Chapter 20 Crisis Strikes; He Zaining Encounters Danger, Xu Lingzhao Saves Ji Cun...

The woman with gold-rimmed glasses looked into Xu Lingzhao's eyes and began a mental search. Xu Lingzhao felt a mental force forcibly trying to enter her sea of ​​consciousness, but since she had acquired her origin, her sea of ​​consciousness was extremely vast, and she instantly withdrew that wisp of mental force.

Xu Lingzhao retaliated and launched her attack. She used her mental power to invade her mind and control her behavior. To outsiders, Xu Lingzhao's lifeless eyes appeared as if she were being mentally searched.

She deliberately dragged it out for more than ten minutes. Xu Lingzhao pretended to come to her senses and watched as the person opposite her walked to Ji Yao's side to report. The answer she received was, of course, that Xu Lingzhao had a clean background and a strong tendency to join Hiteas.

Xu Lingzhao perfectly fits the rebels' requirements: strong, not an undercover agent, and loyal.

Ji Yao had the chains and restraints on Xu Lingzhao removed, explained to her that she should take good care of Ji Cunxi, and then led her group away from the villa in a hurry.

As Xu Lingzhao stepped out of the study, she saw Ji Cunxi standing furtively at the door. She looked up, her eyes revealing concern: "She...didn't make things difficult for you, did she?"

Xu Lingzhao shook her head. She saw Ji Cunxi seem to breathe a sigh of relief. She grabbed Xu Lingzhao's arm and excitedly headed out to go shopping. Just as they stepped out the door, Ji Cunxi turned around and scrutinized the person behind her with a look of scrutiny.

"You look quite good in this combat suit, hmm... broad shoulders and narrow waist, you haven't embarrassed me." Ji Cunxi sat down in the hovercar with satisfaction. Xu Lingzhao sat beside her, watching the scenery moving outside the window. Yesterday, Ji Cunxi showed her a photo, a family portrait, which included Ji Yao and Ji Cunxi's three older brothers and two younger sisters. Everyone in the photo had a different hair color.

Ji Cunxi told her that she rarely saw her father, that Ji Yao's Omega lovers were all kept in a certain place, and that she had no wife. Ji Yao had so many heirs that simply killing Ji Yao was far from enough; the most important thing was to kill the researcher who controlled the Zerg.

Xu Lingzhao quickly realized someone was shaking her shoulder, which brought her back to her senses. She then heard a slightly annoyed voice in her ear: "Hey! What are you thinking about? If you're out with me, you should concentrate."

"Okay." Xu Lingzhao got out of the car and opened the door for her. In front of them was a huge shopping mall. Ji Cunxi led her to a cake shop. After the two sat down, the waiter quickly placed two exquisite small cakes on the table and left.

When Xu Lingzhao first arrived at the central area of ​​Sitias, she looked through the glass at the pedestrians coming and going. Some of them walked side by side, some were families of three, and some were two elderly people supporting each other. Everything in front of her was no different from what she had seen in the Federation.

"Hey! What are you thinking about again!" Ji Cunxi looked at her absent-minded expression and said with some dissatisfaction, "Why are you always so absent-minded?"

"Perhaps... because the mind control hasn't worn off yet." Xu Lingzhao picked up a glass of water, drank it, and looked at the person opposite him, completely calm.

"Oh... alright." Ji Cunxi didn't say anything more.

A commotion arose from the first floor. Xu Lingzhao frowned, got up, and quickly walked outside. Looking down from the third floor, the scene before her made her grip the pistol at her waist even tighter.

The center of the first-floor lobby sank, from which swarms of black insectoids emerged, frantically attacking passersby. No! They resembled insectoids but were not quite; they had human bodies and insect heads, their entire bodies were black, and in addition to their limbs, they had two tentacles on their waists. Their mouths were wide open like the gaping madam, filled with sticky and disgusting tentacles.

Their numbers were so great that they quickly filled the entire first floor, and terrified screams erupted from the crowd. Xu Lingzhao grabbed Ji Cunxi, who was standing next to her with a look of horror on her face, and ran to a higher floor.

Damn it, another new Zerg weapon. Xu Lingzhao's first thought was that these Zerg were after Ji Cunxi.

Xu Lingzhao, annoyed that she was running too slowly, simply carried her on his back and ran to higher ground. The insectoids seemed to possess intelligence and systematically surrounded them. "We... won't die here today, will we?" Ji Cunxi's voice trembled slightly, but it also seemed to carry a sense of expectation.

"I won't die, don't worry." Xu Lingzhao said confidently. She quickly went to the rooftop and looked down, discovering that not only the shopping mall had fallen, but the surrounding area had also been occupied by these insectoids. These people were truly insane; they didn't care about the lives of ordinary people at all. Xu Lingzhao glanced at her personal terminal.

As expected, communications were cut off.

Standing atop the high wall, with swarms of insectoids below, Xu Lingzhao used his mental power to search and locate the insectoid lord among them.

Xu Lingzhao easily leaped between the high-rise buildings, sending Ji Cunxi far away from the Zerg lord. After hiding her and raising a mental barrier around her, he quickly left and headed straight for the lord's location.

She carried a high-speed handgun and two CL-20 grenades. A handkerchief stained with Ji Cunxi's blood was tied around her wrist, quickly attracting the attention of the Zerg. She glanced back discreetly; Ji Cunxi was safe.

At this moment, the once bustling shopping center is now deserted, with only ruins left by the Zerg invasion and billowing black smoke rising everywhere.

Killing a lord would be easy, but the way she was doing it was to kill it without arousing suspicion. She went to the top of a tall building next to the shopping mall and looked down. The lord's red eyes were staring at her, and it opened its blood-red maw, its tentacles waving wildly at her.

A pale blue mental barrier lit up beside Xu Lingzhao. This was the most basic type of mental barrier. She was expressionless, showing neither fear of death nor fear of the insectoid race. This time, she did not choose to jump directly from the high-rise building.

Instead, she slid down the metal glass of the building's exterior. It was an angled building, and she slid down like a bowling ball, knocking away the insectoids that tried to climb up. She calculated her trajectory and slid down just before reaching the bottom.

Using the momentum, she leaped forward and precisely pulled the pins on two CL-20 grenades before throwing them into the gaping maw of the lord. An explosion rang out, blasting the lord to pieces and clearing out the Zerg around it. She was thrown off balance by the immense force of the blast, rolling several times on the ground before getting to her feet, only to be surrounded by a dense swarm of Zerg.

Xu Lingzhao took off the blood-stained handkerchief from her wrist and threw it forcefully to another spot. The Zerg instantly turned their attack on the handkerchief, but without their leader, they tore at each other like headless flies. Xu Lingzhao used her pistol to deal with the Zerg that approached her, and she deliberately did not dodge the bites of a Zerg.

To outsiders, she appeared to be no match for the insectoids, who tore at her arms and back. However, after the insectoids finished tearing at the handkerchief, they seemed to be programmed to surge into the black hole on the first floor of the shopping mall and retreat in an orderly fashion.

Just then, the roar of fighter jets came from above Xu Lingzhao's head. She looked up and met the gaze of a man on one of the jets. Xu Lingzhao ignored his stare; she understood his meaning. She had ruined his "good deed."

Despite being injured, Xu Lingzhao returned to the rooftop and moved among the buildings. He pulled Ji Cunxi out from a hidden mezzanine on a rooftop. When they boarded the fighter jet, Ji Cunxi was still somewhat dazed.

She looked at Xu Lingzhao, her eyes filled with complex emotions. She saw the wounds on her back and arms where she had been bitten by the insectoids, the wounds so deep that the bone was visible. Her eyes were red, and she only asked softly, "Why... do you always save me?"

“Protecting you is my duty.” Xu Lingzhao wiped the black blood splattered by the Zerg on her face with her uninjured hand, but she felt another hand touching her cheek.

Ji Cunxi reached out and wiped the blood from the corner of her eye. When she met Xu Lingzhao's gaze, she lowered her head somewhat embarrassed.

Xu Lingzhao was sent to the hospital for treatment. She lay in the treatment chamber filled with treatment fluid with her eyes closed, feeling her wounds healing. She could feel that Ji Cunxi's feelings for her had become unusual.

Especially when she pulled her out of the mezzanine, the deep dependence and gratitude in her eyes were unmistakable. Xu Lingzhao felt the ward door being pushed open, and she used her mental power to investigate.

The newcomer was the same man from the fighter jet. He slowly approached Xu Lingzhao's treatment pod, holding a vial of unidentified black liquid. Xu Lingzhao began to mentally control him.

The man stopped beside the treatment pod, but poured the black liquid into a nearby trash can before leaving. He turned around and encountered Ji Cunxi, who had just entered. She looked at him warily and said coldly, "Second Brother, what are you doing here?"

"It's nothing, just checking in on you. Your bodyguard is really something." As soon as he finished speaking, he calmly walked out of the ward.

Ji Cunxi quickly walked to the front of the treatment pod and looked at Xu Lingzhao's expression through the glass. After feeling that her breathing was steady, she breathed a sigh of relief and sat down next to the treatment pod.

Her expression was serious, and her eyes, unlike their usual clear ones, were filled with sorrow and determination. She turned on her personal terminal and tapped incessantly on the screen.

After Xu Lingzhao recovered, it just so happened that Ji Cunxi was going to school. So they boarded a starship to go to the St. Syr Military Academy where Ji Cunxi was. The two chatted casually along the way.

Ji Cunxi looked at the news on the personal terminal and let out a light laugh. Xu Lingzhao was all too familiar with that laugh—a mocking laugh. She turned her head and asked, "What's so funny?"

"Well... it's nothing much. It's just that those idiots from the Federation and Pasifica thought the biohazard base was in the Hamonia Mountains, so they all went there. A lot of people died, and they all became food." Her tone was casual, as if she were talking about something completely ordinary.

Xu Lingzhao listened without any expression and echoed, "Indeed foolish."

Then, Ji Cunxi laughed even louder as she turned on her personal terminal, as if the matter had hit her funny bone. She stretched the light screen in front of Xu Lingzhao: "Hey, we even captured one of Pasifica's top generals. Look, it's her, her name is He Zaining." She revealed a sly smile: "Because she's too beautiful, and she's an Alpha, my older brother took a liking to her. My older brother has said he likes her for a long time. Unfortunately, she's stumbled into the tiger's den."

Xu Lingzhao looked at He Zaining on the screen. She was lying on the ground, covered in wounds, her fair face smeared with blood, and her chin was being lifted by a hand. Ji Cunxi put the screen back down: "Although my older brother is an Omega, he's famous for messing around with Alphas."

"Is that so?" Xu Lingzhao glanced at the mentally unstable Ji Cunxi. Her hands clenched into fists. How could He Zaining have been captured? Could there be a mole within Pasifica? The most urgent task was to rescue her. Anger was rising within her. She almost squeezed out a sentence through gritted teeth: "Then do you think she can still live?"

"Of course she can, why not? My older brother likes her, so how could she possibly not live?" Ji Cunxi whispered a few words in Xu Lingzhao's ear.

Xu Lingzhao gave a forced smile; after rescuing He Zaining, she was determined to erase this memory from her mind.

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Author's Note: [Rainbow fart][Rainbow fart] Hehe, I got my contract yesterday! I finally got signed! Looking at the 300,000 words of discarded drafts in my drafts folder, I feel like all my suffering has finally come to an end! [Rainbow fart][Rainbow fart] So happy!