Chapter 73: Kneeling Down

The way to leave this strange piece of White Cloth wasn’t exactly a puzzle, because the owner of this White Cloth had no intention of trapping them.

Qi Ran quickly understood this. More accurately, it should be said that this White Cloth was “herding” them off its surface. The angle gradually tilted, and they nearly slid down it like a slide. After sliding for who knows how long, they finally landed on solid, pitch-black ground. Qi Ran crouched down, reached out, and pressed the ground, finding its texture wasn’t hard, but rather tough, resilient, like countless layers of dyed-black White Cloth stacked together.

This feeling didn’t sit well with her. It reminded her of the Sheet Woman she had encountered at her mother’s house. She had died her second death at that woman’s hands, and Jiang Zhique’s fate had also been unknown. Although in Jiang Zhique’s current understanding, after pushing open the door, there had been a dilapidated living room, and they hadn’t encountered any white sheet woman at all. For Qi Ran, however, the sensation of suffocating to death was so vivid, as if it had happened just yesterday, and she could never forget it.

She raised her head and looked ahead. On the dark ground not far in front, there was an extremely conspicuous marker—a piece of undyed White Cloth, folded to form the shape of an arrow.

Clearly, the owner of all this cloth wanted them to walk forward.

Jiang Zhique had obviously understood the meaning of this marker too. She glanced at Qi Ran somewhat hesitantly and asked, “What do we do?”

“We walk,” Qi Ran said in a low voice. “We have no other choice.”

Jiang Zhique nodded. That was the truth. If the master of this bizarre place truly had any murderous intent towards them, they could have died countless times during the fall. Why waste so much effort going in circles? She followed Qi Ran forward. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the girl called Greasepaint simply following behind them silently, clearly deciding to stick with them and take things one step at a time.

Straight, then a left turn, then straight, straight, straight… After that first left turn, all the subsequent markers indicated going straight. The path was long, so long it was somewhat unnerving. Where exactly were they right now? What kind of place was this? Qi Ran’s brows were tightly furrowed. She walked very slowly, testing each step. The sensation of having only black cloth before her eyes wasn’t pleasant. Light fell from an extremely high place, already somewhat dim and blurry by the time it reached them. Everything before and below her was black, making it impossible to distinguish where the black ground was and where the empty darkness began. Although the markers were clear, she still didn’t dare trust them completely. What if the earlier markers were just meant to lull them into a false sense of security? So she used the simplest and clumsiest method, shuffling forward step by step, testing whether the blackness ahead was ground she could stand on.

After seeing the final marker, there was a door beyond it. A door wrapped in layers of White Cloth.

For a fleeting moment, Qi Ran felt dazed. Seeing that door gave her a strange feeling… a feeling that those white cloths weren’t really white cloths, but bandages. That this was a door made of plaster and bandages.

She reached out and grasped the door handle. The touch made her very uncomfortable. Unlike ordinary door handles, the handle of this door was hard, uneven—like a bone wrapped in white bandages.

What would be behind the door?

This brief thought merely flashed and vanished. Fear and confusion were too much of a luxury for her. Those were things only people with choices could afford to fret over. People like her never had a choice. Many people thought they had options, but actually, they were wrong. The options they had seemed numerous on the surface, but in reality, there was only one they could truly choose. It was like a restaurant: some people could choose whether to eat Chinese food or Western food; some could choose between seafood or delicacies from the mountains; some could choose between eating a steamed bun or eating the plate. But those people were actually already doing well, because some people didn’t even have the steamed bun to choose from and could only choose between plates they could crush with their teeth and tables they couldn’t.

She was one of those people. Her confusion couldn’t be called confusion, because confusion required having a choice. Confusion without choice was, at best, just “a buffer period for surrender.”

Of course, everyone still had two options: steal from others, or starve to death. Clearly, that girl called Greasepaint and her companions had chosen the first one. But the outcome was also evident: they chose wrong. This path had been sealed off long ago, sealed by morality and law. Qi Ran didn’t think she could have done better than Greasepaint and the others. If she were the one facing that Executor surnamed Li, delaying even a single second would probably have been impossible.

And Qi Xin was now working alongside people like that. Qi Ran wasn’t surprised by this, because Qi Xin was always like that. She always managed to do best, and therefore she always got to have the best choices. It was perfectly reasonable. There might be a tiny bit of unfairness, but nothing was ever supposed to be fair. Everything was perfectly reasonable.

She took a deep breath and directly twisted the door handle open.

“This is… the back door?” Jiang Zhique said in a low voice. “We’re out?”

Qi Ran looked outside the door. That empty parking space, where the truck carrying the wooden cabinet had originally been parked—yes, they were back at the rear entrance of that nightclub.

“Impossible…” she heard Greasepaint behind her mutter, her voice sounding like she’d seen a ghost. “This building only has two main gates and three fire escape exits. We clearly sealed them all with cement.”

Qi Ran looked down at the sides of the door. Greasepaint’s words were true. Both sides of the door were thick, solidified cement. The cuts were smooth.

Had she simply pushed open a door sealed by cement like that?

Qi Ran stepped out of the door, not releasing her hand holding it. Jiang Zhique stepped out next. After Greasepaint also left the door’s range, a tremendous suction force came from within the door. Qi Ran’s hand couldn’t possibly stop its closing. It slammed shut into the solidified cement almost instantaneously, perfectly seamless. If they hadn’t just walked out of it, you would never guess a door had existed here moments ago.

“…What the hell,” the girl called Greasepaint murmured. “Is it someone from your side?”

Seeing Qi Ran shake her head, the girl called Greasepaint pondered for a moment but ultimately had to give up. She glanced at Qi Ran and Jiang Zhique, opened her mouth, then closed it again, pressing her lips together firmly.

“What do you plan to do next?” Qi Ran asked. “You know what I’m asking.”

Hearing Qi Ran’s question, the girl lowered her head. “Go home.”

She felt this answer sounded cowardly. Her companions were captured, and her first reaction wasn’t anger or planning a rescue, but thinking of running home to hide. But what else could she do? All five of them together were helpless against that Black Fur Monster. The gap was practically one-sided. What could she, alone, possibly do?

“That’s good, then,” Qi Ran nodded, looking at Jiang Zhique and blinking.

“Why did you ask that?” Jiang Zhique immediately understood what Qi Ran wanted to do and cooperated by asking in a low voice.

“She saw our faces. If she gets a hot head and charges into the Executor’s place by herself, it’ll be very bad, no different from walking into a trap,” Qi Ran said quietly, but her voice was still loud enough for Greasepaint to hear. “If she chooses to give up, that’s much better.”

“But I still feel uneasy,” Jiang Zhique murmured. “You know that what we did this time absolutely cannot be found out by the Executors—why don’t we just…”

The second half of her sentence was whispered very lightly, too muffled to hear clearly. After Qi Ran finished listening, she looked somewhat hesitant, but when she looked at Greasepaint, she seemed to make up her mind and nodded.

Greasepaint, who hadn’t walked very far, felt her face drain of color instantly. Seeing that girl called Qi Ran nod, her brain froze, and she stiffened in place.

Compared to Paper Cutter and the others, Greasepaint’s Talent was the one with the least practical combat ability. Not to mention, the two people before her knew her Talent inside and out, while she was completely ignorant about them. Furthermore, she was now technically a fugitive. If they really wanted to kill her, it seemed they truly didn’t need many scruples. They could just say she attacked them first, and the Executor’s side wouldn’t even ask a question before sending her straight to the morgue.

Was she just this unlucky? To have finally escaped from that Black Fur Monster’s grasp, only to die silently on the roadside… Seeing the girl called Jiang Zhique approaching her, her knees suddenly gave way, and she knelt on the ground. Tears streamed down her face as she wrapped her arms around Jiang Zhique’s leg. This sudden development threw Jiang Zhique completely off, and for a moment she didn’t know what to do. She could only look back at Qi Ran hesitantly, mouthing a silent question.

Qi Ran slapped her own face. This development was nothing like what she had imagined. The girl in front of her, called Greasepaint, had already joined an illegal organization, yet she was still so… she didn’t want to call the other party useless, but that was the truth.

The correct development shouldn’t have been Greasepaint, in order to survive, proposing negotiation, saying there was no need to immediately burn bridges? Then they would demand Greasepaint first offer her bargaining chips—chips like there was an organization behind her that would make killing her troublesome, or that keeping her alive would yield better benefits, blah blah blah. Then they could smoothly take the out offered, saying it was fine if she truly wanted to rescue her companions and they could even help. That way, they’d seize the initiative while naturally gaining contact with the organization behind Greasepaint. Why would this girl just choose to kneel and beg for mercy?

Did she really think doing this would get her spared? It was far too… naive, or foolish, Qi Ran thought. Placing your own life and safety in the hands of someone else’s moral conscience to decide was the most foolish thing of all.