Chapter 99
Chapter 99
Qingshui felt as though she had only just closed her eyes. It seemed like no more than an instant had passed, her consciousness still hovering at the edge of murky darkness, when a noise jolted her awake.
Wen Lianfeng’s voice rang clearly beside her ear. “Wake up. It’s time to go.”
Her eyelids felt as heavy as lead. When she forced them open, the dryness and stinging made her blink repeatedly.
The sky was still that same despairing shade of dark gray. Every joint in her body protested, and the aches and exhaustion had not eased in the slightest.
The voices in her head started up again.
After the brief respite, they seemed to have regained their strength. Once more, they buzzed inside her skull, clear, vicious, and incessant.
Strangely, they did not irritate her beyond endurance this time.
Perhaps her extreme exhaustion had dulled the edges of her emotions, or perhaps the discomfort had numbed her senses.
The words bounced around her mind, filling her with constant agitation, but she realized she could no longer make out what they were actually saying.
They had become more like background noise, a constant and unpleasant mental pressure.
The noise kept her from focusing on every detail of her surroundings, yet in its own way, it also helped her maintain the bare minimum of consciousness, preventing her from passing out from weakness and fatigue.
The group set off again in silence.
They made their way down the rugged mountainside and returned to the highway that seemed to stretch on forever.
After walking for more than two hours, the sky remained overcast.
Ahead, the road curved along a relatively gentle bend.
“Wait.” Wen Lianfeng, who was leading the group, suddenly stopped.
Wen Lianfeng, Chu Jingchu, and Quan Lin advanced slowly and cautiously in a triangular formation.
Peering through the gaps between them, Qingshui saw the scene of a horrific crash in the middle of the bend ahead.
Several vehicles of different makes and models had collided, reducing them to mangled heaps of metal. Large patches of long-dried blood stained the road between and around the wreckage, alongside scattered fragments of severed limbs.
Wen Lianfeng did not approach recklessly. Her expression was exceptionally grave as she observed the scene for a full two or three minutes. Then she abruptly looked back, her gaze passing over Wu Wujie and Guan Yuzhen in the middle of the group before settling directly on Qingshui and Song Yunqing at the rear.
“Chen Qingshui… Qingshui.” She called Qingshui by her full name, then apparently found it awkward and switched back to the simpler form. Her tone was questioning, yet carried a note of certainty. “And Song Yunqing. You’re both good shots, aren’t you?”
Qingshui’s fever-addled mind was forced into alertness. She looked at Wen Lianfeng and nodded.
“Rifle or handgun?” Wen Lianfeng asked more specifically.
“…Rifle,” Qingshui answered hoarsely.
Without the slightest hesitation, Wen Lianfeng unslung the rifle from her back and tossed it over, along with a magazine secured to the weapon.
Qingshui barely managed to raise her hands and catch it.
Wen Lianfeng then turned to Song Yunqing. “You?”
Song Yunqing’s lips moved several times before she answered quietly, “…Handgun.”
Quan Lin immediately drew a handgun from his waist and handed it to Song Yunqing.
She took it. Her grip was somewhat stiff, but her fingers instinctively settled into familiar positions.
The instant the two women tightened their grips on their weapons–
Without warning, Wen Lianfeng suddenly raised her gun and aimed at a forested slope beside the crash site. Nothing there appeared out of place, other than the trees growing slightly denser. She pulled the trigger!
Bang!
The sharp report of the gunshot exploded through the air.
An ambush?!
Qingshui’s sluggish mind snapped taut. A surge of adrenaline forcibly suppressed some of her discomfort.
Almost entirely on instinct, she raised the rifle she had just received and aimed in the direction Wen Lianfeng had fired. Her finger settled on the trigger as her eyes rapidly searched for a possible target.
Song Yunqing’s pupils contracted. Her raised hand stopped trembling, and a vicious glint flashed through her eyes.
And yet–
Dead silence.
Nothing happened. There was only the fading echo of the gunshot, the rustle of wind through the treetops, and the pounding of Qingshui’s heart growing louder in her ears.
The forest was unnaturally quiet.
Wen Lianfeng neither fired again nor moved. She simply held her position after the shot, her gaze locked on that patch of forest like a statue frozen in place.
Everyone held their breath and remained perfectly still. Time crawled by amid the crushing tension.
One minute… two minutes…
“Heh-heh…”
An extremely faint, hoarse chuckle drifted eerily from deep within the woods in the direction Wen Lianfeng had fired.
“We’ve been spotted… We’ve been spotted…”
“Hee-hee… They found us…”
Then the laughter grew louder and warped, rapidly rising from low, muffled snickers into shrill, ear-splitting howls of utter ecstasy!
“We’ve been spotted… We’ve been spotted! Hee-hee-hee!”
“Aren’t you cleverrrrrrrr?! Hahahahahaha! What a clever little biiiiiiitch!”
“You deserve a reward, a reward, a reward! Hahahaha! I’m gonna reward you all! Hahahahahahahaha!”
As those deranged shrieks rang out, more than a dozen deathly pale faces wearing crazed grins emerged from the mountain brush lining both sides of the road.
They had clearly taken great care to conceal themselves. Some had draped their bodies in vines and branches, while others had smeared mud over their faces, allowing them to blend perfectly into their surroundings.
Now they abandoned all pretense of hiding. Deafening laughter and incoherent howls poured from their mouths as they scrambled on all fours down the slopes and out from behind the trees. Their bodies lurched and twisted, yet they moved with alarming speed as they converged on Wen Lianfeng’s squad.
They carried an assortment of weapons: rusty knives, sharpened sticks, thick bones, and human heads.
It really was an ambush, and there were a lot of them!
There was no time to wonder how Wen Lianfeng had discovered them. The instant those frenzied figures appeared, Qingshui’s body moved before her mind could react.
It was muscle memory carved into her very soul.
Aim. Breathe. Predict the target’s trajectory. Pull the trigger.
Even through the sluggish haze of fever, the sequence flowed with near-instinctive ease.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The rifle in her hands spat flame in steady bursts. Its recoil slammed into her weakened shoulder, sending a dull throb through it, but she paid the pain no heed.
Every bullet struck with terrifying precision. Every shot blew apart a skull.
Blood and brain matter burst through the air as one crazed figure after another stopped dead and crumpled to the ground.
Beside her, Song Yunqing opened fire as well.
Her handgun could not match Qingshui’s rate of fire, but her shots were just as steady. A smile even more deranged than the Madmen’s spread across her face, and her aim was no less lethal.
Amid the cracks of gunfire, two Madmen attempting to approach from the flank were shot down.
Wen Lianfeng, Chu Jingchu, Guan Yuzhen, Wu Wujie, and Quan Lin were not idle either. Wen Lianfeng and Chu Jingchu used a handgun and the other rifle to pick off targets farther away.
Meanwhile, Guan Yuzhen and Quan Lin desperately fired at the Madmen’s lower bodies to stop their advance. Wu Wujie charged forward with his pointed shovel and hacked down those still crawling.
The battle began without warning and ended just as quickly.
Although the Madmen knew how to set an ambush, they did not seem capable of any more complex tactics. Faced with the squad’s vicious counterattack, they were soon slaughtered to the last.
More than a dozen corpses in various grotesque poses now littered the road and the slope beside it. The heavy stench of blood spread through the air.
The gunfire ceased.
Wen Lianfeng swept her gaze across the area. After confirming that none had escaped, she turned to Qingshui.
Even in her weakened state, Qingshui had displayed terrifying speed and accuracy. At the sight, the first genuine smile of the day appeared on Wen Lianfeng’s face.
She was pleased.
“Not bad, Mercenary.” She nodded, approval in her voice.
Instead of immediately taking back the rifle, she continued studying Qingshui with satisfaction.
Qingshui slowly lowered the muzzle. Looking at Wen Lianfeng, she could no longer suppress her confusion. Her words came in broken gasps.
“How… did you…”
How could mere observation have made her certain enough to fire a shot and flush them out?
What if no one had been there?
Wasn’t she afraid the enemy might have guns?
Wen Lianfeng adjusted her glasses and replied casually, “It was a gamble.”
Clearly, it was one she had won.
A gamble?
Madmen…
Qingshui silently repeated the word, her gaze growing more complicated as she looked at Wen Lianfeng.
This woman… In some ways, she might be even more insane than the howling Madmen.
She did not fear an ambush. She did not fear that the Madmen might have guns. She had even dared to test her intuition in such an extreme way.
The others in this squad were all frighteningly strange, too.
They shared an indescribable rapport, yet seemed to care nothing for one another.
“I told you. Surviving this long takes more than strength. It takes luck.” Wen Lianfeng cocked her head, the madness in her smile deepening.
“So let’s gamble and see who Heaven wants to keep alive.”