I Survive the Wasteland by Drawing Cards

[Updates whenever I feel like it, enter at your own risk] Shen Luo is a hopeless case when it comes to looks, and he's picky enough to only like 2D characters. Everyone around him knows this and jokes that at this rate, he'll never find a partner. Shen Luo just laughs it off. No partner could ever be as handsome as the NPCs in romance games. Then he suddenly awakens an ability, draws his favorite male NPC, Cen Tingyun, from a card, and gets him in real life. Cen Tingyun has eight-pack abs, long legs, and a trim waist. His meticulously designed face is the very image of human perfection, his voice is sexy and pleasant, and his eyes see only Shen Luo. How is Shen Luo supposed to resist that? After a meteor shower blankets the globe, the world becomes unfit for human life. Extreme heat brings plant mutations and reduced crop yields. When the disaster first strikes, Shen Luo, a former rich kid, has just rented a small courtyard in the countryside to get away from it all. Before he even realizes the apocalypse has begun, he notices something strange about himself. Has he awakened a card-drawing ability? [You obtained 10 watermelon seeds] [You obtained 1 small lake imbued with spiritual energy] [You obtained 1 small storage pouch] [You obtained 1 excellent male vampire companion] Huh? Something weird seems to have slipped in there. Then droughts, floods, frost, earthquakes... one disaster after another strikes the land. In the apocalyptic world, everyone struggles to survive. That's when the things Shen Luo draws come in handy. The watermelon seeds grow huge, sweet fruit, the storage pouch lets him stockpile food and keep it fresh, and even the NPC he drew is a wonderful pair of extra hands. ★ A playful, hopelessly looks-obsessed bottom × a stunningly handsome, cold-faced and dark-hearted AI top who still gets sent out to work ★ Apocalypse story centered on natural disasters, with an unconventional survival, stockpiling, and farming focus ★ Not a government handover story. Readers who enjoy that type of story, take note and enter at your own risk. [My next novel: When the Tortured Novel's Protagonist Starts Taking It Easy [Quick Transmigration]. Please add it to your reading list, mwah!] First story: [A bottom who has been through three lives and is tired of struggling, so he just wants to slack off × a family patriarch with strong self-control and an even stronger desire to control others] In his previous life, Yun Qi was an orphan raised by the Huo family. Beneath the self-respect he worked so hard to maintain lay deep insecurity and inferiority. So, after an accidental drunken one-night stand, he angrily rejected the man's offer of money and a house, which amounted to being kept as a lover. Unable to face the strange, judgmental looks from those around him, he worked harder than ever to distance himself from the Huo family, until he finally worked himself to death. In his second life, he was reborn into an ordinary family with no memories. He worked himself to the bone for good grades every day, and after graduation, he stayed up later than a dog and got up earlier than a chicken for work. Once again, he worked himself to death at his job. After dying, Yun Qi was reborn in his first life. Remembering how he had worked himself to death in both lives, he quickly came around and accepted the man's generous offer. As if! It was real money! Compared with dying from overwork, he could handle a few people looking at him funny! Second story: [A merfolk bottom forced to take it easy despite their different values × the heir to the empire's shining future, a prince top] After Yun Yi dies, he wakes up to discover that he has become the protagonist bottom of a novel full of angst. The protagonist is a member of the deep-sea merfolk, captured by humans and put up for auction. Although the crown prince who buys him takes good care of him, the protagonist secretly dreams of escaping back to the sea. He has always believed the sea is where merfolk belong! At the same time, the protagonist gradually develops feelings for the crown prince who bought him, a man known as the "Empire's Shining Light," feelings he shouldn't have. Then the prince discovers what the protagonist really wants and assumes his affection is fake, meant only to help him escape. The prince immediately launches into a series of tortured-romance tropes: you run, I chase; you can never get away, and so on. Yun Yi wakes up at the auction, right at the start of the story. According to the plot, next he should endure humiliation as the "Empire's Shining Light," who pays a fortune for him, takes him home, beginning a turbulent life of patiently biding his time. But Yun Yi calmly takes the crown prince's offered hand and lies flat in peace. Why would he run? He's not a fish, and he doesn't want to live in the sea! Third story: A terminal procrastinator forced to take it easy × an as-yet-undecided top [Upcoming novel: The Tool Wife Only Wants to Ascend] Wen Yuan accidentally practices himself to death. When he wakes again, he discovers that he has been reborn as the cannon-fodder husband of an antagonistic domineering CEO. The husband is a tool, treated by his family as both a spy and a cash cow. The CEO sees right through him and treats him as both a decoration and a shield. In short, nobody gives him a second thought. Wen Yuan's reaction: We have an engagement? Got it, a legal cultivation partner. Let me check whether the equipment meets standards. Hmm, my dual-cultivation partner has broad shoulders, a narrow waist, long legs, strong arms, and eight-pack abs. He looks pretty strong. Except... Noticing the man's legs in the wheelchair, he reins in his eagerness and sighs with regret. "...Never mind. A workman must first sharpen his tools." Let's treat his legs first. Otherwise, there are plenty of positions and techniques in the art of dual cultivation that he won't be able to practice. Xi Cheng: "?" As a true child of heaven, Xi Cheng has enjoyed a smooth life for the first twenty-plus years: born into immense wealth, blessed with intelligence, and loved by his parents. Even after a car accident leaves him with both legs disabled, he has no intention of lowering his standards for a partner. He never took Wen Yuan, who was married into the family in someone else's place, seriously before, and he has no intention of doing so now. He takes Wen Yuan's promise to treat his legs as a joke, too. He'd have to be crazy to trust professional doctors less than a few sweet words from a layman who has never even dealt with this kind of thing! Later, Wen Yuan really does treat his legs with meticulous care, and his condition really does improve. Xi Cheng: ...It seems you can't judge a person by appearances. And he must really love me. Later still. Xi Cheng: At first I thought Wen Yuan had fallen in love with me. Then I realized he'd fallen in love, and finally I figured out that those were two different kinds of "falling in love." He just wants to cultivate immortality and ascend! Wen Yuan, you liar! Theme: The harder things get, the more important it is not to give up.