They traveled through time at the same time, but the villainous scientist

Chapter 493 Death Strikes
"Miss Claire?"

Seeing this, Zhang Qi exchanged a glance with Chu Xuan and slowly walked inside.

After entering the room, Chu Xuan closed the door behind him and began to quickly scan every detail of the room with his eyes.

"We are Zhang Jie's friends."

Zhang Qi spoke again, and this time, he directly said the name.

The name "Zhang Jie" is like a pebble thrown into stagnant water.

The woman's shoulders trembled almost imperceptibly.

For the first time, a flicker of emotion appeared on that face, which had been repeatedly eroded by fear and exhaustion.

"Zhang Jie..."

She murmured the name repeatedly, her voice hoarse, as if she hadn't spoken in a long time.
"Is he... still alive?"

Her memory was pulled back to before that terrifying flight, to that man who also came from the East, and his companions, who carried an air of incompatibility with this world, and who also talked about things that defied common sense.

They tried to resist, but ultimately, they all disappeared in the all-encompassing catastrophe.

"Alive."

Chu Xuan calmly took over the conversation, his voice devoid of any emotional fluctuation.
"My current situation is similar to yours."

"Really... That's great..."

Upon hearing this, Claire's lips curled into a smile that was more like a grimace, but it quickly vanished.
"But what's the point of living?"

We are all just barely surviving, waiting for the next 'accident' to happen.

That's fate, and no one can escape it..."

There was a sense of helplessness in her voice.

"If that thing is fate, a truly unsolvable law, then you wouldn't be alive today."

Zhang Qi walked up to her, blocking her view of the window and forcing her to look at him.

"Moreover, we have also mastered some... special powers."

Before he finished speaking, Zhang Qi extended his right index finger.

There was no incantation, no omen.

A small cluster of orange-red flames spontaneously ignited on his fingertips, dancing silently.

"you……"

Her lips moved, her gaze fixed intently on the cluster of flames, as if trying to see through them.

"Also...a magician?"

She thought of Zhang Jie's companions, who had also displayed similar amazing abilities.

She reached out her hand, trembling, and cautiously approached the flame.

Her fingertips stopped a few centimeters from the flame, and a warm current brushed against her skin.

This is not an illusion, nor is it some kind of trick.

This is real fire.

"That's it."

Zhang Qi nodded, and the flame at his fingertips went out as if it had never existed.

According to the information he obtained from Zhang Jie, the Zhongzhou team had made contact with the main characters in this world.

"But... even if you have this power, what use is it?"

She sighed and shrank back into the chair.
"Death... it is not a monster, not an enemy that can be burned to death with flames."

It is everywhere; it is everything itself.

A gust of wind, a drop of water, a loose screw… anything can become its weapon.

She began to narrate, her voice low, as if she were talking to herself.

She recounted the story after the first film, explaining how she, driven by fear, completely imprisoned herself within it.

"I thought this place was absolutely safe; there were no windows to fall through, no electrical appliances to leak electricity, and no sharp objects..."

Her voice trembled slightly with a nervous intensity.
"But it didn't stop. Once, I fell asleep, and a loose thread from my clothes got tangled around my neck, tightening and tightening..."

Another time, the deliveryman was pushing his cart past the door when a wheel suddenly came off and hit the door. The sound... I thought the door was going to be forced open..."

What she described were all trivial yet nearly fatal "coincidences".

Zhang Qi and Chu Xuan listened quietly.

Claire's experience precisely confirmed their suspicions.

In this "zero-variable" environment, the "weapons" that Death can use are greatly limited, which keeps the intensity of its attacks within a relatively low range that can be detected and avoided.

In other words, Death is not omniscient or omnipotent.

"It does have limitations."

Chu Xuan spoke softly to Zhang Qi, his eyes behind his glasses flashing with rationality.

"This makes our experiment feasible."

"Ah."

Zhang Qi nodded.

Now, the most crucial step is to convince Claire that they have the ability to protect her in an environment with even more variables.

Looking into Claire's lifeless eyes, he knew that words were useless.

He took something out of his pocket. It was a palm-sized jade pendant, its surface a warm, pale green, without any elaborate carvings, looking just like an ordinary ornament.

"what is this?"

Claire glanced at it, completely uninterested.

"A talisman."

Zhang Qi handed her the jade pendant, saying, "It can protect your safety."

"Heh~" Claire let out a short, mocking laugh.

A talisman? To counter the force that can cause a Boeing 747 to disintegrate in mid-air?

She didn't answer.

Zhang Qi didn't mind and simply hung the jade pendant around her neck.

The icy touch made Claire's body stiffen.

Just then, Chu Xuan, who had been silent all along, moved.

His movements were so fast that no one had time to react. His right hand reached out from inside his trench coat, and a black pistol appeared in his palm.

Without the slightest hesitation, without even aiming, he raised his hand and pulled the trigger at Claire's chest.

"boom!"

The deafening gunshots rang out in the padded room, the sound absorbed and distorted, sounding unusually muffled and terrifying.

Claire's scream caught in her throat. Her pupils dilated to their limit in an instant, her body stiffened from extreme fear, and her mind went blank.

However, the expected excruciating pain and impact did not materialize.

A twisted and deformed bullet, as if hitting an invisible wall, lost all its kinetic energy less than ten centimeters from her chest and fell to the ground with a clatter.

The jade pendant on her chest was emitting a soft and warm glow.

Claire was still reeling from the surreal scene.

"boom!"

Chu Xuan fired another shot without expression.

This time, Claire saw it clearly.

The bullet traced an almost imperceptible trajectory through the air, striking precisely the pale golden halo emitted by the jade pendant.

The halo rippled like water, while the bullet, like an egg hitting a tank, was instantly crushed into a piece of scrap metal and fell helplessly.

The room was filled with a pungent smell of gunpowder.

Chu Xuan put away his gun, as if he had only done a trivial thing.

Claire slowly lowered her head, looking at the two flattened bullets on the ground, then raised her hand in disbelief, stroking the jade pendant on her chest that had returned to its ordinary state.

The bullet... was stopped.

If it can block even a purely physical attack like a bullet, does that mean that most of the "accidents" that death creates through physical mediums can also be blocked?

This thought, like a bolt of lightning, cleaved through the thick, persistent cloud of despair in her heart.

A faint ray of light shone in for the first time.

Her breathing became rapid, and her chest heaved violently.

She looked at Zhang Qi, then at Chu Xuan, her lips trembling, but she couldn't utter a single word.

"Now, are you willing to come with us?"

Zhang Qi asked.

Claire nodded vigorously, tears welling up in her eyes without warning.

These are not tears of fear, nor tears of sorrow, but tears of relief and survival after finally seeing a glimmer of light in the endless darkness.

"I...I'll go with you."

Her voice was hoarse, yet it contained a resolute determination akin to that of a newborn.

She stood up and, for the first time without hesitation, took a step toward the door she had never dared to approach in nearly a year.

Outside the door was the hospital's most ordinary corridor.

White walls, a clean floor, and in the distance, the whispers of the nurses' station and the buzzing of medical equipment could be heard.

She took a deep breath, and the air, which had been filled with the smell of disinfectant, suddenly felt incredibly fresh.

However, the moment her foot stepped out of the ward...

The mutation has begun.

At the end of the corridor, a cleaner was pushing a tall metal cleaning cart, humming an off-key tune. He seemed oblivious to the slight curling of the edge of a paving stone in front of him.

The cleaning truck's wheels precisely rolled over it.

"Cock!"

A barely perceptible, soft sound.

The entire vehicle jolted violently, and a heavy metal bucket filled with water, which was mounted on the vehicle, lost its balance due to the sudden jolt.

It tipped to one side, carrying a bucket full of muddy water, and splashed onto the freshly waxed, mirror-like floor.

The water flowed rapidly, heading straight for a power outlet in the corner—where a high-powered floor polisher was plugged in.

This is just the beginning.

The impact of the tipping bucket struck a bottle of high-concentration toilet cleaner hanging on the side hook of the cleaning cart. The plastic bottle cap, which wasn't tightened properly to begin with, was sent flying by the impact.

Blue, corrosive liquid arced through the air, spraying onto a row of fire sprinkler heads on the opposite wall.

Almost simultaneously, the cleaning cart that was hit by the bucket also lost control, its heavy body spinning as it crashed into a nurse in the middle of the corridor.

The young nurse was stunned by the series of events. She was holding a stainless steel tray filled with freshly sterilized metal instruments that gleamed with a cold, metallic gleam—scalpels, hemostats, and long injection needles.

"careful!"

The nurse let out a short scream and instinctively leaned back.

The tray slipped from my hand and flew out.

A plate full of sharp weapons tumbled and flew through the air like a group of startled silver piranhas, reflecting a chilling glint of death under the lights, and shot towards Zhang Qi and his two companions who had just stepped out of the ward!

Above them, the tremors from the cleaning truck hitting the wall caused a huge, old crystal chandelier to groan under its strain, the screws holding it in place loosening inch by inch, teetering on the verge of collapse.

Ahead lay swirling blades, behind lay a chandelier about to fall, and beneath their feet was a rapidly spreading pool of water that threatened to touch the power source.

The moment they stepped out of the safe zone, death's chessboard had already laid out a deadly trap...

(End of this chapter)