Avalanche

Song Weishi stomped on the man once, then crouched down to ask, "Do I have a grudge against you?"

The man froze, then twisted his face into a grotesque smile. "What does it matter? You two can't beat all of us. You're in this building now, so you'd better behave. Majority rules."

Song Weishi nodded. "I'm not from this building. I'm an outsider. It seems no matter what you—"

Before she could finish, the man cut her off impatiently. "So what! What are you two anyway? You can't beat us. Once the others get in, I'll—"

Song Weishi couldn't be bothered to listen to his nonsense. She drove the knife into his neck in one swift motion. His voice died mid-sentence, his face a mask of disbelief.

She calmly pulled out the blade and looked back at Xie Yi. What she didn't expect was for Xie Yi to give her a thumbs-up.

"Aren't you afraid of killing?" Song Weishi asked, puzzled. Xie Yi looked a bit uncomfortable, but nowhere near as shocked as Song Weishi would have expected.

"These people have been killing inside this building for a while now," Xie Yi said. "I tried to reason with others, but it didn't work, so I made my own way down. These people deserved to die."

Xie Yi picked up a baseball bat and swung it in a practice arc. She was calm, her speech unhurried, like a warm afternoon milk tea—comforting, and completely detached from the act of killing.

Song Weishi was pleased with her reaction. She wiped the blood off her blade and cast a glance toward the door.

"What about the ones outside?"

Xie Yi stretched her limbs and slowly shrugged off her coat. She was reluctant—it was the heavy coat she'd brought from the hotel, far warmer than anything she'd had before.

She set the coat down, walked to the door, and gripped the bat firmly. "I'll handle it. Wait for me a moment, and we'll head out after."

She'd eaten too little before—she'd been starving for days before Song Weishi showed up, with no strength left at all. But now she was full and ready to go all out.

That was Xie Yi's account, and Song Weishi found it hard to believe that a woman who was half-starved had still had the strength to hold her up and fight. With that kind of combat power, what would she be like at full strength?

Song Weishi pulled the door open, and the man who'd been kicking at it stumbled in on the rebound. Xie Yi sent him flying with a single kick, and he slammed into the wall with a heavy thud.

Xie Yi yanked the door shut behind her. Song Weishi staggered from the pull and nearly fell.

She shook her hand out, desperately wanting to open the door, but she held back. She couldn't beat those people outside, and going out would only make things harder for Xie Yi. She'd just wait quietly inside.

The thuds from outside continued without pause. Song Weishi had never felt two minutes stretch so long. Then, silence fell, broken by Xie Yi's muffled voice: "Alright, open it."

Outside, the bodies lay scattered in a heap, whether sleeping or dead she couldn't tell. If you ignored the blood and the swollen lumps on their heads, their faces might've been described as peaceful.

Xie Yi moved with ease, pulling her coat back on quickly. Song Weishi thought it over, then stepped out to finish the job.

Four were already dead on the spot; she finished off the remaining five. Counting the one inside, Song Weishi gained a total of two hundred energy points.

Not bad. The ones who'd died outside hadn't been her doing, so the System only gave her twenty apiece.

Song Weishi was satisfied—even a little was better than nothing. The two of them geared up in their ski equipment and set out from the office building.

Xie Yi had been sent here on a business trip, assigned to this office for less than two weeks. She wasn't familiar with the terrain or the routes, so she followed Song Weishi.

It had snowed in the past couple of days, but the snow wasn't packed solid. Whenever Song Weishi slowed down, she'd sink and get stuck. It was exhausting going, and she was grateful for Xie Yi's help.

They were covered head to toe, even their eyes shielded behind swim goggles, yet Song Weishi still felt a sharp, stinging pain. In weather this severe, without proper gear, nobody would come out—they'd just hole up at home and wait to die.

Her urge to escape this snowfield grew more desperate with each step. She prayed they could move faster. She swung her ski poles so fast they almost blurred, but her body's strength was nothing to write home about, and this terrain was far harder than before. She watched Xie Yi drift further and further ahead, and a sudden spike of panic shot through her.

"Xie Yi!"

She shouted at the top of her lungs, but the figure ahead didn't turn back and kept gliding on. Song Weishi's heart went cold. If they got separated out here, with no way to communicate, they'd never find each other again.

They skied on for a long stretch, and the terrain gradually began to change. Snow-capped mountains rose on all sides—large and small—with half-buried caves dotting the slopes. They seemed to be on a road, though they couldn't tell exactly which section.

Only the tip of a small signpost peeked out of the snow. They'd have to dig, or spot a bigger landmark, to know where they were. Fortunately, when they'd come in, this stretch had only been a few kilometers. If they gritted their teeth and skied a little farther, they should make it out.

Song Weishi panted heavily as she followed Xie Yi's tracks. Just as the figure ahead was about to disappear from sight, her voice grew more urgent: "Wait for me, Xie Yi!"

This time, after only a few calls, Xie Yi stopped. The distant dark speck turned around, seemed to hesitate, then skied back toward her.

As the figure drew closer, Song Weishi's nerves steadied, but anger crept in. Why hadn't she stopped when called earlier? Isn't checking if your companion is still behind you the most basic thing?

Song Weishi skied on with effort. When she got closer, she noticed what looked like a plume of "dust" rising in the distance.

That "dust" was like fog, visibly climbing higher as it closed in on Xie Yi.

Song Weishi instinctively paused her skiing and squinted. As Xie Yi got closer, she began to sense something was wrong.

The approaching mist seemed to speed up. Snow slid off the roadside in chunks from time to time. A few seconds later, she saw it clearly—a wave of snow, like an avalanche, chasing right on Xie Yi's heels, as if it wanted to swallow everything whole.

Xie Yi reached her in no time, and with it came her shout: "Run! Avalanche!"

Before Song Weishi could even speak, Xie Yi grabbed her by the collar and yanked her into a snow cave beside the road.

The world plunged into darkness in an instant. Snow poured in with a soft rustle from outside, as if trying to fill every inch of the cave.

Song Weishi slammed hard into a snowbank. Pain exploded in her head, darkness closed in, and she lost consciousness.