"I'm just an ordinary person."
Jiang Nuan said this with absolute seriousness.
Her eyes were wide open, innocent to the extreme.
Cowering by the car door, she looked like a little rabbit caught in a cage, perfectly embodying the idea that "being weak means being right."
Jiang Ce scratched his head, hesitation flickering across his face for a moment.
His mouth opened slightly, as if he wanted to say something reassuring.
But before he could speak, a low chuckle came from the back seat.
Qinian laughed.
He looked at Jiang Nuan in the corner. His eyes were exceptionally beautiful, the corners slightly tilted, carrying a hint of innate charm.
But at this moment, those eyes held only a cruel, mocking amusement.
Slowly, he straightened up and leaned forward.
In the cramped car, his scorching presence pressed in instantly, squeezing every trace of air around Jiang Nuan.
"An ordinary person?"
Qinian looked at her, lazily curling the corner of his mouth.
His gaze was aggressively invasive, sliding from her eyes, over her tightly bitten lips, finally resting on her slightly heaving collarbone from nervousness.
"Whether you're an ordinary person or not doesn't matter."
He deliberately lowered his voice.
"After we get back to the base and run a test, we'll find out."
A test.
Jiang Nuan's fingers curled abruptly.
That purification method.
Fragments of hazy memories flashed through her mind.
The girl sat in an empty room, a gun pressed to her temple.
No hesitation, no trembling.
She knew better than anyone what awaited her, so she chose not to wait.
Jiang Nuan opened her mouth.
What could she say?
That although she shared the same name and age as this world's Jiang Nuan, she was actually a transplanted college student wronged by fate? That her biggest worry in her past life was failing her calculus final, and her biggest worry in this life was surviving the day?
Would they believe her?
No.
And even if they did, would they let her go?
Even less likely.
"I really am just an ordinary person," she persisted, still trying. "You must have grabbed the wrong person."
Her face was pale, and her body was stiff from tension.
Qinian caught her reaction.
It was like finding some amusing prey; his eyes lit up.
"What's the matter?"
Qinian rested his long fingers on his knee, tapping them idly.
"Scared?"
Jiang Nuan bit her tongue hard, barely managing to find her voice.
"I... I don't know what you're talking about."
She turned her face away, avoiding his blazing gaze.
Qinian scoffed, leaning back against the seat, but he never took his eyes off her face for a single inch.
Jiang Ce tried to smooth things over from the front, "Alright, Qinian, stop scaring the young lady."
"The wilderness is expanding with no pattern. The most important thing right now—"
Jiang Ce didn't finish his sentence.
The dim yellow light outside the window suddenly flickered.
Then, the entire sky went dark.
The temperature inside the car dropped.
Jiang Ce's voice caught in his throat as he turned on the car's interior light.
But even the car light only illuminated a small circle around them, as if the light was being swallowed by something, unable to penetrate the darkness.
In the dark, Jiang Nuan sensed something.
She couldn't describe it—a cold, sticky presence pressing in, like something crawling up from damp earth, silently devouring the area inch by inch.
Outside the window, someone screamed in the distance.
"Don't be alone! Don't be alone!! Grab hold of someone!!" The voice cracked, carrying genuine despair.
Rule one had activated.
【Do not be alone in the dark.】
Jiang Nuan could hear her own heartbeat. She could hear the rush of blood thrumming in her ears. She could hear the faint current of each breath she took.
These sounds amplified infinitely in the darkness, sharp enough to nauseate.
At the same time, a completely different kind of presence roiled violently less than half a meter away from her.
It was Qinian.
The moment that cold, sticky presence drew near, Qinian's body temperature spiked sharply. His right hand hovered in midair, a cluster of crimson fire silently coalescing. Flames surged but didn't spill outward, held in check with extreme control in a confined space.
His eyes were still the same eyes—slightly tilted at the corners, with deep pupils.
But what churned inside them had changed.
No longer cruel amusement, but a cold, ready-to-burst killing intent.
Jiang Nuan instinctively shrank toward the car door.
Outside the car was darkness that light couldn't pierce.
But she remembered that when she first woke up, she had observed there were three or five survivors gathered less than five steps from the car door.
If she pushed the door open, took a few steps outside, and blended in with them.
When her vision returned, she could slip into the crowd and disappear.
Her fingers touched the door handle.
Cold metal pressed against her fingertips.
The handle depressed halfway.
In that instant, she could almost feel the faint tremor of the door's latch spring loosening.
Two forces locked onto her simultaneously.
Her left wrist was seized by a broad, rough hand.
"Don't run off."
It was Jiang Ce. His tone wasn't harsh, but his grip left no room for negotiation.
Another force struck from her right.
An arm, burning with heat, wound around her waist with brute force.
That arm cinched tightly.
Jiang Nuan lost her balance entirely, jerked off-kilter by the strength, and slammed heavily into a solid chest.
"Ugh!"
A muffled grunt caught in her throat. Her nose hit the other's collarbone, stinging so badly that her eyes welled up.
Qinian's body temperature was terrifyingly high.
Through the combat suit, Jiang Nuan could even feel the swell of his muscles and the strong pulse of his heartbeat.
"You tried to run."
His lips were almost against her ear.
A statement of fact.
Heat seared down her ear, past her earlobe, to the nape of her neck.
"Let go!" Jiang Nuan struggled.
But Qinian not only didn't let go; he tightened his arm even more, pressing her firmly against his chest, compressing the distance between them to zero.
"The rule says that being alone... means getting eaten, you know."
He deliberately drew out the last syllable, as if soothing or flirting.
Jiang Nuan's mind went blank.
In her past life of twenty years, she had never even been in love.
Her closest physical contact was probably when a classmate brushed a bug off her back during boot camp.
And now.
She was locked in the arms of a dangerously hot man, his heartbeat crashing into her back through two layers of fabric.
Just then.
A scream erupted from outside the car.
It was the dull snap of bone breaking, followed by a short, choked roar.
And then the terrified, distorted shrieks of several survivors.
Those screams burst out one after another in the darkness, only to be extinguished one by one.
The darkness swallowed everything.
Jiang Ce spoke, his voice turning low.
"Qinian, protect her. Just in case, I'll raise a shield."
He let go of Jiang Nuan's wrist.
A membrane of energy silently lit up in the space ahead—a light golden field of light that unfurled from Jiang Ce's arms, covering the entire interior of the car.
Under the faint illumination of that light shield, Jiang Nuan finally made out what was outside the car window.
She was glad she hadn’t gotten out earlier.
Pasted against the car window were countless black tentacles.
Thick and thin, some slimmer than others, all coated in a slick, translucent mucus that shimmered with disgusting wetness in the pale golden glow.
They made no sound. Just pressed against the glass. Watching. Waiting.
Like countless silent eyes, patiently lingering outside.
Waiting for someone to break the rules.
But it seemed a bit better than the restricted zone in the tunnel—at least here, you weren’t being chased. Caught, and you died.
Was that really the case?
The temperature kept dropping.
Even inside the car, with Qinian’s crimson flames glowing in the palm of his hand, Jiang Nuan could still feel the cold seeping in, inch by inch.
The screams outside were growing fewer.
Not because people had calmed down.
But because there were fewer voices left to scream.
Buzz. Buzz—
The communicator inside the car crackled to life.
And with it came a voice that instantly chilled the air in the compartment by another degree.
It wasn’t loud. In fact, it could even be described as quiet.
But every word was so calm it felt like it was seeping out from beneath a layer of ice: precise, emotionless, brooking no argument.
“Jiang Ce, Qinian, report your positions.”
Jiang Nuan’s first reaction upon hearing that voice was a violent prickle of goosebumps on the back of her neck.
She couldn’t explain why.
The voice was perfectly composed, yet it made every instinct in her body scream the highest alert.
More dangerous than Ye Que.
More dangerous than Qinian.
Without even seeing the person, just hearing that voice, she knew—
The true core of Zero Squad was on that other end.
The voice continued.
“Rule Number Two has been confirmed—”
