Chapter 9: A Beautiful Dazed Goose
After the other students had adapted to the scene, Yu Xian did not remain on the sixth floor. Instead, he made preparations to head downstairs and clear out the remaining Aberrant Parasites.
Previously, if he had not discovered survivors in the sixth-floor classrooms, with some needing urgent treatment to stop the bleeding, he would have long headed downward and slaughtered every parasite in the building. But now that Zhang Shou and the others were here to take care of the wounded, all Yu Xian needed to do was kill the parasites as quickly as possible and save more students.
Nora mustered up her courage. "Wait, I'm coming with you!"
Yu Xian looked at her as though he were staring at a gleaming golden dazed goose. He was just about to refuse her when she added, "Let me come with you, and I'll give you 10 kg of silver."
Yu Xian immediately agreed. "Deal!"
Silver was ridiculously expensive. A 10-kg portion of it would probably be enough to last him a very long time.
Both of them descended to the fifth floor. Yu Xian flickered his finger, and silver threads instantly shot out, cutting down several parasites that were tearing into the students in the corridor. Nora did not stay idle either. She drew her gun and aimed at an Aberrant Parasite in the distance. A gunshot rang out, and the parasite exploded on the spot.
Surprised, Yu Xian stared at the gun in Nora's hand. He hadn't expected its bullets to be that powerful.
With her eyes locked on the fallen parasite, Nora frantically whispered to herself, "I hit it! I really hit it!"
She immediately aimed at the parasites that had rushed out after hearing the gunshot and pulled the trigger again and again. One after another, Aberrant Parasites exploded under her gunfire.
Each classroom usually had around twenty-five to thirty students, but the parasites had actually infected only about five to ten of them. With four classrooms on each floor, that meant there were roughly thirty to forty parasites per floor.
Nora's gun held fifteen bullets. After killing fifteen Aberrant Parasites in succession, she found herself fumbling awkwardly to reload. Naturally, the parasites had no intention of giving her that chance. They rushed out from the cover of the classroom. However, before any of them could get close to Nora, Yu Xian's silver threads swept through and cut them down.
After confirming that all the parasites on the fifth floor were dead, the two of them went downstairs to the fourth floor. Their plan remained the same. Nora would take out part of the parasites with her gun, then expose a brief opening while reloading to bait the rest into a full-scale assault. As they charged toward her, Yu Xian would eliminate them all in one decisive attack.
Heading down to the third floor, Yu Xian asked, "Do you have enough bullets?"
Nora nodded. "More than enough. I brought a hundred thousand rounds."
After being attacked by ordinary humans, she had gone out of her way to procure a handgun and a large amount of ammunition, enough to last her for a long time.
On the third floor, the two worked in perfect coordination. In just one minute, they wiped out all the Aberrant Parasites. After making sure the area was completely clear, they continued down to the second floor.
As she walked behind him, Nora glanced at Yu Xian with a complicated expression and quietly asked, "Are you... a vampire too?"
Yu Xian kept walking, his voice calm as he replied, "Yes. I have ALS. If I hadn't become a vampire, I'd have died. I heard that because of me, you were not only attacked by those thugs but also ostracized by your schoolmates. I'm sorry!"
The moment he made that phone call to the authorities, he had already mentally prepared himself. Once this crisis was over, he would go on the run, never returning to human society until he was truly invincible.
"Is that so..." Nora muttered quietly, looking at Yu Xian with the same complicated expression.
When they reached the second floor, she immediately cleared her mind of distractions. Gripping her handgun with both hands, she opened fire at the parasites without pause. Once her magazine ran dry, she pulled out fresh rounds, keeping her eyes locked on Yu Xian even as she reloaded.
The remaining parasites took the opportunity to launch a group assault. Yu Xian flicked his fingers downward, and silver threads cascaded down like a wave, instantly slicing them into a grotesque mess of mangled shapes.
Right then, the teacher who had fled earlier ran out of a classroom, vaulted over the corridor railing, and leaped straight down onto the courtyard below.
Yu Xian snorted. "Trying to run?"
He immediately slammed a hand on the corridor railing and jumped down from the second floor into the courtyard as well. However, before he could make a move, a gunshot rang out. The upper half of that teacher's body exploded, and he collapsed on the spot.
On the second floor, Nora stood holding her gun. When Yu Xian looked back, she flashed a sly, mischievous smile. Right then, a gust of wind swept through, lifting her long golden hair into the air. The bright, almost dazzling scene momentarily caught Yu Xian off guard.
Yu Xian silently took back what he had thought earlier. She is not a gleaming golden dazed goose. She is... a beautiful dazed goose.
Suddenly, Nora’s eyes filled with terror, and she shouted, "Watch out!"
A black shadow flashed past Yu Xian. Yu Xian reacted quickly. By the time Nora's eyes widened, he had already begun to dodge. Yet the shadow had still severed one of his arms.
Behind him, a rectangular signboard slammed onto the stairs. Yu Xian's blood flowed down from the top of the signboard, trickling through the words "School Ahead, Slow Down," before dripping onto the ground.
Clutching his wound, he glanced at the signboard, then immediately turned around. A woman in a business suit was crouching atop the school's perimeter wall. With a crazed, deranged smile, the woman said, "Little brother, I've come to play with you!"
However, the voice that came out was that of a man.
Yu Xian's expression turned grave. Silver light flickered in his eyes as he gritted his teeth. "You're the bastard from the other end of the phone!"
"Correct, correct. I'm that bastard!" The woman leapt down from the perimeter wall and smiled. "Let me introduce myself. My name is Zhou Tai. I used to be human. But now, I am an Aberrant Parasite."
She slowly walked over to the corpse of the teacher possessed by a parasite and crouched down. "Tsk, tsk! You have such a powerful body, yet you don't know how to use it. What a waste!"
Up on the second floor, Nora seized the moment while the woman was crouched and vulnerable and fired three successive shots at him.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
However, no explosion followed. Instead, three bullets appeared in Zhou Tai's hand. He stood up and smiled. "Bullets aren't actually that fast. In fact, all Aberrant Parasites are capable of dodging them. It's just that they've been pretending to be human for too long. Even after their consciousness awakens and they realize they're not a human, they still unconsciously follow certain human habits. Both their reaction times and speed are heavily constrained by their own subconscious."
Humans possessed self-preservation mechanisms. When they engaged their muscles, their brain would automatically set a safety threshold to prevent overexertion that could damage muscles and bones. This threshold hindered many Aberrant Parasites, which meant that they could exert only about fifty percent of their true potential.
But Zhou Tai's current personality was different. He was the type who inherently never cared about his physical well-being, a maniac willing to sacrifice his body just to achieve his goals. Therefore, the moment his personality had taken over this host woman, he had completely unlocked her body's full power.
Zhou Tai flicked his hand, the three bullets shooting straight toward Nora. "Right back at you, miss!"
However, the bullets collided with silver threads midair and instantly exploded. Yu Xian's body had already turned pitch black. He swept his finger downward, and the silver threads that had been extending upward instantly slashed toward Zhou Tai.