Chapter 32: Kill Her or Spare Her?
Translator: Pluto Editor: Tehrn
Ever since he came to this particular world, Luther didn’t have the chance to fully appreciate the night sky.
Luther slowly blinked his eyes; he felt as if his body and thoughts were about to amalgamate into a column of smoke and merge into the starfield above him. The silver stars dotted the deep dark blue sky, glowing resplendently like scattered diamonds, twinkling with lights that have existed in the universe billions of years before.
[It’s so beautiful…] He exhaled lightly, feeling a little sleepy.
Suddenly, the star-speckled sky was blocked by a large magnified face. Li Zhijun peered down at Luther with his sly fox-like eyes beaming with a playful amusement.
“What are you doing?”
“The night sky is so beautiful… Huh? Brother Jun?” Luther, who had been panting in his pool of blood, regained his clear-headedness and only reacted after a while. He weakly turned his eyes to the side, “Are Marcie and the others here too?”
“I’m here!” he heard Marcie’s anxious and furious voice beside him. “Are you an idiot? You are almost going to faint from blood loss! And you’re thinking that the night is beautiful!”
Luther only realized then that his entire body felt cold, his mind was murky, and he did not even have an ounce of strength left. He turned to Marcie and smiled weakly, his mind was still occupied by the most important thing, “I waited so long for all of you… why are you only here now? The duoluozhong said that… only it could go upstairs as the traps only recognize it… what shall we do now?”
The others exchanged glances when they heard his question, realizing that dealing with the situation wouldn’t be easy.
“Okay, we’ve got it.” Lin Sanjiu patted his hand lightly after she thought about it for a while. She comforted, “You did well. You just have to focus on recovering now, leave the rest to us.”
After that, Marcie carried a small first-aid box with a red cross sign and sat down beside Luther. When she opened the first-aid box, Luther looked over sideways as if he wanted to say something… Marcie probably got that first-aid box from some small pharmacy. There were only a few sparse items in the box, and each of them seemed to have been manufactured for the sole purpose of cheating consumers, the quality was abysmal.
In contrast, the injuries that Luther had sustained probably required a month of hospitalization. As Marcie looked at the cheapskate bandages which were even thinner than paper, she could not help feeling worried. Li Zhijun suddenly smiled and said, “I remembered that Ah Ji has a type of emergency medicine with quick-acting effects. If you don’t mind, let’s use his medicine?”
“Really? That’ll be great!” Lin Sanjiu barely smiled as Hei Zeji stared at her coldly, without any intention to move. Everything fell silent as if the air around them had frozen over.
Since he didn’t respond, no one dared to prompt him to take the medicine out.
Luther blinked his eyes drowsily, probably because he heard Hei Zeji’s name. He had been drifting in and out of consciousness, so he did not know what they were talking about. He only recalled his battle just now. He gave a feeble smile and said softly in a dazed voice, “I turned into Brother Ji just now and broke that duoluozhong’s leg… Brother Ji’s upper limit… so powerful…”
Due to his serious injuries, his speech was slurred, but everyone there understood what he meant. Three pairs of eyes simultaneously landed on Hei Zeji. After a short while, the latter finally threw out a small bottle with a darkened face. Before Lin Sanjiu could cheer, Hei Zeji suddenly spoke, “Get him to eat this and wait for him to wake up. Don’t bother me anymore.”
No one dared to make a fuss about his attitude, they quickly acknowledged and thanked him. Hei Zeji gave the smiling Li Zhijun a sideway glance and turned to walk away without even saying any farewells. Within a blink of an eye, he disappeared from the street with his katana on his back.
“What do you plan to do next?” Li Zhijun had somehow shifted and was now standing beside Lin Sanjiu. He asked quietly, “From what it seems, without his shapeshifting ability, there is no way both of you can get up there.”
Lin Sanjiu looked over to Marcie. Even though Luther had already eaten the medicine, Marcie still had a lot to do. She had to clean his wound, bandage them and get Luther into a new set of clothes… After she had watched them thoughtfully for a brief moment, she turned and grinned at Li Zhijun, “I think Marcie should stay and look after Luther. I have a plan in mind to deal with that woman.”
“What plan?” Li Zhijun smiled without looking surprised at all.
“I need you to act out something with me,” Lin Sanjiu whispered.
Her idea was actually very simple. Since Lin Sanjiu couldn’t go upstairs, she would lure that woman downstairs. With this in mind, she prepared a “script” for Li Zhijun. They walked around the surrounding buildings, making sense of the area before both of them headed toward the taller building where the sniper was hiding in. They each found cover and hid.
Without humans, everywhere became exceptionally quiet. Because it was too quiet, she could constantly hear a fuzzy sound in her ears; she wasn’t sure if it was the sound of blood running through the vessels near her eardrum or simply the sound of the wind against her ears. In such an environment, Lin Sanjiu was fairly certain that the sniper on the 15th floor could hear their conversation.
“Brother! Where are you?” the young woman purposely raised her voice. Her voice rang out immediately, resonating in the silent night. The curtains behind a window on the 15th floor moved momentarily.
“Don’t try to look for me! Just hide well and don’t make a noise, you hear me?” Li Zhijun actually sounded convincingly anxious, “I chopped off one of the duoluozhong’s arm, but I don’t know where he went! Anyway, you just have to hide!”
Their verbal exchange was quick, and their voices echoed through the building, so it was difficult to trace the source of their voice. Just as he said that, as expected, she spotted a person peeking out from above, behind the curtains. Even though the person had cropped hair, it was easy to tell from the figure that the person was a woman. Lin Sanjiu nodded her head secretively and remained quiet, not making any movements.
The two of them did not speak for the next ten minutes. The woman upstairs seemed to have become more and more anxious. She would peek out every few minutes to survey the area. After that woman had done it a couple of times, Lin Sanjiu decided that the time was ripe. Lin Sanjiu let out a sharp scream, instantly compelling the woman to stay by the window side.
“Brother! Come here quick! The duoluozhong is here! I cut off its mouthpart, but it seems to be alive…” contrary to her fearful and helpless tone she tried her best to fake, Lin Sanjiu was actually staring at the window on the 15th floor very calmly.
“Where are you? I’ll go over immediately!”
Lin Sanjiu raised her voice again, afraid that the person upstairs would miss their conversation. “I am at a place called ‘Red Heart Desserts’. Brother, quick! It’s still moving!”
The woman disappeared from the side of the window almost instantaneously. The breeze she created from her movement lifted the curtains, causing Lin Sanjiu’s heart to thump faster for a few seconds. What sort of woman could work with a duoluozhong?
Lin Sanjiu shifted her position, hiding herself a little better. To make their setup even more believable, Li Zhijun and her carried the duoluozhong’s corpse with them. They threw it behind the cake display counter so that only the bottom half of its body could be seen. Looking in from outside, one could only see its two legs.
The woman might not be able to use her “sniping” ability at close distances, but things would get dangerous if she started flinging her traps everywhere. This all meant that they had to lower her guard the very moment she stepped into the shop.
Just as they had expected, they could hear the running “thump thump thump” footsteps coming from afar.
[Huh? That sounded a little too loud?] That thought flashed through her mind. She peeked out a little and saw that a woman was indeed running toward them with large strides. Even before that woman came close, Lin Sanjiu could clearly hear her heavy breaths. The cake shop they were in was barely seven to eight minutes away from the apartment… yet the woman was panting so hard.
“Ah, Ah Jun!”
The woman was finally close. Before she even ran through the door, she saw the duoluozhong’s corpse. She immediately called out sadly and ran a little more quickly as she rushed in the cake shop. “Ah Jun, are you okay?” she was almost by its side.
Without any warning, a thin card slowly appeared in front of her. Before she could react, the 【black cloth】opened up with a swoosh, wrapping the woman’s face. Her ear-piercing shriek was immediately muffled by the black cloth. Just as she was about to reach toward her face and pull the cloth away, she was struck by a heavy item from behind. She fell to the ground.
Lin Sanjiu leaped down from the shelves, stepped on the nape of the woman’s neck with one of her feet, and twisted both woman’s arms inward. The woman who suddenly found her movement restricted went ballistic, she flopped on the floor like a fish while she kept screaming: “Let me go! Let me go! Ah Jun! Ah Jun!”
The woman struggled vigorously, and Lin Sanjiu almost lost her grip. In a moment of desperation, a white light flashed in Lin Sanjiu’s hand, and she delivered a heavy blow to the back of the woman’s head with her police baton. The woman instantly stopped.
[Could I have killed her with that blow?] The first thought that came to Lin Sanjiu’s mind was to check for the woman’s breathing. She was relieved when she felt the woman’s warm breaths against her finger.
The feeling she felt when she killed Ren Nan still weighted heavily in her heart, it was a sticky feeling that clung on to her heart. As she recalled it, she could not help feeling a knot in her stomach. Experiencing that once was more than enough for her.
Li Zhijun only came strolling through the door then, with a cheerful smile on his face. “Hey. You managed to deal with her by yourself, that’s impressive!”
Lin Sanjiu wiped the sweat off her forehead and took a deep breath. “Her physical condition was way worse than I expected. Weird.”
LI Zhijun went closer to the woman and flipped her over, revealing the woman’s swallow and emaciated face. She should have already gained the ability to resist high temperatures, but her eyes were sunken, her skin was a waxy yellow, and her lips were chapped. She looked totally dehydrated and malnourished. Even the duoluozhong’s skin was in a better condition than hers. The woman only had average looks originally, now with her current condition, her pitiable state made it difficult to look at her.
Lin Sanjiu gazed at the face, almost lost in her own thoughts.
“What do you plan to do now?” Li Zhijun suddenly edged toward her, whispering into her ear.
“Huh? What do you mean?” Lin Sanjiu was stunned, “We should have successfully passed the challenge within this pocket dimension, right?”
“No.” Li Zhijun fox-like eyes narrowed in a profound manner, “If your opponent doesn’t die, the pocket dimension will not cease… so you better kill her.”