[1] Apocalypse: Third Rebirth

Chapter 122: Step by Step

"You know, one of these days, someone is going to have to fill me in on what these steps are," grumbled Chen Zi Han as he switched from rubbing my feet to simply lightly brushing his fingers up and down my legs.

I sighed as I enjoyed the movement of his fingers. "I don't really know if they are still applicable, but when I was reborn here this time around, I can come up with some steps to survive the apocalypse," I said chuckling to myself as I thought back to the steps.

"But from where I am standing right now, some of the steps seem... redundant," I admitted, trying to remember everything on my list.

"Like what?" asked Liu Yu Zeng as he turned around to look at me.

"Like step one," I smiled. "My very first step to surviving the zombie apocalypse was to let them all die."

"Them?" prodded Chen Zi Han.

"People. I was going to hold up on my ranch and not care about anyone or anything." I said softly. "Every person in this world could and should die and I would not have an issue with that."

"And then she met me and couldn't bear the idea of letting me die," joked Liu Wei.

Rolling my eyes, I hummed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Getting that fence put in and meeting Liu Wei was definitely the slippery slope that ended me up here, hundreds of miles from my sanctuary and everything I had built.

"Do you regret it?" asked Wang Chao, causing a deafening silence to fill the room. None of the other men moved as I thought about my answer. I wanted to be truthful to both myself and them.

"Every so often," I admitted. "But then I remembered that if we had never gone looking for Liu Wei's family, I would never have met Liu Yu Zeng and Chen Zi Han, so it kind of balances things out for me."

There were almost inaudible signs of relief when I gave them my answer. "But like I said, pretty much every other step now seems like a waste of time."

"How so?" demanded Liu Yu Zeng.

"Step two: Buy a farm," I said counting off the steps on my fingers.

"Which is what brought you to our attention," interjected Wang Chao. I simply hummed in agreement.

"Step three: Sell my old place."

"Which was done by one of our companies," smirked Liu Wei as he looked at me.

"Step four: Move onto the farm and build a fence."

"Which is how you met me in person," pointed out Liu Wei. I was starting to see a trend.

"Step five: Organize the pantry." I said, raising my eyebrow at Liu Wei in a challenge. Not even he could find a way to connect himself to organizing the pantry.

"Which you needed when we moved in." The self-satisfied smirk was all that I needed to see before I rolled my eyes. That man could make absolutely everything about him.

"Fine," said as this started to be a fun challenge for the two of us. "Step 6: Fill the pantry."

"We helped you do that by buying supplies and you did it to be able to feed us," said Liu Wei raising his own eyebrow as if encouraging me to disagree. I could help but burst out laughing.

"Yeah, yeah," I chuckled as I thought about what number 7 was. "Step 7: Learn about EMPs."

"Ah yes, back when Wang Chao thought that you were part of the Blood Moon Mercenaries. He was on the fence about you until we found out that you were looking up information about EMPs. Then he became interested."