by N. Heller
Shocked, Lin Sanjiu slammed her palms against the window, subconsciously shouting through the glass window, "You're leaving?" After Lin Sanjiu said that, she froze for a second. She stared at her own hands and then at the window.
As she was anxious, she didn't control her strength. Logically speaking, the force she exerted would have caused the window to shatter. However, there was only a palm print on the window. Right now, she was just like a normal human before the apocalypse. Her palms even felt slightly numb from the recoil.
The husky female voice disappeared before Lin Sanjiu realized, as if the man's threat had worked.
Through the grime-covered window, Lin Sanjiu saw that the man on the walkway slowly turned around.
There were no lamps in the walkway, so the only light source was from the many stars outside. As the walls of the house blocked out most of the light, its interior was very dark. With the limited lighting, Lin Sanjiu thought that the man was wearing a mask when she first saw his face. However, when she saw it close through the glass window as he approached, she nearly screamed.
The person seemed to be Caucasian. His knobby uneven skin was pallid white. Lin Sanjiu wasn't actually certain of the person's ethnicity because half of that man's face was like melted wax. His eyes were merely two long narrow black openings on his horrifying, rotting face.
"What's wrong? You don't like my face?" The man's muffled voice came from behind his surgical face mask and through the glass window. His voice dripped with ruthless glee. "I do like my face ruined by late-stage syphilis. Especially the reaction women show when they see my face."
Lin Sanjiu felt nauseous just hearing that man utter the word "syphilis". However, she didn't avert her gaze. Lin Sanjiu moved her slightly trembling fingers around the window frame. Click. She locked the window.
"Oh, you noticed? You aren't slow," the man looked as though he wanted to lift his eyebrow but he no longer had any. He straightened his back and slowly took a few steps backward.
Unfortunately, she could not match the man's strength. Even though she had tried her best, the doorknob started turning again. Knowing that the man would soon open the door, Lin Sanjiu quickly noticed the door chain and grabbed it. The door opened slightly and she staggered a few steps backward, however, she barely managed to latch the door chain and it now held the man back.
Under normal circ.u.mstances, her actions would be laughable considering a posthuman's strength. However, this time it helped Lin Sanjiu gain some precious minutes. The man kicked the door violently for a few times, but it did not budge. In the end, he stopped.
"Even though this house f.o.r.c.i.b.l.y 'reinstates' us back to our ordinary human states before the apocalypse, you know your struggles are useless," the man placed his mouth near the ajar door so that his voice could be heard clearly. Meanwhile, Lin Sanjiu pushed a sofa toward the door with much effort.
"Do you know how I got syphilis?"
Once he said that, he was pushed back by a large force from inside the house. Something hit the door and closed it. Next, the door was locked rapidly.
Lin Sanjiu felt a little breathless even though the only thing she did was to push the sofa to the door. She almost couldn't believe how weak she was before she evolved. Without making a sound, she turned around and surveyed the house.
As she couldn't summon her [Ability Polishing Agent], everything around her was swallowed by the darkness. She could only see the outlines of some things in the room. Despite that, with the little light from the starfield, she could see the open-concept kitchen and a dining table at the other end of the living room. There was a corridor between the living and the kitchen which lead to a bedroom and a washroom. It looked like a normal studio apartment.
"In the Soviet prison, your tattoos determines your rank."
There was contentment in the man's voice as he reminisced. He walked toward the window again. Lin Sanjiu was startled. Wasting no time observing her surroundings, she carried the large vase in the living room and rushed to the window. A smile grew slowly on the man's rotting face as he looked at her through the grime-covered window.
"You might wonder how is it possible to get tattoos in a high-security prison?" He took a few steps back as if he was gathering his strength. "You can make a handmade tattoo gun with an electric razor and a needle. You create the dye with burnt rubber and urine. You get an intricate tattoo over the years, using that needle used by dozens, no, hundreds of men before you..."
Crash. The sound of shattered glass pierced the silence. Broken glass laid strewn near the window. Lin Sanjiu felt her heart miss a beat. She raised the vase without hesitation and tried to smash it on the black shadow that was coming through the broken window. However, the vase hit the windowsill. When she looked up, she realized that though the man broke the window with a kick, he quickly withdrew his feet.
The cold frigid air from the dark starfield flooded into the house through the broken window. Lin Sanjiu's breath instantly turned white as she grasped a broken fragment from the vase firmly in her hand. Lin Sanjiu looked out of the broken window and noticed that the man was no longer standing at the wooden walkway.
"No matter what happens, I must stop him from entering." Lin Sanjiu sprinted to the kitchen but she could not find a knife. She found a shelf full of red wine instead. With no other choice, she took a bottle of red wine and ran to the back of the house. Since they were now ordinary humans, she had to consider the natural disparity in strength as a woman. Right now, the protection from this house was her only advantage.
Lin Sanjiu kicked open a few doors in the house and locked a few more windows. Yet, Lin Sanjiu could not find any trace of that man.
"Mrs. Manas, please come out now…" she mumbled to herself as she lifted a mattress and placed it against a window. "Please come out now… I can't die here. I still need to find my grand prize…"
No matter where she went, there was only silence. Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath and ran out of the master bedroom hurriedly. When she turned her head around, her blood froze. The back door of this house was a glass door.
"How is this a good house!" she cursed as she rushed to the backdoor. Thankfully, the back door was locked and she didn't see any sign of forced entry. It was only then that she felt a slight relief.
When she looked out of the glass door, she saw a wooden walkway, just like the front of the house. The wooden walkway was wrapped around half the house. Outside this incredibly ordinary and everyday building was the scenery like that of outer space, filled with stars.
The glass reflected the faint lights from the stars far and near. Lin Sanjiu looked a few times outside the house. Then, she froze.
She saw a white breath floating right above her shoulder in the cold, frigid air.
Chapter 467 - Kitchen Cleaning Spray
The chill was almost tangible, hanging heavily amongst the air particles, and brought the temperature of the room down to an absolute freeze.
The air was still, there was no sound, and Lin Sanjiu could feel nothing but the gloomy and raw air that coated every pore on her body. The condition was so frigid that she couldn't even breathe properly.
Another puff of white breath kissed her ear. It was nearer this time.
Behind her was a dreadful stillness.
Then, there was a sound; the suffocating eternal hush was shattered. Emboldening herself, she looked onto the cosmos outside the glass door and whispered under her breath, "...That's strange. Where is he..."
As she said that, she moved one step closer to the glass door. Had she not psych up and focused her muscles, her legs might have gone weak.
At the back of Lin Sanjiu's reflection, a pale contour line was faintly materializing. She stared fixate at the outline, and gently placed her hand on the glass panel.
The outline quivered.
"He saw his reflection!"
As the thought flashed into her mind, Lin Sanjiu kept her balance by pressing on the glass panel and sent a kick at her back. She was aim
ing at the man's knee, but the latter was a heartbeat faster. He took a step back to evade her boot and quickly connected with a counter-attack of his own by grabbing onto her ankle. Lin Sanjiu's heart wrenched as she twisted her body, her hand gestured half a circle in the air, and she slammed the bottle in her hand on that deformed face. Crash. In seconds, the liquid contents sprayed out into the air from the shattered bottle, drenching her entirely.
The man released a guttural beast-like growl, covering his face with his hand. Lin Sanjiu saw the opportunity and withdrew her leg from his grasp. She quickly ran her fingers across the door, attempting to unlock it. The man had blocked the walkway entirely behind her, and she had merely a few seconds before she could escape from the man's clutches...
However, just when her fingers touched the door lock, she felt an intense sharp pain coursing from the rear of her head. The man was grabbing her hair with a deadly grip, as if he was trying to pull her scalp out altogether. Lin Sanjiu winced at the pain and helplessly lifted her head backward along with the force as the man hissed into her ear, "...When I'm in pain, I will be furious."
She couldn't free herself from the man's steel-like grip, and he was dragging her back into the room. Lin Sanjiu whimpered unconsciously, extending her fingertip as far as she could to reach for the door lock. Just when her finger touched the door lock and it slid open with a click, she felt the man had suddenly exerted more force on his grip. Thanks to the sudden boost, he had successfully pulled her down to the floor.
"...First time in the astral plane?"
Lin Sanjiu fell hard on the ground littered with the debris of the bottle which she had shattered a few seconds ago. A sharp pain ripped quickly through Lin Sanjiu's entire body, numbing her senses. Yet, she was still sensible enough to feel the man's hot breath puffing on her face, "Too bad, this will be your last time here as well."
Seizing the opportunity as the man released her hair, Lin Sanjiu propped herself up from the floor on one elbow, trying to make her getaway. It was just that, without her evolved ability, the physical prowess between a Russian mafia and an office lady was as significant as heaven was from earth. It wasn't long before the man stepped on her hair and pinned her on the floor. In her horror-stricken gasp, she saw the man had balled his right hand into a fist, and the next thing she felt was a massive hit on her windpipe.
Pain cleaved quickly through Lin Sanjiu's throat. For a moment, there were stars in Lin Sanjiu's eyes as she could almost feel her trachea had been squeezed into her brain, soon to be snapped into two pieces. Seeing that the deadly punch was soon to make its second descend, she fought back the intense pain tugging at her head and used all her might to turn around. Then, the piece of sharp bottle fragment, which she had been holding in her palm all that time, was finally stabbed into the man's calf.
As her adversary doubled over in pain, Lin Sanjiu immediately jolted free and lunged toward the glass door. After she'd pulled the door opened, she rushed into the walkway that paved with a wooden plank. In a blink, Lin Sanjiu heard heavy and quick footsteps ranging out behind her as the man had followed her into the walkway.
Lin Sanjiu's lungs burned with pain as she continued to sprint down the walkway. But she wasn't given enough liberty to tend to her injuries because she was about to reach the end of the walkway. Beyond that, lay the cosmos.
The moment she left the house, she knew she would only fall into the man's clutches even faster.
When Lin Sanjiu stopped to formulate her escape plan, the man's head had appeared from the corner behind her. Lin Sanjiu looked around as her heart pounded like a wild beast trying to escape her c.h.e.s.t. She found she had trapped herself in a tight corner. Next to her was the front door that was barred with a sofa and locked by her, so she couldn't get in through that door now. Though she could enter the house through the broken window, the window was roughly six steps at her back. In other words, she had to retrace down the walkway and embrace the peril of getting caught by the man if she wanted to go into the house via the window.
Her situation now called for her immediate action as she would end up in a sorry state if she remained indecisive.
Gritting her teeth, Lin Sanjiu turned and rushed back. As the distance between them got shorter, a grotesque smile was swiftly formed on the man's face that plighted with large and small gummas. Seeing that the man had already stretched his hand forward, Lin Sanjiu made a sudden swerve and hurled herself toward the outside of the walkway.
They would revert to their higher consciousness form the moment they left the walkway. The man was ultra fast. As Lin Sanjiu made her moves, he leaped and jumped out from the walkway first. Pale starlight appeared amongst the darkness. However, before Lin Sanjiu left the wooden floor of the walkway, she exerted force against the edge of the walkway with her feet.
Without wasting a second, she propelled herself into the window.
"You insolent—"
The man cursed Lin Sanjiu aloud in the air. Congealing into a streak of white ray, he dashed into the house again. The moment he touched the fringe of the walkway, he returned to his human form. Then, he rushed toward the window and grabbed Lin Sanjiu by her feet.
At that precise moment, half of Lin Sanjiu's body was inside the house; only her feet were left dangling at the window frame. When she felt the tug at her feet, she struggled with all her might, sending kicks after kicks at the man. As one of her kicks connected with the c.h.e.s.t of the man and caused the latter to stagger back, she took the opportunity and pulled her entire body, including her feet, into the house. Only then, she realized that she had been screaming the whole time.
"Well, here we are, back to square one," the man snarled through gritted teeth and heavy breath as he recomposed himself at the walkway, "...I have decided, little kitty, before I strip away your Potential Growth Value, I'm gonna etch a tattoo in your brain first, with needle and urine… Oh, don't think I can't do that."
As he said that, he slowly moved toward the other side and soon, his figure disappeared from the walkway.
The concrete had not only served as the protective barrier for Lin Sanjiu, but it also had prevented her from attaining the exact location of her assailant. Moments ago, the man had utilized the wall to his advantage and tricked her into the room whilst he crawled into the house through the window and ambushed her from behind. Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but wince at the fact that she had no other way to shatter the impasse or turn the table to her favor. There were too many doors and windows in this house, and all she could do was move back and fro between the doors and windows as she didn't know how to put on a decent defense.
"And she calls this a splendid house?"
Lin Sanjiu chastised that person who placed her in this house internally as she made her move into the deeper part of it. She rummaged through the study room, and the rear entrance, yet there was no sign of the man. She returned to the living room again. And as her gaze fell on the glassless window that allowed the entrance of the chilling draughts of wind, she heard that somebody had shattered the window in the bathroom at her back.
Terror-filled, she immediately ran into the kitchen and took another bottle of wine as that was her only mean of defending herself. Then, quietly, she crept toward the walkway.
The walkway was dimly lit. The door to the bathroom was half ajar, and the lock was clashing itself against the door panel as the door swayed in the wind. Although there were no lights in this house, Lin Sanjiu recalled that the door was tightly shut when she walked past it a few minutes ago. She could feel the freezing draughts of wind even though she was standing far away from the bathroom.
However, there was only the echo of the clanking of the door in the walkway. It highlighted the deadly silence behind the bathroom.
Driving by an unknown force, Lin Sanjiu stopped moving forward. She bent her body down, deploying a half-squatting position as she pricked up her ears.
At first, she couldn't hear any sound behind her fluttering and loud heartbeats; only the ti
ngling sensation of pain, trembling, and the sweat in her palms that were apparent to her. Nevertheless, when she calmed herself down, she had caught a strange noise with her ears. The noise was soft, and she might think she had a paracusia if she didn't concentrate all her focus on her ears.
"Creak" —It sounded like this, and it had her brought her two brows together, meeting at the center of her forehead as she felt the noise was familiar.
She ferreted through her memories for the reference of the noise and when the realization finally dawned on her, her blood turned cold.
From the window in the living room, the person only needed to walk a few more steps forward and he would be able to take in the entirety of the walkway, including the spot she was squatting right now.
Lin Sanjiu did not have the confidence for another few more melee struggles.
Holding her breath, she looked back. A shadow was standing up from the ground. It seemed that he had just come in from the window.
Lin Sanjiu's heart skipped a beat as she pressed her body against the ground. She put the bottle of wine down and slithered her way back into the kitchen. She could make use of the cooking island in the kitchen to obscure her presence from the man. When she was under the cooking island and had tucked in her entire body, the man had arrived at the walkway.
He continued to walk down the walkway. Apparently, he didn't realize somebody was hiding beside him.
If somebody now told her that there was a way that could stop a human's heart from making any sound, Lin Sanjiu would've been more than glad to try it out. She inched back silently and climbed over the refrigerator. Her escapade was coming to an end—all she needed to do right now was crawl across the area below the stove and wave through the cooking island, then she could escape through the back of the man.
However, suddenly, the man's footsteps stopped.