The two of them took their photos and returned to the first basement. When they got to their old spot, the restroom, they found the other two there as well.
The air froze for a second as the four of them looked at one another.
None of them had expected the four of them to still be able to meet up here, at a time like this.
“Let’s switch locations. The restroom’s a bit cramped.” Zhong Ziqian spoke up first, and seeing the other three nod, he took the lead, brazenly walking everyone out in the open to the small storeroom. “Nobody usually comes here. Let’s make this our base next time.”
“Let’s aim to get out next time.”
Seeing she had a signal on her phone, Zhang Xiangyi immediately sent the photos. The other side replied very quickly too.
“The external evidence is all collected. The most important stuff is still in that lab, can we get in there now?” Xi Zirui sent the message to the four-person group chat, then turned to Zhang Xiangyi. “Zhong Ziqian and I mapped out an escape route. It’s not great, but it’s the best option we’ve got.”
By their reckoning, there were two ways out of here: one the workers used for their normal shifts, and one the bosses used, the so-called VIP passage.
But Xi Zirui couldn’t shake the feeling there was another route. There was no way these damn things would fail to leave themselves an escape route of their own.
Xiao Xingzhi looked at Zhang Xiangyi, who hadn’t spoken up, and reluctantly relayed what they’d just discovered. With Zhang Xiangyi, he was her spokesman, he got it.
All the negotiating fell to him.
Xiao Xingzhi talked a lot, so you had to sift through a heap of useless babble to dig out the small handful of useful words.
“Then Zhong Ziqian and I will keep looking for the way out. It’s 4:24 now. By 6:30 we absolutely have to regroup here and get out.”
Looking at the message she’d received on her phone, Zhang Xiangyi smiled. “We won’t need until 6:30.”
The three of them: ???
Zhang Xiangyi looked at Zhong Ziqian and Xi Zirui, her expression unusually grave. “What comes next, I’m not a hundred percent sure I can get everyone out alive. Right now you can still choose to leave the instance, clear the game and keep your lives.”
After this she’d be heading into the lab, which would most likely trip the alarm. She’d kept joking about how many Xiao Xingzhi wanted to take on one-on-one, but this really was the only way.
“After coming this far, you think I’d just leave? Where’s my dignity in that?” Zhong Ziqian tilted up his chin. “I got groped this much, if I don’t see them get what’s coming, I won’t be able to live with it. I want my payback.”
Much as he hated to admit it, he’d uncovered a lot of intel, and he still thought it was worth it. He was a man, after all, so he got groped, big deal. In a little while he’d turn them into real ground meat.
What was the big deal?
Xi Zirui, as always, was smiling. “I know full well what the consequences are.”
Zhang Xiangyi smiled too. “In that case, I hope all of us make it out alive!”
“Don’t worry. We weren’t scared even without weapons before, never mind now that we’ve got them.” Zhong Ziqian held a long, fire-charred staff. Nothing special about it, but Zhong Ziqian liked it all the same. “I’ve never done anything this big. Call it personal growth.”
“I’ll go get the materials for the emblem. You all rest for now.” Xi Zirui volunteered. “I didn’t have to work very hard just then. Once I bring it back I still have to paint it on, and after that you’ll be heading into the lab, so you need the rest more.”
“Right!” Zhong Ziqian nodded. “I’ll go with him, give him some cover.”
Zhang Xiangyi painted the emblem onto all four of them. While she waited for the pigment to dry, she reminded them, “The iris and infrared scans aren’t a problem. The main thing now is the password. It updates once an hour, and we’re on our own for it. So in a bit there’s a very good chance we’ll need a few tries.”
Which also meant: the moment they went in, they’d be straight into a fight.
None of them had imagined that the level that was supposed to be the simplest would turn into the hardest.
“In a bit we’ll all go down together. Zhong Ziqian and I will be in the holding cells. If it fails and the alarm sounds, we’ll come out, and together we’ll force open a path out.” Xi Zirui thought for a moment, picked up some pigment, and drew a simple diagram of a human body on the floor. “Let me tell you which spots are easiest to kill with, so you can aim for those when the time comes…”
And so followed Xi Zirui’s lecture on lethal strikes.
Zhang Xiangyi listened very carefully, this was all the good stuff!
And better still, right after hearing the good stuff, she could practice it immediately. That kind of opportunity was hard to come by.
“Got it?”
Zhang Xiangyi nodded, still savoring it a little.
Xiao Xingzhi smiled. “I’ve got a photographic memory. If I couldn’t remember this, wouldn’t my fame as the college god be a total fraud?”
“I don’t even spend that many hours a day studying, and I still beat all those people to come in first. Sigh… I guess it’s a kind of talent…”
Xiao Xingzhi shook his head smugly, sighing.
Zhong Ziqian, who’d had bad grades since childhood and gone out to work early: ……
Had he ever once spared a thought for how the failing student felt?
“Should I run through it again for you?” Xi Zirui had naturally noticed Zhong Ziqian’s expression. He genuinely wasn’t worried about Zhang Xiangyi and Xiao Xingzhi, from their self-introductions and their performance, both were very clever.
As for Zhong Ziqian…
Never mind.
Zhong Ziqian shook his head hard. “Just listening to it makes my head swell. You could explain it thirty times and I still wouldn’t remember more than a couple. No need, I’ll just bash ’em in the head, can’t go wrong with that.”
If he heard any more, he was going to pass out.
He had a knowledge allergy.
“Then let me at least tell you where on the head is easiest to hit…” Xi Zirui didn’t give up. He grabbed Zhong Ziqian and pointed out a few spots, only relaxing once he’d confirmed Zhong Ziqian had them down.
“Take the master keycard. You’ll use it to get to where that little girl and the others are…”
After watching the patrol leave, Xiao Xingzhi led the way, feeling around in the dark to get Xi Zirui and Zhong Ziqian into a holding cell. “The alarm should be pretty loud. No matter how soundproof this room is, you’ll definitely hear it. Play it by ear.”
“Got it. Stay safe.”
The four of them nodded. Holding her phone and a data cable, Zhang Xiangyi nervously plugged into the charging port.
Her luck had never once been good in her whole life. She just hoped that this time, too, she could let skill win out over luck…
The moment she plugged in, the unluckiest moments of her past surfaced in her mind.
An orphan since childhood, the orphanage director, Mother Director, said that when she’d been found, she’d nearly been torn apart and eaten by stray dogs.
After they’d finally rescued her, she came down with one minor illness after another.
After she’d finally grown up, someone was willing to adopt her.
The first family to adopt her: just as the adoption paperwork was about to be finalized, the whole family died in a car accident.
The second family to adopt her took her shopping for clothes to get a feel for things first, and the moment they reached the mall, they got word that the company had gone bankrupt, and on the way out of the mall they were struck by a falling advertising sign.
The third family that said they’d adopt her, the moment they declared it, they fell into a manhole.
After that, no one dared to adopt her anymore.
Fortunately she worked hard. Good grades earned her financial aid and the like, the state had subsidies too, and once she got into college she had to work part-time and rent a place outside, a few hundred a month.
She’d just moved in when she got robbed. Because she studied computer science, she’d used her saved-up money to buy a decent computer, her only valuable possession, and then the computer was gone too.
Just bought, never even used.
She reported it, but it was never recovered. On the way to the police station she even ran into a stabbing attack, and only because the police arrived fast did she avoid being the next one stabbed.
And so on. To sum up, not once in her whole life had she ever gotten lucky.
Although that wasn’t quite right, with renting, her luck had been okay.
For the price of a one-bedroom, she’d landed a two-bedroom.
“What are you spacing out for?” Seeing her sit there holding the phone without moving, Xiao Xingzhi crouched down and asked, “If you’re scared, I’ll do it. Whatever else, I’m your senior, I definitely know more than you.”
Zhang Xiangyi handed him the phone. “My luck’s bad, but you don’t necessarily know more than I do.”
Apart from eating, sleeping, and working part-time, all she did was study, and sometimes she studied while working too, so she firmly believed her breadth of knowledge was wide.
Xiao Xingzhi’s hand paused on the phone. He hesitated. “Actually… my luck’s bad too.”
Zhang Xiangyi: “?”
“As a kid I could choke on water, I could trip flat on my face right at my own front door, I once boiled water for instant noodles and managed to scald myself badly enough to land in the hospital before the noodles had even gone in, and I could be walking under a big tree and get hit by bird droppings…”
“Hold on.” Zhang Xiangyi quickly cut him off. She knew that mouth of his all too well. “This isn’t a contest over who’s more pathetic. Whatever else, you’ve got mom and dad, your luck’s got to be better than mine. You do it.”
“I…” Having mom and dad was as good as not having them.
“Hurry up and move!”
Xiao Xingzhi pursed his lips, but he set to work on the phone after all, fully focused now, all the grinning and clowning gone. “Keep an eye on our surroundings. Odds are good it’ll be the four of us against however many.”
He wasn’t all that confident in his luck either, and as for skill…
He didn’t believe his third-year-undergrad level could crack this password. The police had been stuck on this one last line of defense for so long, could he really measure up to all those professional experts?
He was confident, but not conceited.
“Okay, I’ve entered it.”
Zhang Xiangyi gripped the whip tight, she’d even soaked it in brine to make sure it delivered maximum value.
“Wooo-laa wooo-laa wooo-laa—”
“Mmmmm—mmmm—”
Zhang Xiangyi sighed. Sure enough, luck would never descend upon her.
The ear-splitting alarm went off, even echoing in the empty corridor, red light flashing, and countless footsteps came pounding from all directions.
Xiao Xingzhi immediately yanked out the cable and took the spiked club from Zhang Xiangyi’s hand. “Told you we’d be fighting. The people inside are bound to come out, and then it’s down to our skills to get in.”
Xi Zirui and Zhong Ziqian came out too. The four of them watched four directions, two guarding each side of the lab door.
Soon the door opened, and the four of them, quick of eye and hand, struck the moment it did. The first few little things to come out were always the unlucky ones, the instant a head appeared, it got taken out.
“Did I hit the right spot?”
Zhong Ziqian was attacking the next one even as he earnestly asked Xi Zirui, this had, after all, been the one lecture he’d paid the most attention to in his life, so he had to at least learn something, right?
“Got it. Keep it up.”
“There are so many of these little things, what do we do?” More and more were coming, and there were only four of them. Two fists can’t beat four hands.
“Someone will come to back us up.”
The door had to be opened.
The better outcome was that they cracked it successfully and slipped in quietly to knock people out cold.
The worse outcome was the current situation.
The four of them fought to the point of exhaustion. The things inside seemed inexhaustible, kill one and another instantly filled the gap, leaving no opening at all. The numbers weren’t even any different from when it started.
Zhong Ziqian panted. “You sure backup’s coming?”
How come he couldn’t see an end to it?
“Boom—”
A wall of fire bloomed before the four of them.