Chapter 172

Chapter 172

Ji Feifan tumbled through the window and slammed hard onto the room’s freezing floor. The impact sent his insides churning and knocked everything out of place.

He lay sprawled there in a wretched heap, his ribs throbbing with excruciating pain. His collarbone burned even worse. Every breath brought a sharp stab of agony, making his vision go dark and stars burst before his eyes.

Clenching his teeth, he swallowed the metallic sweetness rising in his throat and didn’t dare move.

Outside, everything was deathly still. There was no laughter, nor the distinctive sound of a Madman’s footsteps.

Only after confirming it was safe did Ji Feifan prop himself against the wall and slowly drag himself off the floor like a dying fish.

Every movement made shards of bone grind against flesh. He held his breath, choking back every cry of pain.

Hugging the walls, he crept from one corridor to the next like a gecko fighting to survive in the shadows. His senses were heightened to their limits. His heartbeat thundered in his ears as he strained to catch the slightest disturbance in the air.

Cat had drawn away most of the Madmen, but those left behind could burst out from behind any door at any moment.

Fortunately, Death seemed to be dozing today.

He managed to make it back to his room.

The door was unlocked. He pushed his way inside, locked it behind him, and leaned against the door. Only then did he dare gasp for breath.

The room was empty, and the stale smell of dust hung in the air. Yet at that moment, it brought him a strange sense of peace. As his taut nerves relaxed slightly, memories suddenly flooded his mind-of crawling through the duct like a maggot, desperately hoping someone would rescue him.

That helplessness. That pathetic urge to entrust his life to someone else…

“Urgh…”

Ji Feifan dry-heaved as his stomach cramped.

Disgusting.

When had he become this kind of person? A dog wagging its tail and begging for scraps, waiting for its master to bestow the slightest hope of survival?

He staggered to his knees and reached into the darkest corner beneath the bed. The instant his fingertips touched cold metal, his entire body relaxed, as though a drowning man had finally caught hold of a tuft of dead grass on the shore.

Two handguns had been hidden there for a long time.

He gripped them, letting their icy touch spread from his palms through his limbs and drive away his fear. Leaning against the bed, he set the guns across his knees and began calculating rapidly.

“They should be under attack by now.”

Ji Feifan’s gaze gradually turned ruthless. “I have to help them. Cat… absolutely cannot be allowed to live!”

But he knew perfectly well that, with his body in its current battered state, he wouldn’t last long alone. He needed help.

He thought of the handful of survivors he had been secretly contacting.

He would get them out.

That way, he wouldn’t be on his own. Even if he failed to finish Cat off, there would still be others who could flee with him.

Ji Feifan hesitated no longer. He stood, stuffed one handgun into his pocket, and kept the other in hand. Then he pulled a length of nylon rope from beneath the bedsheet and wrapped it around his waist.

After glancing into the bottomless darkness beyond the window, he climbed out and laboriously found his footing on a water pipe.

…………

Meanwhile, at the far end of another corridor…

The Madman known as Big Guy was wandering aimlessly, bored out of its mind. It had a hulking frame and sickly gray-white skin.

As it passed a cell, it saw one of its own kind indulging some twisted desire on the prisoner inside.

Finding the sight dull, Big Guy raised a foot and kicked the other Madman viciously in the backside. “Get lost, trash.”

Despite having its fun interrupted, the Madman by the cage showed no anger. Instead, it grinned with manic excitement.

Big Guy snorted and turned away, intending to find some other amusement.

Then it abruptly stopped.

Someone was huddled inside the cage.

The person was curled up in the innermost corner, covered in filth, though their features remained sharp. But those eyes… There was no light left in them. They stared hollowly at the ceiling, as lifeless as stagnant water.

Big Guy tilted its head and stared fixedly at that face.

So alike.

It really was alike.

Just like that dog.

A surge of sadistic excitement rushed straight to its head. Big Guy split its mouth into a grin, revealing a row of crooked yellow teeth. It pulled out a ring of keys and opened the cage door with a loud jangle.

It reached inside and, under the terrified gazes of the survivors, hauled the person out like a dead dog before slamming them onto the floor.

The person didn’t struggle. Like a corpse that had not quite finished dying, they simply lay there as Big Guy planted its foot on their chest and ground down mercilessly.

“Aaaaaaargh!!!”

The scream instantly tore through the corridor’s silence.

The Madman that had been indulging itself nearby immediately jumped up, clapping and shrieking, “Sounds good! Sounds good! Hahahahaha! Louder! Scream louder!!!”

…

In the room next door, the woman who had once pointed at Ji Feifan and cursed him as a “Traitor to Humanity” abruptly raised her head.

She couldn’t see what was happening on the other side of the wall, but she knew those screams all too well.

The Madmen had started torturing someone again!

The Madman guarding them grimaced, seemingly torn over whether to go join the fun. After a moment’s hesitation, it ultimately failed to resist the bloodthirsty temptation and scampered out the door with a gleeful grin.

The woman looked away, a sharp glint flashing through her eyes.

Her heart was racing so violently that every beat hurt her chest, yet her face remained unnervingly calm.
She had keenly noticed that the noise in the hallway outside had dwindled considerably since early that morning. On top of that, the Big Guy, a Madman, kept passing by every now and then.

The Big Guy never bothered with patrol duty. Could it be… Cat had personally gone out to hunt someone down?

And the Traitor to Humanity was nowhere to be seen either.

She swept her gaze around the cramped cell.

The door stood half-open. It was their only way out.

Should they run?

The woman didn’t know how many Madmen Cat had taken with him, but she did know there were fewer guards now. This was their one and only chance to escape.

Should she gamble on it?!

Yes!

She suddenly shoved a hand into her mouth and pulled a long, thin strip of metal from beneath the base of her tongue. It was the lifeline she had kept hidden all this time.

She yanked the middle-aged woman beside her closer, pressed the metal strip into her hand, and put her lips almost against her ear. “Pick the lock. Hurry.”

The middle-aged woman frowned when she saw the look in her eyes, but she asked no questions. She squeezed her way to the front, gripped the lock cylinder, and inserted the metal strip into the keyhole.

Click.

Clack.

Over the violent pounding of the woman’s heart, that faint snap sounded like music from heaven.

Every survivor in the cage stared with wide eyes, their hearts racing as though they might burst from their chests.

The woman grabbed the bars and pushed outward with all her strength.

The iron door was halfway open, and she was just about to rush out when she caught movement by the window from the corner of her eye.

Her head snapped around.

A deathly pale face was pressed against the window, staring fixedly at them.

In that instant, her scalp went numb. Her blood nearly froze, and her lungs felt as though they had been filled with cement, leaving her unable to breathe.

But she quickly recognized the face.

It was the Traitor to Humanity!

They both jumped at the sight of each other.

Enduring the excruciating pain, Ji Feifan climbed in through the window, his face as pale as paper. He looked at the group inside the cage and quickly raised a finger to his lips.

He wasted no time on explanations. After sweeping his gaze around to make sure it was safe, he swiftly tied the rope he had brought to the cage bars and whispered, “Go!”

The woman no longer hesitated. She pushed the cage door open, grabbed the rope, and slid down without a second thought.

The room was deathly quiet. The only sounds were the increasingly gleeful screams of the Madman next door and the agonized whimpers the other person could barely make anymore.

Suddenly, a deathly pale head appeared in the doorway.

The passing Madman seemed to have come by purely by chance, only to witness their escape. Its scarlet eyes swept toward them, its pupils instantly contracting. Then its lips stretched into an impossibly wide grin.

It laughed.

“The piglets are escaping!”

It unleashed a piercing shriek and lunged at them like a cannonball!

“Shit!”

The woman at the very back was shoved to the floor, and the Madman pinned her down. She struggled with all her might, but she couldn’t budge its terrifying strength in the slightest!

Furious and despairing, she cursed at the top of her lungs, “Fuck! They’re escaping!!!!!”

“Move!”

Ji Feifan cursed under his breath, a vicious gleam flashing in his eyes.

He didn’t try to save her. Instead, he shoved aside someone who was about to climb down, grabbed the rope himself, and jumped!

As he slid down, it felt as though someone had stomped on his collarbone and broken it all over again. His vision went black, and its edges began to blur, but he refused to let go. He clung to the rope with a death grip, letting the coarse hemp tear the skin from his palms.

“Urgh!!”

Thud.

The instant his feet hit the ground, his clothes were already soaked through with cold sweat.

Five survivors had made it down before him. They were crouched behind an abandoned metal barrel.

“Follow me!”

Ji Feifan pulled another pistol from his waistband and tossed it over.

The woman caught it steadily, checked the magazine, and racked the slide with practiced ease.

Seven or eight Madmen instantly crowded around the window behind them. Some clumsily slid down the rope, while others simply leaped out like wild beasts, hitting the ground with jarring thuds.

Ji Feifan said nothing else. He spun around and sprinted toward the other end, ignoring the excruciating pain wracking his entire body.

The woman followed behind him, with the others close on her heels. They ran up onto the racetrack, where several cars were parked.

Ji Feifan yanked open a door and dropped into the driver’s seat. The woman opened the passenger door, while the remaining four women squeezed awkwardly into the back.

Vroom!

The engine roared to life.

Ji Feifan floored the accelerator. His entire body was in agony, but the adrenaline made him feel as though he were on fire!

Kill Cat!

Kill Cat!!!

Qingshui will definitely deal him a devastating blow. She will!

Sometimes, a mouse toyed with by a cat for far too long would lose its mind from sheer terror.

And sometimes, that very terror… would infect the mouse with the cat’s arrogance and madness.

Ji Feifan stared fixedly at the dark road ahead, his knuckles whitening around the steering wheel.

The wind howled past the windows, drowning out the stifled breathing inside the car.

What he didn’t know was that the young girl in the back seat had been staring at the back of his head ever since she got into the car.

There was no gratitude in her eyes, no relief at having survived, and no fear of the Madmen.

It was something else.