heavy.
Ajie's body felt like a cold, blood-soaked iron block, pressing down on her shoulder. Every stumbling step drained her already depleted strength, and she could clearly sense the faint, almost extinguished flame of Ajie's life, extinguished bit by bit in this filthy, hopeless place. The hollow in his chest was tightly wrapped with tattered, blood-soaked cloth strips torn from Wen Shifei, but the dark red liquid still seeped out slowly and stubbornly, leaving intermittent, glaring marks on the filthy ground.
fear.
Like a maggot on her tarsal bone, it coiled coldly around her spine, making her scalp tingle. It wasn't just the fear of the chaebol troops that could pursue her at any moment—especially those executioners who looked like the Grim Reaper—but the deeper, more acute fear came from the faint green light on Lu Cheneng's chest! It was like a curse, an inescapable mark of death! At this moment when the "Weavers" had rebelled and the entire resistance network had been permeated like a sieve, this stable signal was the most striking beacon for the pursuers! Wen Shifei could even hear the hum of ion engines high in the sky, and imagine a single crimson eye staring coldly at her from behind the shadows of the piled-up garbage mountain.
She dragged Ajie like a heavy cross, desperately fleeing through a maze of piled garbage that reeked of death. The ground beneath her feet trembled with the constant rumbling of the underground. The rotting garbage piles occasionally collapsed, revealing the rusted metal framework beneath, like monster fangs. Her vision darkened with dehydration and exhaustion. Sweat mixed with blood and dust, washing muddy grooves across her face and blurring her vision.
"Ajie... hold on... Old Gun... we're almost there..." Wen Shifei's voice was hoarse as a worn bellows, the scent of blood lingering with every word. She didn't know if she was speaking to Ajie or herself, a solace or a last ditch effort of self-hypnosis amidst despair. "Westward... deeper into the garbage dump..." This was the only path to survival, the only hope that kept her from collapsing.
She mechanically walked, skirting a massive mountain of abandoned chemical barrels emitting a pungent ammonia odor. Ahead, the piles of garbage seemed to thin out, revealing a relatively open area. The ground was covered with rusted metal plates and the wreckage of various huge machines, like a steel graveyard. The dim light, filtering through some unknown crack in the fortress, seemed slightly brighter here, but it also highlighted the desolation and silence of the area even more clearly.
Just as Wen Shifei dragged Ajie and stepped into the edge of this "graveyard" with one foot deep and one foot shallow—
whoosh!
An extremely slight sound, but with the sound of breaking through the air at high speed, came from behind a pile of twisted pipe wreckage in the front without any warning!
Wen Shifei's hairs instantly stood on end! The instincts she'd developed from constantly walking on the edge of life and death had her body evading the attack before her mind could react! She shoved Ajie toward a relatively thick pile of scrap metal nearby, using the force to throw herself in the opposite direction!
Duh!
There was a dull sound of a sharp weapon hitting wood (or rather, rotten metal)!
A matte-gleaming, dark-black metal crossbow arrow with a gray feather at the end pierced deeply into the remains of a half-rotted wooden cargo box behind where Wen Shifei had stood a second ago! The tail of the arrow was still trembling slightly!
Attack! Not the standard weapon of the chaebol!
Wen Shifei's heart instantly leaped into her throat, her immense fear temporarily overpowering her exhaustion and fear. She tumbled to her feet, leaning against a rusted steel plate. She quickly drew her shotgun forward, the muzzle pointed warily in the direction of the incoming crossbow bolt, her heart pounding. Who was it? A scavenger from the lower city? Or... some other faction bought off by the chaebol after the "web weavers" rebelled?
The garbage dump was dead silent, with only the faint roar of collapse in the distance and her own heavy breathing.
"Who?! Come out!" Wen Shifei shouted hissingly, his voice trembling with uncontrollable fear and forced suppression.
After a few seconds of suffocating silence.
A tall figure, as if peeled off from the shadow itself, slowly walked out from behind the twisted pipe wreckage.
He wore a heavy canvas coat, its original color unrecognizable, stained with oil and other unidentified stains. The cuffs and trouser legs were tied tightly with rough leather cords. His face was covered by a respirator, crudely pieced together from scrap metal parts and leather, revealing only his eyes and mouth. Dark stains stained the edges of the mask. Most striking were the two weapons slung across his back: one a homemade shotgun with a stubby barrel that flashed a dangerous blue light; the other a ferociously shaped heavy crossbow, its limbs entwined with biological tendons and wires, emitting a cold, murderous aura! His exposed, muscular arms, covered in old scars and fresh scrapes, radiated a sense of savage strength.
His eyes, projected through the eyeholes of his breathing mask, were cold, sharp, filled with undisguised vigilance and... a hint of deep disgust. Like a physical knife, they slashed across Wen Shifei and the unconscious Ajie behind her, finally pinning themselves against Wen Shifei's face.
"Woman." His voice came through the mask, low and hoarse, like two pieces of rusty iron rubbing together, with a thick downtown accent. "What did you bring?"
Wen Shifei's knuckles turned white from the force of holding the gun. She suppressed the turmoil in her heart: "We... are running for our lives! We are being hunted by the chaebol's scavengers! We have no ill intentions! We just... want to find a way to survive!" She tried to make her voice sound calmer, but the fatigue and despair in it could not be completely concealed.
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