Chapter 99 - 94: Worse than Cannon Fodder

Chapter 99: Chapter 94: Worse than Cannon Fodder

After leaving the Rebel Army base, Yin Zhen slipped back in. Ella still hadn’t regained consciousness, and Jenny was busy planning the rescue operation for Ian, so for the time being, she’d simply had someone keep Ella locked in a room.

Yin Zhen had planted a Mind Beacon on Ella back when she knocked her out, so locating her was effortless.

Everything that followed went off without a hitch.

She sent Ying in without a sound to draw some of Ella’s blood, then used Blood Mimicry to take on Ella’s appearance herself, faking an escape to draw the attention of the guards at the door.

With the guards lured away, Ying wrapped Ella in shadows and teleported her out on the spot.

During the flight, Yin Zhen kept a measured distance from Ying — close enough that Ying wouldn’t hit her range limit and deactivate.

Once Ying had stashed Ella somewhere hidden and safe in an abandoned township, Yin Zhen broke into a full sprint, still wearing Ella’s face.

Ella’s Extraordinary Ability was Structural Repair, which made slipping away from the Rebel Army no easy task.

What Yin Zhen hadn’t expected, though, was that Nan Jiamu — coming to rescue her teammate — had moved fast enough to run straight into her out on the wasteland.

"Xian Yu?"

"Captain!"

Yin Zhen reacted instantly, stumbling toward Nan Jiamu in a convincing panic. Nan Jiamu studied the "Ella" in front of her carefully and didn’t catch anything off.

The pursuers behind them were closing in fast, the roar of motorcycles mixed into the noise — there were a lot of them.

Nan Jiamu had no time to overthink it. She pressed an Item into Yin Zhen’s hand. "Go. I’ll hold them off!"

[Delivery Slip: Stick it to your forehead and a mysterious courier will deliver you to the entrance of a nearby residential building. Fair warning — this courier screws up the address all the time, and he’s too stubborn to admit it and too lazy to fix it. You’ll have to figure out how to get the delivery back to the right place yourself.]

Yin Zhen couldn’t help but marvel. The protagonist really did have it good — always flush with little Items like this, free to take risks without breaking a sweat, practically bulletproof thanks to that protagonist’s halo.

She slapped the slip onto her forehead without hesitation, and the next instant she vanished.

Nan Jiamu watched "Ella" disappear to safety and let out a breath. That had been her last escape Item. As for herself — well, she’d just have to fight her way back through.

...

True to Yin Zhen’s spectacularly negative Luck, she dropped straight into a Fallen Species Nest buried in the ruins.

Yin Zhen: !!!

Fallen Species: Dinner just fell from the sky?

Surrounded on all sides by over a dozen Fallen Species, Yin Zhen swore under her breath and yanked Lucia’s Hand Axe from her game inventory, slapped Molecular Sharpening onto it, and caved in the skull of the nearest one.

She couldn’t risk gunfire with Nan Jiamu potentially still nearby, so she had no choice but to channel her blood through her entire body and hack her way out of the Fallen Species Nest with the Hand Axe.

Ying joined the fight, and in under three minutes the floor was carpeted in bodies, Yin Zhen drenched head to toe in filthy blood.

She wiped her face, kept Ella’s appearance in place without dropping the disguise, and made her way back to where Ying had hidden the real Ella.

And so — Ella carried Ella — and they headed back to Night City.

It took some effort, but Yin Zhen tracked down a middle-aged couple in the slums who looked honest and simple enough. She traded them two large bags of artificial blood plasma from her game inventory in exchange for four days of looking after Ella.

For those four days, they were to inject Ella with a sedative every six hours without fail, keeping her unconscious the entire time, while also making sure she didn’t die.

Yin Zhen had already prepared the sedative for them. When she came back to collect Ella, she’d pay them another three bags of artificial blood plasma.

Then, just to be thorough, Yin Zhen issued a threat: if anything went wrong, she would kill them — and everyone they had ever known.

Walking away, even she had to shake her head at the thought. Poor kid. First round, she’d been strung up as a Blood Beast and bled for seven straight days. This round, she was about to spend four days knocked out cold. That was worse than being cannon fodder.

Then again, look at it another way — lying here unconscious, she was at least safe from dying.

Following Nan Jiamu into the operation? She might actually get killed.

As for what came after the reset... they’d cross that bridge when they got to it.

With Ella taken care of, Yin Zhen went straight to the building where Adeline’s apartment was and pulled up the locator bracelet Nan Jiamu had given her to receive the operation plan.

The operation was set for three days from now — the day of the Reset. At nine in the morning, Ian would be transferred from the Guard Corps Building to the West Coast, where he’d board a ship bound for the Sea Prison.

It seemed the Saint Group had no intention of killing Ian. They planned to keep him locked up, continuing his research on deep-sea mutant specimens in the laboratory attached to the Sea Prison.

After all, a top-tier scientist like Ian was far too valuable to waste.

The Guard Team had deliberately scheduled the transfer in broad daylight to discourage any rescue attempt. The Blood Clan’s movements were severely restricted during the day, and the West Coast had no dome cover, making it genuinely dangerous out there — which was exactly why this transfer didn’t feel like a trap.

Yin Zhen finished reviewing the route map and the rest of the information, and was just about to close the bracelet when a message from Nan Jiamu came through.

"You’re not at Adeline’s?"

The bracelet’s positioning was precise — precise enough to tell she was standing outside the building rather than upstairs.

"We had a fight."

Yin Zhen shot back a quick reply and shut the bracelet off. Three days. She needed to make good use of them.

...

Meanwhile, in an apartment in the Upper City District.

"Signal Bad," the bartender from the Abyss Bar, was wrapping Nan Jiamu’s wounds. "If Xian Yu were here, she could fix this up with her ability in no time."

Nan Jiamu had gone toe-to-toe with the Rebel Army forces and taken bullets in the shoulder and thigh, losing a fair amount of blood. The bullet wounds themselves just needed the rounds dug out — after that, blood source element could speed up the recovery.

But Nan Jiamu also had several frostbite wounds carved by an Ice Blade Extraordinary Ability — deep enough to show bone. Blood source element couldn’t do a thing to accelerate healing on those.

Ye Se, dressed in his signature post-apocalyptic style, sighed from the side. "Shame I got sent off on a separate Rebel Army errand at the time. If I’d been with Xian Yu, none of this would’ve gone sideways."

There was one more person in the apartment — "I Want to Quit," a regular gym coach in Night City.

"So where’s Xian Yu now? We can’t run this operation without our healer!"

Nan Jiamu furrowed her brow, working through the pain. "I gave her an escape Item, but it’s random-teleport. She probably got dropped somewhere wrong and got held up. All we can do is wait for her to make it back on her own."

Ye Se glanced at his watch. "I’ll head out then — might as well go check what the Rebel Army is planning."

He had just straightened up when he saw Nan Jiamu suddenly double over, a choked, suppressed groan escaping her. Her hand pressed hard against her chest, cold sweat sliding down from her temple.

"Captain?!" Signal panicked, crouching down to steady her. "What’s wrong?"

I Want to Quit crowded in too, at a loss. "Did the wound tear open?"

Nan Jiamu bit down hard on her lip, forcing the words out through her teeth. "It’s not the wound. I’m fine... just give me an hour... it’ll pass..."

"You go through an hour of this every single day — how is that fine?" Signal’s voice rose with urgency. "What is even happening to you?"

Nan Jiamu couldn’t find an answer. She’d initially thought it was the system punishing her for killing the male lead, but the system had denied it — which left her thinking someone was targeting her through a Special Item.

But who?

Most of the Players were strangers to her. She had no enemies outside the game either. Those ridiculous male and female rivals from all the CEO romance novels — she’d dealt with every single one of them after the game started. Not one left standing.

She kept feeling like she was overlooking something, but her thoughts seemed to hit a wall of fog every time she reached for it. It was deeply strange.

The bandaging on Nan Jiamu’s shoulder was already soaked through with blood. She bit down on her lip and swallowed every sound that tried to claw its way out.

The pain was unbearable. It sank into her bones. It felt like she was being torn in two.

Worse than yesterday. Worse than the day before. Getting worse every single day.

Signal’s eyes had gone red. She gripped Nan Jiamu’s hand, unable to find a single thing to say.

I Want to Quit stood helplessly to the side, and Ye Se didn’t leave either.

"I’m... fine... all of you... go... don’t worry about me..."

Nan Jiamu didn’t finish the sentence. She just toppled sideways.

"Captain!"