Madness Like a Lunatic
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At that moment, Zhou Jiao’s desire to survive surged to its peak. She twisted the motorcycle throttle and charged toward the abandoned highway with the best riding skills she had ever displayed in her life.
In a situation where she was one step away from death, her mind was instead working at an unprecedented speed.
She replayed the clues frame by frame in her mind, finally pausing at the photo of the homeless man that was released when “When Will BioTech Go Bankrupt” announced its closure.
In the photo, the homeless man’s expression was numb, his body covered in pinpricks from cheap injection pumps. Behind him was a row of dazzling blue neon lights, with smoke and dust filling the air, sewage flowing everywhere. A vaguely visible female holographic image was mechanically swaying and striking seductive poses.
That was the most chaotic street in Yucheng, where murder and robbery occurred at every moment. The place was littered with bars, black-market clinics, and hole-in-the-wall eateries.
Compared to the half-crazed man behind her, those people were genuine “chip lunatics.”
Zhou Jiao pulled up the map and sped toward that street.
Perhaps her luck had already run out the moment she finished repairing her motorcycle. Midway through her ride, the motorcycle emitted a sharp alarm, and the AI warned her that if she did not stop within the next minute, an explosion event might occur—
Zhou Jiao couldn’t help but curse under her breath. When she turned to look back, despite having already pushed her speed to the limit, she could still see Jiang Lian’s figure, as if there was no difference from when she had been escaping on foot earlier.
If she abandoned the bike now, she would be caught by his tentacle-like appendages the very next second.
What the hell was he doing?
Would he really catch up to her and just kill her?
Zhou Jiao didn’t dare to gamble on it.
Gritting her teeth, a flash of silver appeared in her eyes as she unlocked the motorcycle’s speed limiter, pushing it to its absolute maximum.
In an instant, the alarm blared in her ears, ringing so loudly that her vision darkened at the edges. But the motorcycle successfully accelerated—its two wheels nearly lifted off the ground as it shot forward like a bolt of lightning, instantly leaving Jiang Lian far behind!
At the same time, the AI’s cold electronic voice sounded:
“Vehicle damage has reached 80%. Please stop immediately and wait for the insurance company to contact you…”
Zhou Jiao’s mouth twitched.
If she stopped now, what awaited her wouldn’t be the insurance company but the city’s corpse collection truck.
She clenched her teeth tightly and, amidst the deafening roar of the engine, accelerated once more. Because she was forcibly overloading the engine through a personal connection line, sparks erupted before her eyes, and waves of dizziness assaulted her.
She was relying entirely on a superhuman level of willpower to maintain her clarity amidst the gold stars flashing in her vision, forcing herself to keep the motorcycle moving forward at full speed.
Yet, at that moment, the AI continued its cold, emotionless reminders:
“Vehicle damage has reached 90%. Please stop immediately and wait for the insurance company to contact you…”
“Vehicle damage has reached 95%…”
—Almost there.
Zhou Jiao fought back the dizziness and forced herself to remain calm as she scanned her surroundings, searching for a place to jump off the bike.
“…Damage has reached 99%, exceeding the insurance coverage limit…”
With a loud bang, Zhou Jiao shut off the AI notification and coldly said:
“Idiot system, I didn’t even buy insurance in the first place.”
She twisted the motorcycle’s direction, aimed straight at a raging fire of burning trash, and charged at full speed!
This was suicidal behavior.
Everyone on the street was stunned.
A street vendor was just flipping locust pancakes on his griddle, and upon witnessing the scene, he nearly lost his grip on the spatula.
—Indeed, this street was full of lunatics, but it was still rare to see someone this insane.
For a moment, the atmosphere became lively, with footsteps, shouting, and laughter blending into a chaotic symphony.
People began turning on their recording functions—some were planning to film short videos to upload online, some controlled drones, intending to take selfies with the accident site, and a few hooded thugs exchanged glances, preparing to rush in the moment Zhou Jiao crashed, so they could drag her to a black-market clinic and harvest her intact organs.
But they all miscalculated.
—At that very moment, as the motorcycle sped like a lightning bolt, Zhou Jiao suddenly stood up on it.
Throughout the entire process, her back remained taut, and her body stayed low, like a bowstring pulled to its limit.
The next second, she pushed off with both feet, launching herself into the air from the speeding motorcycle.
She twisted midair, then rolled smoothly upon landing, one foot bracing behind her to absorb the inertia.
—Her entire form resembled a bird tucking its wings, gliding backward for dozens of meters, kicking up thick clouds of dust.
At the same time, the motorcycle crashed into the blazing pile of trash—
A roaring fireball erupted.
The blast wave sent garbage flying in every direction.
The street vendor’s freshly made locust pancake?
Instantly turned into a plastic-glass pancake.
Amidst the chaos, Zhou Jiao staggered to her feet, ignoring the darkness clouding her vision as she turned and darted into the crowd.
A hot liquid trickled from her nose, dripping onto the ground with soft pat, pat sounds.
She wiped it away carelessly, smearing it across her clothes as she thought to herself:
“With skills like mine, it’s a damn shame I’m not working for the FBI.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a few hooded figures following her.
They didn’t look like company operatives—more like local gangsters, hyenas that had caught the scent of blood and were now trailing her, looking to cause trouble.
Zhou Jiao let out a cold, amused smile.
She couldn’t deal with Jiang Lian, but handling a few small-time thugs?
No problem.
Up ahead, she spotted a gun rental stall. She walked over, intending to rent one.
The vendor, seeing her unfamiliar face, hesitated—he was wary she might be a corporate cop and was reluctant to rent to her.
Zhou Jiao had no patience for bargaining.
She grabbed him by the collar, and a flash of silver appeared in her eyes—
Forcibly transferring payment, she rented a gun.
“Tell those idiots behind me that I’m waiting for them in the alley.” She said with a slight smile, but there was not the slightest trace of amusement in her eyes. With gentle movements, she tidied up the vendor’s collar.
The moment Zhou Jiao ditched the bike and dove into the crowd, Jiang Lian arrived.
At first, his intention was simple—to find a reason to kill her.
—If she couldn’t escape his pursuit, then she deserved to die.
But he was also curious—curious how long she could survive under his hunt.
Yet, when she stopped to repair the motorcycle, the light in his eyes gradually dimmed.
A strong sense of disappointment and boredom washed over him.
—She didn’t take his words seriously.
Maybe, in her mind, his chase was just a fleeting whim.
Maybe she believed that once he caught her, she could brush him off with a few words and a kiss, and he wouldn’t actually kill her.
Then she was gravely mistaken.
Jiang Lian’s gaze locked onto Zhou Jiao’s retreating figure.
His expression turned cold as ice.
If Zhou Jiao had turned her head while repairing the motorcycle at that moment, she would have seen the air crowded with hideous, wet, and sticky tentacles—and the one coiling around her ankle was merely the most insignificant among them.
—If she had moved even a fraction slower while leaving, even if she had managed to escape the chain explosion of the garbage heap, she would still have been smashed into pulp by the tentacle that came crashing down.
This time, Jiang Lian truly had the intent to kill—and he didn’t even let her notice the existence of the tentacles.
Yet, in the very next second, she swung her leg over the motorcycle, the engine roared to life, and she sped off into the distance!
A desperate, gambling escape.
And yet, using such a method, she actually managed to evade his pursuit.
Amidst the thunderous roar of the engine, their gazes met for a fleeting moment.
He saw her sharp, delicate features, her fair, porcelain-smooth profile, her dark eyelashes and damp hair, heavy with moisture from sweat.
She looked just like a camellia shrouded in misty rain, exuding a cold, chilling beauty dripping with dew.
Jiang Lian closed his eyes for a moment, his Adam’s apple rolling slightly, as he felt an uncontrollable surge of exhilaration rising within him.
When she stopped running, his expression turned colder than ever before, fury and murderous intent interweaving.
Yet when she successfully escaped, he was struck by an overwhelming thrill—so intense that it sent a tingling sensation from his chest all the way down his spine.
At the same time, he felt an unnerving pull toward her.
—He realized that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Zhou Jiao.
No matter how far she ran, his eyes remained locked onto her like glue, as if an invisible thread connected them, stretching taut.
Why?
Jiang Lian inhaled, following the lingering scent of Zhou Jiao in the air, and pursued her all the way to the site of the motorcycle explosion.
His gaze swept across the wreckage, and instantly, an image surfaced in his mind—Zhou Jiao leaping off the motorcycle in midair.
For a human, she was already extraordinarily strong.
But to him, she was still nothing more than an ant he could crush at any moment.
Just then, Jiang Lian tilted his head slightly, his nose twitching as he caught a faint scent of blood.
—Zhou Jiao was injured.
Having endured two consecutive explosions, even with the modifications his tentacles had made to her body, she had inevitably sustained minor wounds.
The scent of blood amplified her presence—within half an hour, he would have her in his grasp again.
Jiang Lian’s expression remained icy, but a terrifying twitch flickered across his face.
At this moment, he found himself caught in an indescribable contradiction.
On one hand, he was certain—Zhou Jiao had already performed exceptionally well. Unless he deliberately let her go, there was no chance she could truly escape him.
Yet, on the other hand, he was burning with an urgent need to discover what made her special.
If she wasn’t uniquely exceptional, beyond the limits of all humankind—why couldn’t he look away from her?
If she was as weak and insignificant as she seemed, her lifespan less than one-billionth of his own, then why did she occupy his mind so completely, unsettling and frustrating him to this extent?
Though he was deeply conflicted, the excitement within him did not diminish in the slightest.