Jacob's face instantly paled.
He turned and looked at Ji Wushuang with pleading eyes.
Lu Qianqian's heart leaped into her throat.
Her knuckles turned white from gripping the armrest so tightly.
The lethal techniques Ji Wushuang had taught her during training flashed through her mind in a frantic blur.
But her body remained stiff, frozen in place.
Fear, like a cold hand, closed around her throat.
Ji Wushuang, however, was calm, seeming utterly unfazed by the situation.
She pushed the car door open and stepped out.
She glanced at the officer but said nothing.
Instead, she simply pulled a pack of cigarettes brought from Xia Country from her pocket and offered it to him.
Then, from another pocket, she produced an old, brass lighter.
With a click, she lit it for him.
The officer was taken aback.
He stared at this tall, cold-faced Eastern woman before him.
Her eyes were icy, devoid of fear or supplication.
There was only absolute calm.
And a hint of something utterly terrifying.
It was as if he wasn't looking at a woman, but at an incomprehensible, immense horror!
The officer was momentarily stunned, then instinctively took a drag of the cigarette.
It was fragrant, a taste he had never experienced before.
When his gaze fell upon the brass lighter,
his pupils contracted sharply.
On its side was engraved a faded emblem:
a skull with two crossed scimitars beneath it.
The "Blood Scorpion" mercenary group.
A name that, a decade ago, struck fear across K Country and the entire Central African region.
They had once been hired by K Country's former president to purge rebel forces.
Their methods were exceptionally brutal.
Back then, this officer had been just a lowly soldier.
He had witnessed with his own eyes how those wearing this emblem had slaughtered an entire village of rebel sympathizers as if they were chopping vegetables.
It was the nightmare of his lifetime.
In an instant, cold sweat beaded on the officer's forehead.
If this woman's gaze had initially given him only a vague sense of terror,
then this lighter was the concrete embodiment of a demon!
His hand holding the cigarette began to tremble.
When he looked at Ji Wushuang again, the greed in his eyes was gone.
All that remained was a fear rooted in the depths of his soul.
He didn't know what connection this woman had to the "Blood Scorpion."
But he knew that anyone possessing such an item was absolutely not someone he could afford to provoke.
He took several quick, deep drags of the cigarette.
Then, forcing a stiff, grimace-like smile at Ji Wushuang,
he waved his hand and barked an order to his subordinates.
"Let them pass!"
Ji Wushuang put the lighter away.
However, she left the remaining pack of cigarettes with the officer.
Then, without a word, she turned and got back into the car.
Jacob slammed on the accelerator, and the car shot forward like an arrow from a bow.
Only after they had driven a considerable distance did he dare, with lingering fear, to glance at Ji Wushuang in the rearview mirror.
"Ms. Ji... you... were you formerly with the 'Blood Scorpion'?"
"No."
Ji Wushuang said flatly.
"That was merely an insignificant trophy."
The car continued weaving through the city.
The terrifying scene they had just escaped left Lu Qianqian with no desire to look at the passing scenery outside the window.
Her heart was still pounding wildly.
For the first time, she had felt the threat of death so palpably.
And for the first time, she understood so profoundly her elder brother's intentions.
If not for Ji Wushuang,
she and Jacob might have died at that checkpoint today.
Or faced something even worse than death.
She glanced at Ji Wushuang, who remained as composed as ever beside her.
A feeling named "dependence" welled up in her heart.
The car stopped in a relatively quiet district in the eastern part of the city.
This was an international aid center funded by the Mo family.
Compared to other parts of the city, it was much cleaner and more orderly.
The compound walls were painted white.
At the gate, United Nations peacekeeping soldiers stood guard.
Seeing their car, the soldiers gave it a brief glance before waving them through.
The car stopped in front of a two-story building within the compound.
A white woman in her thirties with blonde hair and blue eyes was waiting for them at the entrance.
She wore a simple T-shirt and jeans.
She looked somewhat weary, but her eyes were bright.
"Hello, I'm Annie."
She stepped forward, introducing herself in fluent Xia language.
"This is the 'Doctors Without Borders' aid station in K Country. I'm the person in charge."
"Ji Wushuang."
"Lu Qianqian."
The three exchanged brief handshakes.
"Ms. Mo has already spoken with me,"
Annie said with a smile.
"Welcome. Our accommodations are a bit basic, I hope you don't mind."
She led the two inside the building.
The interior smelled strongly of disinfectant.
The corridor was lined with beds.
On them lay patients with various expressions of agony.
Moans and coughs filled the air incessantly.
Lu Qianqian saw a girl about her own age.
One of her legs had been blown off.
At that moment, she was staring at the ceiling with hollow, hopeless eyes.
"I'm sorry, there are too many patients. We don't have enough proper wards,"
Annie said apologetically.
She led them upstairs to the second floor.
"This is your room."
She pushed open a door.
The room was small, containing only two simple metal-frame beds and a chipped wardrobe.
But it was clean and tidy.
"Thank you," Lu Qianqian said.
"Get settled in first. Dinner is at seven in the canteen downstairs."
After speaking, Annie hurried back downstairs to attend to her duties.
The room was now quiet, occupied only by Lu Qianqian and Ji Wushuang.
Lu Qianqian set down her backpack, sat on the edge of the bed, and fell silent.
Everything she had seen and heard that day
had far exceeded the sum of her understanding from the past eighteen years.
Poverty, chaos, violence, death, disease.
These words, once seen only in news reports and books,
had now become a harsh, tangible reality.
She had thought she was prepared.
But now she realized how laughable her preparation had been.
"Regretting it?"
Ji Wushuang's voice sounded beside her.
Lu Qianqian looked up and shook her head.
"No."
Her voice was slightly hoarse.
"I just... need some time."
"To accept all this."
Ji Wushuang looked at her.
At her pale face and those stubborn eyes.
She said nothing more.
She simply tossed a pack of compressed biscuits from her own backpack to Lu Qianqian.
"Eat something."
"Food intake can help stabilize your emotions."
After dinner, night fell.
The entire city seemed swallowed by darkness.
In the dead of night,
gunshots echoed intermittently from the distance, and even explosions could be heard.
Lu Qianqian lay in bed, unable to sleep.
The sounds kept her nerves on edge.
Ji Wushuang slept in the bed next to hers.
Ji Wushuang's breathing was steady and even.
As if everything happening outside had nothing to do with her.
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
tions: attribute allocation, analysis, proficiency, and simulation. Specializing in mechanical alchemy, from crafting sorcerous battle armor to handcrafting mechanical maidens, his mechanical legion conquers endless realms... Relying on his wits, he begins with a student-teacher romance, wins over a female director, enslaves a female assassin and a underworld queen, becoming the husband of a Grand Duchess... He enslaves the Goddess of Magic from the divine realm, developing his power simultaneously in both the Wizard World and the Realm of Gods...
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
grated, and just when he finally managed to get into an elite academy, he discovered that he actually had a system, and the way to earn rewards was extremely ridiculous. So for the sake of rewards, he had no choice but to start acting ridiculous as well. Su Cheng: "It's nothing but system quests after all." But later, what confused Su Cheng was that while he was already quite ridiculous, he never expected those serious characters to gradually become ridiculous too. And the way they looked at him became increasingly strange... (This synopsis doesn't do it justice, please read the full story)
