So-Called Karma 15

It felt like a barbed wad of cotton was lodged in Lu Mingqiu's throat, swelling and aching, stealing her voice.

She reached out, her hand hovering near the other's eye socket, and asked in a low voice, "Your... your eyes."

The pitiful little lamb twitched its eyelids and slowly opened them, like a clam futilely prying itself apart to reveal its insides, which had long since been crushed by an iron rod.

How to describe this sight? It wasn't like eyeballs at all, but rather squashed berries, burst purple grapes, rotten flesh tangled in a spider's web, or the crushed entrails of a frog.

Red and yellow were all jumbled together, the crystal shattered, yet a chunk of flesh still remained in the socket—credit to its resilience.

Her breath hitched, and the other quickly shut her eyes again. Using her other senses to gauge direction, she took two more steps forward and brushed against her palm.

It wasn't serious. Yan Xianchuan didn't consider her injuries a big deal—if you were still alive and breathing, it wasn't a severe wound.

She felt only one thing: chagrin, the embarrassing kind.

She should have fought valiantly, completed the mission flawlessly, and proven how reliable she truly was.

Instead, she'd fallen into a trap and had to be rescued. Her most embarrassing moments had all been witnessed, so hadn't her image been ruined entirely?

Thinking about it, Yan Xianchuan even felt a somewhat inappropriate relief: at least she couldn't see right now. If she had seen the disappointment on the other's face, she'd rather have died on the spot.

Her teammate's voice came through the communicator twice before Lu Mingqiu took a deep breath and stood up to ask in a low voice, "Can you walk?"

Yan Xianchuan nodded with a "baa."

Her legs were fine and not broken, so of course she could walk.

But how could someone who suddenly lost her sight move freely, let alone keep up with her pace? Yet leaving her alone here, if danger struck again, what then?

Yan Xianchuan wasn't big, but she weighed a few dozen kilograms. Carrying her the whole way was clearly unrealistic.

Lu Mingqiu's brows knitted tightly.

Just then, she spotted a faded blue cloth buried under the rubble. She dashed over, pulled it out from under the glass, shook off the shards and dirt, tore it into strips, and tied them into a rope.

"Just follow me, only walk forward, okay?"

Lu Mingqiu crouched down and carefully looped the blue cloth rope around the other's neck, avoiding the wounds, and whispered, "Don't be afraid."

Even though Yan Xianchuan could locate her by sound, she stood still obediently when Lu Mingqiu tied the rope around her.

She had never felt so much like a sheep before.

The strap was tied loosely, but she could still feel the pull.

Yan Xianchuan shook her head, thinking, at least she was a sheep with an owner.

"Let's go." Lu Mingqiu gave the cloth rope a gentle tug, starting at a slow walk, then breaking into a jog when she saw the other could follow, though her initial pace wasn't very fast.

She tried to avoid the areas with more corpses, but it was inevitable to encounter a few. Whenever that happened, she couldn't help but look back and warn, "To your left front."

Fortunately, Yan Xianchuan never stumbled. She marched forward with abandon, lifting her legs high and stomping hard enough to crush stones, let alone soft human flesh.

Alternatively, she kicked them away, one by one.

She looked strong and lively, but Lu Mingqiu couldn't bear to look. Those wet droplets of blood, like flowing flames, leapt from Yan Xianchuan's body into her eyes, burning her internal organs.

Calm down.

Lu Mingqiu took a long breath, exhaled slowly, regulated her breathing, and forcibly suppressed her chaotic emotions. The battle wasn't over; now was not the time to indulge sentiment.

The still-functioning surveillance cameras captured the last traces of the Church members' movements. Beyond that, there were no cameras on the path ahead, so Hei Ge didn't know where they had gone.

But after waiting so long, having killed all the attackers, their whereabouts remained unseen. Based on their evacuation speed, they should have appeared by now.

Now, all exits were empty, which could only mean the base had other exits.

"We can't let them escape." Lu Mingqiu's voice turned cold. "Launch the airship and use radar detection."

Hei Ge received the command and immediately piloted the airship into the sky. Handheld mini life-radar detectors had a maximum range of eight hundred meters, drastically reduced when facing terrain like mountains or concrete. But the large unit mounted on the airship was different—military-grade equipment that could easily scan several kilometers underground. Even factoring the airship's altitude, it could blanket the entire Walnut Town in one pass.

Could people on foot outrun an airship?

Almost as soon as the airship took off, Hei Ge received a signal. "Northwest, ten o'clock direction. I've marked it on the map."

The airship's engine roared overhead, and a rope ladder descended from above. Lu Mingqiu scooped up the bewildered little lamb with one arm, grabbed the ladder with the other, and was lifted into the sky.

As the ladder was retracted, Lu Mingqiu first hoisted Yan Xianchuan up, waiting until Gold Ring and the others, who had been retrieved earlier, caught her, before climbing up herself. Once inside the cabin, her first act was to grab a sniper rifle and set it up at the hatch.

The Church couldn't have dug a tunnel all the way to Lipeia; they would have to surface eventually. The moment they emerged, they'd be like moles popping out of their holes in a game, only to be hit in the head by a bullet like a hammer.

The airship likewise retrieved the Calamus unit and finally picked up Bai Ge, heading toward the marked location.

The underground cavity was clearly detected, and the airship carried them directly to the exit to wait.

After Bai Ge came aboard, he walked to the weapons rack, picked up a shoulder-launched rocket, and stood beside Lu Mingqiu, speaking deliberately, "Use this."

"Don't cause trouble," Hei Ge immediately interjected. "We need live captives from the Church for interrogation."

Bai Ge snorted at his words, his demeanor like a rebellious teenager, but he obediently put the weapon down.

Lu Mingqiu, after hearing his words, guiltily narrowed her eyes. Frankly, she hadn't thought of that just now; she chose the sniper rifle simply because it was the easiest to set up at the hatch.

She let out a breath, set down the rifle, and handed it to Butterfly, who was equally skilled in marksmanship. "Keep watch. Try not to kill anyone first; just round them up."

Then she stood up, took the little lamb's rope again, and walked to the other end of the airship, pulling out a medical kit from a storage shelf. "Let me treat your wounds first," she said softly.

Yan Xianchuan twitched her ears. "Baa."

When she had been freed from the cocoon, her body bore nearly a hundred wounds of varying sizes—some long and clean gashes, some jagged blood streaks as if raked by chainsaw links, with torn flesh curling at the edges like shrinking rose petals. There were burns, frostbite... and the most severe ones were the puncture wounds, the size of a little finger, oozing black blood.

As for her eyes, Yan Xianchuan hadn't seen clearly, only a red object piercing through the white web straight into her eyes, twisting. A suffocating pain had forced her to struggle violently, aborting the attempt to strike through to her brain.

The web must have carried more than just paralytic venom; it had been slowly corroding her skin, or she wouldn't have taken so much damage so easily.

But Lu Mingqiu, looking at the wounds now, noticed that the superficial cuts had already begun to heal, and the deepest puncture holes had stopped bleeding.

She unscrewed the cap of the iodine, dipped a cotton swab, and disinfected each wound in turn. The more she applied, the more alarmed she became.

"Your eyes..." Lu Mingqiu said softly. "You can use prosthetic eyes for now. Growing new biological eyes with your DNA will take at least two weeks."

"Prosthetic eyes function no differently from biological ones, and they even have more features. They won't hinder daily life."

Her voice was hoarse. "Don't worry. The surgery can be done as soon as we get back."

I was never worried in the first place... Yan Xianchuan was utterly baffled. Going blind wasn't that big a deal.

And since she couldn't speak human words anyway, she couldn't explain her confusion. Seeing that the other didn't seem to dislike her, she figured it was better to cherish this last intimate moment.

Yan Xianchuan didn't do anything else—she just nuzzled into Lu Mingqiu's arms.

She didn't need to do anything else. She didn't even need to speak; just standing there was enough to capture Lu Mingqiu's full attention.

"They're coming out," Hei Ge's voice crackled over the speaker.

Barely had he uttered a syllable when gunfire drowned out the rest.

Butterfly's marksmanship was equal to Lu Mingqiu's, and he had his own irreplaceable advantage: he excelled at aerial sniping.

With his ability to fly, he would hover in the sky with a custom sniper rifle, attacking from above, catching enemies off guard.

One shot was all it took. The lab-coated technician who had just pushed through the dirt cover froze in terror. He looked up to find an airship hovering overhead, blocking out the sky like some monstrous beast, cutting off any chance of escape.

Despair seized the technician's heart.

Others emerged one after another from underground, also standing helplessly aside. They were mostly lab technicians with no combat ability; those who could fight had been sent by the Poison Master to stall the enemy and had all died at Bai Ge's hands.

The taciturn youth, quiet and unassuming, had killed countless enemies. Those he killed didn't even leave corpses, just a layer of ash on the ground.

The Insect Master was the last to come up. The moment he laid eyes on the massive thing overhead, his expression shifted several times before he made a decisive choice.

He raised both hands in surrender and shouted, "I surrender! I'm willing to defect from the Church and join the Resistance!"

The moment he said that, all the lab technicians glared at him, and the white-coated doctor's face twisted with fury and disbelief. "You dare betray the Church! Betray the Mother Goddess! You madman! Traitor!"

The Insect Master sneered, "So what if I betray? Am I supposed to court death instead? Only fools like you still believe in that so-called Mother Goddess and Holy Healing Church. If you want to die, die yourselves, but don't drag me into it."

"You! You've also blasphemed the Mother Goddess!" The doctor was so angry his face twitched, but his refined upbringing meant he couldn't summon many curses—just the same words repeated: traitor, sinner, and the like.

He gasped for breath and glared at the Insect Master with venomous hatred. "The Bishop suspected your loyalty long ago, Insect Master. You're dead meat!"

The Insect Master rolled his eyes dismissively. "Old geezer, I'll outlive you for sure."

He turned toward the airship and shouted, "I have their experimental data in my hands! I'm defecting in good faith!"