by N. Heller
The dark red war banner unfolded in the air. It started waving noisily in the air, even though there wasn't any victory. Zhu Mingchun chuckled and all his bones started making crackling sounds. His body grew by about ten feet, and within a short time he was huge, almost like a prehistoric creature. He suddenly had a very threatening aura.
"Oh no!" Rena couldn't help muttering.
Zhu Mingchun rolled his eyes and looked down at the girl from high above. He let out a vicious roar. His mammoth-like body moved and he smashed his huge left fist down on Rena, using half his body weight...
"You can die once first!" Zhu Mingchun's voice echoed in the dark. It was so loud that the rubble from the collapsed building vibrated.
Rena couldn't help letting out a sharp cry. Zhu Mingchun's fist was almost the size of half her body. Her leg was injured so she couldn't dodge as fast as she usually could. As the huge fist, almost the size of a hill, loomed over her, casting its shadow, Lin Sanjiu screamed involuntarily in her heart and tried her best to rush forward—
Just then, a piece of yellowish white shadow swept past her. "Smack!" Just as Zhu Mingchun's fist was about to reach Rena, that thing hit the man's fist.
"Huh? " Lin Sanjiu watched in a daze as that shadow disappeared into the air. Zhu Mingchun's fist, which was clearly going to hit its target, suddenly hit the ground, missing Rena as if he had swerved his arm.
"Brother! You're awake!" The teenage girl who had a close shave with death rolled and crawled away. She looked up and yelled delightedly, "You used your almanac?"
Reno lay with his c.h.e.s.t on the ground. Before the blood on the side of his mouth had dried, he had vomited another mouthful of blood. His face was so white that it was almost comparable to a duoluozhong. He took a few breaths before he finally replied, "Yes…"
"From the looks of it, his injuries were far worse than organ trauma... " Lin Sanjiu was worried.
Then, she heard Reno speaking again, "Energies for the day make it suitable for relocation, suitable for festival feasts… unsuitable... unsuitable for fighting…"
There wasn't another almanac page more suitable than this!
Even though Reno's voice was very soft, Zhu Mingchun heard everything clearly. At first, he tried attacking them a few times, as if he refused to believe in this heresy. Yet, he realized that each time he tried to attack the two people in front of him, he would miss no matter what. On the other hand, when they attacked him, his body felt heavy and clumsy. Within less than a minute, he had been hit quite a few times by Rena's fly-whisk. The muscles in his legs cramped up like a fried dough stick. He knew that he couldn't get anything from this even if he continued fighting.
Seeing that the situation had turned against him, Zhu Mingchun was quick to react. He grabbed his war banner and started to run. His body shrunk back to its original size as he sprinted away. Noticing that Rena was intending to check her brother's condition, Lin Sanjiu held her back and quickly wrote two words, "Catch him!"
Rena suddenly realized her mistake. She hit her head and followed the smoke-like skull. After a few leaps, she managed to hit the back of Zhu Mingchun's leg with her fly-whisk heavily. As long as Zhu Mingchun engaged in a fight, his movements would slow down significantly. His speed dropped to that of a normal person and he fell down from the impact of the fly-whisk attack without even much of a struggle.
"Tell us! What do those numbers mean!" Rena shouted as she stepped on his twisted left leg. He screamed in pain.
Chapter 244 - He Won't Steal Your Heart, He'll Just Steal Your Body: Don't Mess With a Cat Demon
"I've already told you all you need to know. Seeing that I don't have a choice, could you please show me mercy?" Zhu Mingchun's trembling voice seemed to echo in Rena's mind. She bit her lip and looked at the unconscious man on the ground. She looked a little hesitant.
After Lin Sanjiu caught Zhu Mingchun off guard and knocked him out, she wrote to Rena in a half-persuasive, half-commanding attitude.
"Under this circ.u.mstances, either you'll die or he'll die. There is no alternative. If you don't have the heart to kill him now, in the future, he'll be a ticking time bomb. We don't know if he heard my name…"
Seeing Lin Sanjiu spending effort to write the long sentences, Rena finally nodded. She sighed and she bent over. Picking up Zhu Mingchun's legs, the teenage girl said in an almost sighing manner, "I know what you mean. This is indeed the best method. I am not a soft-hearted person. But, I'm going to kill an unconscious person now. This feeling… just isn't the same as killing someone in combat..."
Lin Sanjiu could understand that feeling. When she was in Hyperthermal Hell, she felt the same way when facing Chen Xiaoyuan, who was working with a duoluozhong. From a certain angle, Rena, who was raised in the Twelve Worlds Centrum, was somewhat similar to her past self. However, she didn't know when she gradually got a little... numbed to all this.
If a person treats her as an enemy or attempts to kill her companions, Lin Sanjiu realized that she could decide whether to kill that person in a few seconds without feeling much.
"Is this good or bad?" Lin Sanjiu "patted" Rena and consoled in words, "I told you to kill him. It's not your fault."
Zhu Mingchun must die. This was not only because he posed a great danger to Lin Sanjiu's team, but also because Rena needed the numbers on his back. Lin Sanjiu couldn't help thinking back to the moment when Rena broke Zhu Mingchun's legs. The man screamed painfully as tears rolled down his cheeks, "It's a pocket dimension. The numbers indicate that a person is in a pocket dimension!"
"What?" Rena was stunned when she heard this. She looked at Lin Sanjiu and demanded, "Give us more details!"
"It's like this…" Zhu Mingchun, who didn't think twice when he attacked others, was surprising susceptible to pain. He drew a breath and said, "If you use a pocket dimension sensor to scan this area, you wouldn't find anything unusual. Because, because this is still part of Kisaragi Station World. It doesn't work like other pocket dimensions which are independent spaces."
After he tried to negotiate his way out of things, Lin Sanjiu attacked his stomach, so his attitude changed and he cooperated with them.
"How is it still a pocket dimension?" Rena stared at him, puzzled.
"It's true. At first, I couldn't believe it as well... but this is a pocket dimension. It just emerges by descending upon a person! It's true. It can be proven by the numbers…" Zhu Mingchun spoke in a jumble. He switched topics very quickly and Lin Sanjiu had to patiently hear what he said before she could get the general gist of things.
According to him, each person who had entered the pocket dimension would have a number on his or her back. This wasn't a random phenomenon, but the pocket dimension was extending throughout the various districts.
"The pocket dimension had already covered a radius of a few hundred kilometers around here. Anyone that enters this district would definitely have a number on their back," Zhu Mingchun said, full of confidence. "So... so... we looked for you guys… This was Derik's idea."
Rena ignored the man's excuses, she was only interested in learning the answer to her questions, "If that's the case, what do the numbers mean?"
Zhu Mingchun gazed at her for a moment and hesitated before answering carefully, "It indicates how many lives you have. Each time you receive an attack that can kill you, the number on your body will drop by 1... If you have 5 on our back, you can endure 4 lethal attacks. Even if you are badly hurt, you wouldn't die if your number isn't 0. And, and—"
The skull and the teenage girl focused their full attention on him.
"And?" That part was more or less similar to Lin Sanjiu's conjecture, and therefore she was more interested in the next part of what Zhu Mingchun had to say.
"Oh, everytime your number is reduced, the number on the back of your attacker would increase by one," Zhu Mingchun stammered. However, Lin Sanjiu had a bugging feeling that those words weren't what he wanted to say initially.
"This explains why you people try so har
d to deceive us," Rena laughed coldly.
"I'm telling you the truth. This is all Derik's idea!" Zhu Mingchun shouted pleadingly. However, his expression wasn't as eager as his voice, "If you let me go, I promise I won't cause any trouble for you guys again. Let's survive this pocket dimension harmoniously. Isn't that better?"
His words reminded Rena about something. "Hey, what are the conditions to complete this pocket dimension?"
Zhu Mingchun paused for two seconds and replied, "It will be completed once you stay in the pocket dimension for 180 days. You might think that it is an easy task. However, the pocket dimension is affecting more and more people each day. New people appear with numbers on their back each day in this region. These never-ending stream of people may attack you, so 180 days won't be easy."
Lin Sanjiu and Rena exchanged glances. After Rena saw Lin Sanjiu simplified sentence, she turned to ask Zhu Mingchun, "In the beginning, we have 4 on our backs. Is this the same for others?"
It was only then that Zhu Mingchun withdrew his curious gaze from Lin Sanjiu. Evidently, he couldn't tell what she was, "Yes, yes! Everyone's the same!"
Before he even finished his sentence properly, Lin Sanjiu struck his carotid artery at the back of his neck without any warning. As she didn't know the exact point that would make someone faint, she struck him quite a few times, at a lightning fast speed. With the effects of the almanac page, he finally fainted.
"What—" Before Rena could finish shouting, Zhu Mingchun hand felt limp. A small metal case that he had been holding for some unknown time felt to the ground noisily. Her expression changed instantly.
Zhu Mingchun thought that no one had noticed his little actions but Lin Sanjiu had already seen what he was doing from the scanned image created by her higher consciousness.
After both of them discussed the various strange aspects of the pocket dimension they were in, Rena pulled Zhu Mingchun's legs. She attempted to pull him to Reno's side. Observing Reno's wounds, his number was probably very low. The only thing they could do now was to let him kill Zhu Mingchun so that the number "8" on the man's back could be transferred onto Reno.
However, when the two people looked behind, they were stunned. Reno, who wasn't far from them, had fainted again. Yet, that was not what shocked them. A bicolor black-white cat, with a silk bow tie, was backing away from them, pulling Reno's feet. He was in the same position as Rena. Before they knew it, he had already dragged Reno for some distance.
The cat suddenly found himself staring at two other people. Nobody moved.
Chapter 245 - Dr. Hu's Consultation Fees
"Thud." Reno's legs fell from the cat's paws. It stirred up a bit of dust. After looking around with his black eyes, the cat finally blinked as if nothing had happened.
"We meet again," the cat doctor said in a refined manner. He gave an elegant smile—perhaps it was a smile, as no one could tell the exact expression on that cat's face. As he spoke, he took one step back. "It looks like you all are pretty busy. I shall not bother you…" the black and white cat moved extremely fast. He had already retreated quite far after saying those few words. His small body was almost a distant dot...
Startled by this incident, Rena and Lin Sanjiu couldn't react even after some time. Seeing that the cat was about to slip away, Lin Sanjiu touched Rena's shoulders and wrote two large words in midair, "Chase him!"
"Ah?" Rena was still in a daze, just like when she was in the pharmacy, "The cat doctor must be busy. It'll be impolite to make him stay…"
Someone had to watch over Zhu Mingchun. Lin Sanjiu didn't have time to comment about how suspicious the cat was as it moved farther and farther away. She looked at the cat and quickly wrote, "Consultation!" After that, she rushed toward the cat doctor.
"Oh, that's right. I need the cat doctor to check on my brother!" Rena mumbled from behind, as if she found it very logical.
Felines are naturally quick animals. This cat doctor was somehow even quicker. He could run much faster than a cheetah. Even with Lin Sanjiu's flying speed, she found it very hard to catch up with him. However, after thirty seconds, the cat, which had been sprinting as if his life depended on it, suddenly fell on the ground with a "splat". His tummy rose and fell rapidly as he panted. He looked as though he would rather die than continue running.
This is a common weakness of all felines: they have low stamina.
Lin Sanjiu landed slowly before him. She had no qualms about her decision to chase after this cat.
"Turn back," she wrote. Even though she wanted to ask the cat many questions, she knew that she could slowly get the answers from him when he went with them.
As a human, Lin Sanjiu couldn't even communicate as well as a cat right now. When she thought of this, she couldn't help having a complicated feeling. It was very obvious that the cat doctor could affect the people around him in a very curious manner. Lin Sanjiu wasn't sure if she was unaffected just because of her higher consciousness form. The black and white cat panted for some time and looked at Lin Sanjiu with its pair of watery eyes for some time. Realizing that the skull in front of him had no intention to let him go, he finally climbed up from the ground and gave her an aloof nod, "Since you are so sincere, I will have a look."
In his own drama script, he thought that anyone that heard him saying that would definitely reply with something like, "Sorry for the inconvenience, doctor." However, the skull simply stared at him coldly and did not show any sign of gratitude.
He sighed. Under Lin Sanjiu's watchful eyes, the cat returned to Reno, feeling somewhat worried.
"Doctor, you're back! We know that you're busy. We're so sorry that we have to bother you like this…" Rena said politely after she saw the black and white cat. "Would you like some tea first? Do you need to rest?"
Clearly, getting Rena to interrogate the cat wasn't very realistic.
"He has serious internal bleeding and the number on his back is now only 1. He is in critical condition, very critical… Ah, I mean it's not that critical," he seemed to suddenly realize something. "I mean, actually, he doesn't need a doctor."
"What does that mean?"
When the cat doctor looked behind him, he saw the skull approaching him so he quickly explained, "He is actually in critical condition. However, under these special circ.u.mstances, you can just transfer some numbers to him! Once the number on his back increase, he won't die. Naturally, his wounds will slowly recover."
"The doctor is so right," Rena commented as she nodded profusely. Lin Sanjiu really didn't know how she should tell her off.
Lin Sanjiu noticed that the cat doctor was busy trying to wake Reno up. Suddenly, she realized that something was wrong. "Do you know what the numbers are?" Lin Sanjiu wrote hurriedly.
"If these numbers are related to the pocket dimension they were in, how did the cat doctor know about it? He doesn't look like a posthuman… He doesn't seem to be like B.Rabbit, who has gained wisdom through some random occurrence." Lin Sanjiu thought to herself
"What are you?" After pondering for a moment, Lin Sanjiu changed her question.
The cat doctor extended his claw and pricked Reno's neck twice. Two drops of blood slowly oozed out and the teenager actually started to regain consciousness. He passed Reno to Rena before he turned to Lin Sanjiu and introduced himself proudly, "I'm Meowie Hu, I'm a doctor."He spoke as if it was just common sense.
Lin Sanjiu was immediately perplexed by his answer. At that moment, the cat doctor happened to turn and see Rena holding Reno's hand. She was about to hold his hand to stab Zhu Mingchun in the neck, the cat leaped up anxiously, "You can't do that!"
"If you help him, it would mean that you are the one who killed that man. The numbers will be transferred to you." Meowie said sternly, "Let him do it himself. It works even if he uses a Special Item or something."
The siblings fell silent for a moment after they heard what the doctor had said. Rena threw a glance at Zhu Mingchun, who was still unconscious. She clenched her teeth and passed her fly-whisk
to her brother before saying softly, "Aim it at his throat… He'll die faster."
Meowie folded his forelegs as if observing some scientific experiment. He watched closely as the fly-whisk landed heavily on Zhu Mingchun's throat. As Reno was too weak, he didn't have enough strength. Rena had to hold down Zhu Mingchun firmly while Reno hit him about eight to nine times before the man finally died.
Rena didn't know why, but it felt worse slaughtering this man like a pig than blasting Hannie to bits. All of them kept quiet for some time before the cat doctor broke the silence, "Ah, alright. He will be fine after he rests for a while."
The cat sounded high-spirited, "Well, I guess you don't need this corpse. I will reluctantly accept this as your consultation fee..." As he said this, he started dragging the corpse's legs.
Sure enough, color slowly returned to Reno's face. He also regained some energy. He had already forgotten his cat phobia and thanked the cat doctor gratuitously, "It's no problem at all. Please do take it…"
"How can you be so easily charmed!" Lin Sanjiu scolded in her mind. She rushed over and stopped Meowie. "Tell us what we want to know before you go," she wrote.
Chapter 246 - Since You Asked So Earnestly, I'll Show You Pity And Answer You
The siblings stated their objections in unison. Lin Sanjiu forcefully overruled them and got the cat doctor to stay. She had too many questions she needed answers to. While Lin Sanjiu organized her thought and deliberated over how she should start her questioning, the siblings apologized to the cat doctor profusely. They even tried to look for a good, leveled resting spot. They wanted to clean the spot with their sleeves and invite the cat to sit. When Lin Sanjiu looked up again and was about to write her questions, she found Meowie Hu lying on a cushion in a dignified manner. The cushion was on a rock and a cup of hot steaming tea was by his side.