Chapter 262: [Rotten Bones and Resurrected Flesh] At Death’s Door
By rights, Bai Cha could have charged straight upstairs herself.
However, she was a law-abiding individual.
Meanwhile, prompted by her reminder, the receptionist paused in surprise.
“Are you talking about a girl with curly hair wearing a pink dress? The one who came with a man?”
Bai Cha’s face darkened.
“That’s her. Lead the way!”
Nodding hastily in an instant, the receptionist pressed the elevator button for her.
“They’re upstairs in Room 403—I won’t be going up.”
“No, you must go!” Bai Cha fixated a dark, gloomy glare onto her.
Putting on a tearful face, the receptionist could only bite the bullet and step into the elevator alongside her.
“How did they get here?”
Bai Cha inquired inside the elevator, whetting her knife against the elevator wall even as she asked.
“Well… are you here to catch them cheating? But that girl looked like she was passed out—I don’t know if she drank too much…”
The receptionist couldn’t suppress her gossip-driven curiosity.
“What do you mean catching them cheating? That girl is my sister! Ghosts only know where that man came from! You saw her passed out—why didn’t you call the police?!”
With her hair disheveled and her gaze fierce and murderous, the receptionist’s face turned white in a single instant.
She stammered twice.
“I… well… the man used his ID card to check in, so I…”
“What about the woman’s ID? Doesn’t checking in require both people?”
“…We aren’t some legitimate place… 10 yuan for an hour, and only 30 for the whole night…”
The receptionist’s voice grew steadily softer as she spoke.
Ding—
The elevator arrived.
Fixating her stare onto her, Bai Cha signaled for her to walk up front and lead the way.
Truth be told, the receptionist’s words weren’t out of expectation.
This was precisely why she had forced the receptionist to come upstairs with her right from the start.
That umbrella bore so many written characters; she hadn’t read what every single one said clearly, yet judging by the few she caught at a single glance, she could roughly piece together the story.
Had she charged upstairs to slaughter the man all by herself, the receptionist would inevitably gossip downstairs.
And people’s very first assumption regarding an incident like this would inevitably be: Did she go to catch them cheating?
Even if proven otherwise later on, without witnessing it with their own eyes—relying merely on a single mouth running wild—people would say whatever they pleased, refusing to offer explanations upon discovering the truth later.
Because explaining implied admitting one was wrong earlier.
Admitting a mistake was exceedingly difficult.
Even if that mistake held absolute zero actual harm to the gossiper themselves.
Yet which gossip-monger, upon discovering the truth, would go around explaining it to others?
Arriving before the door of Room 403, the receptionist began knocking.
“Hello! Please open the door!”
A man’s voice echoed from inside: “Who is it?!”
The receptionist stole a nervous glance at Bai Cha.
“Reception desk! We just found a thousand yuan dropped on the floor downstairs—not sure if it’s yours, so open the door to take a look!” Bai Cha spouted off the top of her head.
Footsteps echoed from inside immediately, heading toward the doorway.
Bai Cha signaled for the receptionist to step aside.
Plastering herself against the wall with complete obedience, the receptionist refrained from bothering her in the slightest.
With a soft click, the door opened.
The exact instant the door swung open, Bai Cha swung her knife forward without a shred of hesitation.
Slashed directly across the chest, the man emitted an instant, agonizing scream. He wasn’t even wearing clothes, clad in merely a pair of boxers.
As he collapsed onto the floor, Bai Cha delivered a kick straight between his legs. Regrettably, for ease of movement in the game, she wasn’t wearing high heels; the shoe soles were far too soft, and her own strength was far too weak.
Shaking her head in disappointed frustration at her own lack of strength, Bai Cha stepped over the man groaning continuously in pain on the floor.
The room was tiny. Lying atop the bed was a woman whose clothing had already been torn open.
Bai Cha held no way of confirming whether she had arrived in the nick of time, though in truth, even if she had…
This was likely an event that had already come to pass anyway.
Flipping through the room, she found no pajamas in this small motel, so she simply pulled up the bedsheet to drape it over Liu Ruyi.
Next, she noticed an abnormal redness across Liu Ruyi’s body, her skin running a faint fever.
Pondering for a moment, Bai Cha called for an ambulance.
There was no way around it… she truly lacked the strength to carry the girl out in her arms.
Blame it on her being far too frail; her other roommates back in her university dorm could easily princess-carry someone and walk quite a long distance.
As for her, she had to use her teeth just to twist open a bottle cap.
Furthermore, she owned no car here, and her strength was exhausted; hijacking a car wasn’t realistic, leaving calling an ambulance as the only viable option.
As for the man lying on the floor over there… Bai Cha cast a cold, detached glance across him—the man had already scrambled and crawled his way out.
Exceedingly normal—who would want to stay in a room with a blood-drenched person who hacked people the moment she stepped up?
Pondering for a moment, Bai Cha stood up and walked to the doorway.
She then caught the sound of the receptionist calling the police.
Whispering into her phone while stealing glances in this direction, the receptionist locked eyes flush with Bai Cha as she arrived at the door, freezing on the spot in an instant.
Bai Cha offered her a half-smile, ignoring her completely.
Let her call the police then—she wanted to send that man on the floor into prison as well anyway.
What? She was drenched in blood and hacking people at random?
No matter—she believed the purpose of this world’s existence wasn’t to arrest her.
Still, preparations were required all the same.
Casting a backward glance at Liu Ruyi on the bed, Bai Cha set about whetting her knife once more.
Whetting a knife against floor tiles was far less convenient than against outdoor concrete, yet that was unimportant; what mattered was the imposing aura.
The kitchen knife scraped against the floor with a rhythmic clack-clack, paired with her twisted, sinister smile, making anyone’s heart leap in terror.
Before long, the sounds of police sirens and ambulance sirens arrived simultaneously.
The relevant personnel charged straight up to the fourth floor.
The receptionist had fled long ago, trailing after the injured man to the ground floor.
The ones coming upstairs were primarily the police officers.
Meanwhile, Bai Cha had begun coughing the moment she caught the sound of sirens.
Her body held a peculiar quirk: if she wished to intentionally cough up blood, it posed zero difficulty whatsoever—it was simply thoroughly exhausting, that was all.
Bai Cha coughed desperately; by the time the police and doctors rushed up, what met their eyes was Bai Cha vomiting blood in massive, wracking mouthfuls.
She was already covered in blood to begin with.
This appeared somewhat different from the demonic, lunatic female killer image described by the receptionist.
“You’re finally here! Save her first—I don’t know if she suffered an allergic reaction from being drugged!”
The doctor looked at the person on the bed, stepping over to perform a swift check before calling personnel over to carry Liu Ruyi away immediately.
Hesitating briefly, the doctor signaled for the police to send Bai Cha to the hospital as well—how did her state of coughing up blood look like she was at death’s door?
In the event that the blood covering her body was coughed up by Bai Cha herself, a life was at stake here as well.
Bai Cha was incapable of getting up on her own, hoisted up by officers instead.
She was genuinely too exhausted to stand; running all the way here had drained every last drop of her physical strength, paired with her desperate coughing up of blood just now.
Her entire person was indeed at death’s door.
And so, following examinations at the hospital, it turned out that the hacked man’s injuries were actually the lightest of the bunch.
Because the kitchen knife itself had turned dull and nicked, and Bai Cha’s strength was small to begin with, his wounds amounted merely to superficial flesh cuts, failing to even constitute minor injuries.
Liu Ruyi was undergoing emergency treatment for an allergic reaction to medication.
Bai Cha’s examination results, on the other hand, yielded: multiple organ failure + leukemia + anemia.
Virtually on the verge of passing away shortly.
She herself had plunged into a deep slumber as well.
By the time she woke up, daylight had broken.
Standing solemnly by her bedside, a police officer set about inquiring after her information. After wrapping up the basic details, he got straight to the point.
“Last night, according to the motel receptionist’s account, you claimed you were going to save your sister. However, we detected DNA from multiple different individuals in the blood covering your body. Please explain in detail where all this blood originated from!”
Bai Cha looked at him with a frail expression.
“Stolen,” she parted her lips weakly.
“?”
