Escape

The dagger was small, but sharp enough.

Luo Ruzhuo leaned against the earthen wall, watching Zhu Rongtian bring the dagger down again and again.

Wang Fuzhuang's face had twisted into a mosaic, but he seemed to be in considerable pain. The black aura on his face quickly dissipated, and his body didn't turn into a cloud of black mist as it had when Luo Ruzhuo attacked him that night.

He lay on the ground, blood still seeping from several holes in his body. He had stopped moving entirely.

Just like a real person.

Zhu Rongtian had slid all the way down to the ground by now. She was breathing heavily, her shoulders still trembling slightly. She said nothing. Her eyes were dark and frighteningly bright.

The dagger slipped from her hand and fell to the ground.

Luo Ruzhuo walked over and picked up the dagger, wiped the blood off it, folded the blade back into the handle, and tucked it back inside her uniform.

"He's dead." Zhu Rongtian stared at the figure on the ground. The corners of her mouth twitched, as if she were smiling, or perhaps at a loss. "...I killed someone."

"That's right." Luo Ruzhuo pulled her up from the ground, speaking as if she were teasing a child. "Someone will come to arrest you, so let's hurry and run."

Zhu Rongtian: ...

She froze for a moment. The fear she had expected didn't come. Besides a sense of relief, she actually felt a trace of secret joy and anticipation.

Anticipation for what? My life on the run?

She couldn't say, but she felt light all over. Even though the chain was still around her ankle, it was as if she had shaken off something that had always weighed on her heart.

But.

Zhu Rongtian braced her hands on her knees as she stood up and pressed her lips together. "But I have to take care of Grandma."

Luo Ruzhuo waved a hand. "Then bring your grandma along."

Zhu Rongtian froze again, then nodded. She staggered into the main room, helped the old woman up from the bed, and, with great effort, got her onto her back.

Though the old woman was very thin, she was still too heavy for a girl barely into her teens. Zhu Rongtian had only taken two steps when her knees buckled.

Luo Ruzhuo came forward, took the old woman from her, and carried her over to the transport vehicle in the courtyard. Then she turned back to help Zhu Rongtian aboard.

Zhu Rongtian had only taken one step when the chain held her in place.

Luo Ruzhuo struck the chain again with her psychic power. It still didn't budge, and she couldn't help frowning.

Zhu Rongtian looked down at her foot, a note of disappointment in her voice. "You go on ahead... I'll stay here by myself..."

Before she could finish, Luo Ruzhuo had already strode into the main room. She went up to the nail in the wall that held the chain and brought a blade of psychic power down on it, stripping away a large patch of plaster. The nail fell with a clatter, and the chain spilled noisily across the floor.

Zhu Rongtian stared, dumbstruck.

That works too?

Luo Ruzhuo was quite pleased with her own ingenuity.

If she couldn't deal with the chain, couldn't she just deal with whatever it was attached to?

She gathered up the loose chain, bunched it into a short coil, and stuffed it into Zhu Rongtian's hands before climbing onto the transport vehicle. This time, when she reached out to pull her up, nothing got in the way.

Zhu Rongtian hefted the heavy coil of chain in her hands, feeling a little dazed.

Just like that... I'm free?

Though it was called a transport vehicle, it was really just a battered three-wheeler. The cab at the front was a mess, with Wang Fuzhuang's cup, an ashtray, and all sorts of odds and ends piled haphazardly inside. A pungent smell filled the cab.

Luo Ruzhuo couldn't afford to be particular about it now.

"Sit tight." She pointed at the seat belt. "Buckle up... Come to think of it, do you know what a seat belt is?"

Seeing Zhu Rongtian's blank expression, Luo Ruzhuo simply leaned over, pulled out the passenger-side seat belt, and fastened it for her. Zhu Rongtian sat stiffly and let her do it, her gaze fixed on the tightly shut gate ahead.

How are we getting out?

The thought had barely crossed her mind when she heard Luo Ruzhuo say in an even voice,

"Hold on."

The next second, the transport vehicle shot forward. It smashed through the old, rusty gate, and the wheels bumped over the wreckage as it drove straight out.

Inertia jerked Zhu Rongtian backward, and the seat belt held her fast. Her heart nearly leaped into her throat.

Luo Ruzhuo wasn't much of a driver. She followed the main road away from any signs of habitation, hoping to find the boundary of this mental domain. However realistic it was, this was still only a polluted mental domain.

Every mental domain had a boundary.

They drove for a day and a night, from daylight into darkness, and finally into daylight again. In the end, they had driven for who knew how long.

The scenery on both sides of the road was gradually swallowed by fog. After they passed through it, the outline of a small town slowly appeared at the end of the road ahead.

As they drew closer, the same low brick houses, shops beneath tiled roofs, and haphazard utility poles lined both sides of the road.

There were even two familiar tire tracks on the ground.

They were back.

Luo Ruzhuo wasn't surprised in the slightest.

This polluted mental domain was probably centered on the town. No matter how far they traveled, they couldn't get out.

Zhu Rongtian, however, stared blankly out the window, her head throbbing faintly.

It was as if something were telling her that this place shouldn't be like this.

A pale gray line appeared on the horizon. Unlike when Luo Ruzhuo had first arrived and found the town deserted, it seemed to be slowly coming to life. People had already begun walking the streets in twos and threes, most of them men.

Luo Ruzhuo glanced through the window. Not a single face was clear; every one of them was covered by a writhing mosaic.

She spread out her psychic power and sent several attacks at the nearest figures. But after the pollutants turned into black mist and dispersed, they gradually solidified into human form again before long, as if nothing had happened.

Tsk.

They wouldn't stay dead. How annoying.

Luo Ruzhuo now suspected that this kind of Pollution Domain, with humanoid pollutants and even a fixed sequence of events, was the mental-type pollution Xiao Xue had mentioned before.

If they couldn't find a way through, ordinary sentinels would be doomed to keep going in circles in the Pollution Domain until their pollution level reached one hundred percent, whereupon they would undergo complete aberration.

Luo Ruzhuo wanted to find a way through. She parked by the side of the street, got out, and looked around.

Several mosaic-faced figures noticed them and began whispering to one another across the street. One of them looked Luo Ruzhuo's face over several times, then tilted his head toward the person beside him.

They crossed the road and came toward them.

Two pollutants walked up to the transport vehicle and circled it. One looked at the old woman in the back, then at Zhu Rongtian in the passenger seat. Finally, he fixed his gaze on Luo Ruzhuo. The mosaic on his face shifted; presumably, he was smiling.

"Wang Fuzhuang's vehicle... That's his old mother in the back, isn't it? What happened? Little miss, you don't look familiar."

Seeing them speak to Luo Ruzhuo, Zhu Rongtian pushed open the door and jumped down. Her hands clenched into fists, she spoke before Luo Ruzhuo could. Though she did her best to keep her voice steady, a trace of nervousness could still be heard in the tremble at the end of her words.

"This is my cousin. Grandma's sick, and my dad's dead drunk... He can't go out, so he sent us to take Grandma to see a doctor."

The two exchanged a look, sharing an unspoken understanding. Their voices grew warm. "Seeing a doctor? Come on, come on, we know where the clinic is. We'll take you!"

Half pushing them along, the two men picked up Grandma from the back, one carrying her on his back, then hemmed the girls in from front and behind and led them through several narrow alleys.

They were led through a gate into a courtyard several times larger than Wang Fuzhuang's. Single-story houses stood on all four sides, their doors shut and iron bars nailed over their windows.

More than a dozen people stood in the courtyard, all adult men with mosaics over their faces.