"Yuanyuan, do you know where my family is? I have been looking for them for so long. If you have any news, please tell me," Li Hani spoke urgently. She couldn't wait to fly back to her family's side. She instinctively believed that Ji Yuanyuan must know where her family was.
Ji Yuanyuan patted her hand comfortingly, "Of course, I know. Everyone has been so worried about you. Come with me, I'll take you to them."
Her reassuring voice made Li Hani calm down and she was willing to drop the vigilance that she had developed over the past two years of struggling in this apocalypse. She easily believed in her words and willingly followed Ji Yuanyuan.
"Hani, where have you been?" questioned Ji Yuanyuan as if purely curious about what kind of situation she had been in.
As she thought about the past, Li Hani's body trembled whether it was because of anger or fear, only she knew. Ji Yuanyuan patted her back soothingly.
"You can tell me anything," said Ji Yuanyuan in a somewhat bewitching voice.
Li Hani didn't notice anything strange and shared her experience with her good friend, "I was locked up in a research facility. I don't know what kind of inhuman experiments they were doing there, anyway, I didn't have a single good day in a whole year. Then the natural disasters picked up slowly, one night, lightning struck the research facility unexpectedly and burned the building. I was finally able to escape. Since then, I have been on a run looking for you and my family everywhere."
She did not explain any further regarding how many troubles, difficulties, and obstacles she faced before reaching this place.
"You have really suffered," said Ji Yuanyuan with pity in her voice but if one noticed her eyes, there was only coldness reflected in that pair of eyes. There was no pity or sympathy at all. "But now that you have met me, everything will be alright. You won't ever have to go through this again."
Both of them approached a decrepit parking garage that loomed like a gaping maw in the shadows. Li Hani's nerves tensed up subconsciously as she felt something was odd about this place. The air was too still, too heavy in this place that gave her an uncomfortable feeling.
"I'm here," said Ji Yuanyuan when she noticed the hesitation of Li Hani. She half pulled Li Hani inside the parking garage with her.
Li Hani heard a faint shuffle of footsteps in this dark space. The sound was coming from multiple directions. Her instincts started screaming danger. Even though she had dropped her vigilance against Ji Yuanyuan for the sake of their past friendship, it did not mean that Li Hani was a pure and naive person as she had once been.
At the first sign that things were going in unexpected direction, Li Hani wanted to step back but Ji Yuanyuan blocked her way. "Where do you want to go, Hani? Don't you want to see your family? Let me send you to your family."
"Yuanyuan?" called out Li Hani in a low and doubtful voice. "What are you up to?"
Ji Yuanyuan snickered, "Of course, I want you."
Suddenly the dark parking garage lit up with emergency lights and Li Hani was able to see the faces of the people that surrounded her. There were quite a few familiar faces that made her open her eyes in disbelief. She could not believe that Ji Yuanyuan actually colluded with those pyschopaths from the laboratory.
"You should have obediently stayed locked up," said Ji Yuanyuan as she finally dropped the mask from her face and showed her malicious intent clearly. "Who told you to run away? Why do you have to be so stubborn? Haven't you always been proud and arrogant because of your beautiful appearance and even better family background? But what are you so stubborn for now? Your beautiful appearance had long been ruined and this is the end of the world, your family background is of no use here."
Li Hani could not believe her own eyes or ears right now. She felt like she had seen enough of the darkness of the human heart but it was only because the end of the world forced people's greed to show up naked. But who knew that even before the apocalypse, she had kept a snake beside her who had long been dissatisfied with her.
But she was still unwilling. Yes, she did feel inferior thinking about how to face her family in her current situation but that inferiority wasn't enough to make her back off. She did not want to be caught by these mad scientists once again. She stealthily put her hand into her pocket and touched the small knife she carried. Without another thought, she drove the knife into Ji Yuanyuan's stomach when she least expected it and pushed her aside making her fall with a thud.
Taking her chance, Li Hani made a run for her life but she hadn't even reached the entrance of the parking garage when she felt a searing pain hit the back of her head and then a clang of the metal pipe falling on the cement floor was heard.
Li Hani lifted her hand with difficulty to touch the back of her head. She touched something wet and when she brought her hand back to the front of her eyes, she only saw red blood. Hani's breath hitched as she fell down on the ground. A hole seemed to have opened in her head as blood gushed out without stopping.
Ji Yuanyuan came to her side and saw her lying in the pool of her own blood with a satisfied and somewhat maniac look in her eyes. "I have long wanted you dead. Don't you want to find your Ah Ning? He has long died. Now, you can meet him over there."
The resentment that flickered through Li Hani's eyes seemed to bore straight into Ji Yuanyuan's heart and made her shake with fear.
"I. will. not. let. you. go." Li Hani's voice kept getting lower and lower as she enunciated each word through her dying breath.
Ji Yuanyuan woke up from her fear and mentally reprimanded herself for being scared of a dead person. How could such resentment get to her?
"What to do with her body?" asked a man who had been silently watching from the sidelines until now.
"I have a great use of this body. It's my ticket to reach to the top in this difficult time," Ji Yuanyuan smiled meaningfully as if she could already see the bright future ahead of her right now. She put her foot on Li Hani's lifeless body and said, "Aren't you my good friend who wanted to share everything with me? Now, it's time for you to prove your worth. Just be my stepping stone obediently."