Chapter 279

A chill cut across his neck. The bullet tore straight through Magnus Specter’s carotid.

His hands flew up on instinct, clamping hard over the wound. He stared at Emily Ward, eyes wide, full of raw disbelief.

He truly had not expected her to pull the trigger.

“Xiaowei... I avenged you, little brother... Xiaowei...”

Emily dropped to the ground, legs gone soft, and broke into harsh, shaking sobs. Tears blurred her sight. Through that watery haze, she could still make out the pain on Magnus’s face.

After a long moment, panic seized her. She shouted at him, voice cracking, “You! Hurry up and save yourself!”

Magnus was still reeling from the shot she’d fired at him. The bullet had punched through his neck artery. His mind was going dim, vision swimming. For a moment, he forgot all about the Life Crystal. Both hands stayed jammed over the wound, and his head was blank, dead blank.

“Idiot!”

Emily cursed loud, sprang to her feet, and rushed forward, trying to crush a Life Crystal to save him. But she was already using a Super Fire Crystal. She wasn’t Magnus. She couldn’t wield two Crystals at once. Her right hand clenched the Life Crystal so hard her knuckles whitened, yet she couldn’t crush it no matter what.

“Xiaofan, don’t scare Sister Ke! You... hurry and save yourself! Use the Life Crystal! Xiaofan! Sister Ke forgives you, all right? Don’t scare me! Xiaofan...”

Magnus still had some sliver of awareness left. His hands were pressed over his throat, one over the other. Hearing her cry, he finally jolted awake. He hurriedly activated the Life Crystal. A patch of white mist spread from his right palm.

More than ten seconds later, the torn artery began to knit shut. Threads of milky white vapor sank into his body and turned into fresh blood and vigor.

After another twenty seconds or so, Magnus braced one hand on Emily’s shoulder, bent at the waist, and coughed violently.

His thoughts slowly crawled out of that short-circuited haze.

He cursed himself in silence. He had still been careless. He had still underestimated how deep Emily’s bond with her little brother ran.

Or maybe he had overestimated what she felt for him.

Maybe... maybe she had never liked him at all.

A dull bitterness rose in his chest.

Magnus slowly straightened, but the words out of his mouth were still the same.

“Sister Ke... can you come back with me?”

...

The last gold of sunset spread over the whole university district, washing the broken ruins in warm light. The place was wrecked, but under that glow, it carried a strange kind of beauty.

Emily held Magnus’s arm, her head resting lightly against his shoulder. The two of them walked in silence along the shattered footpaths of the university district.

Now and then, giant sparrows cut across the sky, then dropped to the ground and hopped about.

Just like before the apocalypse, when Magnus and Emily came close, the sparrows flapped up and scattered.

In the middle of the road lay a hen, either laying eggs or already done with it. She turned her oversized head with wary, jerking movements and watched the two of them.

When they got closer, the hen beat her wings and stirred up a gust, then hurried off to one side, exposing several huge eggs beneath her.

“Xiaofan, promise Sister Ke something...”

Emily stopped walking. She turned, stepped in front of him, and looked straight into his eyes.

“When we get back, don’t say anything. All right?”

“Sister Ke, Sarah Franklin, she...”

“I know.” Emily looked away, staring off to one side. “But in the end, Xiaowei died because of you. I can’t... I just can’t. And I don’t have the face for it either. You understand, don’t you?”

Magnus let out a faint sigh and turned his gaze elsewhere. He said nothing more.

This matter would likely cling to him and Emily for the rest of their lives. It was never going to be as easy as he had imagined. This wasn’t something she could simply set down because she said she would.

They wandered around the university district for more than an hour. Only after the golden light of evening had fully drained away did they head back to Springvale University and get into the off-road vehicle Magnus had driven out.

“Since we’re here, let’s go take a look at Cliff Baxter’s headquarters. Then I... I’ll go back with you to the lumber mill.”

In the passenger seat, Emily slowly let go of his arm. Her face had mostly returned to calm.

A thousand meters outside Lightwater Residences, Magnus got out of the vehicle and activated the Metal Crystal. He didn’t use a gun. Bare-handed, he killed a soldier from a patrolling off-road vehicle, one of the men smeared in animal blood.

Night had fully fallen.

Magnus and Emily circled around together and entered a five-story residential building near Lightwater Residences. Using a night-vision telescope, they observed the place carefully.

They had surrounded Lightwater Residences.

A trace of surprise flashed across Magnus’s face. He handed the telescope to Emily. Just then, she saw a rat slam into the electric grid. It shrieked as the current blasted it and sent it reeling back. She quickly shoved the telescope back into Magnus’s hands.

“Xiaofan, look! It’s an electric grid!”

Around Lightwater Residences, several hundred animals were roaming. Ninety percent of them were rat demon beasts. There were also some chickens, ducks, and geese that hadn’t settled down for the night, pacing restlessly around the perimeter.

Above them, giant bats swept by in packs. Every so often, one would dive and snatch a person off the ground in its jaws.

“They actually built an electric grid...” Emily muttered, stunned.

“An electric grid might not be a good thing,” Magnus said, lowering the telescope. His eyes narrowed as he stared in that direction.

“You want to cut their power?” Emily asked in surprise.

Wouldn’t that save them the trouble of doing anything else?

“Sister Ke!”

Magnus reached into his spatial storage and pulled out ten Super Fire Crystals and ten Metal Crystals, stuffing the lot into her arms.

“Sister Ke, wait here. Don’t move. Give me five hours. In five hours, I’ll go cut their power and let the monsters outside rush in.”

“Xiaofan, let me go in with you. I don’t want to wait here alone.”

“It’s all men in there!”

“I’m tall. I can pass for a man. It’ll be fine,” Emily said stubbornly.

“You...”

Magnus felt a headache coming on. He raised the telescope and scanned around Lightwater Residences.

“Sister Ke, then use the Super Fire Crystal and stay outside. Your job is to drive those animals toward Lightwater Residences. I don’t think there are enough of them here yet...”

Emily hesitated.

Magnus quickly added, “That job is dangerous too. Just because we’re using Super Fire Crystals doesn’t mean we’re safe.”

“I know that, but...” Emily still wavered.

Magnus cut her off. “Enough. It’s settled. Sister Ke, I’ll go inside and cut the power. You stay outside and herd the animals over. We strike from both ends. Let’s see if the two of us can wipe out the Springvale force headquarters in one shot.”

“All right! I’ll go drive the animals over! Xiaofan, be careful in there!”

Hearing him put it that way, Emily nodded hard, resolve settling in her face.

The two of them agreed on a rendezvous point, then headed downstairs, startling a flock of giant sparrows that had just flown in looking for a place to sleep.

At the foot of the building, they split up.

Magnus followed the street running outside the electric grid and found the patrol vehicle from before, the one whose soldiers he had already slaughtered.

He changed into the uniform of one of the dead soldiers, started the vehicle, turned it around, and slowly drove the patrol car toward the main gate of Lightwater Residences.