Chapter 1362: Nu Yue's Decision
Nu Yue sat in the grass, her ears ringing like cicadas reluctant to leave summer, buzzing incessantly.
The weeds pricked her skin, and cold sweat slowly emerged and dried again. A breeze brought the smell of smoke and flames licking at the car's cracked wreckage.
There was silence in the earpiece for a long time, and then Han Suiping's voice came through, sounding like a low groan as if he had been struck in the chest.
There was no movement from Wan Qingge in the overturned and destroyed car ahead.
The people at the checkpoint were on high alert, spreading out and raising their guns to surround the exploded car. After one of them suppressed the flames with a fire extinguisher, he crouched down to inspect the car for a few minutes, then waved to his teammates. "Hey, come take a look."
Everyone focused on the car, and no one noticed Nu Yue hiding a few hundred meters away. Han Suiping's voice sounded hoarse and meaningless; Nu Yue listened for a few seconds, then suddenly stood up, whispering into the earpiece, "Stay calm! Have you seen the cameras near the checkpoint?"
Unlike Han Suiping, Nu Yue had seen too much life and death. What needed to be done must be done by someone.
"Yes... I see them."
"Why are you crying? Help me cut off the video signals from those cameras," Nu Yue said, crouching low, like a fox. She leaped out of the bushes and dashed towards the checkpoint, where the soldiers ahead suddenly loomed larger in her vision. When the two sides were only tens of meters apart, Nu Yue suddenly changed direction and ducked under the checkpoint's wall.
"Du Hu Team A15, reporting."
Someone on the road ahead opened a walkie-talkie. Nu Yue peeked and saw a person who looked like the leader. He reported while staring at the car, "The target vehicle has exploded, but the target is still breathing. Requesting instructions on what to do next."
Still breathing!
In such a close and intense explosion, an unprepared and weakened posthuman usually cannot survive. So, did Wan Qingge realize something was wrong at the last moment and use some self-defense mechanism?
Nu Yue's heart immediately pounded, and in the earpiece, Han Suiping almost screamed, "Go save him!"
"Don't make noise!"
Nu Yue clenched her fists tightly and glanced outside. Everyone was surrounding the car; if she circled around the other side of the checkpoint...
If Wan Qingge wasn't dead, he was seriously injured, and if she went to save him, it would mean exposing herself for nothing and ruining the plan. Could she still sneak into the rocket launch headquarters carrying a dying man on her back?
A response came over the walkie-talkie, "Is the injury severe? Take a look. How damaged is the target's body?"
The leader crouched down and reached into the car window with his gun barrel as if he had to dig through a trash can to find something.
"Blood everywhere," he answered. "There's a large area of flesh and blood in the lower back."
"Is it the kidney area? Is the organ damaged?"
"It looks like it."
There was silence on the walkie-talkie for a few seconds, and then the sound of electricity crackling. Before the communication was cut off, the man on the other end said, "Then, shoot him on the spot."
A string in Nu Yue's mind snapped.
Before another part of her could scream, 'Don't bother, hurry up and leave,' her body had already taken action. The man had just raised his gun, and her left hand made a throwing motion toward him; the man's forehead immediately caved in as if a piece of flesh-colored clay had suddenly been pressed down by a finger.
The young man standing opposite him happened to see this scene.
When his eyes suddenly widened, the man's forehead regained its fullness. Whatever had caused it to dent before seemed to have been bounced back. Though it was clearly flesh and blood, it seemed to have the elasticity of a trampoline.
If the young man had considered another comparison, he wouldn't have had a chance to say it. Like the man's forehead, his face silently caved in like a bowl. An invisible steel ball seemed to be bouncing between their heads.
With two thumps, the two of them almost fell down at the same time.
"It's no good," Nu Yue muttered. "The last one... and I only got two of them down in the end."
"What... what's going on?" Han Suiping asked in a low voice.
It was her small weapon, invisible to enemies and herself. When she bought it from the Twelve Worlds, it was packed in a box of 12 and had to be taken out when needed. Held in hand, each one was round and heavy, about the size of an apple.
Any surface they touched instantly turned into a flexible rubber-like material. When they were bounced away, the surface returned to its original structure—but the deformation caused by the contact between the two objects was not reversed. In other words, while the forehead bounced back up, the invisible ball smashed the skull and brain inside.
Once these spheres were thrown out, they would bounce around on various surfaces without knowing how to avoid the owner who threw them; the owner throwing them would usually hide in a safe place until their effects wore off. The spheres had a short duration, and after just over ten seconds, the surfaces of the surrounding objects would no longer show mysterious dents—and at this point, Nu Yue had no idea where the spheres she had thrown had ended up.
"What's going on?"
"Can he move?"
Under the surprise of the remaining two, they quickly picked up their guns and aimed at the car. Seeing no movement in the car, one of them cautiously approached a dead person, still holding a gun, and said, "I didn't see any wounds... Hey, what's wrong with you? Can you hear me?"
When Nu Yue silently pounced, she secretly hoped she wouldn't be as unlucky as 'Citizen Mr. Guo'—among the customers who used the small spheres, this person was quite famous, although the seller had hidden his full name for privacy. It was said that he rushed out after the spheres stopped bouncing, then tripped over his own ball and was almost caught by the duoluozhong.
Fortunately, she didn't trip.
Nu Yue pounced on the man's back like a hungry tiger; the man with the A13 badge couldn't withstand this force and immediately fell forward. The last person fired a burst of gunfire, tearing through the air behind Nu Yue—she pressed her hands on the man's head, and in an instant, countless thick silver threads covered his face, completely enveloping his head, as if a spider had laid eggs on his neck.
The man wrapped inside immediately opened his mouth wide, trying to suck in air, but the thick silver threads pressed tightly against his nose and mouth, making it impossible to breathe.
Clutching his back tightly, Nu Yue rolled herself over, blocking the man in front of her with a roll - the gunfire from the last gun stopped abruptly. She leaned her head over the shoulder of the cocoon to take a look and found the fourth person hurriedly retreating, presumably trying to go back to the checkpoint for protection.
Even as he retreated, he still demonstrated high professionalism: the gun remained aimed at Nu Yue, every step was fast and steady, and although his eyes were fixed on her, he quickly approached the checkpoint. Nu Yue's abilities were also not insignificant, but for a moment, facing the barrel of the gun, she couldn't think of what to do. She had taken advantage of the surprise with the cocoon. If she wanted to compare speed with a machine gun, she wasn't that confident.
As he took the next step forward, the fourth man suddenly swayed as if stepping on something invisible before he fell to the ground along with the gun.
Before he hit the ground, Nu Yue seized the opportunity to pounce from behind the suffocating man. And the last battle ended fifteen seconds later.
"Great!" Han Suiping said, having been watching the area through the satellite screen. "You took them down, and Brother Wan is saved!"
Breathing heavily, Nu Yue stood up from the fourth person and put the machine gun away in her storage tool. The battle didn't last long but took up half of her strength. She silently walked towards the car wreckage, squatting to look inside at Wan Qingge.
As soon as her gaze fell upon him, she knew she'd better not look too closely.
With difficulty, Nu Yue removed the deformed car door and carefully carried Wan Qingge away from the seat. Smoke, black ash, large patches of blood, deformed and broken internal components... it was like a glimpse into a horrifying world inside the car shell.
After dragging the unconscious Wan Qingge to the side of the road, she was covered in bloodstains, a sight that was shocking to behold. Nu Yue lay down beside Wan Qingge amidst the four bodies and a wrecked car, panting heavily as she gazed at the sky. Beside her ear, Han Suiping couldn't contain his excitement; she listened for a while before speaking softly.
"Haven't you realized yet? I made the worst, most terrible decision."
Han Suiping was stunned. "Wh... what?"
"I shouldn't have saved him. They already knew Wan Qingge was going to the base at this moment. Now all four people at the checkpoint are dead and their superiors can't contact them, so naturally, they'll know that besides Wan Qingge, there's another companion here."
The thin cotton-like clouds slowly spread out and then gathered back together, gently rolling across the blue sky. Wan Qingge's chest rose and fell so faintly it was almost imperceptible; his face, however, appeared strangely calm. If not for the bloodstains on his eyebrows and eyelashes, he looked like he was just sleeping.
"What difference does it make if I saved him? He's heavily injured now and can't be left alone or taken away. I don't have a car anymore, so I can't get past the next checkpoint," Nu Yue murmured, raising her hand to cover her eyes. "Our plan failed the moment I rushed out to save him."