"So, are you going to carry me or not?" Xiao Jinsheng clung to his arm, squatting down and using the leverage to lift herself off the ground.
Seeing her instantly cling to him, Que Zelian bore her entire weight with one hand, gently swaying her. "If you don't mind, I can just hold you like this and we can still run from the fog corpses."
"I was just playing; don't actually do that!" Xiao Jinsheng exclaimed in alarm.
"How heavy can she be? If you can't carry her, just say so." Su Ye strode forward, extending a hand to Xiao Jinsheng. "Come here, I'll carry you."
Whenever she faced Su Ye, Xiao Jinsheng couldn't forget the sight of that raw, skinned rabbit head on the first day she arrived.
So, instinctively, she still harbored some fear of Su Ye.
Especially with Su Ye's sudden change in attitude, becoming unexpectedly friendly, Xiao Jinsheng suspected he was brewing another mischievous plot to torment her.
She quickly dismounted from Que Zelian's arm, preparing to dodge away.
However, Que Zelian mistakenly thought she was moving towards Su Ye. With a swift sweep of his long arm, he scooped her into his embrace, then lifted her in a princess carry.
His gentle smile met Su Ye's cool, golden eyes. Que Zelian chuckled softly. "I'll do it. After all, I have experience carrying her to escape fog corpses."
He then directed his gaze towards the Zhanmadao on Su Ye's back. "You need your weapon for combat. If she's with me and we encounter a fog corpse siege, she can always hide in the sky."
"But if she's with you, and you're carrying her while needing to draw your sword, wouldn't the wide range of motion accidentally injure her?"
Xiao Jinsheng nodded in agreement with Que Zelian's words.
From a young age, she had always been prone to imagining dangers.
Standing on a rooftop without railings, she worried about falling. Standing on a rooftop with railings, she worried about the railings collapsing, causing her to fall.
Even when chopping vegetables, she could vividly imagine her hand slipping, the cleaver falling to the ground, and the blade landing perfectly on her foot.
Not to mention the Zhanmadao on Su Ye's back was two meters and twenty centimeters long.
If danger struck and she was standing next to Su Ye, a moment of inattention while he drew his sword could result in the blade slicing directly through her body.
Xiao Jinsheng was terrified by her own vivid imagination. She tightly clasped Que Zelian's neck, smiling as she refused. "I'll stick with Que Zelian. He has experience running with me."
"Alright then," Su Ye said, observing the intimate interaction between the two. He suppressed the churning violence in his golden eyes, pursing his lips and turning his head.
"I told you, she dislikes you," Mo Jiao said, walking over and openly mocking Su Ye's deflated expression.
"How much better are you in her eyes?" Su Ye scoffed.
"I'm not like you. I'm getting a divorce," Mo Jiao said coldly.
"Oh, negative fifty-four points. If you want to reach a hundred points and successfully divorce her, you'll have to work hard," Su Ye sneered.
Mo Jiao was utterly silenced.
He had been indifferent to Xiao Jinsheng's tiresome scoring game from the very beginning.
Thus, in their interactions, he would seize every opportunity to spar with Xiao Jinsheng verbally.
But now, it was clear that even if he didn't believe in this scoring game, he had to participate.
However, the thought that the score was entirely based on Xiao Jinsheng's mood, and that increasing it fundamentally required being kind to her, simply infuriated Mo Jiao.
He was almost laughing from anger.
Being kind to Xiao Jinsheng?
If it weren't for the fact that he'd still be stuck with the title of Xiao Jinsheng's beast husband even after death, he'd directly kill her; that would be much simpler and more efficient.
The five men harbored their own thoughts, while Xiao Jinsheng, nestled in Que Zelian's arms, felt only excitement.
This kind of life-saving experience, where her safety was guaranteed, was comparable to a death-defying roller coaster or a bungee jump without a safety harness.
Indeed, Xiao Jinsheng possessed a constitution that attracted fog corpses.
Last night, resting in the villa, she had only moved within the villa's immediate vicinity. With no fog corpses within a one-kilometer radius, it was naturally a peaceful night.
But today, stepping out, the dense fog obscured visibility, allowing them to see only the unique, eerie silhouettes of fog corpses when they were within five meters.
They hadn't even walked a hundred meters before a hundred fog corpses trailed behind them.
Fortunately, the highest-ranking fog corpses that chased them were only four-star, easily handled by the five men's abilities.
Xiao Jinsheng, held in Que Zelian's princess carry, looked back over his shoulder. The thick fog obscured her view, allowing her to see only dark figures moving swiftly, pursuing them.
With yesterday's experience dealing with fog corpses, after luring over two hundred of them, the six individuals sought a tall building for shelter.
Que Zelian moved with the wind's grace, swiftly placing Xiao Jinsheng on the safety of the rooftop.
Yu Yunxiao, pulling on a long vine, ascended the building. He first surveyed the rooftop and then locked the rooftop door.
As a healing ability user, it wasn't suitable for him to join the fight against the fog corpses.
Thus, he was assigned the task of protecting Xiao Jinsheng. Since it was a team effort, everyone contributed, and the star stones obtained would be divided equally at the end.
Xiao Jinsheng, moreover, would receive two shares: one for luring the fog corpses, and another from the share given to her by the five men.
She stood half a step from the railing, bending at the waist to peer down.
However, this time they were on the sixth floor. Amidst the dense fog, she could only hear the roars of the fog corpses and the sounds of battle below, unable to see anything clearly.
"Stay away from the railing. These buildings have been corroded by the fog and are not sturdy at all. Be careful not to fall," Yu Yunxiao warned from behind her.
Xiao Jinsheng, valuing her own life, trusted such warnings.
She turned back haughtily, lifting her chin slightly. "Given your concern for me, I'll add… why are you smiling so strangely?"
Xiao Jinsheng looked at Yu Yunxiao, bewildered by his unnaturally gentle smile.
The word "gentle" simply didn't align with Yu Yunxiao.
At least from their two-day acquaintance, Xiao Jinsheng knew Yu Yunxiao as an easily ruffled, tsundere kitten.
Yet, the Yu Yunxiao before her smiled gently, his heterochromatic eyes — one gold, one blue — staring directly at her, looking utterly bizarre.
Xiao Jinsheng's heart leaped into her throat. She cautiously shuffled her feet, moving away from the strange Yu Yunxiao, and whispered, "Do you think they'll get hurt fighting the fog corpses? You have healing abilities; should you go down and check?"
"You…" Yu Yunxiao's lips stretched upwards, pulling into a gruesome grin that reached his ears. The flesh on his face peeled away in chunks, and his voice, raspy like metal scraping, rasped, "You've already found me…"
In that moment, Xiao Jinsheng understood everything. The figure before her was not Yu Yunxiao at all.
She turned to run left, but the figure instantaneously appeared on her left. She darted right, and it reappeared on her right.
Xiao Jinsheng had nowhere to escape. Forced to retreat step by step by the bloody figure, her lower back slammed into the railing.
The bloodied figure's face was a gruesome mess of flesh and exposed bone, with a flap of skin dangling from its right cheek.
It grinned, extending a bloodied hand towards Xiao Jinsheng. "The source of the star stones… found it."
"He-he-help—!"
"Que Zelian! Su Ye! Huai Qing! Yu Yunxiao! Mo Jiao—!"
In her nineteen years of life, Xiao Jinsheng had never, in less than half a second, accurately and rapidly rattled off a string of names like this.
The bloodied figure closed in. She leaned back against the railing, which, though seemingly solid, was actually more brittle than tofu. With a backward arch, she, along with the collapsing wall, plummeted from the building.
"No, something's wrong with Xiao Jinsheng's side!" Su Ye exclaimed urgently.
Que Zelian unleashed a powerful gust of wind, blowing away the fog corpses that lunged at him, and flew up to the rooftop.
But on the rooftop, apart from a昏睡ing Yu Yunxiao, there was no sign of Xiao Jinsheng.
Xiao Jinsheng fell from the building, neither dying as she had feared nor being miraculously caught by Que Zelian or the others.
She looked around, enveloped in complete darkness, an endless void.
She couldn't discern her surroundings at all; not even a blurry outline was visible.
Xiao Jinsheng suppressed her fear, crouched down, and slowly moved, feeling the ground with her hands.
"Que Zelian? Su Ye? Huai Qing?" Xiao Jinsheng whispered, clutching onto the fading hope that she would meet her five men after falling from the rooftop. "Yu Yunxiao? Mo Jiao?"
But the surroundings were dark and silent. Aside from her trembling, fearful whispers, there seemed to be no other living presence.
Just as Xiao Jinsheng was despairing, her hand, inching along the ground to find a way, brushed against a shoe. The texture suggested it was a leather shoe.
Xiao Jinsheng's heart leaped into her throat. The thought of being scared by a mere shoe spurred her to grasp it, intending to stomp on it a few times.
But she tugged once and couldn't move it.
She tugged a second time with more force, still unable to move it.
Sensing something amiss, Xiao Jinsheng extended her hand, tracing the shoe upwards. Her fingers brushed against a warm leg. Her hand, clutching the stranger's pant leg, trembled.
"Are all those names your lovers?" A lazy, magnetic voice, laced with amusement, resonated above her head.