Chapter 178

Chapter 178

“Captain, someone’s driving toward us.”

The woman adjusted her scope and watched the off-road vehicle swerve onto the battlefield. It was covered in blood, its windshield shattered. The figure in the driver’s seat was slumped over the steering wheel like a corpse.

“Warn them.”

The woman pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the vehicle’s front left tire. It lurched violently, rolled twice through the snow, and came to rest upside down. The door was kicked open from within, and a figure stumbled out.

“Captain?”

“Leave them.”

The woman didn’t fire a second shot. Their rules of engagement forbade them from attacking civilians. She merely watched coldly as the figure limped toward Qingshui.

…………

Qingshui knelt in the snow, her hands trembling as she turned An Xiaolin over. Blood was still flowing from An Xiaolin’s abdomen, and the snow beneath her had been stained a glaring red.

Qingshui couldn’t feel the cold. She couldn’t feel the pain, either, nor could she tell that her body was about to give out. Stubbornly, she tore strips from her inner layer of clothing and tried to bind An Xiaolin’s wound.

“Don’t die… Xiaolin, don’t die…”

But her fingers refused to obey. She wrapped the cloth around twice, only for it to come loose. She tried again, but it slipped free once more. Blood oozed between her fingers, sticky and cold.

Her head grew dizzier by the second. The snowy ground began to spin before her eyes, turning into a massive whirlpool that threatened to swallow her whole.

Qingshui opened her mouth, wanting to call Ye Que’s name again, but it felt as if something had clamped tightly around her throat. No sound came out. Only breath escaped her lips, forming puffs of white mist.

Then she heard someone calling her.

“Qing… shui…”

The voice was hoarse.

It wasn’t Ye Que.

Qingshui raised her head. A distorted figure stood a few meters away, swaying like a tree on the verge of collapse.

She couldn’t make out his face, but she knew who he was.

Ji Feifan.

He staggered over to Cat’s corpse and dropped to his knees. Cat’s face was buried in the snow, leaving only half his profile exposed. A faint smile still lingered at the corner of his lips.

Ji Feifan reached out to touch him, only to pull his hand back. He was afraid Cat might move again.

He waited for a long time, but Cat remained still.

“Dead…” His voice was quiet, as though he were confirming something. Then he said it again, louder this time, with a surreal edge of excitement. “Dead!”

He began to laugh, but there was no joy in it. It was the laughter of a mind that had been stretched taut for too long and had finally snapped. Kneeling in the snow, he laughed until his entire body shook and tears streamed down his face.

He remembered Cat calling him “Little Dog.” He remembered Cat patting his face. He remembered Cat telling him not to even think about resisting.

“Dead… Haha… Dead! He’s dead! Hahahahaha!” He knelt there in the snow, shaking with laughter until tears poured from his eyes.

Ji Feifan turned to Qingshui, that twisted smile still plastered across his face. “Qingshui! He’s dead! Cat is dead! We survived!”

Qingshui staggered to her feet and stood in front of An Xiaolin. Covered in blood, she looked like a demon that had clawed its way out of hell.

She stared at Ji Feifan. There was no joy in her eyes, only bone-deep coldness.

“Don’t come any closer.”

Ji Feifan’s smile froze. “What?”

He thought she hadn’t heard him–or perhaps he simply couldn’t believe what she had said. “Qingshui, it’s me. Ji Feifan. I’m fucking Ji Feifan! I came here to help you!”

He spread his arms as if trying to prove something, or perhaps pleading for an embrace. “Look, Cat is dead. I killed him! I killed him with my own hands-no, you killed him. We killed him together! We survived. We can go to the shelter now. We can–”

“Don’t come any closer,” Qingshui repeated. Her voice was quiet, but every word was ice-cold.

Ji Feifan stood rooted to the spot. He looked into Qingshui’s eyes, but there was no place for him in them. She recognized him, yet she looked at him as if he were nothing but empty air–or a piece of trash.

His hands began to tremble. He didn’t understand. “What… what do you mean?”

He advanced toward Qingshui one step at a time, recounting all the hardships he had endured, his voice thick with tears. “I helped you. I saved all of you. Without me, you’d already be dead. What gives you the right-what gives you the right to treat me like this?”

Kill him.

That was the only thought left in Qingshui’s mind. Kill him. She couldn’t leave him alive. She couldn’t allow him to threaten the others.

The instant Ji Feifan came within reach, Qingshui struck. She grabbed him by the collar and, mustering the last of her strength, slammed him down.

“Thud!”

Before Ji Feifan could even react, his back crashed heavily into the snow. His vision went black, and all the air was driven from his lungs.

Qingshui straddled him and pressed the muzzle of her gun firmly against the center of his forehead. Ji Feifan’s eyes went wide as he stared into the dark barrel. Tears suddenly began streaming down his face.

Why… Why?!

He broke down completely.

Ji Feifan desperately seized Qingshui’s wrist and pushed upward, preventing her from pulling the trigger.

“Why… I was forced into it! I just wanted to survive!” His voice trembled, and his face turned bright red, like an animal on the verge of death. “If you were me, you would’ve done the same thing! I just wanted to survive!”
Qingshui’s injuries were too severe. She couldn’t keep a firm grip on the gun, and Ji Feifan knocked her over with a violent heave. The two of them rolled through the snow. Ji Feifan flipped over and straddled her, wrenching the pistol from her hand before smashing the butt into her head again and again.

The first blow split the skin at her temple. The second sent blood streaming over her brow and into her eyes.

The third. The fourth–

He no longer knew what he was trying to crush. Her indifference. Her refusal to accept him. This goddamned fate.

“What gives you the right to look at me like that?!” he roared, the gun butt slick with blood. “Do you think everyone’s as strong as you? What’s wrong with wanting to live?! What the hell is wrong with that?!”

Blood blinded Qingshui. The world dissolved into a blur of red.

She couldn’t make out Ji Feifan’s face, only a twisted black shadow swaying above her. She desperately clutched his wrist, but her grievously injured body was no match for a man driven completely insane.

“Excuses…” Her voice was so faint that the wind and snow almost swallowed it. But Ji Feifan heard her.

Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. “They’re all excuses! If you throw away the last shred of your humanity, what does that make you?! You’re nothing but a dog clinging to life!”

Ji Feifan froze for a split second.

“Hahaha…”

Then his shoulders began to shake, and he burst into crazed laughter.

“That’s right! Hahahahahaha! I’m… I’m a fucking dog! But even a dog wants to live!” His eyes turned blood-red. He raised the gun and aimed it between Qingshui’s brows. His hands trembled, but his grin only grew wider.

“Hahahaha… I killed… Li Wei’an. That means I can kill you too–”

The world suddenly fell silent.

Even his heartbeat seemed to have been seized by the throat. Ji Feifan went rigid, his pupils contracting as he stared at Qingshui beneath him.

“You… killed her?”

Her blood-smeared eyes opened impossibly wide, while her pupils shrank to needlepoints and locked onto him.

“No…” He opened his mouth, trying to say something.

The look in her eyes changed.

The murderous fury that had been raging within them vanished in an instant, replaced by a fathomless abyss. It was like the darkness he had once seen while drowning in a lake-the kind that devoured every last trace of light.

Utterly… terrifying.

He suddenly realized that he had never truly seen this person for what she was.

Then Qingshui moved.

She exploded upward. Blood still streamed from her forehead, poured from her shoulder, and seeped from the wound at her waist, but she seemed incapable of feeling pain. Her entire body sprang off the ground like a coiled spring, and she slammed her head into Ji Feifan, sending him flying.

Ji Feifan pitched backward. The gun flew from his hand and landed in the snow several yards away.

Before he could react, Qingshui’s fist crashed into his face.

Bam! Bam, bam!

His nose broke. His lips split. Blood sprayed from his face and splattered across the snow in a glaring scarlet.

Ji Feifan struggled desperately to push her away.

He was bigger than her, but he couldn’t overpower her now. She straddled him like a rabid beast, hammering her fists down again and again. Every punch landed with the sound of splintering bone.

He caught her wrist and twisted until it broke, but she seized his hair with her other hand, hauled him off the ground, then slammed him back down.

The back of his head struck the snow, and darkness pulsed across his vision. He couldn’t tell whether the sensation spreading through his body was pain or pleasure.

“Bastard-” he shrieked, his voice warped beyond recognition.

Qingshui’s blood dripped onto his face, one drop at a time, like tears. But there were no tears in her eyes. There was only that emptiness.

That name had punched a hole through the fog of her consciousness. All her exhaustion, pain, and the dizzy haze of approaching death drained away through it.

Only darkness remained.

And within that darkness, she thought she saw that person again. Saw her smiling as she said,

“Take care of yourself.”

Qingshui seized him by the throat and lifted him off the ground. His face swelled purple, and his legs thrashed in the air like a dog dangling from a noose. Cold light flashed in her other hand as a blade left its sheath.

“You have made me very unhappy,” she said.

“Hahahaha… hahahaha…”

Ji Feifan opened his mouth, wanting to speak, but with her hand crushing his throat, all he could force out was laughter. Seeing Qingshui in such agony sent wave after wave of pleasure surging through him.

He wasn’t going to live. Neither was Li Wei’an. Hahahahahaha.

“Do it…” Ji Feifan’s voice trembled, blood still clinging to the corner of his mouth. “Go on… do it…”

“I killed Li Wei’an… and I can kill you too.”

Qingshui released him. The instant Ji Feifan’s body began to fall, she drove the short blade down with enough force to split the air.

Schick–

The blade punched straight through his windpipe without the slightest resistance. Its tip struck the frozen ground beneath the snow with a crisp click. Ji Feifan’s mouth remained open in a roar, but all that emerged was a wet, wheezing rasp.

His eyes stayed open, staring up at the leaden sky. Snow fell onto his face and into those unblinking eyes.

Little Dog.

Blood spread swiftly from Ji Feifan’s throat. Slowly, he closed his eyes.

He truly was a dog. A dog that could never become human again.

Qingshui staggered to her feet, swayed–and then collapsed completely.