Surviving the apocalypse with a wife and a system! [GL]

Chapter 225: BLOODSHOT.

From this height, he could look straight down into the courtyard, and the distance made him feel safe enough to do something stupid.

At this moment, Bai Li’s entire attention was on the zombies around her. She kept swinging her knife, dodging, and slashing, pushing her body to its absolute limits. The movement looked simple from a distance, but anyone who watched closely would understand that every step, every turn, every cut, and every dodge was done with precision. She was not just fighting with brute force. She was controlling her body with a level of care that came from experience, instinct, and a growing awareness of how to conserve energy in a long battle. As her movements became more and more skillful, her demands on herself increased as well. She could not afford to waste even a little strength. She needed to use very subtle movement to avoid the zombies’ attacks, because that would save her a lot of energy and reduce her stamina consumption. Every unnecessary twist, every extra step, every sloppy movement would cost her later.

So Bai Li kept dodging and slashing. Her knife flashed in and out through the air as she cut down one zombie after another. Her breathing grew a little heavier, but her eyes stayed sharp. There was no panic in her face. There was only concentration. Just as she was about to finish off the zombie in front of her, Bai Li suddenly felt a sharp sense of danger coming from above. It hit her like a warning from deep inside her bones. At almost the exact same time, a gunshot rang out.

The sound cracked through the air and echoed sharply across the open space.

In that instant, Bai Li reacted with lightning speed. She jerked her body to the side, moving so fast that it almost looked like she had vanished for a split second. The bullet fired from upstairs grazed her face, leaving behind a burning sting that immediately made her cheek throb with pain. The bullet then struck the zombie in front of her chest instead, blowing through the target where her body had been a moment earlier. Bai Li felt the heat on her skin and the sharp line of pain across her face, but she did not stop to examine the wound. Her first instinct was to move. She quickly shifted position while glancing upward, her gaze locking onto the source of the attack. There, on the twentieth floor balcony, she saw someone pointing a gun at the ground below.

The instant she understood what had happened, Bai Li stopped fighting where she stood and rushed quickly into the small supermarket nearby. She moved with the same speed and decisiveness she had just used in battle. The supermarket entrance offered a temporary barrier, and more importantly, the zombies inside could help block the entrance and mask the smell of living flesh. Bai Li knew that the zombies were attracted by movement, blood, sound, and the scent of living people, but she also knew they were not intelligent enough to figure out exactly where the gunshot had come from. Some of the zombies had already been drawn toward the sound of the shot, but those monsters lacked the thinking ability to identify the shooter. So instead of heading directly toward the balcony, they wandered around the courtyard in a confused state, searching aimlessly for a source they could not properly understand. This gave Bai Li the chance she needed to move out of the line of fire and temporarily break the attacker’s aim.

On the other hand, Yan Cijin had already become fully alert.

Her eyes were bloodshot now, and her hands were stretched forward, the fingers slightly spread as if she were physically holding something invisible in the air. Beside her, little Lili had been taken back inside. The child was quiet now, still close enough to her mother to feel the shift in her mood, and her little face showed a bit of confusion and fear. She kept looking at her mother and the thin line of bluish light extending from her arms. It looked magical, almost like something out of a fairy tale. The glow was beautiful in one sense, but at the same time, the atmosphere around Yan Cijin had changed so sharply that the beauty of the light felt wrong. It did not feel playful or comforting. It felt dangerous.

The little girl did not have the excited curiosity that a child usually had when seeing something magical. Instead, there was a tiny bit of fear in her heart. She looked at her mother’s somber expression, at the bloodshot eyes, and at the change in demeanor that had happened in what felt like only a second. The gentle mother she knew had seemed to turn into something terrifying, something sharp and cold. It unsettled her. But even so, that fear did not stay in her heart for long. Because she was still little, still soft and exhausted from the sudden emotional pull of everything happening around her, she soon slipped into a deep sleep. Her body relaxed little by little, and the tension left her tiny face.

Yan Cijin turned immediately, her hand going behind the little girl’s back as she carried her inside. She carefully placed Lili on the bed, making sure the child was settled comfortably and safely before stepping away. Only after that did she return to the balcony. She took a deep breath, trying to force calm back into her chest.

"Huu..." She exhaled slowly. "Almost missed."

Her voice was quiet, but the tension in it was impossible to hide.

Yan Cijin was still shaken by the sudden turn of events. She had no idea that someone would actually shoot at another person at this moment, much less that someone would actually have a gun in this building. The apocalypse had already made the world wild and ugly, but even then, she had not expected such blatant human malice to appear so quickly and so casually.

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TO BE CONTINUED.