Chapter 146

No one questioned the staff member's sudden intrusion into the meeting, because the news he brought was far too critical.

"You mean..." The people in the command center were just as incredulous as the staff member, "She can freely enter and exit disaster zones, and emerge unscathed?"

"Is this what she meant by the power granted by her god?" Someone couldn't help but mutter, "Can we believe in that god too?"

He thought he'd said it quietly, but the entire table heard him. Everyone turned to look at him.

"Hey! Don't be so superstitious!" A familiar colleague beside him nudged his arm.

The others immediately turned back, as if nothing had happened.

"We don't know what's happening inside, but so far only the elderly and children have been evacuated, and most people haven't left the disaster zone. Lives are at stake—we must prepare for the worst, with the highest standards of danger. Ask her to bring the supplies to our people." The commander-in-chief immediately issued orders. "Get a helicopter from Qing City to pick her up right away. We'll start preparing the supplies she needs to bring in."

"Immediately prepare firearms, bulletproof vests, and explosives for her—draw directly from the military's strategic reserves, and transport as much as possible. The secretary of Pan City will handle food coordination. We don't know how long this disaster will last, so prepare as much as possible, with a good variety. Individually packaged combat rations, like compressed biscuits and Red Bull—foods that provide quick energy. Fruits and vegetables, too, as much as she can carry."

The commander-in-chief continued issuing rapid orders. "For medicine, pull directly from the medical reserves. As I said, we don't know what's happening inside, so maximize quantity and variety... Also cold-weather clothing, blankets, tents..."

Fortunately, Zhou Yi had mentioned earlier that she had a portable backpack that could hold an entire warehouse's worth of supplies. Otherwise, they'd still be racking their brains over what to bring.

Finally, the commander-in-chief said in a low voice: "Do everything possible to provide aid to the Han City disaster zone. Armed police, special forces, and SWAT units are to stand by at all times. We will not give up on a single citizen's life!"

.

Soon, Lin Tu received word that Zhou Yi had accepted the invitation.

Zhou Yi would arrive in one hour, and the arrival point was the reception room Lin Tu had just purchased.

Calling it a reception room was generous—it was really a four-square-meter sitting area with two small stools, plus an eight-square-meter single bedroom. It had cost Lin Tu a total of 1,500 points... painful.

She'd asked the Butler whether a four-square-meter reception room would suffice, and why it insisted on purchasing a single bedroom as well. The Butler replied that [Anju] considered a guest stay to be twenty-four hours, and it couldn't have a guest sleeping on the floor.

Lin Tu had wanted to explain that Zhou Yi could just sleep on the floor, but ultimately gave up—after all, it wasn't a rule the Butler had set.

One hour later, Zhou Yi would spawn in the bedroom.

Lin Tu first opened the special achievement reward from her previous disaster—

The achievement [Company Leader] rewarded her with a company dividend of eight million, totaling eight hundred points.

Speaking of which, after clearing [Killing a Bloody Path], Lin Tu's balance had been over 4,000 points. Adding what she'd earned in [The Ultimate Company], the points from clearing [The Ultimate Company], and the bonus from [Post-Disaster Economic Reconstruction], her balance should have been 8,015 points. But the earlier purchase of the [World Map] and [Reception Room] cost 3,000 points combined, and after deducting utilities and points spent on essentials like the backpack, Lin Tu's total balance was 4,700 points.

This didn't even count the three items she'd consigned with Dong Huadan—[A Box of Super Survival Rations], ten bags total, each worth about 1,000 points. Two bags had already sold, earning her 2,400 points. The [Super Generator] and [Killing a Bloody Path VIP] hadn't sold yet, but people had already come asking about prices.

So Lin Tu's current balance was 7,100 points. She was a small rich woman now.

Lin Tu gleefully continued opening special achievement rewards, but what came next wasn't as satisfying.

[Outstanding Employee] rewarded the item [Outstanding Employee Badge]. When worn, it granted the ability to convert illusions into hallucinations and use hallucinations to influence reality—similar to Yi Ying's magic flashlight, except this badge could only affect oneself. [Enemy of Hunger] rewarded the skill [Stay Alert in Hunger], a passive aura that would make Lin Tu more resistant to hallucinations in the future.

Wait... Lin Tu looked at the [Outstanding Employee Badge], then at [Stay Alert in Hunger]. One required her to use hallucinations, the other required her to be unaffected by them. This...

Setting those two items aside, Lin Tu looked at the final achievement, [Nightmare Bane]—the achievement earned from killing Ace of Diamonds—

[Nightmare Bane: Please note, you killed Ace of Diamonds' clone, not Ace of Diamonds himself. Therefore, you cannot receive an evolution point reward.]

This sentence made Lin Tu freeze, and she continued reading.

[You now have two choices: One, absorb all the power of Ace of Diamonds' clone. However, when you are in the same world as Ace of Diamonds, you will appear highlighted. Two, refuse to absorb. (The corpse will be retrieved by Ace of Diamonds within five days. Please make your choice quickly.)]

Either she traded a bicycle for a motorcycle—as long as she never had the bad luck of encountering Ace of Diamonds, she'd level up without injury—or she sought safety and got nothing. This was entirely a gamble.

Lin Tu was pondering this when she suddenly saw the reception room door swing open—an hour had already passed.

"This is..." Zhou Yi looked wary. Before leaving, a squad of soldiers had surrounded her with endless warnings, telling her that anything could happen in a red disaster zone and to be prepared for any possibility. She hadn't expected...

To step out and see a fully stocked safe room, with her sister lounging in a recliner, legs crossed, casually drinking a cola. She was speechless.

Her rapidly beating heart calmed for a moment. On reflection, Zhou Yi figured she could count on her sister being reliable.

"This is my home, and also the disaster's center. Just think of it as me having an ability to carry a house with me and hide inside it to escape disasters," Lin Tu briefly explained where they were, then looked at Zhou Yi, whose attire was rather unusual—

She was wearing a heavy bulletproof vest, had two rifles on her back, a stun gun and a pistol at her waist, a gun in her left hand and a dagger in her right. She was outfitted like a special forces soldier. Was she really not here to assassinate Lin Tu?

"You told the government? What do they want you to do?" These items were all "contraband," so Lin Tu quickly guessed their origin.

"I told them," Zhou Yi said, struggling to lift her hand to tuck the pistol into her waist before looking up. "First, collect disaster-related information and report it back. Second, if possible, bring supplies to the military or police stationed here."

"Military?" Lin Tu felt a flicker of hope. "I didn't find any military district here on the map."

"It was set up temporarily," Zhou Yi explained. "After getting that map, the country discovered that Han City was about to experience a disaster, and immediately established various temporary organizations here and began evacuating people. There are actually over nine thousand active-duty soldiers in Han City right now. I have credentials, information, and code words. As long as I can make contact with them, I can seek their help."

Lin Tu: "!" Excellent! The number nine thousand was such a comforting figure! She and her sister had latched onto the nation's thigh—nine thousand active-duty soldiers strong!

Lin Tu was about to ask where they were located when she suddenly detected a sound from outside.

Zhou Yi was about to continue speaking, but Lin Tu quietly stood up and shushed her, then moved to the window with almost inaudible steps. On the street, three monsters had appeared out of nowhere, their tentacles drifting in her direction as if listening for sound.

"Holy shit..." Their grotesque, terrifying appearance drew a startled whisper from Zhou Yi—both fearful and as if she were seeing something new.

"Quiet," Lin Tu said. "These monsters track by sound. The house has some soundproofing, but not much."

Zhou Yi quickly nodded, then looked down at herself—at the gear that clinked and clattered with every movement, loud enough to turn heads from a mile away—and decisively started stripping it off.

Meanwhile, the monsters were slowly approaching Lin Tu's building.

"The people outside attracted them," Lin Tu said, listening carefully at the door for a moment before confirming. "There might be another one inside this building. I need to go out and check—might as well observe these monsters' characteristics while I'm at it."

"I'm coming with you!" Zhou Yi had already finished taking off her gear.

Lin Tu didn't refuse her. Instead, she took out the [Outstanding Employee Badge]—the item that seemed to conflict with her passive skill—from her backpack.

She handed the badge to Zhou Yi. The badge's usage was simple: just write the ability you wanted to possess in the [Personal Ability] field, and it would automatically hypnotize you and activate the skill.

Zhou Yi decisively wrote "as light as a swallow" on it, then tried to add "tremendous strength" as well, only to find the pen wouldn't write anymore.

Lin Tu was helpless. "The badge's power is limited. It's a badge, not a wishing charm."

"Alright..." Zhou Yi regretfully hung the badge around her neck. "It's a great item. I'm satisfied. You don't need to prepare that bed—I'll sleep with you tonight."

Lin Tu: "..."

She gently pushed open the door and silently stepped out.

No sooner had she left the room than she heard faint commotion in the distance.

"It's coming! It's coming!" "Where's my key... wait, I should have put it right here!"

The two crossed the hallway, passed the front desk with its lights on but eerily silent, and reached the stairwell.

Downstairs, the person seemed to have finally found the key. There was a soft click as the door opened slightly. Then came footsteps. Lin Tu saw four women and two children.

"Close the door!" "No time—it's here..." "Don't talk! Don't make a sound!"

Then the six people clamped their hands over their mouths, stood on their tiptoes, trembling with fear as they slowly made their way upstairs.

The hallway was equipped with sound-activated lights, which wouldn't turn on without noise.

But the next second, a loud "BANG" rang out, and the sound-activated light blazed to life.

A monster had crashed into the door at a speed nearly imperceptible to the naked eye. In the light of the stairwell, the monster ripped the entire door off its hinges and slammed it hard onto the ground.

The sudden shock made the woman barely half a meter from the dark figure go weak in the knees, nearly collapsing onto the stairs.

She didn't make a sound, but her stiff knee joint bent abruptly after a moment of frozen stillness, letting out a "crack."

The monster whipped its head around and lunged at her.

—Damn legs! You're going to get me killed!

She truly wanted to kneel down and kowtow to her legs, but the stench so close and the massive body made her close her eyes. In her next life, she'd be the legs, and the legs could be the person. She'd make them suffer!

However, the anticipated end—body wracked with pain, then consciousness slipping away into nature—never came.

After a moment, the woman opened her eyes and found herself flying through the air, a gentle breeze brushing her face.

She was dead? No—the familiar hallway was still in front of her.

Then her ass and spine felt a sharp pain as she landed heavily on the sofa in the guesthouse's reception area.

Forgetting how hard she'd fallen, she looked up to see her friends and the owner's wife collapsed in a heap in the middle of the lobby, while a strange woman stood at the foot of the stairs. Presumably, she was the one who'd thrown them in here and saved their lives.

The strange woman was slender, holding a long blade half her height. Though the woman didn't know much about fitness, she could tell at a glance that this person possessed a kind of beauty radiating hidden strength—quite like the martial arts masters described in novels.

As the woman on the sofa thought this while staring at the doorway, her eyes slowly widened and her pupils rapidly contracted.

In the stairwell, the monster had materialized at the entrance. She realized then that the strange woman was even smaller than she'd thought, because the monster was at least twice—no, three times her size. Standing before it, the woman had to tilt her head up just to see its cold, gleaming mouthparts.

"Perfect timing," the woman said, twirling the blade in an unintelligible flourish before charging straight at the monster.

"Don't!" The woman on the sofa gasped instinctively.

Just as she expected a tragedy to unfold, she heard the sharp "clang" of metal striking metal. The long blade met the monster's raised arm horizontally, somehow stopping those hands dead in their tracks. In the flash of that instant, she could even see sparks flying between the blade and the arm.

"Troublesome, as expected." The woman frowned, then turned her head. "Watch yourself!"

With that, she stepped forward into the monster, carrying both herself and it into an unknown darkness.

In an instant, the stairwell went pitch black, so quiet that not even a sound could be heard.

"Are you all okay?" It was then that the women noticed another stranger in the lobby, seemingly the first woman's friend.

"We're fine... we're fine," the owner's wife said, picking herself up off the floor, still shaken. "Thank you so much... thank you! Your friend... she won't get hurt, will she..."

The owner's wife spoke in a hushed whisper—that was the method they'd discovered for communicating at a safe distance from the monsters. Unfortunately, it took a lot of breath control, which was why her speech came out halting when she was emotional.

"This..." Zhou Yi looked toward the pitch-black stairwell and shook her head firmly. "She definitely won't."

Really? The woman on the sofa recalled the stark contrast between those two bodies and didn't dare think about it.

For some reason, the guesthouse was so quiet you could hear people breathing. Why was there no sound of fighting at all? Could it be that she'd already...

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Lin Tu emerged from the stairwell.

The moment they saw her, everyone in the lobby breathed a sigh of relief, mixed with disbelief. The final victor emerging from the "arena" meant she had at least successfully defeated the monster.

"Amazing, sis!" "Thank you! Thank you!"

"Let's find a place first," Lin Tu said, somewhat out of breath, leaning on the long blade. "It's not safe here."

"Upstairs—that's my place!" The owner's wife quickly said.

The group swiftly moved upstairs, with Lin Tu and Zhou Yi bringing up the rear: "What did you use? We couldn't hear a thing from outside."

Lin Tu nodded. "Wire mesh—a type of item. It's like a sealed cage."

"Good thing you killed it. If the two of you were alone in there, and something happened, we'd have had no idea," Zhou Yi said, frowning at Lin Tu, her tone tinged with anger.

Lin Tu felt helpless, not knowing what to say.

Zhou Yi was silent for a moment, then said nothing more. "I don't know what you've been through, but you've worked hard. From now on, if you need anything, just say it."

Zhou Yi didn't think her sister becoming powerful meant she could simply leech off her—after all, given their relationship, leeching off each other was already standard practice. She just knew what kind of person Lin Tu was, and what she'd been like before.

Lin Tu wasn't that amazing, she knew it well. That was why she was angry, or maybe, it was more like she felt for her.

Lin Tu patted her shoulder, signaling she was fine.

The group quickly and quietly made it upstairs.

Only when they'd reached the third floor, several dozen meters above ground, did they finally relax a little.

"Are you soldiers?" The girls looked at Lin Tu and Zhou Yi with hopeful eyes.

When Lin Tu shook her head, their shoulders sagged in despair.

"But we are going to find the soldiers," Zhou Yi said, feeling that since she was deeply tied to the nation, she should step up and say something. "I came from outside. Our country is already sending troops in to rescue people, and there are soldiers on standby inside the disaster zone. Stay here safe and keep your heads down—soldiers will come soon."

Her words were like a torch, instantly rekindling hope in everyone's eyes.

"Soon..." One of them looked at Zhou Yi with desperate longing. "How soon is soon?"

"It depends on where we are." Zhou Yi realized she still didn't know where she was.

She looked at Lin Tu, who pulled out an iPad, opened a map of Han City, zoomed in, and pointed out their location for Zhou Yi.

Zhou Yi carefully recalled the information the staff had forcibly drilled into her head before she left, and her face lit up.

"Very soon!" She answered the girl solemnly. "Because one of the squads is nearby. Though, exactly where... I've kind of forgotten..."

She was about to take the map when Lin Tu stopped her and zoomed in on another location for Zhou Yi to identify.

"Hey? It's right here!" Zhou Yi was delighted. "How did you know?!"

Lin Tu: "...Because that's the police station."

About half an hour later, Lin Tu and Zhou Yi were geared up and heading out toward the nearby police station.

It had to be said, Lin Tu had chosen her position very well indeed.

Not only was the police station close by, but there were several alleyways to weave through in between. Even if no one could see them around corners, they could reach the station in no time.

Just as she'd planned, the two spent only a little over half an hour dodging the monsters aimlessly patrolling the streets before reaching the back gate of the police station.

At that moment, the back gate was shut tight.

Several armed police officers stood behind the fence, warily watching the outside.

Seeing Lin Tu and Zhou Yi—and Zhou Yi, standing before a pool of blood, inexplicably waving at them with great enthusiasm—the officers momentarily wondered if they were hallucinating. Who the hell runs around so boldly in a disaster zone?

He opened the iron gate as fast as he could and let them in.

When he'd brought them to the main hall and was about to lecture them, Zhou Yi presented the letter from the commander-in-chief.

The officer's expression turned serious. "Please wait a moment."

He had a colleague watch the two of them while he hurried out with the letter.

Sitting in the quiet, safe police station lobby, even though the seat was cheap plastic, Lin Tu and Zhou Yi were both happier than ever before.

Zhou Yi was happy because she was about to complete her mission. Lin Tu was happy because—after enduring all kinds of hardships—she could finally lie down and relax.

The officer returned quickly, scrutinizing the two with a stern gaze. "You're not joking, are you? Even if the commander-in-chief sent someone in, why would he only send the two of you?"

Zhou Yi immediately shook her head. "I really am! I have more evidence."

The officer nodded. "Come with me."

He led them to the courtyard behind the police station, where a squad of armed police was reinforcing the walls. He brought them before one officer whose uniform was clearly different from the others'. "Captain, they're here."

Lin Tu vaguely sensed that while the other officers were working diligently, they were all subtly sizing them up.

Zhou Yi had always been a woman of few words and plenty of action. She quickly pulled out all the evidence she'd brought and, in front of the crowd, flawlessly performed a demonstration of summoning items from thin air.

"I really was sent to deliver supplies. Where should I put them?"

The captain was silent for a moment. "Just set them down here."

Then, under the captain's shocked expression, Zhou Yi began pulling box after box out. From the east side of the courtyard to the west, she stacked them a few dozen meters long. After a full ten minutes, when there was finally no more room to pile anything, the captain stopped her—

"What is this? Where did you come from?"

"I told you, I was sent by the commander-in-chief to deliver supplies. But if you're asking where I came from," Zhou Yi paused for a moment, "or even where these abilities came from, all I can tell you is that this was granted to me by God."

Captain: "!!!"

Lin Tu: "???" She'd understood everything up to that point, but suddenly she was lost.

What God or not—she'd never heard anything this bizarre come out of Zhou Yi's mouth before.

Absurdly, the captain actually seemed to believe most of it. "The commander-in-chief did mention earlier that there would be..." He thought for a moment, searching for a way to explain it from a materialist perspective, "a person sent from above to assist us."

He looked at Lin Tu. "And who is she?"

Lin Tu noticed Zhou Yi's gaze slowly drifting toward her, and she had a bad feeling.

"This is God's mascot. Er, uh... she doesn't have any special abilities. Don't pay attention to her. But she's very important. I'll say no more—you'll understand in time."

The utterly baffling, mystic-sounding words made Lin Tu's vision go dark.