Chapter 528 - 469: Mai Mingle - ?Jin?Xue?Li?

Chapter 528: Chapter 469: Mai Mingle - ?Jin?Xue?Li?

The plan to play dead and launch a surprise attack was no longer possible.

The thought had barely formed when the young woman closest to the car silently raised her gun at Mai Mingle.

Mai Mingle dove frantically onto the seat. A bullet whistled past her head and shattered the passenger-side window. With a loud CRACK, the glass fragments exploded like a burst of ice and snow in the dark night.

The roar of blood in her ears was deafening.

The shock alone made her chest tighten like a block of slowly drying cement. Her breathing grew short and shallow, a dull ache spreading within.

’I have to find a way to stall them—otherwise, forget the bullets, I’ll have a heart attack first.’

"Which one of you is the real Jin Xueli?" Mai Mingle blurted out, raising her voice.

She waited a beat; no second bullet came from outside the car.

’Maybe that’s a good sign?’

’If every single one of them thinks she’s Jin Xueli, this question should cause a little chaos, right?’

"I’ve already met one Jin Xueli tonight,"

Mai Mingle said, staying low. She brushed the broken glass off the passenger seat, trying to crawl out the other side while striking while the iron was hot. "She didn’t have any lines drawn on her face, unlike all of you. Do you know that someone’s drawn Coils on your faces? Don’t you want to know what those Coils are all about?"

These old bones were a damn nuisance. All she had to do was curl up her waist and legs to climb over to the passenger seat, but her joints were stiff and creaky, her body seemingly unable to bend.

She remembered menopause, waking up one morning to a suddenly frozen shoulder joint. The pain was endless and excruciating. She couldn’t lift her arm, couldn’t even fasten her bra.

It had been all downhill from there.

"...What does it matter?"

That wasn’t the one who had just fired. From the sound of the voice, another Jin Xueli had approached. She stood at the front of the car and said, "We are all Jin Xueli. All of us are the real Jin Xueli."

Mai Mingle took a breath, struggling to haul her leg onto the seat.

"How can you all be the real Jin Xueli?" she said, panting. "There’s only one Jin Xueli. Don’t you find it strange yourselves? Who did something to Jin Xueli to make so many of you appear here? Who drew those Coils on your faces?"

Mai Mingle didn’t ask why Jin Xueli wanted to kill her. They were clearly resolute and single-minded. Asking why might just remind them to get on with it.

Only by making it about Jin Xueli herself did she have any hope of slowing them down.

Outside the other car door, Chaisi was just about to reach in and give Mai Mingle a hand when something caught his attention. He cursed under his breath and said softly, "They’re surrounding us."

"The Coils were drawn by the Coil, of course," one Jin Xueli said, speaking nonsensically. "It did us a huge favor."

’As long as I can communicate, as long as I can stall for time, there’s hope.’

Mai Mingle quickly asked, "What favor?"

The car’s hood was twisted and mangled, locked together with the guardrail, making it impossible to reverse. Besides, even with so many identical Jin Xuelis, Mai Mingle still couldn’t bring herself to run down a living, breathing, human Jin Xueli. What if she hit the original?

"We don’t want to kill you either," a Jin Xueli said in a low voice. "But if we don’t kill you, there’s no way to get the one hundred million in cash, no way to change our fate..."

Mai Mingle almost thought she had misheard.

’Someone put a hundred-million-dollar bounty on my head?’

’No, wait—the world has become like this. What’s the point of money anymore?’

"Listen to me, someone must be using you—"

Mai Mingle didn’t get to finish before she was cut off.

"It’s precisely because so many Jin Xuelis have appeared tonight that this is the perfect opportunity for a murder."

A Jin Xueli behind the car spoke, her voice muffled. "We are all Jin Xueli, so if we kill you, ’Jin Xueli’ can naturally collect the money. But if only one Jin Xueli is left in the end... then the last one remaining will never have to know for sure if she was the one who actually killed you."

’Is this what they call "all for one, and one for all"?’

Mai Mingle couldn’t make sense of it—and Chaisi, it seemed, shared her confusion.

"You don’t care that you’ve changed, but can’t you see the state of Blackmoor City? You want money? I’ll give it to you. I can give you all of Kai Luonan’s fortune. But in a world where the streets are filled with ’residents,’ what good is money?"

Several Jin Xuelis now stood in twos and threes on one side of the car, forming a semi-circle that blocked off Mai Mingle’s side.

No Jin Xueli went to the side where Chaisi was crouched—probably because he was neither the target nor an easy mark.

The Jin Xueli at the back of the car suddenly raised her voice in anger. "How could someone like you who’s lived a pampered life understand? I don’t just want money! Everything you were born with was essentially bought with money, have you never thought about that? Safety, order, distance, security—only money can buy these things!"

Chaisi was losing his patience. "The Nests have already invaded, and you still—"

"So what?"

The Jin Xueli closest to Mai Mingle cut him off.

She continued walking toward Mai Mingle as she spoke. "A hundred million is still a hundred million. Even if it’s no good in this world, there are other places where it is. What we want isn’t just the money, but everything money can buy... That’s why we said the Coil did us a huge favor."

’Wait, "this world"?’

’The Jin Xueli that Brianna struck before disappeared instantly—’

’What did Brianna say then? The edge of reality... was softened by... what was it?’

’Is there a connection between the two?’

As these thoughts tangled into a messy knot in Mai Mingle’s mind, before she could sort anything out, a Jin Xueli bent down expressionlessly toward the driver’s seat.

The headlights illuminated only one side of her face, the hastily drawn lines of the Coil almost dissolving into the glare.

"I’m sorry,"

Jin Xueli said. Tears shimmered in her eyes, but her face was completely devoid of expression, and her tone was so resolute it was chilling.

It was as if... as if her expression, her desires, her goal... were all locked in place by the Coil.

"Perhaps there are other Mai Mingles in the world, and you’re just one of them."

As the sentence ended, Mai Mingle knew her efforts to stall for time had finally failed.

The very instant Jin Xueli’s gun barrel entered the car, Mai Mingle threw all her strength into shoving the door open.

The pistol flashed, the muzzle blast searing past her face.

The stunning, searing heat of that moment seemed to burn the entire world to a blank white slate.

Mai Mingle couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t feel anything. If this was death, then compared to wasting away, withered and hunched over in a sickbed, it was almost a blessing.

But in the next moment, sound, weight, light, shadow, and the world itself came crashing back into her mind.

She had lunged too hard. As the door knocked Jin Xueli down, she herself tumbled out of the car. Mai Mingle fell onto the road between the open door and the car frame, her legs still trapped inside. For a moment, her body felt like a sack of cement being dragged behind her soul—heavy, hard, and impossible to move.

But the Jin Xueli who had been knocked down didn’t disappear.

She only cried out in pain before scrambling back to her feet.

The other Jin Xuelis immediately seized the opportunity. Some pulled the door open wider, others stood guard, and two of them grabbed Mai Mingle’s arms, dragging her out of the car.

In the stark white glare of the headlights, an unreadable mix of emotions flickered in every Jin Xueli’s eyes, yet not one of them shed a tear or furrowed her brow.

"...Let her go."

As Mai Mingle struggled, she twisted her head toward the voice. Her head had been spinning for a moment, and only now, dragged into the middle of the road, could she finally see clearly that Chaisi had grabbed the Jin Xueli at the back of the car.

One of his hands pressed her against the car, his palm nearly covering the entire back of her head.

Despite his injuries, Chaisi easily suppressed her resistance. Her weapon, an iron hammer, was now somehow in his hand.

The Jin Xueli at the back of the car certainly hadn’t been caught willingly, but even after being attacked by Chaisi, she still hadn’t disappeared.

"I once told you I was willing to be your ally. No matter how many of you there are, that hasn’t changed."

Chaisi said, panting, "Let her go. You want money, I’ll give it to you."

One of the Jin Xuelis holding Mai Mingle shook her head.

"I already told you, what we’ll get isn’t just money... but everything money can buy. Your money can’t buy anything in this world. Only that one hundred million—"

Whatever she was about to say next, Mai Mingle and Chaisi would never have the chance to find out.

Because at that moment, all the Jin Xuelis present suddenly flickered like slightly misaligned projections of light—like the image in a kaleidoscope the instant it’s twisted.

In the instant before they vanished, each Jin Xueli’s figure seemed to spin into the shape of a question mark.