From Apocalypse Boss to Farmer: My Vegetables Make Me Stronger!-Chapter 85 - 79: Who Are They?

Deep underground, there was no wind. In the darkness, everything was utterly silent, as if time itself had stopped here.

Perhaps it was the frigid atmosphere, or perhaps it was her blood loss, but the skinny girl suddenly felt a chill. She subconsciously took a step back and wrapped her arms around herself.

She wasn’t sure if it was a hallucination, but the moment she looked up, she had the uncanny feeling that a bone-chilling cold was seeping out from everywhere in the darkness. The shadow of death loomed over the distorted laboratory.

She was terrified.

She knew perfectly well that deep in this incredibly dangerous underground place, the girl before her, Gu Xi, was her only hope for survival.

But in that moment, she still followed her instincts, retreating again and again.

Not until Gu Xi had carefully smoothed out the bloodstained scrap of paper, folded it neatly, and tucked it into the large backpack on her back.

Only then did the skinny girl let out a quiet sigh of relief and cautiously approach her. "Miss... Miss Gu, when are we leaving this place?"

This deep underground place was full of mutant plant roots. Even though no Ability User was controlling them now... she had just witnessed with her own eyes the horror of how these roots had destroyed the entire mine tunnel in a short time!

’That was too terrifying!’

She didn’t want to stay a second longer in this place that had almost buried her alive!

Gu Xi looked up, her expression calm as she glanced at the girl without a word.

The skinny girl immediately hugged herself and clamped her mouth shut, hunching over like a frightened quail.

Half an hour later, after thoroughly searching the lab and confirming there was nothing of value left, Gu Xi finally looked up, glanced calmly at the girl, and said, "Let’s go."

Gu Xi turned and walked out of the laboratory. Beneath her feet, the earth churned silently, and soon a deep, upward-sloping tunnel appeared in the darkness.

The skinny girl’s pupils contracted sharply as she watched the bizarre scene. She looked up at Gu Xi in disbelief.

The two walked one after the other through the deep underground passage, neither of them speaking.

In the silent darkness, it seemed the only sounds were her own light footsteps and increasingly heavy panting. The skinny girl felt her breathing grow more and more difficult...

She couldn’t stop her whole body from trembling, her legs shaking uncontrollably.

The next moment, as if something inside her had shattered, she collapsed weakly to the ground and finally couldn’t stop herself from calling out to the person ahead.

"Gu Xi!"

Gu Xi stopped and looked back.

The skinny girl’s face was covered in blood and grime; a mixture of blood and dirt coated nearly her entire body. She was curled into a ball, squatting on the ground with her arms wrapped around her knees, trembling like a filthy, abandoned stray kitten.

But the woman who had raised her was already dead.

Gu Xi averted her gaze and turned to continue walking.

"Do you think I’m cold-blooded for not even caring about my own mother?"

The hoarse, trembling cry that suddenly came from behind only made Gu Xi pause for a fraction of a second.

’I’m not interested in other people’s affairs.’

But perhaps out of sheer terror, the skinny girl was suddenly overcome with an urgent need to confide in someone.

She squatted in the darkness, looking up at Gu Xi. Her hands were clenched, her eyes were red, and her voice trembled. "But do you have any idea? The reason I’ve become this... this thing that’s neither human nor ghost... it’s all thanks to her! All thanks to her!"

Gu Xi looked back at her quietly, not making a sound, her expression devoid of any emotional fluctuation.

In the darkest days of the apocalypse, she had seen too many similar things.

They might have felt guilty or ashamed at first, but they would quickly find a convenient excuse to shift all the blame onto someone else. It was as if only by doing so could they justify their own survival.

Yes, all of it was just a way to live on with a clear conscience.

Survival was the most difficult trial humanity faced in the apocalypse.

Everyone made different choices in that regard, and Gu Xi passed no judgment.

But the skinny girl was clearly not as calm as she was.

"You don’t know! You don’t know anything!" Her eyes were red as she stared at Gu Xi, her speech growing faster and her voice sharper. "This is karma! It’s what she owed me! What she owed me..."

She stared at Gu Xi, repeating those words over and over. Was she trying to convince Gu Xi, or herself?

Gu Xi suddenly cut her off. "What’s the use of telling me all this? I’m not her."

’The look in her eyes was so calm and indifferent, as if to say... I’m not your mother, so why should I waste my time listening to this nonsense?’

The skinny girl’s expression faltered. Abruptly, she lowered her head and gave a miserable, self-deprecating laugh.

"Do you want to hear my story?" she suddenly murmured, looking down at her hands, which were caked with blood and grime. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Before Gu Xi could answer, she began to speak on her own.

"Twenty years ago, the person in charge of Moon Bay Base took the initiative to approach Yu City Base, expressing their willingness to submit to the government..."

"My mother was one of the first staff members the government sent to take over this place..."

At this point, the girl’s voice turned a few degrees colder, laced with a strange mockery. "But it wasn’t long before ’they’ chose my mother. Then, she was sent to ’that place,’ and soon after, she got pregnant."

Gu Xi frowned slightly and looked down at the girl on the ground. "Who are ’they’? And where is ’that place’? A laboratory?"

"Not a laboratory." The girl looked up at Gu Xi, who was standing in the darkness. "Who ’they’ are, and where ’that place’ is... she... never told me."

Gu Xi raised an eyebrow, then understanding dawned on her. ’This must be a mother’s instinctive love for her child, right?’

But the girl just gave a cold, mocking laugh. "You think she loved me, don’t you?"

She quickly denied it. "No. She didn’t love me at all."

Meeting Gu Xi’s exceedingly calm and cold gaze, the skinny girl’s thoughts churned for some reason, and her voice grew sharp again.

"Shortly after I was born, she sent me to Yu City Base. She only came back to see me once a year... and every time, the look in her eyes was filled with disappointment!"

"Just because I wasn’t an Ability User! Not an Ability User!"

"When I was thirteen, she suddenly brought me to Moon Bay. I was ecstatic at first. But do you know what happened later?"

Here, she snapped her head up to look at Gu Xi, a sinister resentment in her dark eyes. "That day, I woke up to find myself on a hospital bed in a lab. And they... they implanted something in my head..."

"A Crystal Core Fragment?" Gu Xi frowned slightly. ’This seems a bit different from what I initially thought.’

Because she hadn’t sensed an ability aura from the girl that was anything like her own.

"That’s right, a Crystal Core Fragment."

The girl looked at her, the corners of her lips curling into a strange smile. "I finally became an Ability User! An Ability User! A one-in-ten-thousand Ability User..."

Her powerful abilities, her mother’s gratified gaze, the admiration of those around her—all of it made her ecstatic at the time.

But it wasn’t long before the side effects of the implanted Crystal Core Fragment appeared.

Her body began to grow frail and deteriorate, and her complexion worsened, as if she had been poisoned.

What was even more terrifying was that as the years went by, not only did her ability fail to level up, but it gradually began to show signs of degrading and disappearing!

’How could this be!’

She had grown accustomed to the life of an Ability User, lauded and placed on a pedestal. How could she be willing to go back to being an ordinary person?

Gu Xi frowned slightly as the girl continued.

"I secretly returned to Moon Bay and found her. But when she saw me, she was furious, and seemed flustered... She wouldn’t listen to me at all, just kept telling me to leave."

"And then?" Gu Xi asked, humoring her for once.

"And then..." The girl lowered her gaze and gave a gloomy laugh. "Later, when she found out something was wrong with my ability, she let me stay. Then she went to ’that place’ again, all by herself..."

"And then, she told me," the girl looked up at Gu Xi, the smile on her face growing even more bizarre, "that my problem could be solved. I just needed to have another Crystal Core Fragment implanted in my head."

She raised a hand and tapped her head, her voice grim. "But Crystal Core Fragments are too precious. Those people said I could have one, but I would need to trade an Ability User for it..."

"So, you targeted me?" Gu Xi asked calmly, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes. Don’t you think it’s ridiculous?" The girl looked at her, then lowered her head and laughed again.

Back then, when she saw Gu Xi, she thought her prey had willingly walked into her trap. She had even smugly believed that heaven itself was helping her.

But she never imagined... that she was the one who had been blinded by greed!

’How utterly absurd.’

The skinny girl wasn’t stupid.

Now that she had calmed down and thought about it carefully, she realized: for a young, beautiful girl like Gu Xi to dare enter Moon Bay so openly, without any disguise, showing her true face... how could she not have some real power?

As this thought struck her, the girl’s expression changed drastically, as if she had just realized something.