novelraw Chapter 286 - 273: The Most Terrifying Thing
Chapter 286 - 273: The Most Terrifying Thing
"Your blood...?" Li Xiao looked at Gu Xi, his voice a mix of shock and uncertainty.
No wonder the Chen sisters had average ability potential when they were first tested, yet their upgrade speed was incredibly fast in the following years. But in recent years, they had aged with extreme rapidity, looking nothing like high-rank ability users.
He had originally assumed it was because something had happened to the Blood-colored Asura. With their "sword" gone, the Chen sisters were gradually pushed out of the base’s center of power.
Later, with that woman Ye Xin dead set on sidelining them, the Chen sisters lost their influence. He thought that under all that internal and external pressure, their hair had turned white overnight, aging them into old crones.
He never imagined Gu Xi’s blood was involved.
No wonder. No wonder his dear older cousin, Li Ming, had acted like a madman some time ago, so determined to capture the Chen sisters that he even had Xiao Yu’s men make a move.
So that was the root of it all.
But on second thought, it wasn’t surprising. The Chen sisters were lunatics to begin with; how could they possibly pass up the blood of a Divine Rank ability user?
But... this Gu Xi was no simple character either. To think she’d use her own blood to turn the tables and control the Chen sisters after her return. No wonder Li Ming, after a few days of madness, had suddenly gone quiet and let the Chen sisters escape from the Central Base.
It turned out Gu Xi still had a use for the two sisters.
After figuring all this out, a hint of wariness entered Li Xiao’s gaze as he looked at Gu Xi.
"You used your blood to control the Chen sisters?" Li Xiao couldn’t hide the shock in his heart.
The Chen sisters had always been the Gu Family’s public-facing pawns. For Gu Xi to go so far as to use her own blood as bait to gain control over them... had she sensed something long ago?
Li Xiao’s thoughts immediately turned to his dear cousin, Li Ming.
Besides the Gu Family themselves, if anyone was the first to suspect something about Gu Xi’s background, it... it had to be his dear cousin, Li Ming.
Back when Gu Yumin used to hang around the Doomsday Squad to make his face known, Li Xiao had run into him several times. That was when he first made contact with Gu Yumin.
However, Gu Xi had been right about one thing: Gu Yumin was a man of deep thoughts. For years, he had publicly been the Gu Family’s representative, but behind the scenes, his heart might not have been with them.
Now, as Li Xiao looked at Gu Xi, his wariness was mixed with a deep sense of dread.
He had originally thought she was just a brute who only knew how to fight and kill. He never expected that the Blood-colored Asura, who once terrorized the world with her martial prowess, had now learned to use her head.
Her quiet, behind-the-scenes machinations to control the Chen sisters proved it: the Gu Xi before him was no longer the emotionless killing machine of the past.
And that was the most terrifying thing of all.
He hesitated for a moment, then frowned and asked, "What do you want the Chen sisters to do? And why are you telling me all this? The incident at the quarantine hospital... was that something you and Li Ming planned from the start?"
It was only then that Li Xiao had a startling realization. Perhaps he, who had always fancied himself clever, had long since fallen into someone else’s trap.
’Today... I shouldn’t have come.’
Li Xiao secretly regretted it. He shouldn’t have waded into these murky waters between the Gu Family and the Blood-colored Asura.
’And I... can’t afford to.’
Gu Xi poked Yabao’s tender leaf and raised an eyebrow slightly. "What do you think?"
In the past, she wouldn’t have wasted a single word on a dead man. But now, after living with Wei Heng and the others for over a year, Gu Xi’s personality had become much more animated.
She was becoming more and more like a normal person.
But this only made Li Xiao’s heart pound with even greater fear and unease.
After the apocalypse began, even during the initial years of flight, he hadn’t suffered much thanks to his parents’ protection. After his family eventually made their way to the Central Base, Li Xiao never experienced a hard day again.
Over the years, he had relied on his status as Li Ming’s cousin, using every ounce of his cunning to climb the ladder step by step. Even during the toughest years of the apocalypse, he had never once left the safety of the base, never again faced those man-eating zombies.
Even in the early years, during the zombie sieges, he, a man from the logistics department, had never been to the front lines.
Gradually, Li Xiao had forgotten the terrifying memories of fleeing for his life as a child.
Therefore, even though he had heard countless legends about the Blood-colored Asura, he had never seen her in person. Deep down in his bones, Li Xiao never truly believed Gu Xi was that terrifying.
After all, thanks to his connection with Li Ming, he had practically watched Gu Xi grow up. His memory of her was still stuck on the quiet, withdrawn little girl she was before she put on the mask.
It wasn’t until this very moment, after seeing Gu Xi take out the experts he’d brought with a single move, that Li Xiao finally understood what the name Blood-colored Asura truly represented!
"What do you want me to do?" Li Xiao didn’t dare to move. With a stiff neck, he slightly lowered his gaze to look at the slender vine coiling around his throat like a cold, venomous snake, and asked, forcing down the fear in his heart.
"I recall that in the tenth year of the apocalypse, you joined the base’s logistics department?" Gu Xi asked.
"Yes." Li Xiao wanted to nod but was too afraid of the thin vine on his neck to move.
Back then, after his parents died under mysterious circumstances, he had ended up in the base’s orphanage.
But in those days, there were far too many orphans in the base who had lost the protection of their parents and relatives. How could the base’s orphanage possibly manage them all?
So not every child could be cared for by the orphanage. More of them ended up wandering the streets, or perhaps rushing out of the base to snatch food from right under the zombies’ noses.
But Li Xiao had been clever since he was a child, always knowing how to look out for himself. At only eight years old, he knew to tell the head of the orphanage that he was Li Ming’s younger brother. And in that year, Li Ming was only eleven, but he was already a promising prospect valued by the base’s upper echelons.
This was because he had a remarkable younger sister—a sister whose Potential Value was so high it made the Abnormal Ability Research Institute’s machines explode.
A sister in whom the base had placed great hopes, grooming her to become the base’s strongest humanoid weapon!
Relying on this small connection to Li Ming, Li Xiao successfully got into the base orphanage.
During those years, he frequented the Doomsday Squad’s location. Even knowing Li Ming disliked him, he took advantage of his young age, certain that Li Ming wouldn’t kill him, and shamelessly ran over to the Abnormal Ability Research Institute every few days.
Although, nine times out of ten, Li Ming wouldn’t see him.
But that didn’t matter. He never expected Li Ming to like him anyway. Everything he did was just for the base’s management to see.
He had to make sure outsiders knew that he was, indeed, Li Ming’s brother.
Just like that, a few years later, at the young age of fifteen, Li Xiao managed to work his way into the base’s logistics department and become a junior manager.
"Miss Gu," Li Xiao said. Though he didn’t know why Gu Xi was asking him this, he had started from the bottom in the base’s logistics department and worked his way up for nearly fifty years. He naturally knew more than the average person. "You can ask me anything you want to know."
"I’m quite familiar with the logistics department’s affairs... As long as it’s something you want to know, I will tell you everything without holding anything back..."
Gu Xi cut off his rambling and asked directly, "The supply request forms that the Abnormal Ability Research Institute submitted to the logistics department during the first five years of the apocalypse—whose hands did they pass through?"