moment.
That was why she had sent all of Yu Xi’s teammates into this world, placing them by her side—not just so they could survive this SSSSS-grade apocalypse together, but to ensure they had the strength to fight through every challenge.
She herself was their last line of defense.
She had believed that Yu Xi and her team could pass through this world by their own strength.
But if System T went back on his word, then she would awaken immediately and eliminate him while he was at his weakest.
No matter the outcome, Yu Xi and the others would be able to escape safely.
Everything had been in Leng Mian’s plan.
But now—
Leng Mian slowly stepped in front of Xing Min, frowning as she studied the man whose presence seemed to surpass even her own NPC status.
“You are… Yu Xi’s system?”
No wonder she had noticed an additional presence earlier.
Everyone: …?!
Leng Mian’s words plunged the carriage into silence once more.
Yu Zhenzhen, Ya Tong, Lin Wu, and Xi Yuan all turned to look at the person who had fought alongside them for so long, their faces filled with shock and uncertainty, completely unsure of what expression they should make.