Brother Kai glanced back. Ding Shi had already finished looting the corpses and was heading toward the car.
Brother Kai said, "Yuyu, agents aren't hard to deal with. We could just take the national highway instead of risking our necks with him in the non-signal zone. Haven't you noticed? He's only taking the non-signal zone to explore—he doesn't really care about the main quest."
Brother Kai continued, "I think he's using us as mine detectors. With the five of us together, whenever danger strikes, he'll most likely be the last one to die. Compared to him, we're just cannon fodder."
Brother Kai was about to say more when a flash of cold light gleamed ahead. Caught by the sun's reflection, both he and Chu Yu in the front passenger seat looked over.
All they saw was a flying axe spinning toward them. The axe smashed through the front windshield and hacked into Ritian's burly chest, severing multiple ribs and embedding itself deep in his flesh.
Everyone reflexively looked up, but the web of cracks across the shattered windshield blocked their view.
Alarm bells blared in Chu Yu's mind. Pressing the seatbelt release with her left hand, she slid down out of her seat. A second later, another flying axe crashed through the window and lodged directly into the passenger seat.
Chu Yu shouted, "Ding Shi! Ding Shi!"
Hearing her cries, Ding Shi sprinted over with pistol in hand. Reaching the passenger side, he glanced inside the car, then gripped his gun with both hands and advanced slowly. Ahead lay a two-hundred-meter stretch of concrete road sandwiched between two mountains, flanked on both sides by drainage ditches bordered by dense woods.
Both mountains were quite steep, practically ruling out the possibility that the attacker had scrambled up the slopes immediately after striking; most likely, the assailant was hiding in the woods alongside the ditches.
Suddenly, a noise rustled from the right. A dark silhouette ascended rapidly, darting into the thicker woods higher up. Ding Shi aimed, but the trees obstructed his shot. All he could catch was the back of a figure wearing a tattered black cloak. The silhouette moved at astonishing speed, ascending the sixty-degree slope as if traversing flat ground, almost in defiance of the laws of physics. In barely ten seconds, he vanished completely into the mountain forest.
Ding Shi edged toward the spot where the figure had appeared and quickly uncovered the secret: the figure had used hanging vines to pull himself swiftly up the mountain, rather than climbing barehanded.
Ding Shi fell back. By then, Ritian had already been lifted out of the driver's seat. The others gathered around him as blood poured from his wound. Chu Yu knelt beside Ritian on one knee, a medical pack resting by her feet.
Chu Yu said calmly, "Ding Shi, dagger."
Ding Shi drew his dagger, flicking his wrist so it rotated one hundred and eighty degrees. Pinching the blade, he handed the hilt to Chu Yu. Chu Yu took it, cut open Ritian's clothes, and said, "Water."
Water washed over Ritian's chest, and fresh blood immediately welled up. Chu Yu delivered her verdict: "Not fatal for now, but we can't treat this."
She added, "I studied medicine for four years." That was also the main reason she hadn't been frightened by the female dwarf the previous night.
Mumu asked, "How can he be saved then?"
Chu Yu replied, "Send him to a hospital. Even though the axe didn't hit anything vital, it caused massive damage, leaving a deep surgical wound and multiple broken ribs. The only thing we can do right now is pull out the axe and stitch the wound. For the rest of the journey, Ritian can only lie flat without moving."
In short, Ritian was incapacitated yet refused to die, becoming a burden to the team.
Given his massive build, he couldn't fit across a single rear seat, meaning he would have to lie across the rear footwell. The remainder of the journey would be pure agony for Ritian; the wound was likely to fester and become infected, and the pain from the trauma would torture him endlessly.
Had Ritian been petite and delicate, there might have been a better way, but he was a giant of a man—even two men could barely move him safely. One careless slip, and bone fragments could shift inside his thoracic cavity, potentially puncturing his heart, alveoli, or blood vessels.
After a moment's contemplation, Chu Yu ordered, "Ding Shi, keep watch. Mumu, give me a hand. Brother Kai, see if you can take out one of the seats to open up the trunk into the back."
Chu Yu opened a medical pack, which was well-stocked. Looking at Ritian, who was grimacing through the agony, she asked, "You don't want to die, right?"
Ritian nodded.
Chu Yu said, "I'm going to pull out the axe and stitch the wound now. It's going to hurt like hell."
Ritian nodded. Mumu stuffed a roll of gauze into Ritian's mouth, and he clamped down on it hard. Chu Yu gripped the axe with one hand and gave a sharp pull; the axe came free in a violent spray of blood.
Novice medic that she was, Chu Yu didn't dodge in time, and blood splattered across her face. Yet she remained calm, tilting her head forward. "Wipe."
Mumu used gauze to wipe Chu Yu's face, only managing to smear the blood all over it. Chu Yu set to work stitching the wound. It was a blessing that Ritian couldn't see what was happening; watching from the side, Mumu's eyelid twitched uncontrollably. No wonder Chu Yu had changed careers—with stitching technique like that, not even a livestock farm would dare hire her.
Standing guard, Ding Shi remarked, "Fog's rolling in."
It was eleven in the morning on their second day. In theory, fog shouldn't be forming at this hour.
Ding Shi reported again, "It's not very thick yet. Visibility hasn't been affected much."
Still, this wasn't good. Firearms had long range while throwing axes relied on close quarters; the thicker the fog grew, the more danger the group faced. If they didn't make it off Heishuigou Road before sunset, the consequences would be unthinkable.
Ten minutes later, Brother Kai removed the rear left seat and said, "I'll make a makeshift stretcher." With the car seat upholstery and some wooden poles, it shouldn't be too hard to fashion one.
Twenty minutes later, Chu Yu let out a sigh of relief as she looked at the C-shaped line of stitches. At least it was closed. As for removing the stitches later, there was no need to worry about that—once they cleared the instance, the system would heal all player injuries.
Ding Shi and Brother Kai worked together, lifting Ritian—who had passed out from the pain—onto the stretcher and shoving him in through the trunk. It was a rough, awkward struggle, but they managed to wedge him inside. In the end, Ritian was left with his knees bent, his lower half in the trunk, and the top of his head pressed right against the driver's seat.
Ritian woke up shortly after. His very first words made everyone want to tear their hair out: "I need to pee."
Moving him again would be too monumental a task. As Ritian's best bro, Brother Kai had the two girls turn away, grabbed a mineral water bottle, and helped him out.
By the time everything was sorted out, it was already half past twelve in the afternoon. After grabbing a quick bite to eat and some water, Team Yuyu's car set off once more. With the windshield completely removed, the early-autumn mountain breeze carried an eerie, unnatural chill that froze them all to the bone.
Navigating the winding mountain pass, they reached the crest without further incident. The car descended into a canyon landscape, flanked on both sides by verdant, lush peaks with a road of countless twists and turns snaking through the middle. Team Yuyu had arrived at the first abandoned village along Heishuigou Road.
Chapter 52