Chapter Ninety-Five: A Smile That Pierced the Heart

Boom! With a violent crash, the ground behind the two trucks trailing Zhuang Xiaoyuan suddenly heaved upward. A gigantic turtle’s head burst from the earth and swallowed, in one gulp, the truck carrying the four comrades who had been following behind her own.

“No—”

The change came so abruptly that Zhuang Xiaoyuan had no time to react. She could only stare, wide-eyed, as the truck carrying her four comrades and many wounded soldiers was devoured by that monstrous head.

“Squad leader!” Fu Jian shouted as he drove, stamping hard on the accelerator to pull the truck away at speed, while reaching out to seize Zhuang Xiaoyuan, who was about to leap from the vehicle.

“Old Fu, let go!” With bloodshot eyes blazing from fury, Zhuang Xiaoyuan twisted back and glared viciously at him.

“Squad leader, you can’t go over there. Even if it’s you...” In the rearview mirror, Fu Jian clearly saw the fiend’s shape as it began crawling up from the ground. Shouting at the top of his lungs, he clamped down even harder on her hand. A turtle’s body, mantis-like forelimbs, and—without even needing to see the scorpion tail behind it—there was no doubt: this fiend was a burrower-class demon.

In all of Maple City, the only person who could face a burrower-class demon alone was Hua Ze, captain of the Guardian Team—and even then, only to hold it off, not to kill it. So if Zhuang Xiaoyuan went to fight it alone, there would be no chance of return.

“Let go, Old Fu.” Because Fu Jian had shouted at her so loudly for the first time, Zhuang Xiaoyuan’s shock, grief, and rage finally settled by a fraction. But settling did not mean vanishing. It simply meant she had recovered a little reason. Her expression became calm as well; half suspended outside the truck, she looked at Fu Jian with an even gaze.

“Squad leader...”

Though she said nothing more, Fu Jian found himself, against all expectation, nearly persuaded by those calm eyes. They spoke plainly of the resolve in Zhuang Xiaoyuan’s heart.

“Let go, Old Fu. Even if it’s not for avenging Ge Bailong, Shi Guo, Fei Tong, Bai Qing, and the wounded soldiers on the front line, I still have to go down. You know what a burrower-class demon means. If it’s allowed to rampage freely, whether it charges the city gate or the command center, it will bring catastrophic damage to this city. This is the only way left.”

Those composed eyes still could not sway Fu Jian. Then Zhuang Xiaoyuan’s lips curved faintly, a smile that seemed to carry sorrow in its very shape. It was not the smile of self-sacrifice, nor one of burning rage, but something far more still, far more resigned—a smile born from a pain so deep that even expression had become impossible.

Truthfully, Zhuang Xiaoyuan had never felt this before: the clear, piercing agony of witnessing the sacrifice of people she knew. Not in the previous accidental battle against the evil god’s invasion, nor in the smaller tide of fiend beasts during the Guardian God trial, had any of the dead been people she knew personally.

She had felt regret for them. She had understood the cruelty of reality and the threat posed by fiends. But in the end, they had still been strangers. Like watching a drama in which a villain kills someone, she had been nothing more than an observer, unable to be touched in the depths of her heart.

But this time was different. This time, the ones sacrificed were her own subordinates, her own comrades. The people who would butt heads with her, who would refuse to服服地听她的话 and want to defeat her, who would also care for her, who would bring her meals and tuck a blanket over her even when they were at odds with her. Her comrades had died—and to make it worse, they had been swallowed whole by that fiend. Unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable. She would kill it.

“Squad leader...” Fu Jian knew Zhuang Xiaoyuan was speaking the truth, but even if she wanted to hold that fiend here, how long could she possibly last? Though he thought this, he still did not want to release the right hand he was gripping.

And yet, when he saw that smile on her face, Fu Jian, for reasons he could not explain, let go.

Scalding tears streamed down his face, but he still let go. It was not because of the comrades’ sacrifice, nor because of Zhuang Xiaoyuan’s righteous reasons, but because of that final smile of hers. That sorrowful smile made one’s heart ache of its own accord.

“You go first. Contact headquarters and report the situation. I... will hold out until the Guardians return.”

With those words, spoken in a voice that seemed to drift farther and farther away, Zhuang Xiaoyuan left.

Fu Jian roughly wiped at his face and fixed his attention ahead.

“Old Fu.” Lu Xiaowei’s voice came from behind him, trembling slightly, carrying blame, and also understanding.

“Cut the chatter. We’ve got our own job to do.”

Grinding his teeth, Fu Jian slammed the accelerator to the floor. With the engine’s roar, the transport truck surged forward toward its objective.

A burrower-class demon? So what if it was a burrower-class demon? It was nothing more than a turtle. How dare it hurt my subordinates. Unforgivable.

Leaping from the truck and no longer caring about the comrades receding behind her, Zhuang Xiaoyuan walked step by step toward the burrower-class demon. Chloe’s card appeared in her hand, and with a flash of golden light, Chloe once more manifested upon this battlefield. Only this time, her opponent was no longer a higher evil god, but a burrower-class demon two ranks above it.

“Aroo~”

At last clawing its way free of the earth, the burrower-class demon noticed the tiny creature before it. As though enraged that Zhuang Xiaoyuan had not fled in fear, but had instead continued to approach, it let out a furious howl and charged straight at her.

“Projection: Hound of the Crimson Plain.”

A black longbow and a black arrow covered in barbs appeared in Zhuang Xiaoyuan’s hands. She stopped, drew the bow, aimed at the eye in the demon’s head, and loosed the black arrow along the string.

After firing, she did not remain where she was. Using her displacement ability, she instantaneously shifted to the rooftop of a nearby building and looked toward the attack she had just launched.

A clear ring echoed through the surroundings. The black arrow automatically tracked the right eye of the burrower-class demon’s head and shot toward it, but the demon merely shut that eye. The arrow struck its eyelid and fell away with a crisp sound. It had failed to injure the burrower-class demon at all; it had not even pierced the eyelid.

“Tch.”

Frowning, Zhuang Xiaoyuan began another projection.

“Projection: False Spiral Sword.”

As red projected light flared, a spiraled arrow took shape.

Without the slightest pause, she lifted the spiral sword and set it upon the black longbow, drew it to a full moon, and loosed it.