Chapter 173
Chapter 173
Captain, is this how it felt when you decided to die?
Qingshui hauled the fallen motorcycle upright from the snow, swung one long leg over it, and planted her leather boot hard on the footpeg.
She twisted the throttle.
Vroom!
The thunderous roar of the engine shattered the silence, like a beast awakening in full.
Qingshui did not look back. She shot down the mountain like a bolt of lightning. The violent jolts set her blood boiling, every vibration sending numbness through her nerves.
Ahead, several motorcycles came charging toward her at the sound, their riders’ faces twisted savagely.
Qingshui held the handlebars steady with one hand and raised her pistol with the other. Muscle memory took over as she aimed and pulled the trigger.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Blood sprayed through the air. Rather than slowing down, she opened the throttle all the way. The tires tore across frozen earth and mud, unleashing a piercing screech that set her teeth on edge.
A broken slope loomed ahead.
Qingshui did not hesitate. Her momentum sent the motorcycle soaring into the sky!
The sky stretched endlessly overhead, and the vast snowfield had no visible end. A single wan streak of white lit up the night, illuminating this place that had once belonged to humanity but had now become hell.
Against that boundless expanse of heaven and earth, one tiny yet resolute figure flew through the air.
The instant weightlessness enveloped her, all her hardness and every last pretense shattered.
Two faces flooded Qingshui’s mind without warning.
The first was Aunt Chen. Her greatest regret was that, even at the very end, she had never called her “Mom” to her face.
And then… Li Wei’an.
Li Wei’an, whose mere memory drained every ounce of strength from her body and tore away her soul.
Li Wei’an, whom she had failed to protect.
Before, Qingshui had never dared to think of her, afraid that even brushing against those memories would plunge her beyond redemption. But now, she finally dared to think. She finally dared to remember.
Because… she was on her way to see her.
At the outermost perimeter, the Madman known as Cat suddenly looked up.
It stared at the airborne figure, its pupils instantly contracting to pinpricks.
At that moment, time and space seemed to slip out of alignment.
That figure somehow overlapped with another from its memories-one of utter, unimaginable terror.
At the same time, that cold voice which had once made it tremble seemed to whisper in its ear again, carrying a spine-chilling smile.
“You will know her. You will know her… Hehehe…”
“The moment you see her, you will understand that feeling.”
Icy fingertips seemed to caress its chin once more, and the remembered touch sent shudders through its entire body. In its memory, their forms were twisted yet intimate, and the voice continued to whisper.
“Good child. I leave this world in your hands. Tell her that I have always been waiting for her…”
The boy in the memory bent low, nestling in her arms like a sweet, docile cat. His eyes burned with fanatical worship as he murmured, “Mother… Mother…”
Reality and hallucination intertwined. Cat abruptly raised its radio, pupils contracted to their limit, its voice trembling with overwhelming excitement and fear.
“Catch her! Catch her!!”
Rumble!
Several modified off-road vehicles roared to life at once. Their blinding high beams flared on simultaneously, like bloodthirsty behemoths trapping the airborne figure within pillars of light.
“Heeheehee… Hahahahahaha!”
“Run! Run! Hahahahahaha!!”
The Madmen inside the vehicles shrieked in deranged delight and floored the accelerators.
Blinding white light swallowed Qingshui’s entire field of vision, yet she began to laugh.
Amid that nearly blinding glare, she threw back her head and laughed without restraint.
Her laughter was wild and brazen, as though those were not Madmen coming to claim her life, but spotlights lit especially for her stage.
“Come on.”
Beneath her mask, Qingshui’s pupils contracted to pinpricks. Veins bulged at her temples, and the smile curling across her lips was even more twisted and savage than those of the Madmen.
“Come on!”
Let’s see who Heaven wants to keep alive today!!
The off-road vehicles began circling wildly. The shriek of tires against the ground rose and fell from every direction, forming a deadly ring around her.
Thud!!
The motorcycle slammed heavily into the ground, its frame groaning in agony.
Qingshui did not stop. She did not even slow down. She charged straight at an off-road vehicle hurtling toward her!
The Madmen howled with laughter, convinced she intended to take them down with her.
At the final instant before impact, Qingshui wrenched the handlebars aside. The motorcycle leaned so low it almost skimmed the ground as she shot through the gap between two vehicles!
The Madmen had no time to turn. Momentum sent several vehicles crashing into one another, and the thunder of colliding metal shook the sky.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Qingshui pulled the pin from a grenade and hurled it behind her without even looking!
Boom!
Flames erupted into the sky, and the blast wave propelled her forward even faster.
She charged straight ahead!
Cat raised its gun without realizing it. Through its sights, it could clearly see those eyes.
There was no fear in them. No despair.
Only laughter.
It remembered Mother’s words: “You will know her.”
At last, it understood what Mother had meant.
It was afraid.
“Fire. Aim for the legs–”
…………
“Let go of me… Let me go!!”
“An Xiaolin, you fucking moron, let go of me! Didn’t you say you’d kill Qingshui if she abandoned you? Then go–”
Ye Que’s voice abruptly died in her throat. It wasn’t that she no longer dared to speak–she physically couldn’t make a sound.
Something unimaginably terrifying seemed to be awakening behind her. The pressure was like an ant standing before a mountain on the verge of collapse.
Cold sweat poured from her entire body. Her mouth hung half-open, her jaw seemingly dislocated and unable to close.
The hands gripping her shoulders were so powerful they nearly crushed her shoulder blades.
Ye Que stiffly turned her head, inch by inch.
In the shadows, a single eye was turning red, staring fixedly at her.
“I. Don’t need. You. To lecture. Me.”
An Xiaolin’s voice was impossibly hoarse.
“You. Just need to stay here.”
With that, she flung Ye Que aside and climbed straight out of the pit.
The wind howled.
She looked down at Qingshui, riding a motorcycle and drawing everyone’s attention, while her mind raced.
A sneak attack… All the Madmen were watching Qingshui. That was their only blind spot.
Run!!!
She broke into a run. No–she was charging down the slope!
The hillside was steep, and loose stones tumbled wildly beneath her feet. She nearly fell several times, but her legs no longer seemed to belong to her. Her strides grew longer and faster!
Amid the violent roar of the wind, her mind went completely blank.
Yet within that emptiness, two faces emerged.
The parents who had brought her into this world, yet had never once treated her like a human being.
They had thrown away her hopes like trash. With their blatant favoritism, they had stirred her life into a pot of murky sludge.
Once, she had humbly begged for the scrap of warmth even a beggar would disdain, like a vine clinging to life in a crack between rocks, its head buried in the dust.
She had wanted so desperately to live as a real person.
Not the dispensable daughter of her family. Not anyone’s accessory. Not a shadow trampled underfoot because of her gender. She wanted to stand at the top. She wanted to live magnificently. She wanted everyone to see her–and fear her.
That was why she feared death. She was terrified of it.
All this time, she had resisted the evil desires inside her, the ones dragging her toward depravity.
She had dumped every bloodthirsty, twisted, filthy thought onto Qingshui like so much garbage. Only by letting her own evil parasitize Qingshui had she barely managed to live like a normal person.
She depended on Qingshui too much–so much that she had come to believe that without that shell of madness around her, she was nothing but a coward through and through.
But… she didn’t want to resist anymore.
She accepted it.
She accepted the filth in her bones. She accepted the evil she had been born with.
So what if she was insane? She no longer had to cast her evil desires onto Qingshui and make her bear them. She no longer had to pretend. No longer had to conceal the darkness buried in her bones.
They were the ones who had shaped An Xiaolin into the person she was now–someone who wanted to tear the world apart.
And she would master herself. She would embrace every part of herself. She would trample everyone beneath her feet, including…
God.
An Xiaolin’s foot plunged deep into the earth!
Boom–
She accelerated again, and her posture began to change. Her body was almost parallel to the ground, her arms swinging wider. Each time all four limbs struck the earth, they unleashed an explosive force that was anything but human.
She could no longer feel exhaustion. She could no longer feel the cold. She could no longer feel pain.
All she wanted was… to kill them!
An Xiaolin never stopped, but her world suddenly went black.
A Madman’s sadistic lust for slaughter was slowly corroding the final Pure Land within her soul. An icy presence closed in around her.
Countless fragments flashed before her eyes, but she could grasp none of them.
In the void, stars glimmered, black and white intertwined.
Then two stars woven from black and white hurtled toward her.
She didn’t dodge. She even rushed forward to meet them.
The two stars shot straight toward her eyes, and at last she saw them clearly.
It was a mirror.
One side was covered in writhing black corruption; the other was riddled with fractures. The corruption seeped through the Rift, gradually spreading outward.
When it reached her, something shattered completely.
And at last, she saw the truth.
It wasn’t a mirror, but two worlds reflecting each other!
Bang!
An explosion rang out in the distance.
Her soul plummeted!
In the real world, she had already reached the battlefield.
An SUV was tearing after Qingshui, completely oblivious to the dark figure charging in from behind and to the side.
An Xiaolin seized the rear edge of the vehicle with both hands. Using its momentum, she kicked off with her long legs!
Her entire body vaulted onto the roof like a cheetah. The wind whipped the loose strands of hair from her forehead as she crouched low, her face suddenly appearing over the roof’s edge.
Her eyes were cold as ice, locked firmly on the Madman behind the windshield.
The next instant, under the Madman’s delighted gaze, she raised her arm.
The axe rose high, carrying a resolve fierce enough to rend the soul, then came hacking down!