[Hello guys, I have completely corrected the previous Chapters and made huge changes. Please read again from Chapter 67 to get a better idea of the Chapters.]

That was the level she needed. The tenth floor should have fewer zombies than the eleventh, fewer than the twelfth, and definitely fewer than the thirteenth. At least, that was what she hoped.

So she kept swinging toward the tenth floor.

Yan Cijin could feel the shift in Bai Li’s body before she even opened her eyes again. There was a tiny pause as Bai Li recalculated, then the rope moved, and the descent slowed just enough for a new adjustment. Yan Cijin had been keeping herself as still as possible, but the closer they got to the tenth floor, the more clearly she felt the building passing around them. The movement below her feet, the wind around her face, the faint shift in Bai Li’s breathing, all of it made her aware of just how precarious this entire thing was. She wanted to look up at Bai Li, wanted to see whether that cold and focused expression had changed at all, but she resisted the urge and stayed where she was. She had already decided to trust Bai Li’s lead, and that meant not distracting her.

When Bai Li finally reached the middle of the tenth floor, she took hold of the rope with one hand and carefully placed her feet on the narrow windowsill outside the window. The ledge was barely half a foot wide, thin enough that most people would have panicked the moment they noticed it. Bai Li did not panic. She steadied herself, her body leaning close to the wall, and looked inside through the glass. Her heart dropped slightly.

It was not because of the zombies.

It was because there were people in there.

Living people.

Several of them.

That immediately complicated things. Bai Li didn’t like meeting living people in this kind of situation. Zombies were simple. Brutal, yes, but simple. They wanted flesh. They chased movement. If one wanted to survive, one could just kill them without worrying about tricky minds or hidden intentions. Humans were different. Humans carried suspicion, greed, fear, selfishness, and malice, and those things often became more dangerous than the zombies themselves at exactly the wrong moment. Bai Li had seen enough of that in her previous life to know it was true. So the sight inside the room made her expression tighten just slightly, though she quickly controlled it. She already knew she couldn’t go back up. There were no more ropes below. She couldn’t just skip this floor and try somewhere else. This window was the only possible path.

Taking advantage of the fact that her back was facing outward, Bai Li thought through her next move in a flash. She could not let the people inside see too much too soon. Her backpack had been stored in her spatial storage earlier, but now it reappeared on her back with a silent thought, and she felt the added weight immediately settle against her shoulders. The straps dug in a bit more. Her hands burned harder because of the extra load. But she had no choice. She might need the backpack later, and with so many people inside, she couldn’t let them discover that secret. Even in an apocalypse, certain things had to stay hidden. A person with a secret like that would attract too much trouble if others noticed it. Bai Li did not like unnecessary trouble. She liked clean solutions, and this was going to be messy enough already.

She adjusted her angle slightly, making sure her body was positioned just right so the people inside could not clearly see what she was doing. Then she took out Whisperfang from a spot where it was hidden from their line of sight. The blade itself was still beautiful even in this dim light, a sharp and elegant weapon that looked almost too refined for the filthy world around it. Bai Li held it with a steady hand and used the back of the blade to smash against the glass.

The glass cracked loudly.

A sharp, ugly sound split through the air, and the first fracture spread out from the point of impact like a spider web. Bai Li tightened her grip, ready to force it open if she had to. Inside the room, the people had already been made aware of her presence.

The six people inside were already tense the moment they heard the glass crack, and that fear spread through the room even faster than the sound itself. The office was not large, and with the window open only a little, the atmosphere inside became even more cramped, like every breath was being trapped and pressed back into the chest. One of them, a spiky looking male doctor with glasses, looked so alarmed that his voice came out higher than he probably meant it to. "Dean Wang, it looks like the people outside are going to smash the glass and come in. What should we do?" He was clearly trying to keep himself calm, but the way his fingers tightened around the edge of the desk gave him away completely. Wang Bo, who was the vice president of Jinghua City First Hospital, also looked shaken, though he tried to hide it by speaking quickly and loudly. The scene outside had already gone past the point of normality, and even he could not keep pretending that everything was under control. "What are you all standing there for?" he urged, his voice rough with panic. "Go block the window. There’s blood on those people outside, who knows if they’ve mutated. We absolutely cannot let them in." His words only made the other people in the room more nervous, because when someone in authority starts speaking like that, it usually means they are scared too.

The three men reacted immediately. They rushed over toward the window where Bai Li and Yan Cijin were trying to come in, their movements frantic and ugly, like they were trying to protect themselves first and think later. The doctor with glasses even shouted out in a flustered voice, "Don’t come in! Don’t come in and hurt people, or we won’t be polite!" The words sounded fierce on the surface, but the fear underneath them was obvious enough that it almost made them sound silly. Bai Li, however, didn’t care at all. She was exhausted, her arms were already sore, her palms had been rubbed raw by the rope, and she had no interest in wasting even one second on these people’s meaningless shouting. Her focus stayed on the task in front of her. She used all her strength to smash down with the back of her Tang sword, and the glass finally shattered with a loud crack that sliced through the room. A few sharp fragments flew inward and actually hit the three men, making them jerk back instinctively. Bai Li kicked away the broken pieces still hanging on the frame without looking at them twice, as if clearing a path was just another ordinary part of the process. Then she and Yan Cijin shifted from the outside window ledge to the side windowsill inside the room, moving with the kind of control that made the whole thing look far easier than it really was.

When the man called Lin Da saw them get inside, his fear turned into irritation almost immediately, and he pointed right at Bai Li like she was the root of every problem in the room. "Don’t let them in! Everyone grab your weapons and attack together!" As soon as he said that, the other two men also picked up stools from the room, their hands shaking as they held them up awkwardly, clearly intending to smash them at Bai Li and Yan Cijin if they got the chance. The problem was that Bai Li was still tied to the rooftop rope, Yan Cijin was still hanging from her, and they were both standing on the narrow windowsill, where one wrong shift in weight could send them straight down or make them lose balance inside the room. Bai Li knew it. The others knew it too. That made the whole scene even more ridiculous, because those men had clearly worked themselves up into a heroic posture despite not actually having a good angle for attack. Then Lin Da’s stool came hurtling toward them. Yan Cijin was still pressed against Bai Li’s chest, and from where she was standing, the blow could have easily landed on her if Bai Li hadn’t reacted instantly. Yan Cijin herself was not worried in the slightest, because she knew perfectly well that this kind of thing would not even scratch her, but Bai Li was another matter entirely. Bai Li’s heart tightened in an instant, and a cold wave of anger rose inside her. She didn’t like the fact that these people were trying to attack at all, but what really irritated her was that they were trying to do it while Yan Cijin was still in her arms. That was enough to make her expression sharpen completely.

She gripped the outer wall with her left hand for support and at the same time swung her sword downward with her right. Even in her exhausted state, even with her hands already sore and bloodied, her strength was still far beyond what these people expected. The wooden stool split cleanly in two, almost like it had been cut by a blade instead of struck from above. The tip of her dagger nearly brushed Lin Da’s face, which was enough to send him stumbling backward with a terrified gasp. He fell to the floor immediately, his face pale, and the other two men saw that and suddenly lost the little courage they had managed to gather. They were still holding the stools, but their hands had frozen. They didn’t dare rush forward anymore. Bai Li’s expression did not change at all. She looked at them the way one might look at an obstacle that had already been solved. Cold. Flat. Unbothered. It was not even a matter of intimidation at that point. She simply had the kind of aura that made people understand, very clearly, that if they got any closer, she would not hesitate to cut them down.

Only then did Yan Cijin open her eyes properly, after hearing all the voices and the sudden movement. She had been holding on tightly, but she had stayed quiet the whole time, and now she slowly looked at the people inside the office. Seeing that several of them were from the hospital, she naturally relaxed a little, though not enough to let her guard down. Her voice came out clear and steady as she said, "We’re alive, and I’m a doctor from the hospital too." It was a simple statement, but it changed the atmosphere in the room slightly. Zhang Fan, the male nurse from the ICU, recognized her almost immediately because emergency patients often went through his department, and Yan Cijin was not someone he could easily forget even under normal circumstances. His expression shifted from fear to surprise, then to something like relief. He dropped the stool in his hands immediately and said, "It really seems to be Dr. Yan." That alone made the people in the room breathe a little easier. Their shoulders loosened slightly, and the tension dropped just a bit, though none of them dared get too close. They still huddled together, clearly wary of both Bai Li and Yan Cijin, because the situation had already gone beyond simple trust. Everyone in this room had seen too much by now to assume anything was safe.

Bai Li jumped down from the windowsill with a light but controlled movement, then cut the ropes binding her. After that, she used Whisperfang to cut the ropes binding Yan Cijin and herself. Only then did Yan Cijin finally get off Bai Li, and even that moment carried a strange little pause, like neither of them particularly wanted the contact to end, even though the situation had clearly required it.

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To be continued.