What did he mean, fly?
Fang Xiaoxia's breathing was ragged. The sensation of the car plummeting made every passing second feel instantaneous, as if the next blink would bring her crashing down to be smashed to pieces, robbing her of the ability to think.
Big bro, does this car of yours come with maglev?
Yet Bai Zhou's next command followed immediately:
"Get out of the car."
"Huh? What?" Fang Xiaoxia's mouth fell open, wondering if she had misheard. "Here?"
"Jump!"
Bai Zhou said. Behind him were howling gales and torrential rain, the violent wind whipping the corners of his clothes.
"Open the door and jump out!"
Bai Zhou didn't even glance at the steering wheel or the dead speedometer needle. In this moment, neither the accelerator nor the handbrake had any meaning. Gravity and momentum were dragging this Maserati, "flying" through midair, into a rapid plunge.
For it was not a real swan after all, and even a real swan would be smashed to pieces falling from this height.
"Don't worry, I'll catch you!" Bai Zhou added.
The night was pitch-black, devoid of stars.
Yet as Bai Zhou looked at the girl, his eyes were brighter than any star:
"If you jump, I'll jump right after!"
"..." Fang Xiaoxia felt Bai Zhou had truly been driven mad by the adrenaline.
Yet suddenly, she wanted to go mad right along with him.
As if the world hadn't already gone entirely mad—three-meter-tall black monsters and a freakish deformity with a colossal mouth were chasing her, a Maserati was tearing across an expressway bridge on a rainy night... If this absurd reality was all just a dream,
then let this final leap be the finale before waking up.
And so, she said, "Okay!"
Then she actually pushed the car door open.
A gust of fierce wind rushed in, rain battered her face, and the dark clouds and sky in her vision seemed to plummet rapidly, as if the end of the world were swaying into view.
"You really are a madman! I don't even know what your name is!"
Fang Xiaoxia's shouted words mingled with the howling wind, sounding somewhat muffled.
Turning her head, Fang Xiaoxia looked at Bai Zhou with blazing eyes. Though nervous, she was filled even more with the courage to throw back her shoulders.
"—But now, I'm a madman too!"
After all, Bai Zhou was the only person she could trust right now.
She suffered from social anxiety whenever she met strangers, couldn't even throw a punch when bullied, couldn't do anything right... but a girl like her loved nothing more than fantasizing about untouchable things.
This meant she had always been fantasizing about the arrival of a certain moment—a moment when she could break free from her mundane life and go utterly wild. Deep in the heart of this little fire dragon, a surging volcano had secretly been dormant, silently piling up all the unspoken desires and imaginings, waiting for a single, reckless eruption.
Until this very moment.
Just as Bai Zhou said everyone had their moment of seeing ghosts...
For Fang Xiaoxia, that moment to go mad was right now.
"Right now!" The youth's voice severed all hesitation, piercing through the wind and rain like a sharp blade straight to her heartbeat.
Fang Xiaoxia closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and steeled her resolve.
Then, she made the boldest move of her life.
Whoosh!
Her white dress fluttered like a kite.
Standing at the edge of this steel wreck hurtling toward the sea, braving the gale and torrential downpour that could knock anyone off their feet,
Fang Xiaoxia, hands covering her eyes, actually pushed off with her feet and leapt from the open door straight into the raging atmospheric pressure outside.
Her tiny figure clad in a white dress was instantly swallowed by the torrent of weightlessness.
Driven by no one else, it was an extraordinary leap born solely of her own resolve.
—This was practically impossible for Fang Xiaoxia; she felt that at this moment, she had definitely been possessed by a ghost.
Yet at that instant, Fang Xiaoxia seemed to hear a faint, crisp snap.
The shell named "everyday life" shattered.
The girl plummeted into the sky, like a caged bird spreading its wings to break free.
The mediocre girl was sloughing away, and an entirely new life was screaming as it broke through its shell.
She cried out:
"Aaaahhh! Unlucky, unlucky, unlucky, unlucky—!"
The sensation of weightlessness made Fang Xiaoxia feel the world spinning. Her stomach churned, though she couldn't throw up. The raging wind and icy rain lashed at her face like knives, distorting her features, while turbulent currents rushed at her head-on, yet she couldn't seem to draw a single breath.
Falling, falling.
The white dress billowed and fluttered in the gale.
Plummeting in a spin, the girl covered her face, legs tightly bent and pressed together, facing the sky with her back to the sea, like a child cradled by the wind.
She squeezed her eyes shut, not daring to open them, knowing only that she was hurtling toward the sea, and in a moment she might end up like a free-falling tomato smashed on the ground.
The insane experience sent Fang Xiaoxia's adrenaline surging. Her brain was hyped into oxygen deprivation yet unable to think, and her limbs felt completely limp and unresponsive.
An indescribable sensation made her throat tremble as if it were about to shed tears—yes, that contradictory description, her throat shedding tears.
At this moment, the girl prayed in her heart.
[O gods...]
[If this is all a dream, let me wake up right now.]
Hummm!
Suddenly, an indescribable sound—a low hum—pierced the howling gale and rang clearly in Fang Xiaoxia's ears.
Immediately after—
Thwump!
She heard the sound of some colossal object unfurling, like a great bird snapping open wings like hanging clouds, stretching taut and billowing against the gale—
Beneath her, a soft yet solid sensation suddenly arrived.
Miraculously, the violent winds that had lashed her entire body and the driving rain pelting her face came to an abrupt halt.
The weightlessness of the fall vanished as well.
"W-what happened...?"
Had she woken from the dream?
Fang Xiaoxia's heart was still pounding wildly. Her trembling eyelashes flickered over tightly shut eyes as she gingerly opened them.
First, she parted the fingers covering her eyes to peek through a slit; then, she suddenly pulled her hands away and widened her eyes—
"Th-this is...?!"
She was sitting on something.
Beneath her hips lay dark yellow paper that felt both sturdy and soft, marked with clear cross creases and crumpled wrinkles. Everywhere she looked were numbers and symbols, shimmering with faint light under her gaze.
A paper airplane.
An impossibly massive, gently glowing origami paper airplane, gliding smoothly between the night sky and the sea!
—She was sitting right on this paper airplane.
Wind and rain were shut out by an invisible barrier. Far below rolled the surging sea, the pouring rain hammering billions of tiny ripples onto the water's surface.
Torrential rain poured down as raging billows battered fishing boats; the sea merged with the sky, swallowed in a boundless expanse.
Yet through the storm, the paper airplane remained astonishingly steady, spreading its wings as it flew toward the horizon beyond the dark clouds.
Raindrops parted automatically as they neared the paper plane, as though meeting an invisible, gentle force field enveloping it.
Whoosh...
Around them, there was only the steady rush of air as they glided; the sound of waves crashing ashore and rain falling felt as if they came from somewhere unimaginably far away.
"It must be a dream..." Fang Xiaoxia murmured in a daze.
Not far in front of her sat the familiar youth. His back was turned to her, his posture relaxed, one hand even resting casually on the edge of the "paper airplane" as if he were riding a scenic cable car.
The faintly luminous paper airplane illuminated his back, setting his silhouette apart from the vast expanse of the rainy night.
The glowing youth turned his head, blinking twice at Fang Xiaoxia with a hint of smugness:
"Didn't I tell you I'd catch you?"
In the distance, the stretch of the expressway bridge they had just escaped was reduced to a faint, colossal silhouette blinking with sporadic lights in the pouring rain, like a coiled giant serpent.
On the bridge, those colossal Black Warriors, as well as the figures of Luo Jiu, Picasso, and the others, had all shrunk into indistinct specks.
They stood there staring dumbfounded, casting collective gazes of shock, fury, and disbelief in this direction.
Looking closely, one could see the sea below shimmering with faint, variegated colors like a bizarre net spread open toward the sky, with monsters looming in the churning waves nearby.
The paper airplane swept across the sea, casting a long shadow that flickered past over them.
Only now did Fang Xiaoxia truly, clearly realize that they had really "flown" out—in the manner most familiar from her childhood, yet most surreal in this moment.
A gentle glow emanated from the crumpled paper, brushing against the girl's white dress with a kind of warmth.
Fang Xiaoxia was utterly stunned, the immense shock leaving her entire brain light-headed.
"You were right just now. I kept forgetting to introduce myself."
At that, Bai Zhou looked at Fang Xiaoxia, blinking twice. "I don't know how many times we've run into each other, but this is our first official introduction—"
"My name is Bai Zhou."
In that instant, as if awakened, countless memories suddenly flooded Fang Xiaoxia's mind.
The mysterious youth who disappeared into the end of a rainy night outside the restaurant, seemingly tailed by someone.
The bizarre man wearing only a naked apron, who free-fell past her window and vanished mysteriously.
And the master of the paper airplane sitting before her right now, who had redeemed and rescued her like something out of a dream.
Whoosh...
The steady rush of wind whispered softly past the girl's ears.
Carrying the two of them, the crumpled paper airplane soared across the deep, rainy night toward the pitch-black distance. Before long, it flew back to the coast and blended into that sprawling city.
On this stormy, deserted midnight, the shadow of the paper airplane swept across the city's skies.
The girl's heart thudded. The surreal fantasy of this moment made her feel like a witch riding a broomstick, draped in a magic blanket on her way to spend winter in a fairy-tale kingdom.
This was a scene that belonged only in fairy tales and divine murals, yet it shone into the life of an ordinary girl like her.
—On the eve of her eighteenth birthday.
[O gods.]
Watching the youth's figure gradually blend into the night, the faint light glowing from the crumpled paper plane below reflected in the girl's eyes.
From the bottom of her heart, she prayed once more—
[I take back my earlier request.]
[If this is a dream, let time stand still at this moment!]
Bai Zhou looked down at the paper airplane beneath his feet.
Riding this plane for the first time, Bai Zhou's feelings were equally complicated.
Though it didn't show on his face, with his back to the girl, Bai Zhou's eyes darted constantly as he scanned the surface beneath him without pause.
[59-Point Paper Airplane]
[Imbued with students' yearning for freedom and longing for the sky outside the classroom window, born from the departed souls' gratitude toward their teacher; having nothing to their names, the impoverished students could only offer this pure emotion as a gift.]
[Boarding this airplane allows one to fly freely high into the sky.]
[Grades are merely the runway for takeoff, but once the plane takes flight, it no longer needs to land, soaring onward toward boundless possibilities.]
Luo Jiu and Picasso would never let him walk away so easily. Bai Zhou knew better than anyone that simply crashing off the expressway bridge would not be enough to escape them.
Yet when Bai Zhou had looked at the guardrail in distress, he remembered this [59-Point Paper Airplane].
And so, Plan B was born.
[Fly high!]
He seemed to hear tender children's voices echoing in unison from the paper airplane.
Then, leaping through midair, he stowed the battered Maserati into the Trojan Horse while waving his hand to toss out this airplane.
And then—
He truly flew high into the sky.
It was as if a paper airplane from his childhood had flown back into his hands, his past good deeds repaid with a gift capable of redeeming himself.
The gift was even immense enough to shatter the desperate plight surrounding Bai Zhou, carrying his future destiny high into the sky, far enough to leave gods and demons behind.
"Thank you..."
Bai Zhou whispered in his heart, as if looking through the paper plane to see the children who had once been dominated by the Exam King and saved by him.
Even for Bai Zhou, riding a paper airplane through the air was wonderfully romantic and unbelievable, as if a fairy tale had manifested in reality.
To Bai Zhou, they truly were the loveliest people, and what he had heard just now was undoubtedly the voices they had left behind.
Because of them, this grand flight had been made possible.
"What the fuck did you say just now?" Big Mouth Luo Jiu's mouth hung open wider than ever before.
He demanded of Picasso beside him, "What the fuck did you fucking say just now?"
Picasso: "...?"
He had said: unless Bai Zhou could fly.
And then... he really took flight...?!
Who could have imagined it? A Rank 5 Extraordinary had accomplished something even Titled Extraordinaries could not do.
And in... such an absurd, preposterous fashion?
What on earth was that?! What the hell was that crumpled paper airplane?
"How am I supposed to explain this to Father when I get back?"
Luo Jiu's eyes nearly popped out of his skull as he watched the two of them riding the paper airplane, swaggering away toward the edge of the horizon before disappearing from his sight.
"Am I supposed to say these two bastards flew off the bridge, rode a crumpled paper airplane, and escaped at four hundred kilometers per hour?"
"Should we have brought two fighter jets in advance?!"
Luo Jiu was practically growling. "Him escaping on a broomstick would sound more plausible than riding a paper airplane at four hundred kilometers per hour!"
"There's nothing scientific about this, and nothing occult either!"
"You're right, but that's assuming you get the chance to report this to your father," Picasso's low voice reached Luo Jiu's ears, reminding him to look around.
"Before that, we need to find a way to break out."
Picasso looked at the layers of dark shadows gathering around them and the turbulent fog nearly engulfing half the expressway bridge, saying:
"It'd be great if you had a paper airplane right now too. Even a paper boat would do... We could row it all the way to Mars."
"Otherwise, you'd better use the lifesaving trump card your father left you right now."
Looking around, Big Mouth Luo Jiu: "..."
To allow Bai Zhou, a Rank 4 Destined, to reach into the domain of the sky ahead of his level, the cost of using the paper airplane was naturally extraordinary.
The spirituality in Bai Zhou's body was rapidly draining, and he discovered that once this use of the plane ended, a five-day cooldown would begin—just like how children had to go to school for five days before resting on the weekend.
To preserve his combat readiness and recover quickly, when his internal spirituality was nearly half depleted, Bai Zhou steered the paper airplane down to low altitude and jumped back to the ground with Fang Xiaoxia.
They returned to the city of Tinghai, where the depths of a deserted alley provided temporary safety.
Far in the distance, the neon landmark "Tinghai Welcomes You" looked tiny in the rain, indicating that Bai Zhou and Fang Xiaoxia were at the city's remote outskirts.
Bai Zhou breathed a sigh of relief, stowed the paper airplane, and was just pulling a black umbrella from his coat—
Swish!
A strange yet familiar sound reached his ears.
A broom-shaped grappling hook zipped across the air, its sharp talons latching firmly onto a nearby roof.
Immediately following, a dark figure whooshed across the pitch-black curtain of rain.
This rainy night seemed especially suited for enemies crossing paths on a narrow road.
"I'm pretty sure I saw that weird plane land around here..."
A low muttered complaint drifted through the air, cutting off abruptly.
A cape fluttered in the wind; gems glittered in the rain.
The masked witch landed lightly atop the wall.
The heavy rain was still pouring. As her imposing silhouette cast down, the newcomer's eyes lit up the moment she caught sight of Bai Zhou's face.
Practically impatient, she pulled out a thick wad of rolled-up wanted posters from her coat, drew out the top one, studied the photo, and scrutinized Bai Zhou's features intently against it.
Then, she let out a sudden, triumphant "Ha!":
"'Just when the trail seems lost in a maze of mountains and streams, what luck to find it without the slightest effort!'"
"You heinous villain, you've fallen into the hands of me—the 'Elegant Poem Recording Love,' the 'Guardian Maintaining the Scales of Reason,' the 'Agent of Justice,' the 'Beloved of Talent,' the 'Guide of Radiance'—the [Gem Witch]!"
Under Fang Xiaoxia's dumbstruck, ghost-seeing gaze, the witch perched on the rooftop eaves—dressed in bizarre attire with an unfriendly scowl—reeled off a string of titles.
This made Fang Xiaoxia think an entire ambush of titled mysterious figures surrounded them, frightening the girl into constantly glancing left and right.
"Heh, repent your sins!"
With one hand on her hip, lifting her cape to reveal the jewel-encrusted belt around her waist like someone headed to a masquerade ball, the witch brandished the wanted poster in her other hand toward the two below:
"Answer me!"
By the dim yellow light of the streetlamp, enabling both Fang Xiaoxia and Bai Zhou to see, the masked witch on the eaves pointed at the ID photo that clearly belonged to Bai Zhou and interrogated him coldly from above:
"Are you the psychopathic killer responsible for serial bombings, the villain who attacked official authorities, the murderer who killed multiple bureau officers, the traitor colluding with the Blood Worship Cult to strike officials, the bandit who stole a Black Box..."
As Fang Xiaoxia stared at Bai Zhou with terror, shock, and utter disbelief, the masked witch rattled off an avalanche of horrifying crimes like reading items off a menu, staring down at Bai Zhou's red-backed ID photo:
"—the heinous, fugitive Black Box Special Administration Class-A wanted criminal who has eluded capture by the authorities at every turn—"
"Bai Zhou, am I right?"
Chapter 185