Xiaotao and I were safely back at her house later that night. I was injured, so she made me sleep on the bed. I laughed and said, “But you’re the hostess, and I’m the guest. How can I let the hostess sleep on the couch?”

“Guests should be quiet and obey the hostess!” Xiaotao snapped back. “I’m ordering you to sleep in the bed!”

And so, I reluctantly lay on the bed and tried to get some rest. The sound of Xiaotao taking a shower in the bathroom coupled with her scent in her bed excited me too much that I couldn’t sleep.

As I tossed and turned, I heard the bedroom door open. Xiaotao slipped into the room wearing pajamas. I quickly pretended to be asleep. Xiaotao quietly lay down next to me and hugged me from behind. My heart started racing when I could feel the soft pressure of her breasts on my back.

But then, I heard Xiaotao quietly sobbing. Surprised, I asked her, “What’s wrong?”

She kept on crying and didn’t answer. The events that happened today must’ve hit her very hard, especially when a police officer died by the bullet that was intended for her. I turned around to face her and gently patted her head with my uninjured hand and comforted her, “Don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

Xiaotao curled up in my arms like a little bird. Her freshly washed hair emitted the scent of shampoo. I knew that there was nothing I could say that would make her feel better, so I just kept on stroking her hair until she gradually fell asleep.

Due to excessive blood loss, coupled with the side effects of the anesthetic, I grew more and more drowsy myself and eventually fell asleep too. But it wasn’t long before I was woken up again by a loud bang on the door. It went on incessantly and Xiaotao jolted awake from her sleep too.

“Who’s that?!” she shouted.

The banging of the door didn’t sound right. “This is bad!” I warned her. “Xiaotao, someone’s trying to break in!”

We jumped out of the bed instantly. Xiaotao took off her pajamas, exposing her beautiful body. I froze in shock, but then realized that she was changing her clothes. Fortunately, the room was dark and the light wasn’t on, so it didn’t feel very awkward. I lowered my head and told Xiaotao, “I’ll go out and see what’s going on!”

The metal gate in front of the main door had been smashed in several times. There was someone there holding an axe, unremittingly bashing into the metal gate. Had there been no metal gate and the man were bashing straight into the wooden main door, he would’ve been inside by now.

Not long after, Xiaotao came out wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

“Who are you?” she barked. “And what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The man completely ignored her; he just continued banging the gate with the axe. Xiaotao and I exchanged looks. It seemed that this guy was hypnotized by Professor Li again.

Xiaotao reached the holster on her waist and slowly pulled out her gun. She signaled with her eyes for me to open the door. I took a deep breath and walked slowly forward. A small fragment of the metal gate flew off and hit my face. It hurt a lot but I kept on going. I found a safe opening and swiftly unlocked the metal gate and flung it open, then I quickly backed away from the door. The axe-wielding man rushed in, but Xiaotao pointed her gun at him and screamed, “Stop right there!”

Then she suddenly froze to the spot.

“Uncle Zhang!” she exclaimed with astonishment.

Uncle Zhang was an old man in his seventies who owned a bicycle shop downstairs. But at that moment, his eyes were glazed over and his face was stony and expressionless. He was even drooling from a corner of his mouth. The axe he was holding was slightly bent due to the impact on the metal gate.

Uncle Zhang stormed in and swung the axe at Xiaotao, but she lithely dodged it and the axe smashed into the glass coffee table. Uncle Zhang wouldn’t give up. He kept on swinging his axe at Xiaotao tirelessly, smashing all the furniture in the house. Xiaotao grabbed a coat from the coat rack and shouted, “We have to get out of here now!”

“But what about your house?” I asked.

“Never mind that, we have to stay alive!”

We slipped out of the house and closed the door behind us. The second we were out, all the banging noises inside came to an abrupt halt. We held our breaths and waited for a few seconds until we were sure that everything was quiet inside. Then Xiaotao pulled out a small gadget from her pocket. It was called a cat’s eye monitor. It was a special device used by the police and it was used to monitor what’s inside the house by looking into the cat’s eyes.

After looking through the cat’s eyes, Xiaotao handed the device to me and said, “Song Yang, look!”

I looked and saw Uncle Zhang standing still with the axe still in his hand. He was probably implanted with the order to break into Xiaotao’s house and kill her, but now that Xiaotao was absent, he just stood there like a statue, or perhaps more precisely like a malfunctioning robot.

Then, we noticed the elevator that stopped on the first floor was gradually moving up.

“Someone’s coming up again,” remarked Xiaotao. “Let’s hurry to the stairs!”

We flew down the stairs until we reached the fifth floor, where we heard the footsteps of someone coming up the stairs. Xiaotao was horrified and told me we should go back immediately. When we reached the sixth floor, the footsteps were getting closer and closer to us. Our hearts almost jumped out of our throats.

“Let me walk in front of you,” I suggested. “These people are only instructed to kill you. They won’t attack me, just like how Uncle Zhang didn’t do anything to me earlier.”

Xiaotao shook her head frantically. “No way! What if you’re also a target?”

“That’s unlikely. If Professor Li wanted to get rid of me, she would’ve done so a long time ago…”

“Fine, then,” Xiaotao reluctantly agreed. “But please be careful!”

And so, I proceeded down the stairs and Xiaotao followed about five or six meters behind me. When I reached the third floor, I saw a man holding a cleaver in his hand, walking up the stairs with a blank expression on his face.

“Hide yourself now!” I yelled.

The man walked past me as if he didn’t even see me. Once he’d gone up, Xiaotao reappeared and we continued down the stairs. We had no idea if we were going to bump into another one from Professor Li’s zombie army. Clearly, this woman was a psychopath who would do anything to get what she wanted with no regard for human life.

We finally reached the first floor safely. I took a peek at the elevator and found no one there. I made a hand gesture to Xiaotao to tell her to come down.

“The first floor is safe!” I announced.

Xiaotao slowly slipped out of the corridor with a gun in hand. When we reached the main entrance, we saw that it was blocked by a group of middle-aged women standing there chatting.

“I wonder who was making all that noise this late at night! How rude!”

“Do you think it’s a thief? Should we call the police?”

I first thought they were just innocent bystanders, but the second they saw Xiaotao, their eyes were glazed over and they suddenly charged towards her.

“Freeze!”

Xiaotao fired a shot at the ceiling in panic. The noise was deafening, but the women were completely unfazed. They must’ve been a part of Professor Li’s zombie army too. Judging by their behavior before Xiaotao appeared, they must’ve been completely none the wiser about the fact that they’d been hypnotized.

Xiaotao kicked one of the women squarely on the stomach, which stopped her in her tracks for a few seconds, but she soon continued to rush forward as if nothing had happened. Xiaotao was by then surrounded by four or five middle-aged women who all scratched her face with their fingernails. Xiaotao was skilled enough to fight off five or six gangsters, but she didn’t have the heart to hurt those innocent women too much. I was in total panic, not knowing what to do to help Xiaotao. I grabbed one of the women by her collar to pull her away from Xiaotao, but she was strangely as strong as Hercules and didn’t budge an inch.

One of them then grabbed Xiaotao by her throat and pinned her down to the floor. I shouted for her to stop at the top of my lungs and desperately tried to shove the woman away from Xiaotao. Unfortunately, I couldn’t reach her at all, because the other women were blocking me with their bodies and I couldn’t slip past them no matter how hard I tried.

Xiaotao’s eyes were beginning to roll back. She desperately raised her gun and was prepared to fire it in self-defense, but in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Her arms fell limply to the ground, her legs stopped struggling and she seemed to have stopped breathing.

I was so shocked I stood there stupidly with my eyes widened. Xiaotao was killed!

“Ah!” shrieked one of the women suddenly. “Why is there a dead body here?”

With that sound, the rest of the women ‘woke up’ and were in utter confusion. They had no memory of what they’d done at all.

They all turned to me and asked, “Young man, did you see who killed her?”

“Get out! Get out of my way!” I yelled at them.

“Watch your attitude, young man!”

“You killed her! You murderers!”

I snatched the gun from Xiaotao and fired a shot at the ceiling.

“If you don’t get out of my sight right now,” I warned them, “I’ll kill all of you!”

The women screamed and fled. I looked down at Xiaotao’s bruised neck. Her eyes had completely rolled back and blood was flowing out of her mouth. There were bloody scratches on her face and neck left by the women’s fingernails.

I tried to lift her body up with one hand. But no matter how hard I tried, I just didn’t have the strength to do so. I collapsed onto my knees and held her in my arms, weeping bitterly. It felt as if a knife had pierced through my heart.