Can I Still Make It If I Run Now?

Back when Ye Nanfeng broke up with Lu Xi, she made a big show of saying, "Your mom gave me five million. I'm leaving, don't see me off."

In reality, she hadn't taken a single cent.

On the day Lu Xi left to study abroad, Ye Nanfeng ate a six-yuan bowl of plain noodles beneath an overpass and cried like an idiot.

That's fate for you. It loves playing jokes.

A few years later, the apocalypse came, and zombies roamed the streets. After surviving countless brushes with death, Ye Nanfeng finally reached the fabled Safe City. The shower water was hot, the rice was unlimited, and the city lord was supposedly kind and gentle.

Overcome with emotion, she thought her luck had finally turned.

Until she stood before the city lord and saw that ice-cold face...

Lu Xi, City Lord.

Ye Nanfeng: ...

Could she still make a run for it?

Ye Nanfeng stood in the city lord's hall, staring at that ice-cold face on the high seat, her knees already beginning to shake.

Lu Xi said coolly, "Long time no see."

Ye Nanfeng gave a strained laugh. "Ha... hahaha... What a coincidence..."

Lu Xi: "Not a coincidence. This is my city."

Ye Nanfeng: "...I know. I was just passing through. I'll leave right away..."

Lu Xi: "Someone, arrange a private room for her."

Ye Nanfeng breathed a sigh of relief.

Lu Xi: "Right next door to mine."

Ye Nanfeng: ...

To the people of S City, City Lord Lu Xi was the last deity in the apocalypse: calm, compassionate, and never wrong.

She had built these towering walls with her own hands and sheltered thirty thousand refugees. Her rules were strict, yet she always left room for mercy. In this wasteland, she had become everyone's hope.

She stood atop the city walls, gazing down at the people with eyes as mild as tea.

No one had ever seen her smile, or seen her lose her composure.

"The city lord is perfect in every way," the old residents would say in private. "She's just too cold and distant."

What they didn't see was this:

In the nights that followed, the light in the city lord's bedroom stayed on until morning.

Passersby sometimes heard tearful pleas for mercy from inside:

"I really didn't take your mom's money... Oh... Please, I'm begging you, let me go... I won't do it again..."

Theme: Fate's greatest joke is turning the boasts you made into debts you have to repay on your knees.