Surviving the apocalypse with a wife and a system! [GL]

Chapter 239: upset Cijin.

Yan Cijin was upset. That much was obvious.

And she had no idea how to fix it properly.

After hesitating for a second more, Bai Li finally opened the door and went home.

She stepped into her apartment, closed the door behind her, and immediately began emptying everything. Her backpack came off first. Then she started piling the supplies from her spatial storage into the living room one after another. The floor slowly filled with the things she had brought back from downstairs. Bottled water. Drinks. Snacks. Packets of seasoning. Wet wipes. Tissues. Small useful items that would be hard to replace later. Some of it she had carried physically. Some of it she had pulled out of her spatial storage. Either way, it ended up in the same place, creating a neat little pile in the middle of the living room.

The sight of all those supplies made Bai Li’s nerves settle a little.

At least the trip had not been wasted.

The apartment was quiet. Too quiet, if she was being honest. The kind of quiet that made a person hear their own breathing more clearly than they wanted to. Bai Li glanced toward the bedroom door for a second, then toward the kitchen, then back at the living room. Yan Cijin had gone back into her own place, and Bai Li still had no clue whether she should go over and knock, send another message, or just wait until she calmed down naturally. In the end, she decided to deal with the more immediate thing first.

She drank some electrolyte water.

The cool liquid went down her throat and made her feel better almost immediately. Not fully, but enough. It washed away a little of the dryness in her mouth and helped settle the heat in her body from being outside. She stood there with the bottle in one hand, breathing slowly for a moment. Her cheek still stung faintly if she touched it. The scratch was small, but the reminder of the gunshot made her face colder whenever she thought about it. She did not like being at a disadvantage. She liked being the one who was prepared. This time, she had escaped the worst of it, but that only made one thing clearer. Weapons mattered. Distance mattered. Timing mattered. And people who thought they could simply bully others with a gun were even more dangerous than zombies because they could hide their intent behind a human face.

Bai Li finished the drink, set the bottle aside, and glanced at the pile of supplies again.

Then she turned and opened the bedroom door.

She stepped inside and looked around the room with her usual quick assessment of the space. There was no mess here that mattered at the moment, just the normal quiet of a room where someone lived and rested. Bai Li moved to the desk, switched on her computer, and waited for it to boot. The blue glow from the screen lit up her face faintly while the machine started up. She kept her posture casual, but her mind was already turning over the situation again.

Hu Xuecheng was dead.

That was the main thing.

But how had it happened?

Bai Li knew she had not fully seen the final moment from downstairs. She had only heard the shot, then the sudden sound of someone screaming, then the heavy fall. The residents in the group chat had already started panicking and spreading all kinds of guesses, but most of those guesses were probably wrong. The truth mattered more than rumors. Bai Li wanted to know exactly what had happened on the balcony, and the fastest way to see that was to check the security footage from the hallway and staircase area.

Once the computer was ready, she turned to the folder that stored the building camera footage.

The security system in the hallway was not fancy, but it was useful enough. If the cameras had captured anything from the angle she needed, she would be able to piece together the sequence better than from the residents’ confused messages. Bai Li clicked through the folders with a calm face, though her mind was still on Yan Cijin’s red eyes from just now. She wondered if she should send a message to explain again. Maybe that would help. Maybe it would not. Maybe Yan Cijin was already crying because she had been genuinely frightened and not because of the scratch at all. Bai Li felt a little awkward at the thought. She still was not good at comforting women when they cried, especially not Yan Cijin. It always made her feel like the world had suddenly asked her to do something she had not trained for.

At the same time, she started replaying the moment in her head. Yan Cijin had checked her face so carefully, touched her cheek so gently, and then looked at her with those red eyes. Bai Li knew that expression. It was the look of someone trying to stay strong while the feeling inside was already too much. That kind of reaction always made Bai Li quieter. She did not like seeing Yan Cijin cry. It made her feel too many things at once, and none of them were simple. Guilt. Tenderness. Protection. A quiet kind of frustration at herself for not knowing how to say the right thing at the right time.

Still, the feeling did not stop her hands.

She found the correct recording section and opened it.

The screen changed.

The hallway footage began to play.

Bai Li sat down.

..

..

Seeing that Bai Li was alright, Yan Cijin leaned against the security door and relaxed. Even though she and Bai Li had no connection, she couldn’t help but worry about her. Yan Cijin thought it was probably because Bai Li had saved her before, which was why she cared so much about Bai Li’s safety.

She had no right to demand anything of Bai Li, nor to ask her not to take risks. The outside world was already in such a state without taking risks, they probably wouldn’t even have food.