Chapter 914: Get In

Heimu pulled his hand from his pocket, waved toward the plane tree across the street, and said, "The original route is cancelled. We must go find your father immediately. No matter where these things came from, they won't bypass the residential area."

Hua opened their mouth, probably subconsciously wanting to say "Teacher, you should first find a safe place to take shelter," but Heimu didn't give them a chance to speak.

As soon as her words fell, under the plane tree across the street, a black sedan sliced out of a roadside parking space with a very smooth motion.

The headlights flashed once, the engine emitted a low, steady roar, and the car's body traced a precise arc through the chaotic street, bypassing a frightened dog that had appeared from nowhere, and came to a steady stop less than two meters from Heimu.

The driver's side window lowered, revealing a fully enclosed masked rider helmet.

Ice‑blue shoulder pads glimmered with a cold, hard sheen under the red warning lights, while warm orange geometric patterns on the visor flickered at an extremely rapid rate.

Kaluoer's mouth formed a perfect O when she saw the black car.

She glanced at the car, then at the rider in the driver's seat clad in full-body ice‑blue metal armor, then at Heimu, then at Hua; in her warm golden eyes, four parallel thought threads ran simultaneously: "So handsome," "So cool," "What's going on," "Am I dreaming?"

The rear‑seat window also lowered.

The glass slowly descended, revealing a graceful figure in the back seat.

Ice‑blue shoulder‑length short hair, pale violet round eyes, cold white skin, an oval face, wearing the same middle‑school uniform as they were.

Her clear, gentle features showed no obvious emotional fluctuation, her lips slightly pursed, as if engaged in something very important—sitting in the back seat of a black sedan, expressionless, flipping through an illustration book amid the background of a doomsday alarm.

Ge Lei Xiu lifted her eyes to glance at Hua, then nodded.

She then withdrew her gaze, refocused on the illustration book, and turned a page.

"Ge Lei Xiu, classmate?!"

Hua's pupils contracted sharply the moment they recognized the other, and a crack finally appeared in their steady voice, "Why are you here— and who is this—"

Their gaze shifted to the driver's seat, scanning back and forth between the fully enclosed helmet and the ice‑blue shoulder pads, eyebrows furrowing, as their brain clearly searched their memory bank at an extremely high speed.

Then she found a match: the school gate, where someone stood with arms crossed beside a gatepost.

"... the security guard at the school gate?"

Kesi Mo's helmet tilted slightly.

"Get in!"

Kaluoer had kept her mouth open ever since.

She looked at Ge Lei Xiu's cool, delicate face, then at Kesi Mo's ice‑blue metal armor covering his shoulders, and then blurted out an exclamation that fit her prior excitement perfectly: "This girl is so beautiful! This knight is so handsome! Does your organization still recruit people!"

"Get in."

Heimu opened the rear door and turned his head toward the back seat.

She did not answer Kaluoer's question about "recruiting," nor explain Ge Lei Xiu's and Kesi Mo's true identities.

Her dark‑purple eyes swept the surrounding street under the red warning lights: the number of Collapse Beasts was increasing at a visibly rapid rate, and three large individuals had squeezed out from the direction of the overpass, leaving deep dents on car roofs as they stepped over overturned vehicles.

The nearest one was about three intersections away, moving slowly along the commercial street's glass shop windows, its glowing shell patterns warped into blurry spots by the glass reflections.

Time was running out.

Hua did not move.

She stood still, her gaze shifting back and forth among the black sedan, Ge Lei Xiu, Kesi Mo, and Heimu.

In her blue eyes still swirled confusion, but beneath that surface, thoughts raced at high speed.

Her lips moved slightly, probably to say "Teacher, what on earth is happening," but before she could speak, Kaluoer decisively yanked her sleeve and shoved her into the back seat, then slipped in herself, moving with fluid grace, muttering, "Stop thinking, Hua! The monsters are coming! Get in first! Close the door, close the door, close the door!"

Heimu was the last to get in, and with a reverse hand motion, pulled the car door shut.

The moment the door closed, part of the outside alarm was blocked, but the roar still seeped through the car's steel body, shaking the seats into a slight tremor.

Inside the car it was very quiet; the air‑conditioner vent blew a mildly warm breeze, forming an absurd contrast with the apocalyptic scene outside, as if in a cinema where the left screen showed a disaster film and the right screen a road‑trip movie, while Ge Lei Xiu, seated in the middle of the back row, quietly flipped through the illustration book.

"Coordinates."

Kesi Mo's voice came from the helmet, so concise it was just a single word.

"The marked spot on the navigation. At the end of Martial Arts Hall Street, near the old moat bridge."

Heimu spoke while pulling the seatbelt across and buckling it, moving with calm composure.

Kesi Mo gave no reply.

She simply grasped the gear lever with a gauntleted hand, shifted it forward one notch, and pressed the accelerator.

The black sedan shot out from under the plane tree, its tires rolling over several Collapse Beast fragments and broken glass shards on the asphalt, producing a rapid series of fine creaking sounds.

The world outside the windows rushed backward at an extremely erratic pace: overturned cars, shattered shop windows, a fruit stall trampled to pieces, and a stray dog that had been chased by a Collapse Beast through three intersections before diving into a trash can to hide.

Kesi Mo's driving style was inversely proportional to her usual brevity in speech—precise and decisive; each turn was timed to the instant the car's side would be grazed by a Collapse Beast's claw, and each acceleration point was chosen after the obstructing vehicle ahead was pushed aside.

The armored left hand kept a steady grip on the steering wheel, the right hand hovered above the gear lever ready to shift, the ice‑blue shoulder pads turned gently with the wheel's motion, and the warm orange patterns on the visor blinked steadily and slowly, forming a stark contrast to the apocalyptic chaos outside.

Kaluoer perched on the right‑hand window, her nose almost pressed to the glass, her warm golden eyes wide open, continuously exclaiming from her mouth.

Whenever she saw a building's glass curtain wall smashed by a Collapse Beast, she let out a "Wo—"; each time she saw a Collapse Beast being flung into the trailing dust by the sedan and disappearing farther away, she added "—still fine, still fine," both hands clinging to the window frame, knuckles whitening from the strain, yet the light in her eyes remained startlingly bright.

"Oh my god, there are three—no, four—on that building! They seem to be gnawing on that electronic billboard, which is still showing a shampoo ad, and the shampoo model's face has been half‑gnawed off. This scene will give me nightmares!"

Kaluoer's voice leapt back and forth between "terror" and "excitement," the two emotions jostling in her throat until they merged into a vocal style uniquely Kaluoer's.

"Close the window."