There Will Always Be Protagonists With Delusions of Starting a Harem Chapter 42

Zixu sanctuary was very big. Near him was a large field of flowers, in the distance were overlapping mountains, to the left of the fields was a winding brook and to its right was an exquisite two-storey bamboo house. A yard lined with bamboo fences in front of the house and to the back was a large bamboo forest.
He bent down and picked up an unknown flower, rubbing it between his fingers and wetting his hand with the flower's water. A light fragrance of the plants wafted quietly. He didn't know if he imagined it, but he felt his mind cleared up a lot from smelling the sweet scent. He walked to the bamboo house and pushed open the wooden fence, when he reached the house he tried pushing the door but couldn't get it to open.
[The host has insufficient authority. The mountain abode is closed and cannot be entered for a while,]
"…." His mouth twisted and he took back his hand. Suddenly he thought of a problem, "When you took me inside, aren’t the people outside scared to death?"
[The sanctuary is linked with the soul and can be entered using the spirit.]
He felt reassured. He walked to the small river by the flower field and checked his reflection on the water. Short black hair, dark brown eyes, straight nose, thin lips that tilted upwards…. Sure enough, still as handsome as his original self!
After basking in this appearance for a while he sent himself out. He opened his eyes to the sight of the freight train again. No one in the car noticed anything abnormal going on in this corner, he shifted his posture and continued pulling out story data from the system, reading it through.
Xu Yi's awakened a support type ability, so in the early days of the apocalypse he had some difficulties getting by. Xu Yi did not have it easier until he came across male lead number one, his senior Qiu Xiangyu, and formed a small team. Qiu Xiangyu had the metal ability and he was originally a university student studying computer science, he had both the brain and the brawn. The strength of their team was not too bad.
However, good times don’t last for long. After a month of peaceful days, the small team made a lapse of judgement, they entered a mountain resort packed with zombies and were brutally besieged. Qiu Xiangyu got injured when protecting Xu Yi and couldn't run. The rest of the team abandoned them because of that.
Xu Yi was angry but couldn't do anything, he could only carry the injured Qiu Xiangyu on his back and hide in one cabin in the resort. He slowly treated him with his weak healing at that time.
The two endured by depending on the food from the space as they nursed their wounds. The silver lining is that both of their abilities went up a grade, their strength sharply rose and after their wounds healed they both broke out from the encirclement. They ran into male lead number two, Wei Xu, who was stranded in the resort like them.
The three quickly teamed up. They successfully escaped and headed to H city's Annan base as per Wei Xu's suggestion. He said he had some connections there and they would be able to ask about their family's whereabouts. Xu Yi and Qiu Xiangyu talked it over before quickly agreeing.
The three of them reached the base half a month later and Wei Xu immediately took them to the base's leader, Liu Tao. Only then did the two of them realised Wei Xu's status was not so simple.
Liu Tao received them with great warmth. He arranged for rooms to stay in, gave them some supplies and even personally took them on a tour around the base. The three were very satisfied with the base's environment and decided to stay there for the time being.
With his strength, Wei Xu quickly had his own small squad in the base. Once when he went out to gather supplies with his squad he found a hidden arsenal, which made him the biggest leader in the base aside from the base leader himself. Xu Yi was generously provided for by Wei Xu and Qiu Xiangyu with the zombie's crystal cores and he upgraded his ability level after level. He soon became an indispensable part of the team.
The feelings between the three grew along with their increase in strength, their relationship became more and more ambiguous. Liu Chen, son of Liu Tao, was secretly in love with Wei Xu since childhood; Once he discovered that Wei Xu was interested in Xu Yi he grew angry and very jealous of him. He abandoned the support work Liu Tao arranged for him at the base and insisted on following Wei Xu's small team out to gather materials. He also provoked Xu Yi; telling him he's a good-for-nothing who only sits back and enjoys his teammate's hard work.
These words made Wei Xu very angry with him. Wei Xu wanted to drive Liu Chen away, but because Liu Tao who was his elder had always pleaded with him he didn't have the heart to do it. He suppressed his anger in his heart but he grew to detest Liu Chen more and more.
The next supply run Liu Chen pushed Xu Yi into a crowd of zombies as he had planned. He then lied to Wei Xu that Xu Yi ran to the other direction. Wei Xu and the others in the team believed him and searched the opposite direction, naturally, they couldn't find anything.
To have their most beloved person disappear made Wei Xu and Qiu Xiangyu suffer and full of despair. The two men never gave up looking for him. On the other hand, Xu Yi who hid from the zombies in his space was soon rescued by the odd and eccentric third male lead, a doctor named Liang Ping. He was taken to the small house Liang Ping was hiding in. Because he was very grateful for the other man's help, Xu Yi convinced Liang Ping who will run out of supplies soon to go back with him to the Annan base and join his team with Wei Xu and Qiu Xiangyu. Liu Chen's vicious action was exposed by Xu Yi when he returned. Wei Xu was so angry he almost strangled Liu Chen to death but fortunately Liu Tao arrived in time to save the cannon fodder’s life.
Afterwards, Wei Xu and his small group decided to leave the Annan base for B City. On the night of departure there was a sudden zombie outbreak that destroyed the Annan base, resulting in Liu Tao's death and Liu Chen's disappearance. Xu Yi was separated from Qiu Xiangyu and their group and while all alone he met male lead number four on the road to B city, Yan Zheng, a special forces soldier. At this point all the four male leads would have all appeared.
Ye Zhizhou looked at the timeline and found out the plot had progressed to the point where Liu Chen was going to push Xu Yi into the zombie crowd. He heaved a sigh, still okay, right now there were still two male leads who hadn’t encountered the protagonist. The mission shouldn't be that difficult to do.
Flipping through the data for the body he's using, his mouth twisted, so that's why the name Liu Chen was familiar to him — this body was Liu Chen's. The attractive guy from before called him that name, too.
How come he gets a cannon fodder role in every world…..
He skimmed over the story of the protagonist and his harem members' growing feelings and skipped to the end of the story, looking for the things that caused the world destruction.
At B City, a traitor in the team let out the secret of Xu Yi's spring, attracting the greedy eyes of B city's higher-ups. Wei Xu would have already joined one family in B City by then, he had some say in the matters of the B city base so the higher-ups of B city didn't dare to make a move on this coveted spiritual spring. There was one exception though — the youngest son of the Zhong family of medics, Zhong Qiu.
The mad scientist Zhong Qiu had been studying the zombie antivirus ever since the world fell into an apocalypse. He had made some progress, but he had been stuck at the last final step. Xu Yi's spring was very powerful and would be very valuable for his research. Zhong Qiu found out about Xu Yi and captured him, keeping him in his research lab and making the male leads furious. They broke into the research institute to take Xu Yi back and in the process Zhong Qiu tragically died. The only genius capable of making a vaccine for zombie virus vanished from the world.
"……"
Several decades later the base of hope that Xu Yi established with his male leads had become a tiny world on its own, and yet from start to finish they didn't manage to make a cure for the zombie virus. The protagonist and his male leads died oh so peacefully, leaving the world where zombies rapidly evolved. What followed was tragedy for the last remaining living humans and the world’s destruction.
……He had nothing to say.
He switched off the screen and couldn’t calm down for a long time.
The truck stopped at a small abandoned gas station after ten minutes or so. Wei Xu came up with a big bag in hand and threw it inside the freight car, saying "Eat first, I don’t think we'll reach the base by night. We'll stay for the night. Everyone should be careful."
Everyone nodded, the strong man with a bald head from before beginning to distribute the food, once more he gave Ye Zhizhou a disdainful look.
The dinner is a package of biscuits and a half bottle of water. It tasted like wax to him, he couldn’t grow to like it. He had lived lifetimes of a young master's comfortable life, now that his living standard dropped drastically he needed to re-adapt.
Wei Xu glanced at him several times, hesitating, before calling out to him with a dark face, "Liu Chen, come with me!" and he walked towards an offroad vehicle behind the truck.
Ye Zhizhou was somewhat baffled being called out by him, recalling the plot he brushed the crumbs off his fingers then chucked his remaining water at the pretty guy. He got down from the truck as the bald man was looking on with a fierce glare.
The vehicle door was open and you can vaguely make out a person lying down at the back. Wei Xu stood by the car door, when he caught sight of Ye Zhizhou, he bent inside the car and tossed a small pouch at the young man. "For you, else you'll complain to uncle that I bullied you when we get back."
Ye Zhizhou looked at the mini sausages in the pouch and laughed, "So stingy. Getting a beating because you bully me is just when we were kids. You actually still think about it now, that's all in the past." He counted the mini sausages and nodded in satisfaction, "Enough to share with everyone in the truck. Thanks, brother Wei."
He turned to go as he finished talking, not lingering near Wei Xu at all.
Wei Xu was stunned by this natural indifference from him. As he looked at the other’s dirty face he recalled their childhood — getting beaten whenever Liu Chen would tell on him. He felt quite awkward and his heart's loathing somehow faded. He gruffly called out to him then took out another bag and tossed it over, "We have to take shifts guarding. You're teamed with me and we're up first. If you mess up again I'll toss you out to the zombies!"
The pouch accurately hit Ye Zhizhou's chest. The original body is as weak as a little chick and the physical strength of ability users are greater, Ye Zhizhou fell back two steps from the hit. He rubbed his chest, when he saw the chocolates in the new pouch his smile grew brighter, "Brother Wei is the most generous. Thank you ah." In the apocalypse, a small sized calories replenishing foods such as chocolate were very popular.
Wei Xu's fingers twitched seeing Ye Zhizhou getting hit back by the force, but he ignored his thanks and got inside the car, shutting the door behind him.
Ye Zhizhou didn’t care about it. He returned to the back of the truck and divided the food with everyone but deliberately went around the bald man, giving more chocolate and sausage to the pretty guy instead.
The bald man huffed with his nose angrily and the younger man quickly shared some of his chocolate and sausage to him. Ye Zhizhou chuckled at that, making the bald man even angrier.
In the middle of the night, Ye Zhizhou was shaken awake by Wei Xu, he rubbed his face to clear his head. He followed Wei Xu to climb up the truck. Ye Zhizhou took the machine gun handed to him and fiddled with it. This is the first time in his many lives that he touched this type of weapon, it's quite a novel experience.
"Can you use it?" Wei Xu who sat two arms away from him suddenly started a conversation. He also held a gun in one of his hands.
"Probably a little bit." He was reading instructions on how to use it on the screen while he slowly familiarised himself with the gun's parts so he threw out a perfunctory answer.
Wei Xu couldn't adapt to Ye Zhizhou's cold attitude today, his brows wrinkled, he started saying, "Xiao Chen, I hope you understand that I only see you as a little brother. I don’t have any other thoughts towards you, don’t make things difficult for Xiao Yi anymore."
"Mm. No problem." He held up his gun and aimed it to the open, he roughly knew what to do now. He tilted his head and smiled at Wei Xu, "It's the apocalypse, staying alive is more important than love. Don't worry, brother Wei. I won't trouble you in the future. As for Xu Yi, I really have to apologise to him." The first step in the mission: clear his name in front of the second male lead.
Wei Xu watched the easily smiling Ye Zhizhou under the moonlight, he felt his heart blocked by some unknown thing. Wei Xu closed with a very stiff "Good that you know," and moved his gaze away, concentrating on the night duty.
[T/N] Uhhh…. did it in a hurry, only thing I can remember being significant is Zhongqiu being Mid-Autumn Festival because that made me chuckle and me being unsure for the bullying part, thanks to Joui from Exiled Rebels and Kotoni from Chaleuria, they helped me with that part! The names in this arc are more modern(?), kinda pun-y and short one word names, haha, Yanzheng also means ‘strict/severe’
have fun guessing who is Ye Zhizhou’s lover in this arc~