“Tch.”
A clear, low click of the tongue sounded above her head, carrying a hint of helplessness and a trace of dry humor.
At some point, Lin Chen had stepped half a pace in front of her, his body slightly tensed like a cheetah ready to pounce.
In his right hand, he tightly gripped the metal thermos, now stained with dark red smears and slightly dented.
With his left hand, however, he casually reached over and snatched the blood-smeared phone from Su Qianqian’s grasp—the screen still displaying her teammates’ mockery and the enemies’ teasing.
Lowering his gaze, his eyes swept quickly over the messages: “report,” “actor,” “ridiculous excuse.”
The corner of his lips seemed to twitch upward for a fleeting moment, forming a faint curve filled with absurd irony.
“These netizens,” his deep voice sounded, calm as if detached from the situation, even carrying a faint trace of amusement, “are really hard to carry.”
Before his words even fully fell, his wrist flicked sharply. The phone shot out of his hand as if alive, slicing through the air with a sharp “whoosh” and striking the staggering security guard zombie at the alley entrance squarely in the face.
“Smack!”
The phone screen shattered into a spiderweb of cracks upon impact, then went completely dark.
The zombie’s head snapped backward from the hit, its movements freezing for a moment.
“Move!”
Without even glancing at the result, Lin Chen grabbed Su Qianqian’s wrist again. This time his grip was even stronger, almost forceful, as he yanked her away from the wall and rushed toward another narrow fork deeper in the alley.
“My phone!!!!”
She hadn’t even posted her zombie selfie to her social feed yet!!!
Was he insane?!
Why didn’t he throw his own phone instead?!!
The good first impression she had of him was instantly obliterated by this phone-related grudge.
Stumbling as he dragged her along, Su Qianqian’s mind still echoed with his words—“These netizens are really hard to carry.”
Under the overwhelming fear and the absurdity of reality crashing down on her, she instead felt a strange numbness.
The clutter in the alley became obstacles. Her foot caught on an overturned plastic crate, and her body pitched forward.
“Careful!” Lin Chen barked, pulling her back with force.
In that moment of imbalance, as her arms flailed instinctively in search of something to hold onto, Su Qianqian’s fingers accidentally brushed against the edge of another phone in her pocket—
Her backup phone, which she had stuffed in there earlier in her panic.
“Buzz…”
A faint vibration came.
The backup phone’s screen suddenly lit up under her unconscious touch.
The glow looked especially glaring in the dim alley.
Su Qianqian instinctively looked down—and her pupils shrank to pinpoints.
On the lit screen was the map interface of Honor of Kings.
But… something was completely wrong.
It was no longer the familiar, vividly colored terrain of King’s Canyon.
Instead, the screen displayed a cold, precise overhead map composed of blue-gray lines—
The outlines of towering buildings, clearly labeled intersecting streets.
It was unmistakably a real-world city map.
And on this incredibly realistic map, countless tiny markers of different colors were lighting up silently, densely packed across it.
Red flame icons, blue shield icons, green leaf icons…
They were exactly the same symbols used in the game to represent players in different roles.
Each tiny icon flickered faintly, as if breathing, positioned at precise coordinates across the real city map.
Su Qianqian’s gaze was instantly locked onto the upper-right corner of the screen.
There, a blood-red flame icon was flashing frantically, accompanied by a line of text that made her scalp tingle:
【Thunder God (Lu Bu) – Online – Distance: 1.2 km – Donglin Road Intersection】
It felt as if an invisible bolt of lightning had split open her chaotic mind.
“Thunder God… the one who said he’d report me… Thunder God?”
The moment her words fell, Thunder God’s avatar suddenly flickered violently.
Immediately after, a new voice message burst out from the backup phone’s speaker like a dying wail, filled with terror and disbelief—
“Holy sh*t—!!! What the hell is that?! Help—!!!”
Thunder God’s signature loud, brash voice—once used countless times in the game to curse and rant—was now twisted and broken, filled with the most primal fear and despair a human could feel in the face of absolute horror.
Behind his voice was chaotic noise—piercing screams and a dense, grating sound of frantic scratching and pounding.
“Donglin Road! Donglin Road Intersection! Anyone alive?! Save—!!!”
The voice cut off abruptly.
On the map, the bright red flame icon representing Thunder God, which had been flashing wildly, suddenly went out—
Like a candle snuffed by the wind.
Silently.
From deeper in the alley, new dragging, sticky footsteps approached, accompanied by low, grating growls, slowly closing in from another fork.
At the alley entrance, the security guard’s body that had been knocked down by the phone began to twitch again, its bones grinding with a scalp-crawling sound.
What a waste of her phone!
“Move!”
Lin Chen’s voice was low and firm like iron, carrying unquestionable authority.
He tightened his grip on Su Qianqian’s wrist again. The force was still strong, but this time, she didn’t feel like her bones were about to be crushed.
Instead, she drew a faint sense of security from that almost rough pull.
She didn’t even realize that she had grabbed onto his forearm in return, her nails digging through the thin fabric of his hoodie, nearly embedding into his skin.
Together, they plunged into the narrower fork.
It was piled with discarded cardboard boxes and foul-smelling slop buckets. Above them, rusted fire escapes and clotheslines crisscrossed like a tangled web.
The light was sliced into fragments by the towering walls on both sides, casting twisted, shifting shadows.
Every step felt like walking through a minefield—any shadow could hide a bloodthirsty monster ready to pounce.
Su Qianqian’s heart slammed wildly in her chest, every breath filled with the heavy stench of rust and decay.
Fear surged like icy tides, wave after wave eroding her sanity.
She clutched the backup phone tightly, its cracked screen digging into her palm, her fingers turning pale from the force.
On the screen, the cold city map remained clear.
But the glaring red flame icon representing Thunder God had completely disappeared, leaving behind only an empty coordinate—
Donglin Road Intersection.
That teammate, who just seconds ago had been cursing in chat, threatening to report her and mocking her “ridiculous excuse,” was now… gone.
Torn apart by whatever those still-flickering colored dots on the map represented.
The chill that realization brought was colder than the wind sweeping through the alley.