Reborn One Week Before the Apocalypse

Tang Mo didn’t know how long she had been wandering across the vast land. Ever since she’d left her body and become a conscious entity, her sense of time and space had grown increasingly faint.

She knew that as a conscious entity, no matter how strong, she would eventually dissipate if she remained separated from her physical body for too long.

But Tang Mo wasn’t afraid. In fact, she was completely immersed in this other world, one she had never been able to touch before.

In the past, Tang Mo had been single-mindedly focused on becoming stronger and stronger, and she had certainly succeeded.

But she had forgotten that no matter her circumstances, there was always a world to see around her—a world she never had time to look at.

She had achieved her goal of becoming the strongest. For a while, she even felt as though the weight of the entire world rested on her shoulders, compelling her to push herself even harder.

But this world, built from endless white snow, overturned many of Tang Mo’s long-held beliefs.

‘I was too arrogant,’ she thought.

In truth, the world would keep spinning, no matter who was gone.

The Ice Age had made the environment even harsher. At first, everyone thought they wouldn’t survive.

But soon, humanity overcame their environment. They were living well in a climate of ice and snow, one completely inhospitable to human life.

Tang Mo had once believed that people couldn’t possibly be happy while facing such hardship.

But she was wrong. Humanity’s adaptability, their resilience and fortitude in the face of difficulty, was far greater than she had ever imagined.

In that moment, Tang Mo found herself admiring ordinary people. Even without her world-changing power, they could always find a way to survive on their own, and even make their lives a little better.

The hope of all humanity wasn’t riding on her, nor on those few pearls.

Tang Mo scoffed at her own arrogance. It seemed that in these past few days, she had come to understand things that many people spend their entire lives trying to grasp.

Humanity always creates its own hope. No person and no thing can give it to them.

At that moment, Tang Mo suddenly wanted to go and see her old friends.

In this life, she had always been on the move, but she had still made many friends along the way.

But Tang Mo had always felt that her time was short and her mission was urgent, so she rarely lingered.

She would offer a hasty farewell and depart, never making plans to meet again, never even saying the words, “See you next time.”

However…

As a conscious entity, Tang Mo was weak now. Her sense of direction was so poor that it was nearly impossible to find specific locations in a place where one couldn’t even distinguish north, south, east, or west.

So Tang Mo could only wander aimlessly through human settlements, waiting for the little pearl that was so reluctant to leave her to find her once more.

The last time she’d felt that connection, even for just a brief moment, Tang Mo had sensed a transfer of energy.

‘The next time we connect, I have to seize the opportunity. It might be difficult to return to my body, but it should be possible to at least replenish some energy for my increasingly tenuous consciousness.’

‘But when will I receive that connection again?’

‘What is the trigger, exactly?’

Perhaps it was because she currently lacked a brain, but she thought about it for a long time without a single clue. She didn’t even know which of the little pearls had been the one to reach out to her.

‘The most likely candidate is probably the Spirit Power Pearl,’ she reasoned. ‘After all, it has the strongest energy in my sea of consciousness, and it’s the one I use most often.’

This time, however, Tang Mo was wrong. Back in the tent where her body lay…

Lin Yi spent most of her days at Tang Mo’s side, washing her body daily. ‘I have to protect my daughter,’ she thought. ‘Momo will wake up sooner or later.’

The two little ones, Yangyang and Xianxian, had lost all interest in playing. They each held one of Tang Mo’s hands, chattering on and on about how much they missed her, hoping their sister would hurry up, open her eyes, and play with them.

Yangyang was still too young to understand the stakes, but Xianxian already did.

She knew that if Sister Momo woke up, they would have to live in this world of ice and snow forever.

But she still desperately wanted Tang Mo to wake up.

As for Jingjing, it went without saying. It spent every day curled up beside Tang Mo’s neck, refusing to go anywhere.

Wen Jianshu, the Sect Leader, and Lin Yu didn’t come every day, but they were even busier. They were poring over the dozens of pages of the instruction manual, going through it page by page, line by line, and word by word, until they could recite every sentence from memory.

They were desperately trying to find a way to save Tang Mo within its pages.

‘Is there really only one way? Isn’t there a better, faster method?’ This was the question they asked themselves every single day.

Xiao Tao was even busier, handling all the support work. She cooked for those poring over the documents, for the one washing Momo, and for those holding Momo’s hands.

After all, Momo hadn’t woken up yet. If everyone else were to collapse, it would be a complete disaster.

Lao San and his men weren’t idle, either. Each one grabbed a small stool and sat right on the edge of the protective barrier, taking over the guard duty from the men the Sect Leader had originally assigned to the post.

They were waiting for the exact moment their boss would fall after completing his mission so they could retrieve him and bring him to their boss’s wife’s side without a second’s delay.

They were all brothers who had followed Qin Ling for a very, very long time. None of them doubted the choice he would make.

Only Tang Mo’s closest family and friends knew of her current situation, and all of them had made the same choice.

Tang Mo’s body seemed to have fallen into a deep slumber. It was deathly still and completely unresponsive. If not for her faint breathing and weak pulse, it would be impossible to tell she was even alive.

Within her Sea of Consciousness, the raging energy had gradually calmed. Although much of it had dispersed, the remainder obediently revolved around four pearls in the center, each glowing with a different colored light.

The Life Pearl, the Power Pearl, the Space Pearl, and the Spirit Power Pearl. These four pearls formed a square, doing their utmost to prevent the energy from dispersing from the shattered Sea of Consciousness.

If not for these pearls, the rampaging energy released by a shattered Sea of Consciousness would have long since caused an ordinary person’s body to explode.

Outside the Sea of Consciousness, a physical body is incapable of containing such dispersed energy.

Even if their body didn’t explode, the day a superpower user loses all their energy is the day they say goodbye to the world.

With the four Attribute Pearls so busy, the two other small things beside them seemed rather idle.

One of these two small things was the pink Emotional Pearl, which had grown to be much larger than the Attribute Pearls.

The other was the Jade Pendant that Tang Mo had long since fused with her Sea of Consciousness.