Annihilation

"Why did you kidnap another student?" another unfamiliar male voice asked, his voice hoarse from smoking and drinking.

"I was about to go downstairs when I saw another student at the stairwell. I was worried he might cause trouble, so I just tied him up," the man who tied up Liang An replied.

"Okay, then put them together under guard and gag them."

Liang An was shoved to the railing on the top floor. With a "crack", his left wrist was first handcuffed, the chain looping around the railing and locking, and then the other handcuff was fastened to his right wrist.

The next second, the hood covering his head was ripped off, and before he could see his surroundings, a cold piece of tape was slapped tightly onto his mouth.

"Behave yourself." The man shoved Liang An hard against the railing, turned and walked toward the top floor entrance, without putting the hood back on Liang An's head.

Liang An remained silent, then turned to meet Wen Zhi's terrified eyes.

His hands were also handcuffed to the railing, his mouth was covered with black tape, and his face was covered with marks from being beaten.

Even in such a dangerous situation, Liang An was speechless with a mixture of anger and amusement.

As expected of you, Wen Zhi!

A "plague god" who was unexpectedly bound to kidnappers.

Ignoring Wen Zhi's glaring gaze, Liang An calmly observed his surroundings.

The moment the hood was removed, he saw that the man who had tied him up was wearing a school security guard uniform, and the other man was tall and muscular, wearing a drab gray work uniform. His face was unmasked, with a scar running from his brow bone to the corner of his mouth. His eyes were sinister, and he looked at people with undisguised malice.

The kidnappers completely exposed their faces without any attempt to conceal them, which meant they had no intention of leaving any survivors.

The entire school is on holiday this week, and even the usually busy senior high school students haven't had any make-up classes. The huge campus is deserted, making it the perfect time to commit a crime.

Liang An sighed silently in his heart.

I wonder what the kidnappers will do next?

The scarred man watched him and Wen Zhi from a short distance away, glancing at his phone every now and then, seemingly waiting for a message.

Wen Zhi, perhaps terrified of being beaten, leaned quietly against the railing, turning his head to stare at Liang An.

Liang An moved his hands, causing the handcuffs to sway and hit the rough railings with intermittent clanging sounds.

The scarred man glared at Liang An and was about to teach him a lesson when his phone suddenly vibrated.

He brandished his fist at Liang An, his eyes full of warning. Then, he quickly tapped the phone to answer it.

"Damn it, got it." The scarred man hung up the phone, his eyes filled with even more malice.

He rushed to Wen Zhi in a few steps, raised his fist without saying a word, and slammed it hard into Wen Zhi's face with great force.

Wen Zhi couldn't dodge; his fist slammed solidly into his cheekbone. He groaned and crashed into the railing, blood instantly trickling from the corner of his mouth.

After venting his anger, the scarred man immediately turned around and strode to the top floor exit. He then closed the iron door behind him, took out a padlock, and locked the door securely with a click.

Liang An heard footsteps coming downstairs; the scarred man had locked him and Wen Zhi on the top floor.

Once the footsteps had faded away, Liang An slowly brought his left hand to the cuff of his right hand. The cuff had a hidden pocket, and he discreetly pulled out a thin wire from it. With a flick of his fingers, the wire slipped into the handcuff lock.

In just a few moments, with a snap, the tightly locked handcuffs popped open, and his hands easily broke free of their restraints.

Wen Zhi stared wide-eyed at Liang An in disbelief, his gaze fixed on Liang An's hands that had just broken free of their restraints.

Liang An tore off the tape from Wen Zhi's mouth, signaling him to be quiet, and quickly used wire to unlock Wen Zhi's handcuffs as well.

He desperately wanted to abandon Wen Zhi and run away, but ultimately, his youthful spirit and the sincerity and sense of justice hidden deep within him held him back, preventing him from escaping alone.

Wen Zhi followed Liang An towards the exit. Just as they got close to the door, they heard footsteps going up the stairs, one after another, as they approached the exit.

Liang An gently placed his fingertips to his lips, making a shushing gesture.

Wen Zhi held his breath and followed Liang An to a corner of the top floor.

Liang An pulled a roll of simple climbing rope from his pocket, quickly fastened one end of the rope to the railing, and tugged at the end of the rope to make sure the buckle was firmly gripping the railing.

"Time is short. I'll use the climbing rope to descend to the sixth floor first, and then you can follow. This location is special; it's easy to use it for leverage to descend. We'll run from the sixth floor—remember, we're running away. We have no weapons; we can only run. We need to be quick."

After Liang An finished speaking, he immediately flipped over and jumped over the railing. He gripped the rope tightly with one hand and slid down the wall evenly with both legs, his movements swift and decisive.

In a short while, he slid down the rope to the sixth floor. He used his toes to precisely push off the railing of the sixth-floor corridor for leverage, his body drawing a clean arc in the air before he steadily jumped into the sixth-floor corridor.

After landing, he quickly bent over to steady himself, his eyes scanning the two ends of the corridor. Once he confirmed that no one was there, he immediately grabbed the end of the rope, swung it hard, and signaled Wen Zhi to descend quickly.

Wen Zhi gripped the rope tightly, mimicking Liang An's technique. Just as he flipped over and leaped over the railing, the iron gate not far away was suddenly pushed open, and chaotic footsteps sounded, quickly heading towards him.

He stared at the kidnapper, then slipped and nearly lost his balance.

"Damn it, the hostages escaped."

Liang An was waiting anxiously when he heard the kidnapper's suppressed roar, followed by a loud gunshot.

He looked up abruptly and saw Wen Zhi's figure plummeting straight down from the sky, like a leaf torn apart by a gale, slowly falling.

He stood frozen in place, his blood seemingly freezing in an instant, his fingertips turning icy cold, his gaze fixed on the falling figure.

A sharp ringing sound exploded in Liang An's ears, bringing him back to his senses. His face was deathly pale.

Suddenly, as if by a bizarre illusion, a strange change occurred without warning—Wen Zhi's body seemed to be dismantled by an invisible force, turning into scattered ashes bit by bit, and completely annihilated before hitting the ground, as if it had never existed.

After Wen Zhi disappeared, the green belt downstairs began to fade, turning from bright green into fine dust that was easily scattered by the wind.

The walls of the corridor behind Liang An were peeling away, the plaster falling off in rustling sounds, revealing not bricks and stones, but a void of white.

The distant building outlines are melting away, the sky is fading in color, and even the night has become transparent.

Everything was fading and dissipating; the sounds of the wind, the shouts, and the screams were gradually thinning and dissolving until only a deathly silence remained, a silence that was unsettling.

Standing in this dissipating void, Liang An felt his body becoming lighter and more transparent along with it.

Everything turned into tiny specks of light that drifted into the air, revealing an abyss of nothingness, gradually returning to chaos.

-----------------

Liang An felt like a tiny speck of dust drifting in a vast, pure white space, floating and sinking, seemingly without end.

After an unknown amount of time, a few golden specks of light finally appeared in the void ahead.

These points of light first slowly coalesced into a shimmering mass of color, gradually blurring out indistinct characters. Then, they pulled each other together and spread outwards, their edges becoming clearer little by little, and the outline of a thread-bound book slowly emerged in the void.

Liang An stared at the book cover from afar, and in the dazzling light, he painstakingly pieced together the title, "The Domineering XX Falls in Love with Me," stroke by stroke, following the gold-embossed lettering.

The characters XX are shrouded in a thin, indistinct mist, a chaotic mess, with no discernible outline, making it impossible to piece together the accurate characters from the blurry haze.

Suddenly, as if an invisible hand was pushing Liang An to the thread-bound book.

Upon closer inspection, the entire book appears bright and new, showing no signs of having been read. However, its four corners are curled into charred, fragmented edges, as if some kind of energy had dissipated, leaving behind burn marks.

The words on the cover still shimmer with a dazzling light, clear and sharp, exuding a terrifying vitality and energy.

The two characters "XX" were still blurry, and upon closer inspection, they resembled an abyss shrouded in black mist, silently devouring the surrounding light and also swallowing Liang An's mind.

A tremor ran through his soul like a tidal wave. Despite the tearing pain, Liang An controlled his trembling fingertips and tentatively reached for the book cover.

Just as his fingertips gripped the edge of the cover and he was about to forcefully open it, a blinding white light suddenly burst forth from between the pages, the surrounding space began to distort, and an invisible force violently threw Liang An away.

In the midst of the dizzying chaos, Liang An seemed to glimpse vague words such as "early death" and "white moonlight".

Immediately afterward, a wave of dizziness gripped him, his internal organs churning as if out of place, and a dull pain drilling upwards through his bone marrow. Like a kite with a broken string, he was driven out of this pure white space by an irresistible force.