A Gentle Cage in the Ruins

In the third year of the apocalypse, the outside world had long ceased to be a place fit for humans. Inside a base with three layers of protection, Lin Yuan had survived alone for a very long time, until the day a woman, trembling with hunger, stumbled in. Her name was Shen Xingchu. Timid and fragile, she was like a thin sheet of paper that could be scattered by the wind at any moment. Lin Yuan did not harm her. He gave her water and food, but also a choice she had to face—stay, or return to the corpse-strewn wasteland outside. Ten days later, she nodded. And now, beneath the quiet of the night, something long suppressed was quietly beginning to fracture.