Ice Age Apocalypse: I Hoard Billions of Supplies Chapter 1405: Dream and Reality

Two people carried plenty of ingredients, complaining as they took off their shoes and stepped into the house.

"We agreed to come over on the weekend for hotpot at your place, but you slept like a pig. No matter how much we called, you just wouldn't wake up!"

Zhang Yi could only force a smile, saying he had overslept.

The two girls paid him no mind. They carried the ingredients into the kitchen, chattering away as they began washing the vegetables.

Zhang Yi sat on the living room sofa. On ordinary days, Fang Yuqing never let him touch the cooking.

Fang Yuqing had once said that letting a man be stuck in the kitchen every day would make others laugh.

Zhang Yi glanced back at the kitchen. Fang Yuqing and Lin Caining were already wearing aprons, washing vegetables, and he suddenly felt that days like this were exceptionally beautiful.

An overwhelming sense of happiness enveloped him.

But for some reason, this happiness felt a little unreal. It was like the sunlight streaming through the window onto his face, hazy and blurred, as if separated by a thin veil that obscured the truth.

The things in the dream were rapidly being forgotten, including the faces of the people in it, slowly growing blurry.

A moment later, Lin Caining carried a household hotpot to the living room, skillfully plugged it in, and arranged the washed ingredients on the table.

Hotpot is a cooking method beloved by the people of this nation because it's simple and easy to make plentiful.

Zhang Yi ate the familiar hotpot, while the two girls chatted, their joyful laughter like silver bells.

But Zhang Yi kept feeling distracted, unable to shake that dream from his mind.

Seeing this, Fang Yuqing pouted with displeasure.

"Zhang Yi, what's wrong with you today? Are you sick? You've been spacing out all day."

Zhang Yi looked up and quickly said, "No, no, it's just that…"

He paused for a moment, then said slowly, "I just had a very strange dream."

"A very strange dream? How strange?"

Lin Caining asked curiously.

Fang Yuqing rolled her eyes. "Honestly, you're something else. You have a dream and it messes you up like this."

Zhang Yi hesitated for a moment, then said, "The dream I had was very long, as if years had passed. In the dream, I met a lot of people and went through many things. It was so real, like I had actually lived in that world."

Lin Caining bit her chopsticks and said, "Most of us have experienced that feeling. Waking up from a dream and suddenly not being able to tell which is reality and which is the dream."

"In that case, just wash your face, and you'll be fine after a while."

Fang Yuqing giggled. "It's like the story of Zhuang Zhou dreaming of the butterfly in the book, right?"

She turned her head to look at Zhang Yi, her big eyes full of curiosity.

"Was I in your dream? What was I like? Tell me about it."

Zhang Yi rolled his eyes upward, thinking.

But soon, his heart skipped a beat.

Because the Fang Yuqing in the dream... well, let's not go there. If he said it out loud, it would definitely cause trouble.

"Of course, you were wonderful! We were very much in love, living together after getting married."

As he spoke, Zhang Yi couldn't help but recall the content of the dream.

"I dreamed of the apocalypse."

"The whole world was covered by an endless snowfall, freezing many people to death. We were trying hard to survive, just to stay alive."

Lin Caining said excitedly, "The apocalypse? That sounds interesting! I see stuff like that all the time on short videos! Tell me more, what exactly happened?"

Girls' gossipy curiosity is always exceptionally strong. They're especially keen on prying into the secrets hidden in others' hearts.

Zhang Yi felt his memory was especially fuzzy and could only give a rough account.

But the later parts weren't really suitable to say out loud.

So he substituted Fang Yuqing and Lin Caining into the roles of the other girls in his dream and briefly recounted the story.

After the two girls listened, they both laughed.

They thought the dream was really interesting. If he could write it down, it would probably make a very entertaining novel.

Zhang Yi just smiled too, lowered his head, and continued eating, trying to put the matter out of his mind.

It was just a dream, no need to take it too seriously.

After lunch, Zhang Yi and the others cleaned up the trash and planned to go to the cinema in the afternoon to watch a newly released movie.

The elevator stopped on the 18th floor, the door opened, and a long-haired woman in a black high-neck sweater and black-rimmed glasses stepped in.

Though her clothes were modest, they couldn't hide her perfect figure.

The moment he saw her, Zhang Yi's heartbeat noticeably quickened.

In his dream, there was also this woman. Her name was Zhou Ke'er, the chief physician at Tianhai City First People's Hospital.

In the dream, she was his woman.

Zhang Yi's throat tightened. He wanted to say something but eventually closed his mouth.

How could he take things from a dream seriously?

When they reached the ground floor, Zhou Ke'er quickly walked out, while he accompanied Fang Yuqing and Yang Siya to throw out the trash.

Outside the apartment building, he saw Auntie Lin from the neighborhood committee, wearing a red armband, scolding a young couple who hadn't leashed their dog while walking it.

Not far away, Uncle Old You from security stood with his hands behind his back, smiling as he watched a few elderly men playing chess in the fitness area.

On the basketball court, Big Brother Chen Zhenghao, wearing a basketball jersey with tattooed arms showing, was playing a three-on-three street basketball game with Xu Hao and other residents from the neighborhood.

Everything from his dream now looked surreal.

Zhang Yi walked forward in a daze, feeling an increasingly stark divide between the dream and reality.

His reason told him this was the real world, but a feeling, a strong urge, kept pulling him toward that snow-covered world.

Zhang Yi could hear Fang Yuqing and Lin Caining laughing beside him, but he didn't absorb a single word. He walked numbly to the trash disposal area, pressed the button, and tossed the trash bag into the bin.

"Zhang Yi, what's wrong with you?"

Fang Yuqing walked over, stood on tiptoes, reached up to touch Zhang Yi's forehead, then touched her own.

"Eh, no fever? But why have you been so out of it all day?"

Zhang Yi was stunned for a moment, then smiled. "I'm still thinking about the dream I had last night. It was so real that it makes me feel... it makes me feel..."

He felt like it wasn't just a dream.

But now, everything felt beautiful, like a dream.

The sudden thought startled Zhang Yi.

But wasn't everything in front of him exactly that beautiful?

He had a 140-square-meter, three-bedroom apartment in Tianhai City, a BBA car worth two or three hundred thousand, and a sweet, adorable girlfriend he was about to marry.

Life here was happy and warm.

While the world in the dream was cold and cruel.

Yet why was he still so immersed in that dream world, unable to let go?