Dimensional Store: Welcome to the Apocalypse Apartment - Chapter 261

Chapter 261

Back then, Gu Changge had appeared here wearing a mask.

Seeing how agitated the man was, Gu Huaiwei half-jokingly played along. “Oh, Gu Changge is my idol. I really admire her, so I used her name too.”

“No, you two…” The middle-aged man in the wheelchair wanted to say that, at a glance from a distance, Gu Huaiwei really did look a lot like Gu Changge.

But once Gu Huaiwei opened her mouth, she was a completely different person from Gu Changge.

Gu Changge had been quiet and reserved. No matter what she did, she was methodical, gentle yet resolute. The young woman before him, however, was a little too lively.

“Nine years… It has been a full nine years since she left…” The man in the wheelchair let out a long sigh. The murky breath lodged in his chest had still not fully dispersed after all these years.

The man’s name was Gao Yuan. When he had met Gu Changge in his twenties, he had been high-spirited and had sworn to purge the pollution from this world. Now, in his thirties, he lived like an old man in his twilight years. He had already accepted the fact that Gu Changge was gone, and that pollution would never disappear from this world.

Gu Huaiwei pretended to be her sister’s little fangirl. Propping her face in her hands, eyes practically sparkling, she asked with great interest, “Why don’t you tell me the story of you and Gu Changge back then? I’ll do a special interview with you. When I promote the Sanatorium later, I can even write a dedicated memoir piece about you all and add some prestige to my place.”

Gao Yuan had already learned from Zhou Yizhi’s mother why Gu Huaiwei had invited him here.

Out of a desire to help an old friend, he had not refused.

Lin She sat behind Gu Huaiwei with a silver-white laptop. His long, pale fingers flew across the keyboard, recording Gao Yuan’s words.

“At first, the pollution didn’t appear on a large scale. It only manifested in small clusters of buildings, so it was considered a classified incident.

The authorities established the Mysterious Incident Handling Bureau and recruited capable people skilled in the Five Elements, feng shui, and the like, attempting to enter each Instance and resolve the pollution.

My great-grandfather worked in that field. By the time it was passed down to my generation, only scraps of the craft remained.

I met Gu Changge at the Mysterious Incident Handling Bureau. She wore a mask and sat in a leadership position. Among that group of stern middle-aged people, she stood out so brightly.”

“Mysterious Incident Handling Bureau?” Gu Huaiwei had yet to leave Gray Mist Town, so she did not know what lay beyond the town.

Gao Yuan waved a hand. “The past is too painful to look back on. That place was destroyed long ago. It’s now become a Five-Star Instance. There’s no need to go there anymore.”

The people of this Dimension were powerless against the pollution.

Gu Huaiwei stopped asking and waited for Gao Yuan to continue.

He Xueyi brewed Gao Yuan a cup of hot tea to refresh him.

“Thank you.” Gao Yuan held the teacup and sank into memories of the past. “Gu Changge was the captain of our pollution-clearing team. She wasn’t very old. When we met her, she was only in her early twenties, about the same age as you are now…”

At this point, Gao Yuan frowned slightly. “I always felt she was different from us. It was as if time never left any trace on her.”

“How long was it before Gu Changge disappeared?”

“Less than a year.” Gao Yuan sounded rather emotional. “During that year when the pollution expanded without limit, she created far too many legends.

Gu Changge cleaned up the internal corruption within the Mysterious Incident Handling Bureau, donated massive amounts of supplies to ensure the factories outside could keep operating normally, led us in clearing pollution and compiling strategies for completing each Instance, and established the Safe House so that the people barely surviving within clusters of Instance could have a chance to catch their breath…”

Like Gu Huaiwei, Gu Changge did not belong to this Dimension. The results she achieved by clearing an Instance could not be recorded under her name.
That worked out perfectly for Gao Yuan. With his own results added to Gu Changge’s, he shot straight to Number One on the Heavenly Ranking.

No wonder Gao Yuan had never been able to let go of Gu Changge.

“It’s just a pity that the speed at which pollution can be cleansed will never keep up with the speed at which it expands.

“I wanted to imagine the future with Gu Changge, to imagine a future that belonged to us… but whenever the topic of the future came up, Gu Changge was always unwilling to respond.

“We ate together. We went into Instances together to earn Lifespan. Everything she built, I took part in it too… But even though she was right there in front of me, she felt so unreal.

“Only later did I understand where that feeling came from. It turned out she had never planned to stay.”

Gao Yuan gave a bitter smile and took a sip of hot tea, his voice laced with pain and reluctance.

“Gu Changge seemed to have run a Sanatorium like this one too. It was called a Sanatorium, but in reality, she was paying Lifespan out of her own pocket to let injured humans come in and recover.

“Her Sanatorium wasn’t as large as yours. There were a lot of people inside, and it was chaotic, but it saved many lives.

“Then one day, Gu Changge suddenly told me that her work here was finished, and that she was leaving.

“I asked where she was going. She only said she was going somewhere we would never be able to meet again.

“I tried to make her stay, but it was useless.

“She didn’t want anything. She abandoned her work, abandoned the reputation she had in this world, and even abandoned those of us who had fought our way up alongside her. Just like that, she left!”

Even after all these years, Gao Yuan still couldn’t understand what could possibly have been more important than the year they had spent struggling forward together.

“If she chose to leave, then she must have had something more important to do,” Gu Huaiwei said. Of course she knew why her sister had left.

As the one who had been chosen without hesitation, her heart felt warm.

She would love her sister forever, just as her sister loved her.

“Don’t be so pessimistic. As long as you’re alive, there’s always hope of meeting again.” Gu Huaiwei’s gaze fell on Gao Yuan’s disabled legs. “Mr. Gao, would you like to try retiring here at the Sanatorium? In any case, Gu Changge left you plenty of Lifespan. It’s enough for you to live here until the end of time.”

Gao Yuan looked around the unfamiliar Sanatorium, and in the end, he chose to stay.

Xiling You had been listening from the side the whole time. She was firmly convinced that the Dimension passage had to be inside this Sanatorium. Otherwise, Gu Changge back then could not have left so quietly and without a trace.

The fist hidden in her sleeve clenched slightly.

Previously, the woman in chains she had rescued from the Mine Instance had also mentioned the Dimension passage. That woman had told Xiling You that the Dimension passage was in the shop’s storage room.

When Gu Huaiwei was away, Xiling You had secretly slipped into that storage room.

She had not found the so-called passage.

It had to be… the Dimension passage had to be nearby.

Xiling You felt there was hope for her to go home.

After the interview ended, all of Gu Huaiwei’s thoughts were on upgrading the Sanatorium.

She opened the computer at Oasis Sanatorium, and a new pop-up appeared.

Although Gu Huaiwei had not successfully invited the Black-hearted Merchant, she had invited the Hospital Director, the Director of the Hot Spring Mansion, and the Library Director. That counted as successfully completing the requirement to invite merchants.

[Congratulations on completing the marketing mission for this stage! You successfully invited the Mayor of Gray Mist Town, no fewer than three well-known merchants of this town, and the Number One on the Heavenly Ranking to visit Oasis Sanatorium, and completed the promotional article.]

[Congratulations! You have triggered a hidden reward!]