A shrill scream ripped through the stillness of the night.
Mo Chu and Li Chen exchanged a glance. At the same time, they shoved open the car doors and jumped out. With a sharp metallic ring, Mo Chu pulled the dagger from her waist.
Xiao Jin tried to follow, but she immediately shoved the little thing back inside the car.
The two of them had at least absorbed crystal cores before. Xiao Jin hadn’t absorbed a single one. And whatever had come this time was obviously no ordinary threat.
The scream had come from Kang Xingchi’s side. After that one terrified cry, everything went silent again. No one knew whether the person who screamed was still alive.
At the same time, the people in Kang Xingchi’s convoy had all woken up. Even from this far away, Mo Chu could hear the chaos erupting among them, and her brows instinctively knit together.
They didn’t even know what was attacking them yet, or whether the missing people were dead or alive, and they were already panicking. All that would do was give the creature more chances to kill.
Mo Chu gestured to Li Chen.
He nodded.
The two of them moved forward soundlessly.
As they drew closer, they heard Kang Xingchi’s voice.
It was cold and sharp, stripped clean of the careless liveliness she’d shown earlier.
“No one gets out of the cars. No one makes a sound. Count yourselves and tell me who’s missing.”
A moment later, someone whispered, “Xu Shishi and Zhao Jie are gone.”
Another trembling voice asked softly, “That scream just now… it sounded like Xu Shishi’s. Then where’s Zhao Jie?”
The question sent a chill through everyone. Silence fell instantly.
A few seconds later, someone started quietly sobbing.
Kang Xingchi snapped, “No crying. No noise. I’m getting out of the car now. All of you stay put. Anyone who gets out on their own—dead or alive, I won’t care.”
The crying stopped immediately.
She pushed open the door and stepped out, only to come face-to-face with the approaching Mo Chu and Li Chen. Both sides startled at once, nearly attacking before they recognized each other.
Fortunately, all three reacted quickly enough to stop themselves.
Kang Xingchi glanced at Mo Chu. Mo Chu pointed silently toward the direction the scream had come from.
Kang Xingchi gave a slight nod.
Without another word, the three of them slipped into the darkness together.
The night was deathly still.
After only a few steps, an eerie chewing sound drifted out from behind a tree. Then came the stench—a thick mix of blood and rot, unmistakably belonging to a zombie.
A zombie.
The three of them stopped at once.
It was pitch-black. There wasn’t a trace of light anywhere.
Zombies weren’t hindered by darkness, but humans were.
And just then, behind them, the roar of a car engine suddenly shattered the silence.
The chewing stopped instantly.
Mo Chu cursed inwardly. “Shit.”
She grabbed Li Chen and Kang Xingchi, dragging them back a step.
In the next second, a foul gust burst from behind the tree, slicing through the exact spot they’d been standing in moments before.
That speed—
A second-rank zombie.
Cold prickled across Mo Chu’s spine.
“Li Chen!”
At her shout, blazing fire exploded from Li Chen’s palm, illuminating the darkness—and the zombie standing less than half a step away from them.
Li Chen reacted instantly. Streams of fire twisted into thick burning whips that wrapped tightly around the zombie’s ankles. With a violent yank, he flung it sideways, interrupting its charge.
Mo Chu gripped her dagger and lunged forward without hesitation.
She moved fast.
Closing the distance in an instant, she ducked beneath the zombie’s claws, circled behind it, and locked an arm around its back as she drove the dagger toward the base of its skull.
But this zombie was even more agile than the one they’d encountered in Lin City.
It twisted violently.
Her strike missed.
The force threw her hard onto the ground instead.
At the same moment, Li Chen lashed out with two more streams of fire, binding the zombie’s limbs again.
From the corner of her eye, Mo Chu saw Kang Xingchi charge straight in.
She was terrifyingly fast.
As she ran, the exposed skin on her body transformed inch by inch into metallic silver. From her legs to her arms to her face, gleaming steel spread across her until she looked almost like a humanoid machine forged from metal.
She slammed directly into the zombie without dodging.
Its claws crashed against her fist—
Clang!
The sound of metal colliding rang through the night.
Mo Chu froze for half a second.
That ability…
In her previous life, Iron Woman Kang Xingchi’s most famous power had been full-body metallization. By the later stages, her body was tough enough to fight zombies head-on without fearing their claws at all.
Mo Chu drew in a slow breath.
So this really was that Kang Xingchi.
What a ridiculously small world.
But this wasn’t the time to dwell on it.
Kang Xingchi had already engaged the zombie head-on while Li Chen restrained its limbs again. Flames coiled around its arms and legs, burning fiercely and locking down all of its movement.
This was Mo Chu’s chance.
She sprang off the ground and launched herself onto the zombie’s back, trapping its head in place.
This time, her dagger plunged cleanly into its brain.
She clearly felt the blade strike something hard.
Without hesitation, she twisted the dagger and hooked it out.
A translucent crystal core flew free amid a spray of dark green fluid, landing squarely in Mo Chu’s palm.
At the same instant, the zombie collapsed to the ground, all resistance gone.
Mo Chu flipped lightly off its back.
With nothing left to fight against, Li Chen’s flames spread unhindered across the zombie’s body, engulfing it completely. A revolting burnt stench filled the air.
None of them seemed to notice.
Bathed in flickering firelight, the three of them looked at each other for the first time after fighting side by side.
They were all a mess.
Mo Chu and Kang Xingchi burst out laughing almost at the same time.
Even Li Chen’s lips curved faintly upward.
Kang Xingchi glanced at him and said, “Your friend’s pretty incredible.”
As she spoke, the metallic sheen faded from her skin bit by bit until she looked human again.
Mo Chu turned to look at Li Chen.
During the fight, he’d barely moved from start to finish, yet he’d played the biggest role of all.
Without him suppressing the second-rank zombie head-on, the battle never would’ve gone this smoothly.
So the legendary five-element ability really did live up to its reputation.
Smiling slightly, Mo Chu said, “I’ll thank you on his behalf.”
Kang Xingchi waved her hand dismissively. “No, I should be thanking him.”
She was still smiling when she looked up.
Then the smile faded.
Mo Chu followed her gaze.
The place where Kang Xingchi’s vehicle had been parked was now completely empty.
No need to guess who had driven it away.
What was laughable was that even while abandoning their teammates to save themselves, they still hadn’t dared flee too far. They’d only driven a long distance away before stopping to watch from afar. Once they saw the fight was over, they slowly drove back.
Mo Chu heard Kang Xingchi let out a cold snort.
Ignoring them, Kang Xingchi turned and walked toward the tree the zombie had emerged from.
Mo Chu tugged Li Chen along behind her.
Behind the tree lay two people.
One of them could barely even be called half a person anymore. There was no need to check—she was long dead. That was probably Xu Shishi, the one who had screamed.
The other person looked mostly unharmed, lying motionless on the ground, dead or unconscious.
Kang Xingchi crouched to inspect him, then laughed softly.
“Lucky bastard. He fainted from fear.”
Apparently the zombie had ignored him after that, and he’d somehow survived.
Meanwhile, Kang Xingchi’s teammates finally pulled the car back over.
Mo Chu hesitated, then quietly asked, “What about them…?”
She didn’t finish the sentence, but Kang Xingchi understood anyway.
She glanced over at the group, irritation flashing across her face as she raked a hand through her hair.
“So annoying.”
Mo Chu merely looked at her and said nothing more.
They weren’t close enough for her to interfere.
As Kang Xingchi’s unreliable teammates climbed nervously out of the vehicle, Mo Chu took the chance to say goodbye.
She and Li Chen headed back toward their own car.
Behind them, she heard Kang Xingchi’s boyfriend speaking in a placating tone.
“A-Xing, it’s all thanks to you this time. We didn’t mean to leave. We were just afraid we’d get in your way.”
Kang Xingchi replied flatly, “I said no one leaves the cars at night. So who wants to explain how Xu Shishi and Zhao Jie got out?”
A girl stammered nervously, “Th-they were a couple… Shishi went out first, and Zhao Jie followed her…”
Kang Xingchi gave a humorless laugh.
“So they were horny enough to throw their lives away.”
Her boyfriend immediately said, “A-Xing, someone just died.”
…
Listening to them, Mo Chu shook her head.
No wonder she’d never heard about Kang Xingchi having a boyfriend in her previous life.
The two of them returned to the car.
Xiao Jin had nearly clawed the door apart from anxiety while trapped inside.
The moment they got back, the little thing circled frantically around Mo Chu before Li Chen grabbed it by the scruff and dumped it into the driver’s seat.
Mo Chu glanced at him.
“Li Chen, you should sleep in the back for the rest of the night. We can switch.”
He shook his head. “You sleep.”
Mo Chu looked like she wanted to argue, but she knew his personality well enough not to bother.
A while later, Kang Xingchi’s teammates—probably terrified another zombie attack would happen—finally convinced her to leave overnight.
Before they drove off, Kang Xingchi even knocked on Mo Chu’s window to say goodbye.
Honestly, Mo Chu suspected she hadn’t been persuaded so much as simply annoyed into agreeing.
Later that night, even Li Chen eventually fell asleep.
But Mo Chu lay awake in the spacious backseat, staring into the darkness.
She was thinking about Kang Xingchi.
In her previous life, Kang Xingchi’s name had been almost as infamous as Li Chen’s.
The difference was that Li Chen was feared for his ruthless methods and overwhelming strength, while Kang Xingchi was notorious for her twisted way of doing things.
She only cared about money.
As long as the price was high enough, she’d do anything—dirty jobs, bloody jobs, murder-for-hire. Nothing was off-limits.
The thing Mo Chu remembered most clearly was the time someone paid Kang Xingchi to kill Li Chen.
Originally, it had just been a test. People wanted to see whether the so-called Iron Woman—whose reputation claimed she’d kill anyone for the right price—actually dared target Li Chen.
No one expected her to take the money and really go after him.
Li Chen hunted her across thousands of miles afterward, chasing her from the desert all the way to Sea City until she was forced to seek refuge with his mortal enemy.
And even then, she still remembered to collect her payment.
The moment Li Chen left, she went straight back to the client for the rest of the money—and even extorted double the original amount out of him.
After that, just as no one dared provoke Li Chen anymore, no one dared provoke Kang Xingchi either.
One of them wanted everyone else dead.
The other simply didn’t care whether she herself lived or died.
In their own ways, both of them were terrifying.
But the Kang Xingchi she’d met today…
Mo Chu lowered her eyes, lost in thought.
Suddenly, a muffled groan came from the front seat.
Her heart jolted.
She shot upright and leaned forward to look at Li Chen.
He lay curled slightly in the seat, eyes tightly shut. His face was flushed red, his expression strained, as though enduring unbearable pain.
Mo Chu immediately suspected he was injured.
But when her healing light flowed into his body, she found nothing wrong.
After hesitating for a moment, she reached out and touched him lightly.
“Li Chen?”
The instant her fingers brushed him, his hand clamped tightly around hers.
Mo Chu didn’t pull away.
She stared at him quietly for a long moment before slowly realizing something.
Li Chen was having a nightmare.
