Swallowed by the pitch black, Fu Qingdai crouched inside a residential apartment, her grip white-knuckled around her compound bow.
Since she had already swept the area, every interior door was left wide open, giving her an expansive, unobstructed tactical playground.
The interior of the building was a void of absolute darkness.
Though neither could see the other, she could perfectly track the localized sphere of Liang Cui's malice. In turn, Liang Cui was aggressively hunting her by tracking the faintest of sounds.
Out in the living room, the deafening crash of splintering furniture echoed as Liang Cui kicked her way through the apartment, spewing venomous threats.
"You little bitch! You've been out of ammo for a while now, haven't you! I know you're in here. I'm not in a rush... Let's take our time. Let's see how long you can hold your breath."
Inside the master bedroom, Fu Qingdai ground her teeth together. She reached back, slowly drawing a broadhead arrow from her quiver, nocked it, and began drawing the bowstring millimeter by millimeter.
Halfway to full draw, a sudden clamor of distant shouts echoed up from the floors below.
Liang Cui’s sinister laugh immediately followed. "Little bitch, sounds like the meat downstairs is looking for you... Oh, I get it now. You can track my position. No wonder you suddenly broke cover. You played bait to lure me away from the herd, didn't you?"
"Fine! Then I won't play along. If you want to cower in the dark, stay there. I'm going to butcher every last one of your friends, and then I'll come back and take my time peeling you!"
With that, Liang Cui's heavy footsteps pivoted toward the living room exit.
Fu Qingdai instantly ripped the bowstring to its anchor point and kicked the heavy wooden bedframe.
"Gotcha—AGH!!!"
The microsecond Liang Cui opened her mouth, Fu Qingdai released the string.
The doorway was a fatal chokepoint. The arrow buried itself deep into Liang Cui's shoulder with a sickening, meaty thud.
Capitalizing on the scream, Fu Qingdai lunged out of the dark. Her long legs coiled and snapped out, delivering a devastating front kick dead center into the mass of murderous intent.
The kinetic transfer of that kick hit with the force of a veteran heavyweight.
Caught completely off guard, Liang Cui was launched backward, crashing heavily into the guest bedroom across the hall.
Choking down her own terror, Fu Qingdai pressed the assault. She gripped her heavy compound bow like a club and began savagely beating the mutant.
After a few blind, brutal swings connected, she mapped out Liang Cui’s exact position and tackled her to the floor.
Her fingers locked onto the arrow shaft protruding from Liang Cui's shoulder and violently twisted it, while her free hand rained frantic, piston-like punches down onto the monster's face.
"Die! Die! Fucking DIE!!!" Fu Qingdai shrieked, weaponizing every ounce of her primal terror into raw violence.
But Liang Cui's mutated physiology granted her vastly superior strength. After a few seconds of frantic, bloody thrashing, she bucked her hips and violently hurled Fu Qingdai off her.
Fu Qingdai slammed spine-first into the edge of a heavy wooden wardrobe, her skull bouncing off the timber with a loud crack. Searing pain exploded through her nervous system, but her hand immediately scrambled for her empty shotgun.
Spitting blood and curses, Liang Cui lunged forward to rip her apart.
Suddenly, a sharp click echoed in the dark. The mutant's forward momentum violently aborted, a flash of genuine panic washing over her ruined face.
Does this little bitch still have bullets?!
A microsecond later, the heavy steel stock of the shotgun smashed brutally into Liang Cui's jaw.
Without missing a beat, Fu Qingdai lunged again. She wrapped one hand deeply into Liang Cui's hair and yanked backward, using her free hand to resume a savage, relentless ground-and-pound.
The moment she felt a massive clump of scalp and hair tear free in her fist, Fu Qingdai broke contact, scrambling backward to avoid the counterattack.
"You little whore, I am going to skin you ALIVE!!!" Liang Cui shrieked, her voice pitching into a hysterical frequency.
She had assumed this fragile little bitch would be easy prey, but she had been brutally outplayed and humiliated repeatedly.
In terms of raw physical specs, the girl was inferior in every way, but her radar-like perception was an agonizing tactical disadvantage.
"Keep hiding... I'll process your corpse later!"
Spitting a mouthful of blood and broken teeth, Liang Cui backed toward the door, keeping a tight guard against another ambush.
Frantic shouts continued to bleed through the floorboards; the survivors in the activity center were desperately tearing the building apart looking for Fu Qingdai.
Fu Qingdai had already retreated into the living room. Realizing the mutant was actually abandoning the fight, she forced down her trembling terror and plunged her hand into her sweat-drenched inner pocket. Leaning out from cover, she screamed at the hallway, "You fucking bitch! I thought sluts just needed a pretty face to steal men, but apparently you needed a mutant superpower to get the job done... you shit-eating, one-eyed ugly freak!!"
"You probably mutated that succubus power because no man would ever touch you in your past life!"
"You motherf—" A sickening hum vibrated through Liang Cui's skull, her entire body shaking with apocalyptic rage.
Fu Qingdai's psychological warfare had hit a critical damage modifier, plunging a knife directly into the mutant's deepest insecurities.
"I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!!" Liang Cui shrieked, launching herself blindly at the source of the voice.
She tackled empty air. But Fu Qingdai's arms whipped around from the flank.
A fistful of overwhelmingly sweet, sticky chocolate spread was violently smeared directly across Liang Cui's eyes and face.
"What the hell is this?! MY EYES!!!!" Liang Cui wailed, her coordination instantly collapsing.
As the mutant began wildly thrashing and clawing at her own face, Fu Qingdai clicked on her tactical flashlight.
Tracking the monster's flailing silhouette, she raised her heavily coated fists and began mercilessly battering Liang Cui's exposed skin!
Every brutal impact left a sticky, dark-brown fist print.
The hyper-accelerated allergic reaction, combined with total chemical blindness, sent Liang Cui plunging into an abyss of panicked agony.
Fu Qingdai bit through her own lip. The allergen coating her knuckles burned like battery acid against her own skin, the agonizing pain forcing tears down her cheeks.
But with a lethal predator inches away, she couldn't afford to hesitate. She forced herself to keep swinging, punishing the mutant while screaming venomous curses to drown out her own pain.
"Ugly freak! Slut! You want to be a whore?! I'll show you how to be a whore!"
Her hair a wild, sweat-drenched mess, Fu Qingdai let out a feral scream. She hoisted a heavy armchair overhead and brought it crashing down onto Liang Cui, over and over with every ounce of her strength.
"This is! For! Trying! To steal! Our! Brother! AHHH!!!"
The relentless impacts hammered Liang Cui’s spine until her posture completely collapsed, pinning her to the floorboards as the furniture finally splintered into useless wood.
Just as Fu Qingdai scrambled to heave a heavy glass coffee table for the final blow, Liang Cui planted her hands, stabilized her core, and executed a violently fast, evasive roll.
The coffee table slammed into the floorboards, exploding into a shower of tempered glass. Seeing the mutant hauling herself back upright, Fu Qingdai’s stomach plummeted, and she immediately bolted.
The creature's other senses were still terrifyingly sharp. The shock of the sudden blindness was wearing off, replaced by lethal focus.
Close-quarters brawling was off the table. If she let the mutant grapple her, she would be snapped in half.
There was only one tactical solution left. The bitch was blind... she had to kite her up to the roof and throw her off!
...
Meanwhile, the bloodbath inside the Longlin Skyscraper raged on.
Gao Tianfang pushed forward like an unstoppable juggernaut. Su Jin and Cheng Du fought a desperate, bloody retreat, weaponizing every doorframe, desk, and piece of debris to bleed the clock.
They had practically kited the monster in a full lap around the massive ring-shaped corridor.
Despite their evasion, the few terrifying seconds of close-quarters entanglement had left them catastrophically battered.
Su Jin was operating on three shattered fingers, and Cheng Du had multiple fractured ribs... both were bleeding out from countless internal and external lacerations.
"Is stalling for time the only pathetic trick you rats know?!" Gao Tianfang roared, his eyes bloodshot and twitching with murderous impatience.
The lighting was compromised. One rat was fast, and the fire-breathing freak had incredibly elusive footwork. By all metrics, these two nobodies should have been paste on his boots ten minutes ago, yet they stubbornly clung to life.
He was done playing. The evaluation was over!
Seeing the armored behemoth accelerating for another charge, Su Jin snatched up the large chemical carboys he had just scavenged and hurled them down the hall.
The heavy glass collided in mid-air, shattering instantly. Formaldehyde and pure ethanol violently mixed, instantly vaporizing into a thick, choking cloud of noxious fumes.
Exploiting the smokescreen, Su Jin grabbed Cheng Du—who was now practically dead weight on his feet—and dragged him into an adjacent clinic, quickly throwing the deadbolt and frantically shoving heavy medical cabinets against the doorframe.
Collapsing beside Cheng Du, Su Jin gripped his shoulder, his voice frantic but demanding focus. "Status report! Can you still move?! We just have to drag this out a little longer, just until dawn... Sunrise is almost here, we can still win this!"
Cheng Du hacked up a thick clot of blood. His eyes were glassy, staring listlessly at Su Jin. "Boss... the math ain't mathing. We can't beat him. Just... drop me and run."
"Do not authorize that kind of talk—"
"Just listen to me." Cheng Du weakly grabbed Su Jin's bloody wrist, his chest shuddering violently. "Boss, I’ve been needing to file a report with you for a while... Truth is, I always figured this world was a dead-end corporate restructuring. Everyone I knew got liquidated. I was just waiting for my pink slip..."
"Right up until I got assigned to your department... The whole world has gone to absolute shit, but you're the only manager who refuses to declare bankruptcy. You keep handing out stock options in hope. Ever since I was a kid, everyone diagnosed me as defective. You were the only one who told me I was operational." Cheng Du paused, his jaw working as he fought for oxygen, forcing the words out through the blood. "Boss, I respect the hell out of you. I started actually giving a shit about you... And over time, I realized... I’m fully authorized to die for you..."
"It scares the shit out of me... but I honestly believe that in this entire godforsaken world, nobody is a higher priority asset than you. Not even myself."
"Why the fuck are you giving an exit interview right now?!" Su Jin yelled, cold sweat mixing with blood on his forehead as his eyes locked onto the barricaded door.
BOOM! A cataclysmic kick hammered the heavy door, instantly splintering the frame and violently scattering their makeshift barricade across the tiles.
A bloody, exhausted smile cracked across Cheng Du's face. "I... I know I’m violating HR protocol right now, but if I didn't file this grievance... I wouldn't get another chance... I'll handle the severance package. You run!"