Chapter 44
Chapter 44
“Heh…” The corners of Sister Li’s lips curled upward, and she finally couldn’t hold back her laughter.
Her heart raced as an incomparable, sickening pleasure spread through her.
She really wished she could see how those people reacted when they received her gift.
Just imagining it sent a pleasurable tingle across her scalp. The thought of the despair on their faces nearly made her burst into hysterical laughter.
“Heheheh… Hahahahahaha! Hahahahaha!”
Sister Li’s laughter grew increasingly manic. Machete Man Xiao Yi and Machete Woman Xiao’er were long accustomed to it. Sick smiles spread across their faces as well.
Machete Man bared his teeth. “I’d love to see the despair on their faces.”
“What a shame… By now, their own teammates have probably torn them to pieces.”
Machete Woman shook her head in mock pity.
In the distance, a handful of blood-soaked maniacs lunged toward them from the roadside. Sister Li didn’t even spare them a glance. With her lips curved in something close to delight, she floored the accelerator.
“Rrraaargh!”
The engine roared, and the vehicle shot forward.
Thud! Thud!
The dull impacts were punctuated by the sharp cracks of breaking bones. In the rearview mirror, twisted bodies could be seen tumbling onto the roadside, splattering blood across the pavement.
Sister Li didn’t so much as flinch, as though she had merely run over a few bags of garbage. Keeping one hand on the wheel, she pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her pocket with the other, placed one between her lips, and lit it. She took a long drag.
Gray-white smoke spread through the vehicle, blurring her pale, impassive profile.
“Sister Li,” Machete Man rasped from the passenger seat. “Where are we going now?”
Machete Woman looked up from the back seat as well.
Sister Li exhaled a smoke ring and stared through the haze at the winding road leading down the mountain. The road led toward neighborhoods that had once teemed with living people. It also led toward… the remote outskirts.
“North,” she said.
Her darling would definitely go there.
The vehicle continued hurtling forward, leaving the scattered maniacs lunging after it behind.
Their supplies were in the vehicle, and the tank was full. As long as they made it out of these damned mountains…
They rounded a sharp bend.
The calm on Sister Li’s face instantly froze.
At the end of the curve, the straight road leading to the foot of the mountain was blanketed by a dense, black mass.
At the sound of the brakes, the ones in front all turned in unison. Dozens of bloodred eyes locked onto the vehicle.
A wave of excited agitation instantly rippled through the crowd.
“Found people… We found them…”
“Bitches! I WANT TO PLAY A GAME WITH YOU!”
“Hehe… Can I have the insides of your eyeballs…? Heehee…”
“Tch.” Sister Li clicked her tongue, a rare reaction from her. A crack finally appeared in her normally placid expression, revealing a mixture of intense annoyance and disgust.
Charge through them? Impossible.
Without the slightest hesitation, she slammed the vehicle into reverse and floored the accelerator. The SUV roared backward as she tried to retreat around the bend and find another route.
Just as the vehicle had twisted halfway around…
Pop!
A strange, muffled explosion came from the right rear tire, followed by the shrill scrape of rubber against pavement. The SUV lurched violently to one side and began bouncing wildly.
Sister Li showed no reaction as she kept the accelerator pinned to the floor, but no matter what she did, the SUV refused to gain speed. Instead, the ruined tire sent it skidding uncontrollably sideways.
She flicked a glance at the rearview mirror. A maniac stood behind the vehicle, clutching a machete smeared with chunks of human flesh. It had stabbed the tire as the SUV passed, puncturing it in an instant.
“This is bad,” Machete Man said grimly, his hand already tightening around the hilt of the machete resting across his lap.
Machete Woman silently raised her own machete.
The SUV came to a complete stop, sitting crooked in the middle of the road.
Ahead of them, the dark horde let out a collective, deafening shriek like a school of sharks scenting blood. Abandoning their sluggish pace, they began running and leaping, surging toward the disabled SUV in a wildly staggering mass.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The first maniacs to reach them began battering the vehicle with their bodies, rocks, and anything else they could find that was hard enough. They struck the doors, the windows, the hood…
The entire SUV shook beneath the sudden barrage of blows.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Several maniacs even clambered directly onto the hood. They pressed their twisted, cackling faces against the windshield, their bloodred eyes bulging as they stared fixedly at the three people inside.
One of them was holding a thick crowbar. It raised the weapon high and brought it down with all its might.
Crash!
A spiderweb of cracks spread across the windshield. It hadn’t shattered completely, but it clearly wouldn’t withstand many more blows.
More maniacs crowded around the SUV, piling up layer upon layer as they pounded and shrieked.
It was over. They were completely surrounded, with no chance of escape.
Machete Man and Machete Woman both looked at Sister Li, waiting for her orders-or… her final decision.
Sister Li remained in the driver’s seat without looking at the frenzied faces outside. She slowly took one last drag from her nearly spent cigarette, then crushed the butt against the steering wheel.
She lowered her head, her shoulders beginning to tremble.
At first, a low, stifled chuckle squeezed from the depths of her throat. Then it grew louder and increasingly uncontrollable, overflowing with twisted delight and utter madness until it drowned out even the uproar of the maniacs outside.
“Hahaha… Hahahahahaha!”
She doubled over with laughter. Tears leaked from her eyes, and an unnatural flush spread across her pale face. There was nothing but madness in that laughter. Compared to the maniacs outside, driven only by instinct, the sound of her laughter was far more terrifying.
“I lost?” Her laughter stopped. She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, her voice turning extraordinarily cold.
“No.”
Reaching into the innermost compartment of her backpack, she pulled out a small glass vial.
Inside the bottle, scarlet liquid swayed gently.
“I’ve never lost.”
Holding up the bottle, she turned to Machete Man and Machete Woman beside her. The remnants of her manic laughter still lingered on her face. “Heh… Do you want to die a worthless death like this…” She gestured with her chin at the monsters outside the car, creatures driven by nothing but instinct. “Or do you want…”
She paused, then slowly and clearly enunciated each word. “To become one of them, and then… keep having ‘fun’?”
Xiao Yi and Xiao’er exchanged a glance.
There was no fear in their eyes. No hesitation.
Almost simultaneously, their mouths split into the same crazed grin as Sister Li’s.
“Of course,” Machete Man rasped, his voice hoarse but resolute. “We want to have ‘fun.'”
“Fun.”
“Good.” Sister Li smiled in satisfaction. She unscrewed the glass bottle and dripped the dark red blood onto her open left palm before handing the bottle to Machete Man.
Soon, each of the three held a small pool of scarlet blood in their palm.
Outside the car, the pounding grew more violent. The cracks in the windshield spread, and the doors began to buckle.
Sister Li stared at the blood in her palm. Then, without the slightest hesitation, she slammed her blood-soaked hand over her own eyes!
Machete Man and Machete Woman followed suit!
“Nghaaaah!”
A tortured groan erupted from Sister Li’s throat. Her body convulsed violently, and her fingers dug deep into the leather seat. Veins bulged across her forehead and neck.
Her vision first became a searing expanse of bloodred, then rapidly dimmed as though she were plummeting into a bottomless abyss.
But it lasted only an instant.
The darkness quickly receded, replaced by an entirely new sensation. A savage torrent filled with the desire to destroy surged through her body, scouring every nerve with an intensity she had never experienced before.
It felt so good…
She had never felt such bliss! Such pure… joy!
The urge to tear things apart, to hear screams, to see the whole world painted in blood was so overwhelming, so natural, that it felt like her true inborn instinct.
The pain vanished. All that remained was a shuddering exhilaration and an almost absolute calm.
“Heh…” A low chuckle rolled from her throat.
Then it rapidly swelled into shrill, ringing laughter.
“Hahaha… Ahahahahahahahaha!”
She threw back her head and howled with laughter, her whole body trembling as tears once again streamed from her eyes.
She had never felt better. Never felt freer!
To hell with humanity! To hell with order! To hell with the struggle to survive! This was what she was meant to be! This was the ruler this mad world deserved!
Crash!
At last, another heavy blow shattered the windshield completely. A hand smeared with filthy blood reached inside and clawed wildly at the air, accompanied by obscenities warped by manic excitement.
At almost the same moment, Machete Man and Machete Woman shoved open the relatively intact doors on either side.
“Perfect… whetstones!” Machete Woman’s voice became shrill and distorted. Cold steel flashed in her hand, and the lunatic reaching through the windshield lost his hand at the wrist! Filthy blood sprayed everywhere!
Machete Man’s lips stretched into a grin. He swung his machete in a wide horizontal arc, slicing the two lunatics lunging at the door clean through the waist and turning them into four pieces! Entrails and clots of blood splattered across the ground!
They charged out and plunged straight into the horde, moving faster and striking more viciously than ever, without the slightest restraint.
Severed limbs flew wherever they passed, manic laughter mingling with agonized screams!
Sister Li leisurely unfastened her seat belt and pushed open the door.
Outside, a lunatic who had just pulled down his pants excitedly pinned her against the seat. “Let’s have some fun together…”
Sister Li tilted her head, her scarlet eyes coldly appraising her fellow creature. Then she reached out and seized the lunatic by his greasy, matted hair!
“Huh?” The lunatic froze.
The next instant, the muscles in Sister Li’s arm bulged. With terrifying, inhuman strength, she yanked upward and twisted!
Crack! Rip!
The teeth-grating snap of vertebrae rang out alongside the sound of tearing flesh! She had ripped the lunatic’s head straight off his neck with her bare hand. The broken vertebrae and windpipe were exposed to the air as the headless corpse swayed, then collapsed in a fountain of blood.
Sister Li held up the head, its expression frozen in a moment of ecstasy, then tossed it aside like garbage. Thick blood dripped from her fingers.
She flicked her hand and swept her gaze across the surroundings.
More of their kind, drawn by the slaughter and fresh blood, were converging on them.
But there seemed to be little unity among them. Some lunatics had already begun clawing and attacking one another purely for the thrill of inflicting violence.
The scene was the very depths of chaos, bloodshed, and depravity.
Sister Li watched these creatures act on their most primitive, brutal instincts. A flash of lucid coldness and disgust passed through the depths of her scarlet eyes.
When she spoke, her voice was not loud, yet it carried an inexplicable terror that made every word clearly audible throughout the area.
“Stop.”
Several lunatics who had been biting and tearing at one another abruptly froze. Their scarlet eyes turned toward her in confusion.
Sister Li took a step forward, treading through a pool of blood mixed with brain matter. Her scarlet gaze swept across the crowd. There was no madness in her eyes, only boredom.
“Or I’ll make sure none of you can ever have fun again.”
A brief, deathly silence followed.
Then some of the weaker lunatics seemed to instinctively sense danger. For reasons they could not understand, they cowered and retreated.
Several exceptionally burly lunatics looked at the severed head by Sister Li’s feet, then at the two killing machines behind her, who were efficiently butchering their own kind. In the end, they too inexplicably stopped and fixed their scarlet eyes on her.
Standing amid pools of blood and chunks of corpses, Sister Li slowly stretched her lips into a smile utterly devoid of warmth.