Chapter 36
Chapter 36
The autumn night carried a slight chill, so Chen Yuhui found a blanket in the room and draped it over herself.
“Yuhui,” An Xiaolin suddenly said.
Chen Yuhui looked at her, but An Xiaolin kept staring out the window. “You’re afraid of Qingshui, aren’t you?”
Chen Yuhui’s fingers tightened, bunching the blanket beneath them. “No.”
An Xiaolin remained silent for a long time.
“I am.”
She turned to Chen Yuhui. In the dim light, her eyes shone with startling brightness.
“Tell me, if I stopped being useful, would Qingshui abandon me?”
“Would she just leave me wherever I was?”
“How did I never realize before… that Qingshui was so… cold-blooded?”
Her final words were so faint they almost dissolved into the air, but Chen Yuhui heard them all the same.
An inexplicable anger flared inside her. Yes, Qingshui’s willingness to kill at the slightest provocation frightened her, but that didn’t mean Chen Yuhui could deny that Qingshui had saved their lives.
“Hah.”
Chen Yuhui let out a derisive laugh and shot An Xiaolin a scornful look. “You’re the last person with any right to call Qingshui cold-blooded. When Li Wei’an and I were about to be torn apart by those lunatics right in front of you, Qingshui saved us both. And you, An Xiaolin, just stood there and watched!”
“Qingshui may be cold-blooded, but she’s saved our lives more times than we can count.”
“You, on the other hand…”
She abruptly stopped and swallowed the rest of her words.
“…I’m sorry.” An Xiaolin’s voice was calm, unnervingly so. “I just don’t want to die.”
Chen Yuhui said nothing more. She turned away and heaved a deep sigh. “Take back what you said.”
“Nature selects, and the fittest survive. If you keep this up… no one will even need to abandon you. You’ll have already abandoned yourself.”
…
The Bespectacled Man practically crawled back to the guesthouse on all fours.
His face was still smeared with dirt and bits of grass from his flight, and his glasses sat crooked on his nose. The eyes behind the lenses brimmed with terror. His hands were trembling so badly that he nearly failed to push the door open.
Sister Li was idly toying with an empty cigarette pack. Beside her, the man and woman clutching machetes stood like a pair of statues, their faces devoid of expression.
The Bespectacled Man’s entrance shattered the oppressive silence. Everyone looked up at him, their gazes filled with questions and unease, along with a faint trace of schadenfreude.
“S-Sister Li…” The Bespectacled Man panted, his voice trembling as he stammered incoherently. “Brother Li… Brother Li is… dead! That woman killed him! Just one strike! His throat… the blood sprayed so high…”
The hall fell silent in an instant.
Even the people quietly sobbing in the corner stopped. Everyone held their breath and turned toward the woman on the sofa.
Sister Li’s fingers stilled on the cigarette pack.
She slowly raised her head and looked at the Bespectacled Man. Beneath the lights, her pale face seemed almost unreal. Her gaze was so calm it appeared empty. She didn’t speak at once, merely watching his features twist with fear.
The few seconds of silence felt like hours.
Just as the Bespectacled Man’s knees weakened and he was about to collapse, Sister Li’s lips suddenly curled ever so slightly.
It was only the faintest twitch of a muscle, yet that single movement instantly imbued her placid face with a chilling flicker of interest.
“Interesting,” she said.
Everyone froze.
Someone was dead, and all she had to say was “interesting”?
The Bespectacled Man was dumbfounded as well. His mouth hung open, but he had no idea what to say.
Sister Li casually tossed the empty cigarette pack onto the coffee table, then leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees and resting her chin in one hand. She regarded the Bespectacled Man with an almost perverse intensity. “Go on. Tell me how that woman did it.”
The Bespectacled Man swallowed and forced himself to calm down before stammering through the whole story.
“She was fast,” he added at last, his voice still shaking. “Really fast… None of us even saw what she was holding before Brother Li dropped. Then she just stood there and asked us, ‘Anything else you’d like to say?’ The way she looked at us… it was like we were pigs waiting for slaughter…”
He shuddered again as he spoke.
Sister Li listened in silence without interrupting. Once he had finished, she remained quiet for a moment, lightly tapping her fingertips against her knee.
“She came out alone,” she murmured, as though analyzing the encounter. “Opened the door to lure the enemy in, then killed with a single strike. Clean and efficient. How impressive…”
A strange yet familiar thrill shot up her spine like an electric current, making every pore on her body open.
She raised her head and swept her gaze over the uncertain, suspicious faces in the hall. “See that? That’s the kind of person who can survive in a world like this. A fool like Li Jianping got exactly what he deserved.”
She spoke as if it were nothing, yet a chill ran down everyone’s spine.
In the corner, Gao Yizhou gripped He Qianxue’s hand tightly. They exchanged a look and saw the same deep fear in each other’s eyes.
“Th-Then, Sister Li… what do we do next?” A tall, thin man in the crowd ventured hesitantly, his voice unsteady. “Are we still going to… find them?”
Sister Li did not answer right away. She leaned back against the sofa and turned toward the machete-wielding pair. “Xiao Yi, Xiao’er, what do you think?”
Xiao Yi was a lean, powerfully built man. He had kept his eyes closed as if dozing, and only now did he slowly open them. His eyes were unusual, with very pale irises that made his stare resemble that of some cold-blooded reptile.
“That woman,” Xiao Yi said in a low, hoarse voice. “She’s trained. Fast, ruthless, and mentally tough. She won’t be easy to deal with.”
Beside him, the Machete Woman, Xiao’er, had a scar running from the end of her eyebrow to the base of her ear, twisting her once-delicate features into something fierce. She said nothing and merely nodded.
Sister Li seemed pleased by their assessment, and the corner of her mouth twitched upward again. “If even you two say she’s trouble, then she really is interesting.”
She looked back at the anxious crowd and drawled lazily, “Then we won’t provoke them.”
Just like that, she gave up.
The Bespectacled Man, who had been protesting the injustice moments ago, instantly fell silent. So did everyone around him.
This woman… was giving up just like that?
Sister Li said, “What are you all staring at? We have no food, and we can’t beat them. You want to go get yourselves killed?”
It was the truth, yet no one could believe it.
Sister Li curled her lips. She had never been particularly interested in playing warlord. She simply found it amusing that the people here feared her yet had no choice but to depend on her.
She fished a crushed pack of cigarettes from between the sofa cushions, pulled one out, and lit it. After taking a deep drag, she exhaled a cloud of gray-white smoke.
She was far more interested in the woman who killed with such swift, ruthless precision. She did not know why, but merely hearing about her made her heart tremble uncontrollably.
She tapped off the ash and continued, “Go on. Tell me what the woman who killed him looked like.”
The Bespectacled Man swallowed. “She looked pretty young. About five foot seven, and not especially muscular. Her eyes were cold… like she’d crawled straight out of hell.”
Sister Li flicked her cigarette again. It had nearly burned down to her fingers, and impatience crept into her voice. “I asked what she actually looked like. Her face, her hair, her eyes… Describe everything clearly.”
The Bespectacled Man swallowed again and struggled to remember. “Her face was pale, deathly pale. Her hair was kind of… yellow? No, it wasn’t very long. And her eyes were… black. They were black.”
With every sentence, Sister Li’s heart beat faster. Even her fingertips began to tremble beyond her control.
She did not even need to see the woman in person. Those descriptions alone were enough for her mind to sketch out the woman’s silhouette.
She could almost imagine the woman standing before her, staring at her with those icy eyes.
What a rush.
“I’ve changed my mind.” Sister Li stubbed out her cigarette and rose to her feet. She was slender, yet as she stood there, an invisible pressure seemed to radiate from her.
She wanted to play with this woman.
Even if it killed her.
She walked to the window and looked toward the villa, her voice so soft it sounded as though she were talking to herself. “They’ll come out. To look for food, water, medicine… As long as they come out, we’ll have our chance.”
She turned around and swept her gaze over the crowd. “Starting today, all of you will take turns keeping watch. Don’t get close. Stay at the edge of the woods and watch them. I want to know… exactly how many people they have.”
No one dared respond. No one dared ask why she had changed her mind again.
The Bespectacled Man quietly retreated into a corner and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. He stole a glance at Sister Li. She was resting with her eyes closed, her pale face utterly expressionless.
Yet somehow, he found her even more terrifying than the moment he had seen blood spraying from Li Jianping’s throat.