Chapter 23
Little Flower, already dazed from the kisses, was caught off guard by the Abyss’s sudden question.
“Does Ling Ling want a wedding?” Shi Changyuan asked again, looking at Lin Ling.
Lin Ling finally had a chance to catch his breath. His mind, blank just a moment ago, first wondered, surprised, The Abyss actually knows about weddings?
Then his second thought was, But I don’t have any family.
“What’s wrong?”
Shi Changyuan, seeing that Lin Ling seemed to be spacing out, gently pinched his cheek, bringing him back to the present.
“Do you want one?” Lin Ling burrowed into Shi Changyuan’s embrace, instinctively seeking closeness. “Human weddings are about inviting friends and family, receiving their blessings and witnessing, but we don’t have any relatives.”
“Witnesses don’t have to be individuals,” Shi Changyuan embraced the Little Flower who had willingly fallen into his arms, his voice low and drawn out, like a mysterious ancient incantation.
The Abyss said, “Our witnesses will be heaven and earth, the universe, the vast sky, the world itself.”
“This world will give my Little Flower the best blessings.”
“A wedding is fine, but don’t make it too extravagant!” Lin Ling said instinctively. “That’s super tiring!”
Shi Changyuan looked at the languid Lin Ling in his arms and chuckled. “Mm, I definitely won’t let Little Flower get tired.”
They had just discussed the wedding, nothing had been decided, but within a few days, it seemed the whole world knew, sending their congratulations.
Especially Mo Cheng. After learning about it, she called Little Flower and suggested that he and the Abyss attend a human wedding, which happened to be today, to experience the atmosphere and learn some things.
“There will be lots of cupcakes at the wedding, and the bride is the manga artist Little Flower likes the most. Maybe Little Flower can ask her about her new work.”
After the human bases were established, to ease the tension of the apocalypse, they promoted many manga artists with heartwarming styles, and the newly transformed Lin Ling had been captivated.
Lin Ling’s eyes lit up. Just as he opened his mouth to exclaim, Shi Changyuan suddenly appeared beside him, his voice tinged with possessiveness.
“…Who does Little Flower like the most?”
“Isn’t it me that Little Flower likes the most?”
Sensing the sudden surge of jealousy, the humans on the other end of the communication quickly hung up, leaving Little Flower alone to face the Abyss’s vinegar.
“No, no, that’s not it,” Lin Ling quickly waved his hands. “That kind of liking and liking you are different.”
“How are they different?”
Lin Ling watched as Shi Changyuan kept questioning him, finding it a bit novel. So this was what jealousy felt like?
He thought for a moment, then wrapped his arms around Shi Changyuan’s neck, kissed him, and said, “I like you, like I want to kiss you, hug you, and be with you always. But as for the manga artist, I just want to meet her.”
“And…and…”
Lin Ling racked his brains, trying to understand this feeling himself.
“My liking for the Abyss is that I like you just as you are, standing here, you don’t need to do anything. But as for the manga artist, if she stops drawing, or her drawings aren’t good anymore, I won’t like her anymore.”
Shi Changyuan looked at Little Flower, his expression full of sincerity, every word tugging at his heartstrings.
He cupped Little Flower’s face and gently kissed his forehead.
“What I like most is Little Flower, nothing else but Little Flower.”
The Abyss gave Lin Ling his sole affection.
Lin Ling, who was just coaxing his jealous boyfriend, was caught off guard by this sudden and straightforward confession. He instinctively replied,
“Me too.”
Little Flower blinked and, following the Abyss’s logic, said, “Because the Abyss was born in this world, I like this world, I like many, many things in this world.”
“If one day the Abyss is gone, I won’t like anything anymore.”
“So, don’t be angry anymore, let’s go to the wedding together.” Little Flower clung to Shi Changyuan, urging him to leave for the wedding venue.
Shi Changyuan and Lin Ling weren’t dressed formally, but as Lu Jiajia put it, their faces were enough. Their usual clothes were already the best.
Mo Cheng had informed the others in advance, so they entered without any obstacles.
The Abyss had never attended a human wedding. He heard that he needed to give a gift, so after pondering for a moment, he pulled out a large piece of rare metal from the Abyss space.
“Is this enough?”
The human receiving the gifts was so startled by the football-sized rare metal that he fell off his chair. Soon, a group of researchers arrived and carefully carried the rare metal away.
“What is this?” Little Flower asked.
“I don’t know, I extracted it from the earth I devoured. It should be similar to gold, takes up quite a bit of space,” the Abyss wasn’t quite sure either.
Later, Little Flower learned that the metal the Abyss had given them had accelerated the progress of human research by fifty to one hundred years.
It sounded very impressive.
So, when Little Flower and the Abyss took and ate as many cupcakes as they liked at the wedding, the humans didn’t mind at all, and even the bride’s bouquet was personally handed to them.
“I heard you’re a fan of mine?” The bride winked playfully at Lin Ling. “I know you, Little Flower.”
Then, the bride took out a complete set of her manga, signed, and handed it to him.
“Just as I imagined.”
Lin Ling accepted it in a daze, not quite understanding what the bride meant.
He looked around, having been too focused on the food earlier. Now he noticed that many of the people at the wedding were familiar base administrators, researchers, and scientists.
“My dad almost went bald worrying about you and the Abyss, and I peeked at Professor Mo Cheng’s ‘Plan to Save the World with Love’ and got a lot of inspiration.”
“So, can Little Flower and the Abyss be the protagonists of my next manga?”
Little Flower’s head buzzed from the first part of her speech, but he immediately caught the keywords “manga protagonists,” and his eyes lit up.
“It would be a great honor!!!”
Meanwhile, the Abyss caught the keyword “love brain.”
Love brain? What was a love brain?
So, throughout the wedding, he didn’t pay much attention to the proceedings. Little Flower was busy eating and happily hugging his manga.
After returning, Little Flower kept writing letters, sending the things that happened between him and the Abyss to the bride as material.
The Abyss watched Little Flower. Every time he wanted to hug him from behind to get his attention, Little Flower would push him away, saying, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, let me finish this.”
Originally, they would be glued together for 23 out of 24 hours a day. Excluding 10 hours of sleep, at least half of Little Flower’s attention would be on him.
But since getting the manga, Little Flower’s attention was diverted for another 2 hours a day, and writing letters took another hour. The Abyss couldn’t understand why these things occupied so much of Little Flower’s attention, but he stayed by Little Flower’s side nonetheless.
“Why are you unhappy?”
Lin Ling put down his pen, stood up, and hugged Shi Changyuan.
Little Flower, seeing the slightly dejected Abyss, kissed him hard on the lips and guessed, “Do you want a letter too? I can write you a love letter.”
“I can write letters to anyone, but I’ll only write love letters to you.”
Hearing Little Flower’s words, Shi Changyuan chuckled, kissed him back, and whispered in Lin Ling’s ear, “No.”
“I was just thinking, if I hadn’t lost the seed…”
He paused for a moment and continued,
“As humans say, we would have been childhood sweethearts, innocent and carefree. Our understanding of the world would be completely synchronized, and I wouldn’t have to learn about Little Flower’s past likes from others.”
“I would know what Little Flower likes and why.”
“No one understands my Little Flower better than I do.”
It turned out that the Abyss wasn’t just being randomly jealous. Lin Ling had never thought that he had been dwelling on this matter.
Little Flower thought about it. Actually, when they first met, the Abyss hadn’t shown this feeling, not until the humans returned to the Seventh Base.
The three years he spent in the human base, the people he met, and the things he experienced had deeply influenced Little Flower, and it was true that he and the Abyss had some differences in their ways of thinking.
“Then let me take you to the places where I lived before, and we can relive it together,” Lin Ling pulled Shi Changyuan up, deciding to help the Abyss resolve this issue.
“I’ll share with you the things I encountered, the people I met, the scenery I saw, and the manga I read.”
Lin Ling seriously considered a feasible plan, “Besides that, I can also tell you what I was thinking at the time. Then you’ll definitely understand me better than the worms in my stomach.”
Abyss: …That’s not necessary.
“And, I can use the memories where you exist to overwrite the memories where I was alone. Then my mind will be full of you.”
Little Flower’s eyes crinkled into crescents. “So, how about it, want to join me?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll join you.”
The place where Little Flower sprouted was at the southern wall of the Seventh Human Base, about 600 meters from the main gate.
“I haven’t moved since I sprouted.” Lin Ling brought the Abyss to the spot, but now there was a collapsed pit there.
Little Flower froze, thinking someone had stolen his home while he wasn’t paying attention.
“Ah, I remember now. We dug a big hole here during the rainy season and haven’t filled it in yet.”
Lin Ling found a small hoe from the nearby bushes and squatted down with the Abyss to fill the pit, then planted a small sprout on top.
“Okay, this is me as a sprout.”
Lin Ling explained that after sprouting, he carefully observed his surroundings for a long time, about three months. At that time, Little Flower was still a bit scared, after all, he was unfamiliar with this place, and some humans looked quite fierce.
“Then, I would often hide among the Boston ivy and climb up the wall to see what the humans were doing.”
After saying that, Little Flower climbed up the high wall and beckoned the Abyss to join him in observing the humans.
When the two appeared on the wall, the guards noticed them.
The guards recognized Little Flower and his boyfriend, and they had been instructed to let them do whatever they wanted, so they just muttered, “Young people these days, even taking their romance to such high and dangerous places.”
The two sat there from afternoon till evening.
The nights in the apocalypse were dangerous. Most human bases followed the rhythm of sunrise and sunset, so when the bright moonlight shone on the earth, the entire base fell silent, only the night shift guards patrolling, ensuring the safety of the residents.
And outside the high walls, occasional cries and roars of mutated creatures could be heard.
“I was so small back then, I would get scared at this time.”
“After all, my roots were outside, with no human patrols to protect me. What if a mutated creature came to gnaw on my roots while I was sleeping? I wish I were a little flower growing inside the walls.”
Shi Changyuan, looking at the little flower sitting beside him, understood how Little Flower felt back then.
A yearning filled with childlike dependence.
The Abyss stood up abruptly, jumped down from the high wall with Little Flower, and spent the entire night beating up all the aggressive mutated creatures around the Seventh Base.
Then he spent a week making Lin Ling salivate at the sound of certain cries, remembering only that the xxx mutated creature was truly delicious roasted!
Slurp, slurp~
…
“About half a year later, I transformed.”
Little Flower said proudly, “I disguised myself as an ordinary human and went to the city ruins with everyone to try my luck, and then I was lucky enough to find a USB drive!”
Lin Ling even took Shi Changyuan to find a team heading to the city ruins, blending in and walking there with them.
The distance was quite far on foot, the round trip taking a whole day. Shi Changyuan could imagine that if Little Flower were truly human, his delicate feet would be covered in blisters.
“I fell behind at that time, and it was already midnight when I came back. Only one shop still had its lights on.”
After nightfall, Lin Ling took Shi Changyuan to the private bartering spot where he had exchanged the USB drive for half a year’s worth of fertilizer three years ago.
“I was so small back then, I couldn’t compete with those giant mutated plants for nutrients, so I was a bit malnourished. It was after I ate the fertilizer that I finally bloomed.”
But three years later, the shop seemed to have closed early.
The Abyss looked and found that the shop owner seemed to have had a bit too much to drink and was drunk. He dragged the man out expressionlessly and turned on the lights.
Lin Ling knocked on the door and said the exact same lines as he had three years ago.
The slightly drunk shop owner, in a daze, thought he had returned to three years ago, sobering up considerably. “Holy crap, did I travel through time??”
“No,” Little Flower kindly reminded him, “It’s me.”
The shop owner focused his eyes. “It’s Lin Ling! Phew, you scared me.”
The owner wiped away nonexistent sweat. “I thought I had traveled back to three years ago. Back then, there were earthquakes, heatwaves, and the Abyss kept expanding. Life is so much better now.”
Little Flower smiled, then heard the still slightly drunk shop owner say,
“Here’s the fertilizer you asked for. You always only exchange for this. I forgot to tell you during the hasty relocation before.”
Shi Changyuan looked at the pile of almost dusty fertilizer in the corner, seemingly seeing Little Flower’s past life in the base through this small gap in time.
The next morning, Little Flower took the Abyss to see Lu Jiajia.
Lu Jiajia, hearing that Lin Ling wanted her to repeat what she had done three years ago, looked at Shi Changyuan beside him, struggling to keep a straight face.
She had become part of their little couple’s role-playing game.
“But I don’t really remember…”
She tried to express her difficulty in cooperating, but Shi Changyuan’s offer was too good to refuse.
She couldn’t believe that Lin Ling’s boyfriend still possessed a large amount of pre-apocalypse supplies in the tenth year of the apocalypse, even including her favorite doujinshi—
She could only accept it with tears in her eyes, playing the role of her three-years-ago self, and wishing them happiness 999 times.
After checking off Lu Jiajia, Little Flower took the Abyss to Team Leader Mo. At that time, Mo Cheng was just a team leader. Little Flower had encountered some danger; a foolish human had mistaken him for a medicinal herb and tried to dig him up.
But Mo Cheng noticed something unusual about Little Flower and stopped the person.
With constant watering and fertilizing, Little Flower appeared before Mo Cheng in his human form.
She was the first human to know his true identity.
“Actually, I knew what this meant, but I felt that Team Leader Mo didn’t seem like a bad person.”
Mo Cheng heard that Little Flower was taking the Abyss to relive the past and waited patiently for her turn to reenact the events of that year.
Since returning from the city relocation, she hadn’t seen Little Flower’s main body and hadn’t watered or fertilized him for a long time. She missed him quite a bit.
But her plan didn’t go as expected. The Abyss requested a no-contact reenactment.
Mo Cheng: …Seriously, he’s jealous even of this???
But when she saw Little Flower’s main body now, she felt a wave of emotion.
“Little Flower is so beautiful now,” Mo Cheng reminisced. “Back then, Little Flower wasn’t so healthy. His leaves were small and yellow, and he only had one bud.”
And now, Little Flower was lush and vibrant, his vines sprawling everywhere, boldly declaring his territory.
And the small white flowers on each vine were like a sky full of stars.
Looking back, Little Flower’s past three years hadn’t been easy. Like many ordinary humans, he struggled for survival, working hard for his future.
“Then the heatwave came, and then the humans relocated.”
“Finally, Little Flower met the Abyss again.”
Little Flower pointed at the large, unwavering boulder, “It was here that I saw you standing in the center of the Abyss.”
“I said to you, hello—”
“Are you the new neighbor who moved in? My name is Lin Ling.”
Lin Ling looked at Shi Changyuan, his smile bright, then added playfully, “I’m the Little Flower you’re looking for.”
“And in the future, I’ll also become your boyfriend.”
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