Chapter 56-Game Descent: I Am the Sole Player
Chapter 56
Huff, huff—
Lin Huijun leaned against the bare concrete wall, fighting to steady her ragged breathing. Her lungs burned like fire.
She was inside an unfinished residential complex. The thirty-story building was clad in scaffolding and green safety netting. From outside, it should be difficult to spot anyone within.
But she couldn't be sure it was truly safe. After all, birds had vision beyond human imagination — let alone birds that had survived since the game's descent.
Outside, a howling gust carried the shrill cries of distant birds. Inside the bare concrete unit, silence fell, broken only by the sound of labored breathing.
Lin Huijun had spotted the mutated birds near South Lake. She had originally intended to keep watch over Bai Shan and Cheng Yue's fight, but happened to see a bird fly overhead clutching a child in its talons.
With [Light Feather] equipped, Lin Huijun was confident she could keep up. Having dealt with them during their previous visit to the Wetlands, a single mutated bird posed no real challenge for her.
Knowing she couldn't intervene in Bai Shan and Cheng Yue's battle, and having spotted something she could do, she refused to stand by. So Lin Huijun immediately drove after the bird.
One street into the chase, the child snatched by the mutated bird seemed to fight back. The bird convulsed in midair, and the screaming, struggling child slipped from its talons. Lin Huijun leaped onto the car roof and caught her just in time.
The girl — seven or eight years old — was clinging to a water gun for dear life. The water gun was likely her ability or item, and she had used it to counterattack the bird.
Her abdomen had been ripped open by the sharp claws, the wound so severe that her internal organs were faintly visible. Had no one caught her, the fall alone would have been nearly certainly fatal.
Luckily, the little girl still had a bottle of healing mineral water. At Lin Huijun's prompting, she used most of it and managed to save her own life.
Lin Huijun told the child to stay in the car while she went outside to deal with the mutated bird.
But that particular bird turned out to be remarkably vindictive. It actually summoned a flock of companions to mob her — over a dozen birds swooping in from all directions in a coordinated siege.
After fighting her way here, Lin Huijun had killed ten mutated birds. The good news: she had leveled up to 14, just one level short of the goal she'd set before coming to Nanzhou City.
The bad news: her limbs were wracked with intense, searing pain.
Lin Huijun desperately told herself over and over that pain was nothing more than an illusion generated by the brain. Her limbs were still healthy, still strong, completely unharmed. After repeating it dozens of times, she braced herself against the wall and stood up.
She had to get back to the RV. If anything happened to it, Bai Shan would be furious.
The building was wrapped in green safety netting. Lin Huijun's fingers parted the mesh and she peered through the semi-transparent material.
Not a sound nearby. Unnervingly quiet. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling that the birds' piercing cries were still stabbing at her eardrums.
Having dealt with them at the Wetlands before, Lin Huijun felt these mutated birds were behaving differently today — agitated, as though they were in a rush to get somewhere.
Lin Huijun had a strong sense of direction. She remembered that the bird carrying the child had been flying away from the Wetlands, in the opposite direction from where she now stood.
Could these be mutated birds from somewhere else?
After resting against the wall for a short while, Lin Huijun was eager to move again. Just as she was about to leave, something occurred to her. She opened the game panel. The Nanzhou City channel was experiencing unprecedented activity.
*
A red convertible streaked through the dim twilight. Atop the towering buildings all around, birds large and small perched in rows, their heads swiveling in unison to watch the car speed off in the other direction.
Cheng Yue couldn't drive. She monitored the Nanzhou City channel, filtering the messages and feeding directions to Bai Shan behind the wheel.
And as a side task — eliminating any mutated creatures that harassed them.
One after another, monstrous birds with wingspans of at least two meters dove from the sky. The moment they entered a certain range, their ferocious assault froze as if someone had hit pause. They hung limply in the air like drunks, flipping and drifting about in lazy spirals.
Only after the red convertible had pulled far enough away, its trail of exhaust nearly dissipated, did the floating mutated birds come crashing down onto the road — one piled on top of another, forming a small hill.
Given Cheng Yue's status in Nanzhou City and the fearsome reputation she had carved out that very afternoon, Bai Shan didn't think anyone in the channel would be suicidal enough to provide false information.
But her main reason for having Cheng Yue post publicly was to catch Lin Huijun's attention. As long as Lin Huijun spared a glance at the channel, she would know someone was looking for her.
"I'm at the construction site near Wan'an Mall!"
"Lin Huijun posted in the channel!"
[Lv.14 Lin Huijun] appeared in the channel, putting an end to the search.
Bai Shan said nothing. The red convertible took a wild turn, its rear fishtailing, and sped off in a new direction.
Cheng Yue didn't drive, but she had spent the past two weeks intensively participating in Nanzhou City's ground operations. With a decent memory, she knew the sprawling city fairly well.
Continue in this direction and they'd reach the university district — a relatively remote area. If anything else was worth mentioning, the Qian River Estuary was over that way, where tourists would go to watch the tidal bore in certain seasons. The highway to Hai City was nearby as well.
Cheng Yue's arm rested on the car door. She turned to look behind them. The convertible's wide-open view left the massive dark shadow completely exposed, drawing ever closer.
Were the birds tracking them, or was the flock heading in this direction all along?
The car braked sharply. Inertia pitched her body forward.
Bai Shan unbuckled her seatbelt, opened the door, and stepped out. The black RV was parked not far away.
She jogged over in three long strides, jumped onto the black RV, and found a child sitting inside. She stepped back out to double-check it was her vehicle, then climbed back in.
Before she could say a word, the child in the tattered jacket immediately recited in a clear, practiced voice:
"The sister who owns this car saved me! She put me in here and said if another sister came by, to tell her — she went to fight the birds!"
"...Alright, stay inside."
Bang — Bai Shan shut the door.
She decided it was time to establish some vehicle rules. Not just any stray cat, dog, or child could be hauled onto the car!
And what were that kid's parents thinking, dressing her in clothes with eye-searing color saturation at a time like this — as if afraid the mutated creatures wouldn't notice her?
Bai Shan sighed.
A few dozen meters away stood a construction building draped in scaffolding and green cloth. A faint red glow flickered in Bai Shan's eyes as her gaze swept upward from ground level.
In the heat-imaging spectrum, she quickly located a warm red-yellow silhouette.
With a tap of her toe against the ground, Bai Shan vaulted onto the third tier of scaffolding. She peered through the green cloth — inside were bare gray concrete walls.
On the twentieth floor, Lin Huijun had decided to stay put the moment she saw the channel flooded with missing-person notices and news of the mutated bird invasion, waiting for the others to come to her.
Sounds of clanking and banging came from outside. The thin, elongated scaffolding swayed faintly. Lin Huijun stood braced against the wall, a hint of anxiety and worry between her brows.
The outer walls of this building were still unfinished, wrapped in a layer of green netting. As the noises grew louder, Lin Huijun stared outside with an almost defensive gaze. Then suddenly, the netting ripped open. The day's last few rays of color spilled into the gray room as someone burst through.
Recognizing Bai Shan's face, Lin Huijun let out an exaggerated sigh of relief.
Right behind her, a young woman in black boots and a black jacket — radiating a fierce, intimidating aura — jumped through the gap in the netting.
"I knew you two would end up working together!"
Lin Huijun exclaimed with visible delight.
Perhaps because Cheng Yue had used such cold, clinical words as "rewarded" and "punished by death," everyone in the channel had assumed Cheng Yue was putting a bounty on the two people with the black RV. That had startled Lin Huijun into checking the leaderboard. Cheng Yue's rank had settled at 42 — meaning she hadn't killed Bai Shan.
Or rather — hadn't been able to kill Bai Shan.
Bai Shan still wore that same half-lidded, cool-eyed expression, but looking at her, Lin Huijun felt something was subtly different.
They had been apart for just three hours. She had gained one level. What had Bai Shan gained?
Cheng Yue — the woman the entire world was buzzing about for slaughtering her way to rank 42 — was now following Bai Shan. Lin Huijun didn't know what had transpired between them, but it surely wasn't a simple sparring match. By her first impression, Bai Shan held the dominant position in their relationship.
Realizing that what Bai Shan had shown her might be merely the tip of an iceberg, a wave of hard-to-name emotions churned inside Lin Huijun. Her initially thrilled expression stiffened for just the briefest instant.
But soon, Lin Huijun relaxed her brow. She pulled her hand from the gray wall, straightened her back, and walked toward Bai Shan.
The three of them stood behind the green netting. Outside, the world had all but sunk into darkness. Only a thin red line remained at the horizon.
"Found her. So — what's our plan?"
Cheng Yue was the first to ask.
Bai Shan looked at Lin Huijun first. "Can you still move?"
Lin Huijun's [Scorching Sun Chariot] could incinerate anything that got close. Bai Shan couldn't tell from the outside whether she was injured, but [Scorching Sun Chariot] itself had painful side effects — the more frequently it was used and the higher the intensity, the longer the agony persisted. Lin Huijun had never voluntarily explained this. Bai Shan had figured it out through observation.
"Yes." Lin Huijun answered without hesitation.
Bai Shan nodded. Then she suddenly leaned sideways, half her body protruding through the torn netting, gazing up at the sky.
From what she had observed at the mountainside, the mutated birds invading Nanzhou City's airspace had come from the direction of the Wetlands, numbering at least two to three thousand.
Based on the channel's reports, these mutated birds were highly aggressive. Many swooped into the city to hunt. But Bai Shan had noticed that the birds at the vanguard hadn't shifted once — they advanced through the high altitude with unwavering resolve.
She wasn't sure if she was being a bit narcissistic, or if there was some other reason, but she had the feeling the flock was flying in her direction.
...Surely not. The last time they visited the Wetlands, the two of them hadn't exactly done anything outrageous.
Bai Shan tilted her chin high and looked up as a group of birds passed directly overhead. Their flight speed wasn't particularly fast. The birds at the front flapped their wings less frequently yet maintained remarkably steady speeds — Bai Shan knew this indicated superior flight capability. Flocks let such birds lead the way.
But they probably weren't the true leader.
Birds did possess a degree of social structure, but that structure only applied within the same species. Sparrows would never fly in formation with pigeons to cross the ocean together.
Yet up in the sky, every imaginable species of bird was represented. Bai Shan's eyes were almost dazzled.
Their mutations followed a uniform direction: larger bodies, longer necks, sharper beaks, and impressively expansive wingspans — similar to their dinosaur ancestors. A few of the larger ones looked particularly like pterosaurs.
Bai Shan knew a thing or two about birds. She was the type to ignore things that didn't interest her, even if they were right in front of her face. But biology happened to fall within her zone of higher interest.
Watching the motley collection of "dinosaurs" overhead — judging by feather color, beak shape, and body type — Bai Shan could roughly identify that one as a grey heron, this one as a night heron, the plump one below as a great tit, and the one currently diving at her was probably a blackbird...
A machine gun materialized at her side. A few bursts cut down the charging mutated blackbird.
The brazen noise instantly broadcast her position to the flock above. More mutated birds broke from formation and dove toward the source of the sound.
Bai Shan turned to the other two. "I'll find the leader bird. You two cover me."
For a flock of such diversity and number to mobilize in concert — and to have chosen such a precisely opportune moment — there had to be a leader bird capable of commanding all of them!
It possessed remarkable intelligence and the power to dominate the entire flock.
Comments
Post a Comment