Once Zhang Shou and the others adjusted, Yu Xian did not remain on the sixth floor, preparing instead to head downstairs and continue clearing out aberrant worms.
Had he not discovered surviving students in the sixth-floor classrooms—some in urgent need of first aid to stop their bleeding—his original plan was to keep pushing downward until he killed every single aberrant worm in the academic building.
Now that Zhang Shou and the others were handling bandaging the survivors' wounds, all he had to do was slaughter the aberrant worms as quickly as possible and save more classmates.
"Wait, I'm coming with you!" Nora plucked up her courage and spoke up.
Yu Xian looked at Nora, feeling as though he were looking at a glittering golden silly goose. Just as he was about to refuse, Nora said, "If you let me come along, I'll give you twenty jin of silver next time!"
"Deal!" Yu Xian agreed immediately.
Silver was outrageously expensive nowadays; twenty jin of silver ought to last him a long time.
The two descended to the fifth floor. With a flick of Yu Xian's finger, silver threads instantly sliced through several aberrant worms that were standing in the hallway mauling students. Nora was not idle either; she quickly drew her pistol and aimed at an aberrant worm in the distance.
A shot rang out, and the aberrant worm's body blew apart on the spot.
Yu Xian was slightly startled, glancing at the gun in Nora's hand. He had not expected the bullets from this firearm to pack such devastating power.
"I hit it! I hit it!" Nora muttered to herself in excitement as she watched the aberrant worm collapse.
She then aimed at the aberrant worms that came charging out at the noise, pulling the trigger repeatedly. Aberrant worm after aberrant worm burst and died under the gunfire.
Each class had roughly twenty-five to thirty students, and only about five to ten were infected by aberrant worms. With four classrooms per floor in the academic building, each level held roughly thirty to forty aberrant worms.
Nora's pistol held fifteen rounds in total. After gunning down fifteen aberrant worms in succession, she began hurriedly reloading in a fluster.
Naturally, the aberrant worms had no intention of giving her a chance to reload, surging out from behind cover in the classrooms. Before they could close in, however, Yu Xian manipulated his silver threads and cut them down.
After confirming that every aberrant worm on the fifth floor was dead, the two moved down to the fourth floor.
Once again, they had Nora first kill a portion of the aberrant worms with her pistol, then bait them into a general charge while she reloaded, whereupon Yu Xian wiped out the onrushing swarm in one fell swoop.
"Do you have enough ammo?" Yu Xian asked as they headed down to the third floor.
Nora nodded. "Plenty. I packed a hundred thousand rounds."
Ever since she was attacked by 'ordinary people,' she had specifically stocked up on pistols and ammunition—in quantities generous enough to keep anyone satisfied.
On the third floor, working in seamless coordination, they slaughtered every aberrant worm in just a minute. After making sure none slipped through the net, the two continued down to the second floor.
"Are you... a vampire too?" Nora, trailing behind him, gave Yu Xian a complicated look and asked in a low voice.
Yu Xian walked ahead, replying frankly, "Yes. I have ALS. If I hadn't become a vampire, I would have died. I heard that because of me, you were not only attacked by violent thugs, but also ostracized by other students at school. I'm sorry."
In any case, he had already prepared himself mentally when he called the police: once he resolved this disaster, he would flee to the ends of the earth, not returning to human society until he became invincible.
"So that's how it is..." Nora murmured softly, looking at Yu Xian with conflicted eyes.
Once they reached the second floor, Nora immediately cast aside all distracting thoughts. Gripping her pistol with both hands, she fired continuously at the aberrant worms. When she ran out of bullets, she retrieved fresh rounds, reloading while keeping an eye on Yu Xian.
The remaining aberrant worms seized the chance to launch an all-out assault. Yu Xian swept his finger downward, and a silver thread descended like a wave, slicing the aberrant worms into grotesque shapes in an instant.
Just then, the teacher who had fled earlier burst out of a classroom, vaulted over the corridor railing, and landed on the plaza below.
"Trying to run?!"
Seeing this, Yu Xian planted a hand on the railing and likewise leapt from the second floor down to the plaza.
Before he could strike, a gunshot cracked through the air. The aberrant worm-parasitized teacher's upper body blew apart, collapsing on the spot.
On the floor above, Nora held her gun, flashing a sly grin when Yu Xian looked back. A gust of wind happened to blow by, fluttering her long golden hair; even Yu Xian found his eyes dazzled for a moment by the radiant scene.
Yu Xian took back his previous thought.
She wasn't a glittering golden silly goose, but... a pretty silly goose.
Suddenly, horror flashed across Nora's eyes, her mouth opening as if to shout something.
"Watch out!"
As Nora's cry rang out, a dark shadow flashed past in an instant.
Yu Xian reacted swiftly; the moment Nora's eyes had slightly widened, he was already dodging, yet the dark shadow still severed one of his arms.
*Thud!*
A rectangular road sign slammed heavily onto the academic building's steps.
Yu Xian's blood trickled down from the top of the sign, flowing across the words 'School Ahead, Slow Down' before dripping onto the ground.
Yu Xian clutched his wound and glanced at the sign. He spun around immediately. Without his noticing when, a woman in business attire was crouching on the school perimeter wall.
"Hey there, mister, I came to play with you!"
The woman wore a manic, lunatic smile, but the voice that came out was that of a man.
Yu Xian's expression turned grim, silver light flickering in his eyes as he gritted his teeth. "You're that bastard on the other end of the phone...!"
"Yes, yes! I'm that bastard!" The woman jumped down from the wall and said with a beaming smile, "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Zhou Tai. Formerly a human, and my current identity is... an aberrant worm."
It slowly strolled over to the corpse of the teacher parasitized by the aberrant worm, squatted down, and muttered to itself, "Tsk, tsk. Possessing such a powerful body, yet not knowing how to use it. What a waste."
*Bang! Bang! Bang!*
From above, Nora seized the moment while Zhou Tai was squatted down and ill-positioned to dodge, immediately firing three consecutive shots at him.
Yet no explosion followed. Instead, three bullets appeared in Zhou Tai's hand. He rose with a chuckle. "Bullets really aren't that fast. Actually, every aberrant worm has the ability to dodge them. It's just that they pretended to be human for so long that even after their consciousness awakens and they realize they aren't human, they still follow some of humanity's bad habits. Their reflexes, their speed—both are constrained by subconscious inhibitions."
Humans possessed self-preservation mechanisms; when regulating muscle activity, the body automatically set a safety threshold to prevent muscle and skeletal damage from overexertion.
Many aberrant worms were influenced by this, which was why they could only unleash around fifty percent of their true power.
Zhou Tai's persona was different. He inherently did not care about his physical vessel, belonging to the type willing to self-mutilate to achieve his ends. Thus, once his persona took over this body, its power was fully unleashed.
"Here you go, missy!"
With a flick of his wrist, the three bullets shot instantly toward Nora on the upper floor.
*Boom!*
Midair, the bullets made contact with a silver thread and immediately exploded.
Yu Xian's body had already turned pitch-black. Sweeping his finger downward, the silver thread stretching upward whipped down to slice toward Zhou Tai.
Chapter 9