Chapter 264: [Rotten Bones and Resurrected Flesh] Rushing Over
The crowd kept squeezing toward Bai Cha without stopping.
Bai Cha looked at the streetlights on the side of the road.
The Dodder Vines drilled into the ground, breaking the base of a streetlight.
The streetlight instantly slammed down toward the crowd.
Amidst piercing shrieks, that single heavy strike smashed numerous people to death.
It also succeeded in clearing out a portion of open space ahead.
Seizing the window, Bai Cha ran forward by stepping along the streetlight, simultaneously breaking another streetlight nearby.
Compared to these dense, endlessly spawning people, breaking streetlights consumed slightly less power.
As streetlights fell one after another, Bai Cha finally arrived at the hospital entrance.
The crowd outside dispersed, yet the hospital before her eyes dissolved away like a soapy bubble as well.
The scene shifted once more.
Bai Cha was sent back to her initial starting location yet again.
For a single fleeting moment, Bai Cha felt a wave of complete breakdown.
Because she was truly exhausted.
For someone with a frail constitution, two consecutive rounds of physical drain were practically demanding her life.
Although this world wasn’t real, if she died here, she would likely die for real, and the physical frailty of her body felt excruciatingly vivid.
This time, she could sense that the power she could deploy had increased slightly.
Yet it was merely slightly more.
Paired with the physical drain from earlier, her condition was actually far worse.
Rain had begun falling from the sky.
The rain was red.
Large, heavy droplets slammed down; Bai Cha instinctively ducked under the eaves of a roadside shop, yet despite that, she was struck nonetheless.
A searing, burning pain spread across her entire body instantly.
She looked down at her arm; there, no actual wounds were visible.
Looking back at the rain, those red droplets were clearly formed of written words.
Yet the instant they struck the ground, they dissolved back into water—colorless, transparent water.
Bai Cha sensed Liu Ruyi’s location.
Great—quite far away, even as a straight-line distance.
Bai Cha let out a deep sigh.
Then, her gaze swept across the roadside, locking onto a van.
Enduring the pain of being struck by those written words, Bai Cha rushed to the side of the van, slapping the car window with all her might.
The driver rolled down the window, about to hurl curses, when Bai Cha drove a Dodder Vine straight into his head.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry, I’m truly so sorry!”
Delivering a rapid apology, her hand exerted force to kill the driver; the corpse vanished at lightning speed, and Bai Cha was already inside the vehicle.
In truth, she had never passed her driver’s license test—primarily due to her physical health, having fallen ill midway through, making her too lazy to bother with it later on.
No matter—she still barely recalled how to operate a vehicle.
As for whether she would get into a car crash… one could only say, fortunately this wasn’t reality, so she held zero need to worry about running people over.
She needed to worry only about whether she herself would be crashed to death.
The crowd remained densely packed as ever.
Bai Cha slammed her foot on the gas pedal, charging straight out.
Overhead, those red raindrops slammed down, creating a chaotic pitter-patter sound, feeling as if the car roof might be dented out of shape.
Cracks had already begun surfacing across the windshield.
This compromised her line of sight considerably, while severely impairing steering control even further.
Bai Cha drove purely on instinct, steering the vehicle with lively vigor.
All she could say was, fortunately the obstacle-setting in this world consisted entirely of pedestrians on foot; had they been driving vehicles like her, that would be truly thrilling—everyone playing bumper cars.
Even so, after running down far too many people, setting aside how the car jolted up and down as it drove forward, the front bumper had already begun warping out of shape.
Paired with the rain growing steadily more violent, the windshield finally failed to hold out, shattering completely into pieces.
The exact instant the glass burst open, Bai Cha instinctively used the Dodder Vines to shield her head and neck.
Yet her body simply lacked the time—primarily because her power remained insufficient.
Glass shards pierced directly into her flesh driven by the impact force.
Bai Cha’s face turned noticeably paler still.
Furthermore, the pain brought on by the pouring rain slamming flush against her face proved far more agonizing than glass slicing through her flesh.
Fortunately, however, the destination arrived at long last.
With considerable difficulty, Bai Cha wove the Dodder Vines into an umbrella, holding it over her head as she ran toward the apartment building before her.
The person appeared to be atop the roof.
Yet in this apartment building, the elevator happened to be broken.
Although Bai Cha hadn’t counted exactly how many floors high this building was, a conservative estimate put it at twenty floors minimum.
Great…
Bai Cha was truly exhausted.
Casually digging out a glass shard lodged in the back of her hand, she clutched her throbbing, aching chest, catching her breath on the spot for a few brief moments.
Then, she began climbing the stairs.
Having reached this stage, she needed to catch a glimpse of Liu Ruyi no matter what.
Regardless of the underlying reason, she couldn’t possibly give up at this point.
Yet her body was genuinely far too frail, her legs trembling with every step she took.
After scaling seven or eight floors, she essentially resorted to crawling up the stairs.
Even in this manner, she held zero physical strength.
The extreme physical exhaustion, setting aside bodily fatigue, caused blood to seep continuously from her nose and mouth.
This wasn’t caused by her coughing intentionally—she was genuinely exhausted to this degree.
Her vision turned steadily blurred as well.
She was abruptly reminded of that dream that used to trouble her endlessly in the past.
Just like this—a staircase that could never be finished.
She ran continuously on the stairs, running until she was so exhausted she crawled on the floor, yet no end was ever in sight.
Some claimed it was because her psychological stress was far too immense, manifesting inside her dreams as a result.
Yet… Bai Cha always felt that it was real.
Vague fragments of memory seemed to surface inside her mind.
Yet she couldn’t see them clearly.
Possessing something to distract her mind, Bai Cha persevered through several more floors.
Until she reached a point of total physical exhaustion, lying flat right there, unable to budge for a long while.
Had her chest not been rising and falling with faint breaths, an outsider looking on would assume she had already passed away.
Bai Cha moved her fingers with considerable difficulty, raising her head.
Overhead, it appeared they were nearing the rooftop.
Taking a deep breath, she exerted her strength once more to prop up her body.
Because she crawled up essentially on her knees, the skin over her knees was scraped completely raw.
With every breath she gasped out, she would cough up a mouthful of blood, raspy, rattling sounds echoing continuously from her throat.
Upon reaching the rooftop door, she pushed for a long while without forcing the door open—she held zero strength left.
Left with no choice, Bai Cha lay flat right there while directing the Dodder Vines to climb up and dismantle the door.
Rooftop doors of this nature closed automatically after being pushed open, yielding considerable resistance as a result.
Bai Cha utilized the time spent dismantling the door to catch a brief rest.
Finally, the door swung open.
With her fingers trembling violently, she could no longer hold the umbrella woven from Dodder Vines.
Closing her eyes, she secured the umbrella directly atop her head.
Then, exerting every ounce of effort to stand up, she staggered toward the rooftop.
The sky hung dark to a degree resembling pitch night.
Red rain fell continuously from the heavens.
They were not rain; they were harmful, vicious words.
Inside this world, they had materialized into entities that struck people’s bodies much like blades slicing through flesh.
Bai Cha could sense her own Dodder Vines being destroyed.
Furthermore, this rain impaired her line of sight severely.
Her vision was already thoroughly blurred due to extreme physical exhaustion to begin with.
“Liu Ruyi!”
Bai Cha could only call out weakly.
“Liu Ruyi, where are you?!”
Bai Cha wiped the blood from her face, her entire person appearing messy and disheveled to the extreme. Taking two steps, she collapsed onto her knees on the ground, her legs throbbing with painful numbness, this fall making matters worse.
Upon striking the floor, these raindrops turned into ordinary rainwater, diluting the blood across her frame instantly and spreading outward.
Fortunately, however, she caught sight of the figure huddled in a corner.
Holding that pale pink umbrella that was retracted inward, Liu Ruyi sat curled up entirely right there, her head buried between her knees, her hand holding up the umbrella—yet the umbrella proved utterly useless.
“Liu Ruyi!”
Having tried to stand up for a long while without succeeding, Bai Cha called out once more.
The other party didn’t even raise her head.
Resigning herself to her fate, Bai Cha let out a sigh—she still had to drag herself over.
