Liǔ Cháoquè finally experienced firsthand the back injuries caused by an explosion. While playing the game, she had thought the heroine lying in bed, wrapped in bandages, looked so battle-scarred and fragile; now that she had genuinely transmigrated here, keeping herself from grimacing in front of people was already the utmost restraint for the sake of her image.
Damn it, it hurt so much.
Liǔ Cháoquè bared her teeth with a vacant stare, utterly unable to figure out how simply riding a roller coaster had catapulted her straight into a video game.
She had no idea how the time flow worked in this game, nor whether she could just hit a skip button and be discharged immediately.
Whether her prayers actually worked or the game's time flow was simply faster than the outside world's, on the third day, her wounds—which had been aching faintly just a moment before—healed completely with a sudden snap.
The discharge procedures were completed very quickly, and Hú Qiáo came to pick her up. To celebrate her leaving the hospital, she specially took Liǔ Cháoquè out for a meal.
But Liǔ Cháoquè was not happy at all.
"Smile, just order whatever you want to eat." Hú Qiáo handed Liǔ Cháoquè a menu.
Liǔ Cháoquè always felt a sense of embarrassment at being called by her gamer tag out on the street. She wanted to change her nickname, only to find that it was unchangeable.
It made her feel aggrieved for no good reason.
So, carrying this name, she began to experience another chapter of gaming life.
"Hello, Officer. Please tell us everything you know."
Sitting in the interrogation chair and looking at the two police officers seated across from her—don't worry, she hadn't done anything illegal; she had just unluckily become the primary witness.
"I was just about to go downstairs to buy groceries when I heard a very loud noise from next door, and then everything went quiet. I remember that the people living next door were an elderly couple, and thinking they might have fainted, I tried knocking on the door."
With lingering fear in her heart, Liǔ Cháoquè said, "As it turned out, no one answered me, and since I couldn't break the door down, I went to get the property management. They opened the door with a key and found a pool of blood on the floor, and then everything that followed happened just like this."
"I didn't see the body. I'm afraid of having nightmares." Clutching her chest, Liǔ Cháoquè looked very panicked as she said, "Just seeing that huge pool of blood was enough for me to imagine how chaotic the room must have been at the time."
The police officer tapped the table and asked, "Do you have anything else to add?"
Liǔ Cháoquè shook her head. "That's pretty much all I remember. Oh, it should have been around eight o'clock when I went downstairs to buy groceries."
She looked pitifully at the two police officers, somewhat worried. "Is this case a robbery-murder or a vendetta? If they don't catch the killer, can I apply for witness protection? I feel very unsafe right now, like I could be killed at any moment."
The young police officer handed her a piece of paper containing the witness protection application procedure. "If you have any other questions, we will contact you again."
Clutching the paper and wishing she could pull out her phone on the spot to start her application, Liǔ Cháoquè nodded hastily upon hearing these closing-like remarks.
Shortly after, someone accompanied her to process the witness protection.
She moved into a single dormitory right next door to a young police officer, which gave her immense peace of mind.
Just like that, a month passed. Perhaps due to some sort of justice buff, she spent a thoroughly comfortable month—to the point where she almost didn't want to leave.
The killer was caught. It wasn't a vendetta, a crime of passion, or a home invasion robbery, but rather the elderly couple's son, who had run up heavy gambling debts elsewhere and wanted to use his parents' pension to pay them off. When the old folks refused, he hacked them to death with a kitchen knife.
As for that loud bang Liǔ Cháoquè had heard, it was the sound of the man rummaging through boxes and cabinets and accidentally knocking over an old, heavy wardrobe.
If Liǔ Cháoquè hadn't simply knocked on the door and left when she got no answer back then—if she had thought about picking the lock or kicking the door straight open—the man probably would have swung the door open and hacked her to death right along with them.
Ever since learning about this, Liǔ Cháoquè refused under any circumstances to keep living in that building. Hú Qiáo, caught between relief and a touch of self-blame for missing the case while on a date with her boyfriend, didn't even have to think twice when she heard Liǔ Cháoquè decided to move, immediately insisting on living together.
"How on earth did you find this place?" Liǔ Cháoquè asked, her jaw dropping as she looked at the two-story building situated directly opposite the police station.
"This should be safe enough, right, little Smile?" Xú Wàngzhōu blinked. Having heard about her unprovoked misfortune this time, this senior schoolmate had enthusiastically patted his chest to guarantee he would find her a residential complex where absolutely nothing could go wrong.
At first, Liǔ Cháoquè hadn't believed it at all—how could such an absolute guarantee exist? But now, she believed it.
He had directly found her a place in a military residential compound!