Outside the pit, Scarlett laughed maniacally as she shot at her fixed-trajectory moving target.
Her observation was entirely correct; the Threat Entity's intelligence had noticeably degraded after its death.
Now, it moved as if its knees were fused shut. It didn't even know how to descend into the pit or climb the stairs, merely following a continuous, predictable path. If there had been any trees nearby, she would have loved to string that rookie up with a rope, just to see if this thing would obediently stop right beneath him to take a beating!
The Anomaly's corpse circled the pit repeatedly, accelerating under the hail of bullets until it left afterimages, before gradually slowing down.
Finally, its body entirely embedded with warheads, practically turning it into a metal sculpture, it collapsed.
John, who had been on standby in the driver's seat, ready to execute Plan B and flee at a moment's notice, gave her the answer she wanted to hear.
"Threat Entity executed!"
"Phew, how refreshing. It's been a long time since I got to shoot like that. Report our mission's success to the Liaison Department and have them send some unlucky Logistics Squad over here to pick up the shell casings."
Scarlett jumped down from the truck bed and walked to the edge of the deep pit. Peering through her Night Vision Goggles at the rookie huddling helplessly at the bottom, she felt there was no need to deal with him by the book.
"Hey, rookie down there!"
The little white figure in her Night Vision Goggles looked up.
"You put on a good show. I'm quite satisfied. Here is my Business Card. If you're interested in furthering your studies in the future, contact me."
With a sharp snap, she opened and closed her cardholder, letting a small piece of paper flutter down into the pit. Although it landed in the mud, Scarlett never expected the rookie to catch it mid-air in such utter darkness anyway.
"Someone will come to fish you out. Just wait quietly."
John started the engine, picked up the highly spirited Scarlett, and sped away.
Scarlett left with absolute panache, but for Shi Rang, stuck at the bottom of the pit and entirely unaware of the situation, the experience was completely different.
To him, this had been a night of sheer madness.
Witnessing a corpse, narrowly escaping being buried alive, hearing a gunfight, confronting Grey Dog, and running into two groups of intruders...
The endless barrage of bad news and sheer terror had completely drained Shi Rang's mental fortitude. If anything could be worse than all of that, it was being trapped in a pit four or five meters deep.
Surrounded by pitch-black darkness, once the gunfire and engine noises outside faded away, Shi Rang was left engulfed in absolute silence.
It seemed the people outside had finished fighting...
He tried to dig footholds into the pit walls to climb up, but his body was too weak, and the waterlogged soil simply couldn't support his weight. So, he sat down to wait. Clutching the small slip of paper that had drifted down from above, he rubbed its laminated surface. He held onto it like a lifeline, waiting for his strength to return and for daylight to break.
An unknown amount of time passed before the squelching sound of boots stomping through the mud echoed from outside the pit.
Shi Rang jolted awake, realizing his entire body was aching and his limbs were stiff.
He had actually fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion.
The rain had stopped. A faint, hazy blue glow washed over the sky; dawn was fast approaching.
"Was she trying to plant crops with shell casings? They're completely buried in the mud."
"Well, at least they gave us an exact count. Let's start digging."
"Help!" Shi Rang stood up, waving his arms and shouting toward the surface. "I'm trapped down here!"
Soon, two heads popped over the edge of the pit, standing out starkly against the dimly lit sky.
"Who's that down there?"
"An uninvolved civilian. It was mentioned in the report."
"Then he has nothing to do with us."
With that said, the two of them actually just walked away, completely ignoring Shi Rang's frantic screams. They stopped chatting and simply wandered around the muddy ground with their heads down.
Shi Rang shouted until his voice was nearly hoarse, finally realizing that they genuinely had no intention of saving him.
A surge of inexplicable anger flared up within him. He jammed his feet against both sides of the pit, trying to scale his way to the top just like in the movies. Yet, only two steps up, he slid right back down to the bottom. The soil just wasn't firm enough.
He had no choice but to sit back down and wait. Wait for the earth to dry, wait for his stamina to fully recover, wait for the roar of an engine and the inevitable cascade of dirt pouring down from above, which could happen at any moment...
But when he thought about the completely severed trail of clues, a profound sense of sorrow washed away his fear of death.
The squelching footsteps from above echoed endlessly within the deep hole.
Amidst the exhaustion, numbness, and biting cold, he passed out.
-----------------
During his college years, Shi Rang absolutely despised all group activities. He kept a respectful distance from the student union and parties, never joined social gatherings with his peers, and spent his days drifting back and forth between his dormitory and the academic buildings like an invisible man.
If the prize for that reading competition hadn't been a free set of books, he would never have willingly stepped into a crowd.
Reading and gaming were among his very few hobbies. The former allowed him to forget his pain, while the latter reminded him that he was still alive.
He sat down in the corner of the reading room, looking much like a mouse venturing out of its burrow, remaining highly alert and utterly repulsed by his surroundings. His icy, unapproachable demeanor successfully kept the other contestants at bay.
Once the painful wait for the competition to begin was finally over, he immediately buried his head in the book placed before him—
"Exploring the Oceans Beyond Pangaea."
It was a historical read that thoroughly piqued his interest, but at that moment, he was in no mood to savor the prose.
Leaving his familiar environment had wound his nerves tight, so he simply treated it as an urgent mission that had to be completed as swiftly as possible.
"The Pan Continent, where our Twelve Districts are located, is a supercontinent. Although the shape of the planet is known, no one has ever successfully completed a true circumnavigation of the globe..."
"Excuse me, is this seat taken?"
Shi Rang was startled.
He stared wide-eyed at the girl who had spoken to him, acting as if he had just seen some sort of extraterrestrial creature. He hastily shook his head and scooted his chair further into the corner, pressing himself against the wall to hide—even though she had chosen to sit across from him rather than in the empty seat right beside him.
"Thanks."
As soon as she sat down, she began reading.
Shi Rang tried his hardest to concentrate and continue reading after this minor interruption, but his mind was utterly consumed by the smiling face the girl across the table had shown him just moments ago.
It was a polite and friendly smile, but he was so unused to receiving kindness from others that he couldn't help but interpret it as disdain and mockery. He couldn't resist sneaking a peek up from his book to check if she was giggling while typing on her Mobile Phone, spreading his odd behavior online as a joke, or exchanging knowing glances and pointing fingers with her friends. Girls always moved in packs and had their own tight-knit cliques, didn't they?
The girl across the table was resting her chin on her hand, scanning the dense blocks of text on the pages.
Only after confirming that he wasn't the target of any malice did Shi Rang finally steady his nerves. He dove entirely into his reading, quickly forgetting the entire world outside of himself.
Fifty minutes later, he finished his speed-reading. He jotted down a summary of the contents on the paper provided by the organizers, double-checked it once, and stood up to submit his results.
Without a doubt, he was the very first to finish. It was a well-deserved first place; reading was one of his very few strong suits.
Just as he clutched his prize and prepared to leave, he heard the soft sound of a chair shifting in the corner of the room.
Catching a glimpse from the corner of his eye, he saw that the girl was actually the second person to stand up.
He stared for far too long. Even as the girl claimed her prize and pushed the door open to leave with a complete set of shrink-wrapped books in her arms, he continued to gawk at her like an idiot.
Without a doubt, she noticed.
The girl leaned her back against the glass door, holding it open to leave him enough room to pass, and shot him a questioning look.
Shi Rang snapped back to reality, feeling the blood rush straight to his head as the whole world seemed to dim around him. Everyone in the room—those within his line of sight and those outside it, including the staff member handing out prizes—was definitely staring at him. He, who never left the slightest trace of his existence in the outside world, had disrupted the order of this space and become the center of questioning and scrutiny.
He hastily squeezed past the girl and jogged straight to the building's entrance. Panting heavily, he stared blankly up at the sky, completely forgetting how to get back to his dorm.
"Are you alright? Are you feeling unwell?" The main culprit behind all of this had followed him out.
'Good heavens, doesn't she realize that talking to me will draw the stares of everyone passing by?'
Shi Rang's nearly overloaded brain forced him to come up with a logical excuse to flee the scene.
Fortunately, he managed to think of a rather foolish excuse.
"I have to go back to my club, it's an emergency..."
"A club?"
"The Board Game Club." Shi Rang threw the club out there as an excuse. His tone, hardened by panic, came across as incredibly rude.
Regardless of her reaction, be it mockery or anger, he just wanted her to hurry up and walk away.
He just wanted to return to his old rhythm of life and retreat into his comfort zone.
To his surprise, her eyes lit up. "There's a Board Game Club at School? I've never heard of it."
Shi Rang froze.
An unprecedented urge surged into his heart. His lips trembled, unable to distinguish whether he was feeling pure excitement or utter terror.
Finally, he mustered his courage and blurted out those words: "Are you interested?"
Shi Rang couldn't remember exactly how he introduced it to her after that. He only remembered that she used her Mobile Phone to snap a picture of the club's poster and, right before leaving, promised him that she would definitely drop by to check it out.
Staring at the girl's retreating back, it took Shi Rang quite a while to remember that he should have waved to acknowledge her "goodbye."
He had been incredibly rude. She was definitely going to hate him.
But she didn't hate him because of it.
Later on, he met The Girl at the Board Game Club. Then a second time, a third time, over and over again.
She was always incredibly kind to him. This warmth gradually melted away Shi Rang's resistance to the outside world. Whenever she smiled, he felt a shared sense of joy.
He had always known that every good change in his life would inevitably meet a terrible end. The higher you fly, the harder you fall.
Yet, as long as he was by her side, he didn't feel so afraid anymore.
Slowly, he learned her name, became her adventuring partner and game master, and finally held her hand...
He learned the methods to fight back against his fears. She had changed him.
Gradually, he left that darkness behind, deciding to bravely face the turbulent waves of the future together with her, determined to break his miserable curse.
And then, she disappeared.