Feeling the man's embrace, Xiaoxiao's tense body relaxed. She closed her eyes and quietly waited for death to come.
[HeLa Cell]'s enormous body approached them step by step, then slowly opened its bloody maw.
Suddenly, the man's arms tightened around Xiaoxiao, and he grabbed the back of her collar. After stuffing something into her arms, he hurled her away.
"Live on." Under Xiaoxiao's trembling gaze, the man swallowed the transparent pill in his hand. At the same instant, [HeLa Cell]'s huge mouth swallowed him.
Boom!
A tremendous force suddenly exploded inside [HeLa Cell]'s mouth.
It blew half its body to pieces.
Xiaoxiao stared at everything before her in disbelief. She lowered her head and looked at what the man had just stuffed into her arms.
It was a pistol engraved with a star symbol, the weapon the man had used before.
Tears instantly welled in her eyes.
But before she had time to grieve, [HeLa Cell], half its body blown away, transformed back into a dog and slowly began crawling to its feet, waving the two bone whips on its back.
Trembling, Xiaoxiao got up and ran in the opposite direction without looking back.
[HeLa Cell] rose from the ground, glanced at the fleeing Xiaoxiao, then set off after her.
But whether because the two bone whips on its back were too heavy or because its weight did not match its body shape, [HeLa Cell] was not fast.
A frail figure ran through the dark woods, gasping for breath, her face deathly pale.
Behind her, [HeLa Cell]'s massive form pursued her relentlessly. Its enormous bone whips swept across the tree trunks, leaving strange, terrifying gashes on their thick surfaces.
Xiaoxiao's tear-streaked face was filled with fear she could hardly conceal as she listened to the sounds drawing ever closer behind her.
Xiaoxiao dared not look back. She clutched the pistol tightly and charged ahead without stopping for a moment.
She had heard others say that City C lay just beyond this little forest.
If she could reach City C, there was a chance she could be saved.
The trees around her grew sparser and sparser, and at last a glimmer of hope appeared on Xiaoxiao's terrified face.
She could see it: the edge of the woods was just ahead. She was about to escape!
Pfft!
A flower of blood bloomed from her left leg as a sharp bone whip instantly severed her lower leg.
"Ah!"
Xiaoxiao pitched to the ground, crying out at the searing pain in her left leg.
She looked at her lower leg and saw that it was gone. Only blood continued to flow from her thigh.
And [HeLa Cell] was less than twenty meters in front of her.
Enduring the agony, Xiaoxiao used her remaining right leg and both hands to inch forward with difficulty.
Almost there, almost there! Xiaoxiao repeated silently.
At last, she crawled out of the woods.
The city's brilliant lights came into view, but Xiaoxiao's face was filled with despair.
For a cliff lay before her, and the city was far below it in the distance.
In an instant, despair and fear enveloped her heart, weighing on her until she could hardly breathe.
She turned her head with difficulty and saw [HeLa Cell]'s figure looming like the Grim Reaper.
Trembling, Xiaoxiao gripped the pistol with both hands, aimed at [HeLa Cell], and pulled the trigger hard.
Bang!
She fired a shot, but whether from fear or because the gun's recoil was too strong,
the shot struck the ground beside [HeLa Cell] and missed.
[HeLa Cell] stared fixedly at the pistol in Xiaoxiao's hands. It knew that thing all too well.
It was because of that thing that it had been driven into trouble again and again.
Without hesitation, it lashed out with a bone whip.
An intact right hand flew into the air in a spray of blood.
"Ah!" Her right hand severed, Xiaoxiao clutched the stump in agony and fell to the ground, struggling.
Xiaoxiao still held the pistol in her left hand, but the intense pain made her instinctively crawl backward.
At last, she backed up to the edge of the cliff, and a sensation of weightlessness followed.
Just like that, Xiaoxiao fell off the cliff.
[HeLa Cell] stretched its head over the edge and looked down. The dark night and the mist made it impossible to see what lay below.
[HeLa Cell] turned its head back and stopped looking down.
It picked up the severed arm and lower leg from the ground in its mouth and swallowed them both.
Licking its mouth, [HeLa Cell] turned to look at the city ablaze with lights, then at the road down the mountain to one side.
A bold idea sprang up in its mind.
The human just now had kept trying to run toward that place. There must be many more of her kind there.
Though it did not know how strong the people there were, [HeLa Cell] was confident that even if it could not kill them, it could still return alive.
At that moment, even [HeLa Cell] itself had not realized that it had long since changed from a single-celled organism that understood nothing and wanted only to survive into an intelligent life-form with an independent consciousness of its own.
In fact, it had already gained intelligence after eating a human for the first time. It simply had not realized it.
Just as humans did not know how they came to possess consciousness of their own.
Swinging the two bone whips on its back, [HeLa Cell] ran quickly toward the road down the mountain.
City C.
At the entrance to a supermarket, a young man carrying several bags struggled his way out.
He raised his head and looked at the sky.
"Ugh, seriously, it's already so late." With that, he walked off carrying two bags of ingredients.
The young man walked along the dim sidewalk, hung one bag on his arm, then took out his phone and began typing on the screen.
"I bought some vegetables and stuff. I probably can't eat it all by myself.
How about I make some extra tonight and bring it over to you?"
After he sent the message, no reply came for a long time.
The young man sent another message.
"Hela, I really don't mean anything else by it. I know about your family's situation. I just want to help you, that's all."
But there was still no response from the other end.
The young man frowned and hurriedly called her.
"Beyond the mountains, beyond the sea, there's a bunch of Smurfs~!"
The phone tune played, but the person on the other end seemed to have no intention of answering.
"Oh~ lovely Smurfs~ oh~ lovely Smurfs~"
The phone kept ringing, and the young man's heart rose into his throat little by little.
"Fuck, no way!"
The young man hung up and hurriedly broke into a run.
He rushed to an apartment building, but just as he was about to go in, he heard a strange noise coming from an alley nearby.
He looked at the apartment building, then at the alley. After a moment's hesitation, he walked over.
"The smell of blood?"
A faint smell of blood drifted out of the alley, piquing his curiosity even more. He put down the bags in his hands and walked in.
"Hela didn't kill herself in here, did she?!
No, no, she shouldn't do that." The young man shook his head and continued down the alley.