Chapter 30: You’re the Female Lead?
Cheng Ruoyan—the woman revered as the sole female lead of the original story.
In the novel, Shen Chengyin’s flight from Hope Base had been fraught with hardship, until he was ultimately rescued on the roadside by a scavenging squad led by Cheng Ruoyan.
Cheng Ruoyan took a fancy to his striking looks and brought him along. During the return trek, she was overjoyed to discover that Shen Chengyin possessed a rare life ability.
Once he followed them back to Revival Base, Shen Chengyin was treated with the highest honors, granted a safe haven to recuperate and rebuild his strength.
Cheng Ruoyan had made frequent romantic advances, the base’s supreme leader held him in high esteem, and the entire scavenging team welcomed him with warmth—all of which slowly rekindled Shen Chengyin’s trust in this unfamiliar sanctuary.
That idyllic life persisted for nearly two years. Everything unraveled when the central granary of Revival Base was breached, and hundreds of thousands of tons of grain vanished without a trace overnight.
The only person capable of relocating that astronomical volume of food in such a brief window was a spatial ability user.
Because Shen Chengyin had hidden his spatial dimension from the very beginning, Cheng Ruoyan and the others naturally never suspected him.
Revival Base’s only registered spatial user was Cheng Ruoyan’s uncle, the younger brother of the supreme leader. As one of the founding architects of the settlement, why would he brazenly rob his own people?
The theft became an unsolved mystery, and Cheng Ruoyan’s uncle, being the sole identified suspect, was thrown behind bars.
Yet fate played a cruel, mocking joke on Shen Chengyin. A week later, an envoy claiming to hail from Hope Base arrived at Revival Base, seeking to barter crystal cores for grain.
Spotting Shen Chengyin chatting and laughing in the courtyard, they blurted out his identity on sight, exposing his spatial power to the entire leadership.
Within a few agonizing days, he was framed, turned against his newly forged brothers, bombarded with universal venom and envy, and personally locked away in the deepest dungeon by the supreme leader himself.
Once again, Shen Chengyin was betrayed.
He tried to explain, but nobody believed him.
For a spatial ability user, there was no way to prove one’s innocence short of dying.
And so Shen Chengyin was chained, enduring inhumane, sadistic torture day after day.
In the original text, that arc cut even deeper to the bone than the betrayal at Hope Base; even as a detached reader, Su Han had felt chills running down his spine.
Snapping out of his thoughts, he shifted his gaze back to Shen Chengyin, his brows knitting together.
He would never let the male lead endure that kind of torment again.
Yet this time, it was Shen Chengyin himself who had brought Cheng Ruoyan back… Was the plot truly impossible to derail?
The system was equally bewildered: [This doesn’t make any sense. The wasteland is massive, and we’re thousands of kilometers away from Hope Base. How on earth did we still run into Cheng Ruoyan?]
Noticing Su Han’s hesitation, Cheng Ruoyan offered an elegant smile.
“Your companion is quite shrewd; he struck a mutually beneficial deal with us. Otherwise, with just the two of you out here in the wasteland, you might not have been able to keep hold of this RV.”
It was a thinly veiled, velvet-wrapped threat.
Su Han clenched his fists. Had Cheng Ruoyan not been captivated by Shen Chengyin’s handsome face, she probably would have seized the vehicle by force already.
Raw firepower dictated the rules. Every enforcer in that van was armed to the teeth with live rounds; for now, they had no choice but to let Cheng Ruoyan pull the strings.
Sullen-faced, he dragged his feet behind Shen Chengyin. In a petty fit of helpless frustration, he kicked the back of the man’s heel.
Cheng Ruoyan waved a slender hand. Several burly men hopped out with heavy tools, swapping the punctured tire in a matter of minutes.
The passenger van had already been packed to the brim, and cramming Shen Chengyin and Su Han inside turned the space into a suffocating sardine can.
Cheng Ruoyan, maintaining her delicate high-born poise, leisurely took the front passenger seat, leaving Su Han and Shen Chengyin in the rear cabin to choke on stale sweat.
A scarred man with a jagged slash across his cheek patted his own thick thigh with a crude smirk. “Hey there, little brother, why don’t you come sit right here?”
The other men burst into coarse laughter. “Fuck, you so starved for women you won’t even spare the pretty boys?”
Su Han ignored their leering remarks, stepping right over the man’s outstretched boots. Shen Chengyin followed right on his heels, grabbed Su Han by the collar, hauled him up, and deposited him squarely onto his own lap.
Flustered and uncomfortable, Su Han shifted awkwardly. “Maybe I should just crouch down.”
There was a narrow gap between the front and rear rows. Crouching there would be stiff and cramped, but it was far better than sitting on a grown man.
“Sure.”
Shen Chengyin spared Su Han a glance, his gaze layered with unfathomable intent.
Su Han couldn’t shake the feeling that the bastard was up to no good.
He dropped into a squat right in front of Shen Chengyin, nudging the man’s knees apart to make room. Shen Chengyin obligingly parted his long legs wide, looking down at Su Han with only the boy’s head poking up between his thighs.
Su Han’s hair had grown a bit shaggy—soft, light-colored locks that looked remarkably plush and pleasant to ruffle.
The two held that posture for several long seconds, until even the hardened soldiers nearby began shooting them bizarre, loaded looks.
What the hell were these two doing in broad daylight?!
Su Han had initially prided himself on finding a clever solution, until he cast his eyes down and was greeted by the formidable, unmissable bulge resting mere inches from his nose. Only then did it strike him that this posture was thoroughly indecent.
Indecent was putting it mildly—it felt like a full-blown proposition!
Grimacing with mortification, he rubbed his aching calves, stood up, and planted himself right back down on Shen Chengyin’s lap. “…Forget it, my legs are asleep.”
It was just sitting on his lap! He didn’t even fear death; why the hell should he be afraid of this?!
Tilting his head, Shen Chengyin studied the delicate pink flush creeping up the shell of Su Han’s ear, then casually lifted a hand to trace the skin behind it.
“How did you get a scar here?” Shen Chengyin asked softly.
The sudden contact sent a violent jolt through Su Han. “Where? I don’t remember having any scars there.”
The crimson on his ears blossomed all the way down his neck.
One of the soldiers let out a low whistle, chiming in with a smirk: “Hey, big guy, aren’t you a life-element user? Why not just wipe the mark off his skin?”
“It doesn’t look bad. Keep it,” Shen Chengyin replied coolly, withdrawing his fingers.
Turning to gaze out the dust-streaked window, a subtle, unmistakable smirk curved at the corner of his lips.
Of course Su Han wouldn’t remember it.
Because while the boy lay unconscious in that deep coma, Shen Chengyin had etched that mark with his own hands.
It didn’t ache, it didn’t itch, and it was barely noticeable to the naked eye—just a faint, raised ridge when brushed with a fingertip.
A brand of ownership.
Apocalypse: Becoming The White Moonlight Of A Possessive Mad Dog
