Chapter 287 - 125: One-Life Run (Part 2)

Chapter 287: Chapter 125: One-Life Run (Part 2)

If she turned and ran, he would have followed close behind on his bike.

’But what’s the point of this stalemate?’

Zhang Shutong even started to feel like his presence here tonight was pointless. He could have just told Lu Qinglian in advance that the killer would appear on camera.

But he’d been just a little too late.

Finally, he gritted his teeth and made a decision. He wrenched the handlebars around, then looked back, staring hard at her through his helmet.

The distance between them had shrunk from over ten meters to five.

The woman turned her head.

The next moment, a blur flashed before his eyes. The instant he lost sight of her, Zhang Shutong twisted the throttle. The bike roared to life, its wheel kicking up a cloud of snow and mist. The front end even lifted, but he felt the motorcycle wasn’t moving forward. It was just whining, the tire slipping on the ice and snow. Something was holding fast to the rear.

’It’s the woman!’

’She was waiting for this exact moment!’

She was holding the motorcycle’s tail box with one hand!

Zhang Shutong struggled to twist his body, keeping one hand on the throttle while pulling a shovel from his pocket with the other. He swung it hard at the woman’s hand. In that fleeting moment, he saw her face. It was, just as he’d suspected, the face of Gu Qiuyan’s mother. It was utterly bloodless. Her eyes, so similar to her daughter’s, were wide open but completely devoid of life.

The shovel struck, but to no effect. The impact just sent a numbing jolt up Zhang Shutong’s arm. He fought to keep the bike balanced. The tail box had a quick-release mechanism. Zhang Shutong dropped the shovel and fumbled for the switch. With a click, the bike suddenly lurched free. He and the motorcycle pitched forward. Zhang Shutong quickly gripped the handlebars, just barely avoiding a crash.

He twisted the throttle again, but the woman wasn’t done. She was already in hot pursuit.

He steered onto a side path—a route he’d planned on his way here. If his pursuer was relentless, Zhang Shutong intended to lead her in circles. But the woman was even faster than he’d anticipated. He glanced back and saw her sprinting alongside him, almost keeping pace.

’What the hell is this thing?!’

The next moment, the woman struck, throwing a punch at him. The motorcycle’s rearview mirror took the initial impact—metal bent and glass shattered. The bike lurched violently to one side. Her fist, unhindered, then slammed into his arm. Half his body went instantly numb. Luckily, he didn’t fall. It was as if she were a machine executing a program, her objective suddenly switching from "pursuit" to "kill."

Hours later, Zhang Shutong finally understood where the hole in that Fox’s window came from.

He could picture it now: Song had probably just started the car, not even having time to shift gears, when the woman grabbed the side mirror. Then came the punch through the window. Then Song must have slammed on the gas, sending both the car and the woman crashing into a tree.

’So running like this won’t work.’ Zhang Shutong squeezed the brakes and dug in his heels, carving a deep trench in the snow. Muddy slush sprayed everywhere as he fought the motorcycle’s momentum to a stop. The woman’s reaction was a beat too slow; she overshot him, ending up in front of the bike. Zhang Shutong released the brakes, gunned the engine, and charged straight at her!

A few hundred pounds of steel, even without a running start, packed an incredible amount of kinetic energy. She wasn’t made of iron, after all. With a dull THUD, the impact threw his arm back. The woman went down, the bike went down, and Zhang Shutong was sent flying onto the ground.

He fell so hard his vision went black, but he forced himself to stand up. The motorcycle’s wheel was still spinning in the air. Hurriedly, Zhang Shutong pulled out his phone, turned on the flashlight, and shone it forward.

But there was nothing in front of him.

His hair stood on end.

Zhang Shutong spun around, but an immense force slammed into his shoulder, kicking him clean off his feet. He tumbled several times through the snow, one half of his body screaming in pain. He struggled to get up, but his hands kept slipping uselessly in the snow.

Another kick sent Zhang Shutong sprawling backward again. This one landed squarely on his chest, right where he’d been kicked the day before. He felt the air rush out of him, his breath catching for a terrifying second.

He coughed violently, his lungs on fire. ’If I stop, it’s over.’ Though his vision was dim, he had already noticed the patch of reeds nearby. During the chase, they had gone far outside the camera’s range. He was now at the edge of the road, with the lakeshore just below. Zhang Shutong abandoned the idea of standing up and simply rolled down the dirt embankment.

His body tumbled, the world spinning around him. The motorcycle helmet protected his head from the worst of the impacts. He rolled all the way to the water’s edge and saw that the woman had stopped up on the road, seemingly searching for something.

’That’s it,’ Zhang Shutong realized. ’She can’t hear.’ If she could, she would have followed the sound of his tumbling descent. But she hadn’t. All she could see was a pitch-black patch of reeds with their tangled, messy stalks.

’The darkness is my cover!’

Without even waiting to catch his breath, he scrambled to his feet, hunched over, and staggered away into the distance.

The woman up on the road was still searching. She seemed to be slowly making her way into the reeds. But this wasn’t going to be a game of hide-and-seek. Zhang Shutong glanced at the moonlight overhead. ’If I just keep hiding,’ he thought, ’it’s only a matter of time before she finds me.’

He cursed under his breath. ’Lu Qinglian might be at the camera by now, but I’m way too far away. Maybe she can follow the tire tracks, but I already rode down that path once on my way here. I’m not sure she can tell which way I went. And even if she figures it out, it’ll still take her time to catch up.’