Do You Want to Come With Me?

"And Wang Gang, Chen Fang..."

Xu Xiaoyou held a list, reading off the names like Yama calling the roll.

"Step out on your own. It'll save us both the trouble."

The atmosphere fell into a deathly silence.

Both gangs were dumbfounded. They thought this stumpy corpo dog had gone mad with greed. Didn't she see the hundreds of people currently in the middle of a firefight?

To just stroll in like that and demand debts—did she have a death wish?

"My name is the Crossing-River Dragon! Nobody calls me Zhao Tiezhu!!"

Someone in the crowd roared. With a ferocious expression, he piloted a retired military armor and charged out from behind cover. The mechanical arm thrusters on his limb shifted, and he threw a heavy, powerful punch straight at Xu Xiaoyou's head!

With a thunderous boom, dust and debris filled the air!

Both gangs watched the settling dust simultaneously, wanting to see if the overconfident brat had been turned into a pile of meat paste.

Then, they witnessed a sight they would never forget.

Standing behind Xu Xiaoyou, a black-haired girl had appeared out of nowhere. She held a single hand against the iron fist of the mechanical arm. She didn't even seem to be exerting much effort, yet the metal beast, several meters tall, couldn't advance an inch. The surface of the metal armor even emitted an overwhelmed hum from the force of the vibration, as if it might fall apart at any second.

Inside the military armor, Zhao Tiezhu's eyes bulged as if they were about to pop out of his sockets. When he met Bai Youyou's icy gaze, his body began to tremble uncontrollably.

The size difference between this black-haired girl and the military armor was massive, but she gave him the sensation that he was facing an insurmountable mountain!

Bai Youyou let out a soft breath, her eyes sharpening. Then, her fingers dug deep into the armor's mechanical fist. She actually hoisted the massive frame entirely off the ground. Using a throwing motion like she was tossing a sandbag, she hurled it into the distance!

Boom—!

The abandoned warehouse was struck with a massive dent, cracks spiderwebbing across the entire wall!

The figure inside the armor was out cold.

"Holy crap..." someone's voice trembled.

That was a retired military armor!

Even if it was an early military product from Universal Heavy Industries—a simple exoskeleton-covered model—that punch should have easily flipped a car. And she just caught it that effortlessly?

It weighed several tons at the very least, yet the girl had grabbed it and thrown it like a little chick!?

Their gazes toward Bai Youyou were filled with nothing but terror. Was she some kind of humanoid T-Rex?

"Youyou, if he's unconscious, we can't get the money," Xu Xiaoyou said with a slight frown.

"Sorry, Yuzu, I forgot..."

Now, all the gang members on the field looked at the blonde girl through a different lens.

Noticing the change in how the people around her were looking at her, Xu Xiaoyou knew she had achieved her goal.

She cleared her throat.

"Those whose names I just called, you can come out now."

After what they had just seen, who would dare be dishonest? One by one, they stepped forward. Those who needed to pay, paid; those who needed to settle debts, settled them.

In a short while, Xu Xiaoyou had collected a large sum of debt. Just as everyone was hoping these two plague gods would leave quickly, Bai Youyou let out a cold snort as several pairs of handcuffs appeared in her hands.

"Alright, all of you are coming with me."

...

Inside the guard bureau.

Looking at the hundreds of gang members lined up in front of him, heads bowed in silence, the chief of the guard bureau sighed helplessly and rubbed his temples in frustration.

Someone in the crowd couldn't help but chuckle, only to stifle it a moment later.

After watching Bai Youyou leave, the chief waved his hand at the gang members.

"You can go. Try not to cause so much trouble."

"We're out of here~"

"What are we eating tonight?"

"Let's go together, let's get late-night snacks."

"Hey man, sorry about that shot to your ass earlier. Four holes isn't a problem, right?"

"Sigh, we're brothers, don't worry about it."

The hundreds of people dispersed from the guard bureau in a swarm, with only a few staying behind for appearances.

"Are we really just letting them go?" a young man stepped forward, his voice urgent. "They all..."

"What else? Leaving aside the fact that we don't have enough cells to hold them, do you really think the government in our public security zone still serves a purpose?"

"To put it nicely, we are the peacekeepers of this city. To put it bluntly, as a privatized security force, we are actually just outsourced security for Universal Heavy Industries."

"If you don't want these lunatics driving armored vehicles to our doorstep tomorrow and causing unnecessary casualties, you have to distinguish between what can be done and what can't."

The chief's gaze was weathered and melancholy. "This is the law of survival in this city."

...

After leaving the guard bureau, Xu Xiaoyou noticed that Bai Youyou's expression had remained poor.

The two of them strolled along the seaside. The summer night breeze felt comfortable against their skin, gently brushing their faces. The soft sound of waves passing over the sand filled their ears, the white tide rising and falling rhythmically like the ocean's heartbeat.

"You actually knew that arresting them wouldn't do much, didn't you?" she asked casually.

"Yeah," Bai Youyou said, sounding a bit discouraged. "Don't really take me for an idiot who knows nothing."

"Then why bother arresting them?"

The two sat on the beach. The waves washed over their feet, breaking into countless white bubbles on the sand. In the distance, the lights of fishing boats flickered on the dark sea like tiny fireflies.

The night hung low. The ocean held countless stars, like treasures from a fairy tale waiting for innocent children to scoop them up from the water.

"Everyone has to die, so why bother living?" Bai Youyou said.

The sea breeze blew the girl's hair into a mess, but her gaze was serene.

"Keeping them quiet for an hour or two... that's enough."

Bai Youyou hugged her legs, resting her head on her knees. Fine sand passed through her toes, and she gently toyed with it until it drifted away with the tide.

"I didn't know... before I came here, I didn't know there were such terrible places in the world."

"Then what kind of place did you live in before?" Xu Xiaoyou asked with a chuckle.

"Yuzu, don't you know about the Oasis?"

"Isn't that a virtual world?"

"But I used to live in that virtual world," Bai Youyou said softly.

Xu Xiaoyou couldn't quite understand what the girl meant.

"In the Oasis, crime is not tolerated. No one does anything illegal there."

"If you do something bad in the Oasis, you get locked in a consciousness prison for hundreds of years."

"But here, guys who commit crimes can just walk out of the guard bureau as they please."

"Let's not talk about those things. It ruins the mood."

Bai Youyou's face rested gently against her knees, her eyes quietly watching the girl beside her.

"We were supposed to go to the aquarium at the end, but then that happened."

"The aquarium?"

The girl hid her expression against her knees, her hair messy around her ears.

"Doesn't everyone say that you have to visit three places when you go out together? The cinema, the aquarium, and the Ferris wheel at the amusement park."

"Last night, I spent quite a while looking up guides online and planned it all out..."

Bai Youyou gently tucked a stray hair behind her ear, revealing her slender neck, which looked dazzlingly white under the moonlight.

She hugged her legs and looked out at the sea with a calm gaze. "It's just a bit of a pity. I don't know if there will be another chance."

"If you just want to come out and play, any time is the same, isn't it?" Xu Xiaoyou said, propping herself up on the sand with her hands. "It's not like I'm suddenly going to vanish."

"Mm..."

Noticing the girl beside her move, Xu Xiaoyou looked up.

She watched Bai Youyou stand up and watched her step lightly across the beach, carrying her strappy shoes in her hand as she skipped nimbly.

Under the silver moonlight, the hem of her dress rose and fell, and splashes of water landed on her pale calves.

She watched the girl quietly until the latter turned her head, hands behind her back, and smiled at her.

"Yuzu."

"You told me before that you're leaving this hive city in a few days, but you don't know where to go."

"Do you want to come with me?"