An Innocent Bystander

Yao Si's heart clenched, and as her body began to stiffen, she gathered enough courage to look up. On a lamp post not far from where she was she saw a person. He was covered by a black trench coat, so she couldn't get a clear look of the face, but a head of blonde hair caught her eyes, and one look was enough for her to know that it was a foreigner.

"Ha, it seems your Western faction isn't as ferocious as it pretends to be?" a different cold voice added.

Only then did Yao Si realize that there was another person on the adjacent lamp post. His face wasn’t visible like the other’s, but he had a head of black hair, so he had to be someone from the Celestial Empire like her.

These two people were probably bloodlings too. She could sense an invisible pressure from them, and it was completely different from the type that she felt from Li Zheng. If she guessed right, they were probably the pre-third generation bloodlings that Li Zheng had mentioned. Were they part of the fighting?

They said the battlefield was at A city, so what happened? What was this, warm-up before battle?

She peeped at the light box that was on it's brink of death, its lights flickering, and a sense of panic began to rise from the bottom of her heart. If she had taken one more step, then the thing that was shattered would have been her head.

When the gods fight, the fishes in the moat are affected1. Seeing that the two people had no time to mind her, Yao Si decided to flee the scene. However, as soon as she moved her feet, a gust of wind suddenly gathered from nowhere. The fallen leaves that once covered the ground were blown around in the gale.

She was blinded by the wind, eating a mouthful of dust. She lifted her hands in a reflex to cover her eyes, and right then, she could hear a loud bang from above her head again. Light flashed in the corner of her eyes, like something was descending from above.

She subconsciously dashed aside, and with a deafening clamor thunder landed right where she had been standing, leaving a two meter deep pit with a scent of scorched ground.

Yao Si swallowed her saliva, that was... so close.

"Thunder? So the second generation from your east are only capable of this." The yellow hair opened his mouth again, but he had already changed to a new spot, clearly it was to avoid that thunder just then.

The black hair guy on the other side had thin strands of lightning coming out from his hands, which clearly signaled that the thunder had been brought about by him.

That… That's bloodling special abilities?

How far would her unluckiness go.

"I think you people should better surrender obediently, wouldn't it be great to have the two factions united?" The blonde taunted once more, "There is no way you are winning this war."

The black hair didn't reply but instead waved his hand. A wave of crackling lightning headed for the blonde again, blasting a four to five meter wide crater where his opponent was standing. Then he said in an emotionless voice, "Fight, don't blather!"

During the process of dodging, the blonde was left in a state of fluster and agitation. His silhouette flashed, and he was now on the other side, fighting with the other person. Yao Si could only see two afterimages separating and converging in mid-air and hear spluttering noises and the lightnings that left holes and craters on the ground.

In that moment, Yao Si had an illusion that she was transported to a scene of a Sci-Fi movie, In hindsight, she remembered that she was about to leave. She turned and found a shared bike on the side of the road, then used all her might to cycle like crazy. All her potential erupted as she cycled through three streets.

While cycling, she could still hear the loud thunders behind her. When she turned, she could still see fire and lighting on the other side of the road that resembled, with great likeness, a shooting location of a Hollywood Sci-Fi movie. From time to time, a few figures would fly across the air with a swish, heading towards there. As a weakling, she could only pray that these people wouldn't discover her presence.

Whether it was because she wasn't too visible, or that those people who rushed to help were all from the Eastern side, no one had stopped her.

What was more miraculous was that no one had come out to take a look at this loud and flashy spectacle. Even when the two people were fighting on the road, there was not a soul to be seen. Recalling the special abilities that bloodlings possessed, she decided that between those two fighters, one must have a way to make ordinary people not notice, even during such a fueled battle as this one.

Only now did she actually understand what the great war which Li Zheng mentioned meant. It was just two bloodlings having a quarrel, yet it had such a serious power of destruction, the entire street was now lying in ruins.

If it had been a group...

She didn't dare to let her thoughts run. This thought further solidified her determination to get as far from here as possible. An unknown explosive energy supported her all the way from second ring of the city to outside the fourth ring, until she could no longer hear the chaos within the city. Only then could she slow down and take a long breath.

Casting the bicycle aside, she sat onto grassy patch on the side of the road and exhaled heavily.

Oh hell, that was so tiring. It was good, even though she was affected as an innocent bystander, at last she had escaped the...

"Bastardly barbarians from the East, die!" A shout of abuse in altered tone sounded from behind her.

Two familiar black and white silhouettes suddenly appeared on the lawn, and the blonde was just about to punch his fist into the ground. Yao Si turned and saw a large crack suddenly opening on the ground, heading straight for the person in black.

Then...

That person ducked aside...

Then...

She fell into it...

Shit!

_______

Yao Si felt that she was about to die. Pain. Her whole body ached, and she could even hear the sound of her bones snapping. The crack was surprisingly deep, she could only see a thin line of a gap at the top of the pit, and she began to question whether she was alive or not.

After some effort, she finally successfully flipped her middle finger towards the top of the crack.

Blondie, I’ll remember you now.

Maybe she had owed something to those two people in her past life, otherwise why would they be constantly haunting her. And if she had known that, she wouldn't have wasted her time running and cycling for that long!

Yao Si didn't know how long she had lain without there moving, but the pain in her body had magically disappeared, and even the wounds from the fall were all healed. Her energy had slowly returned too.

Taking a deep breath, Yao Si stood up. She began to feel a little glad that she had been converted into a bloodling, no longer finding any faults with this state of being with great life force.

She sat down and rested for a while, then turned and stared at the top of the pit, deciding in the end to climb out. Maybe because this pit was made by the blonde’s ability, it was deep but not very wide. There was a possibility that she could make it out by supporting herself against both sides and pushing her way up,

It was time to get to business now. Yao Si stretched her limbs outwards straightaway, inching upwards in a 大 shape. After a bit, she realized that this method actually worked! Although it was tiring, at least there was still hope.

When she became tired, she would stop and rest for some time. And just like that, climbing and stopping, she had really stayed between the edges and got closer and closer to the edge.

Due to her constitution, Yao Si’s energy recovered very quickly. She wasn't clear about how long she had been climbing, only feeling that her limbs were becoming numb and in the end moving mechanically. The initially dark entrance at the top had become brighter and brighter, even a little blinding. When she approached it, she realized that it was daylight outside.

Five meters from the exit, her heart filled up with hope. She increased her speed and reached with one hand for the edge of the pit. When she touched the grass on the top of the crack, she loudly cried out with tears rolling down her cheeks. Mamamia, she finally made it to the top!

Just as she was about to climb out, she heard a familiar voice from above her.

"Let's clean up the battlefield."

What?

Next second, she felt the surroundings shaking, and the hope-filled exit above her head closed just like that. Her feet slipped and she fell back to the bottom again.

This time she didn't break any bones but instantly blacked out.

Before she closed her eyes, she had only one thought in her mind.

You black-haired person, screw you and your entire family!