LWGP - Chapter 17
Chapter 17: Mutated Birds
The shortsword pierced the heart, but what spurted out was green blood. It turned out Wang Jiu had quickly grabbed a nearby corpse to block the attack.
As the shortsword entered the corpse, the dagger in her hand plunged into the throat of the goblin opposite her.
In terms of reach and speed, she had the upper hand.
Blood frothed from its mouth, and its body convulsed once before going still. However... another goblin was thrusting its shortsword toward Wang Jiu's side.
Swish!
A sword stabbed from behind, and it fell to the ground.
Xiao Li, whose waist was being held by the Chief Purser to steady him, pulled out his iron sword. Before he could even breathe a sigh of relief, the captain's shout came from the cockpit, accompanied by a flashing indicator light.
“Attention, high-altitude snow mountain ahead! We're ascending!”
They had descended earlier to counter the airflow, but now they were ascending because they had to face a towering mountain!
The Chief Purser hurriedly informed everyone, but in truth, she knew that the three of them were in the most critical situation!
“Come here, quick!” the Chief Purser called out to Wang Jiu, leaning in and extending a hand toward her. Before Wang Jiu could reach out and take it, whoosh!
The plane shot upward...
BOOM!!
The group of three slid outward. But Wang Jiu, with her agile body, was faster than the other two. She grabbed a handle, kicked off the wall for leverage, and propelled herself toward the seats. She grabbed an armrest, twisted around to sit down, buckled her seatbelt with one hand, and with the other, she grabbed the Chief Purser who was about to be flung out.
The Chief Purser felt her body about to float away. As she was caught, she saw the blood from the wound on her rescuer's arm float out during that brief moment of weightlessness, a few drops landing on her face.
A flight attendant, light and easy to pull. But Xiao Li... The 1.83-meter-tall Xiao Li felt like he might dislocate this young doctor's arm when she grabbed him.
But the next second, he found himself being yanked and thrown. Yes, thrown. With a single pull, this young lady slammed him into a nearby seat.
His butt hurt a little, and he was a bit dazed.
“You look thin, but you're surprisingly heavy. Are you made of cement?”
Having the strength of a weightlifter didn't mean it was easy to pull a young man of over 140 jin against the momentum. Wang Jiu's wrist ached as she frowned and commented. Xiao Li snapped out of it, his face darkening, just as he was about to retort.
“They're coming again.” The Chief Purser, who had just managed to pull a heavily injured and unconscious security guard colleague to her side, noticed the movement in the vortex and gave a dry warning.
The two looked over. Five goblins poked their heads and bodies out, one after another, but this time they slid toward the passengers.
Xiao Li's expression immediately turned pained.
He had known about game dungeons, but this was too twisted. Either they stayed put to avoid being smashed to death inside the plane, or they watched the passengers get killed by goblins. What kind of cruel choice was this!
To save them or not? That was the question.
The passenger area was in chaos. Amid the screams, the goblins emerging from the vortex, despite being flung about by the weightlessness, still remembered to swing their shortswords and spiked clubs at the passengers.
In that instant, the three who had just secured themselves were faced with a choice.
The decision probably took all of one second.
“Leave one person by the door.”
Click. Xiao Li was about to ask who would stay, him or the Chief Purser—it would obviously be the Chief Purser—but he didn't expect Wang Jiu to grab his hand the moment he unbuckled his seatbelt.
Go out together? Not quite!
“Ah!” Xiao Li couldn't suppress a very human scream as Wang Jiu threw him. Fortunately, he held onto his shortsword. Screaming, he slid down the aisle, barely managed to steady himself, and approached the goblins that were frantically attacking the passengers. He raised his sword!
The goblin he struck shrieked and pounced on him in return. Xiao Li fell, using his shortsword to block its bites. He was struggling. Luckily, Wang Jiu arrived.
He watched as she arrived, stepped over him with her slender long legs, and... walked right past.
So damn cool!
Xiao Li: “???”
This didn't align with the spirit of socialist collective revolution at all!
He couldn't take it. He swiftly raised his leg and kneed the goblin on top of him in the stomach. As the creature was knocked upward, he rolled over, got up, and swung his sword at its neck, hacking it into a nearby seat.
“Ah!” He pinned it against the seat and hacked at it viciously.
Blood splattered.
When he was done, he turned around with a ferocious expression, as if making a vow.
He simply didn't want to be looked down on. But just as he turned to put on a cool facade, he saw Wang Jiu up ahead sidestep a shortsword and plunge her dagger upward into a goblin's heart. But it was vicious too, gripping Wang Jiu's wrist tightly, its claws about to pierce her palm, simultaneously immobilizing her dagger and disabling one of her hands.
But Wang Jiu's reaction was too fast. Before it could exert any force, her other hand grabbed and twisted its wrist, snatching the shortsword, and then she slashed viciously.
The goblin's entire hand was lopped off.
Swish! Freeing herself, Wang Jiu fell sideways onto a seat, dodging an attack from behind. But she raised her foot, her boot pressing against the chest of a second pouncing goblin, and kicked. Then, with a flex of her waist, she shot back up, tightened her grip on the shortsword in her left hand, and stabbed straight ahead while flinging the dagger from her right hand.
Both weapons found their mark simultaneously, delivering instant death.
Wang Jiu controlled her breathing, stepped forward to pull out the shortsword, then took another step. Before the goblin with the dagger in its neck could fall, she had pulled that out too.
Swish! With a weapon in each hand, she pointed the shortsword at the goblin that had been approaching for a sneak attack but was now standing frozen, not knowing what to do, its face a mask of terror.
The ferocity on Xiao Li's face receded like a tide. His expression was seven or eight parts similar to the goblin's—How is this woman/human so fierce!
This time, however, Wang Jiu didn't make a move. The last one was taken care of.
Thump! One of the passengers, holding a spiked club, gripped the clumsy weapon with both hands. His arms were still trembling, but his strike was steady.
A fatal blow.
A real man!
Xiao Li glanced around. The passengers could be roughly divided into three types: those dazed with fear, those who just screamed madly in fear, and those who chose to fight back in their fear.
Indeed, a life-or-death crisis truly brings out one's essential nature—be it courage or cowardice.
“Is... is it over?”
Wang Peng, who belonged squarely in the first category, asked blankly.
Just then, the plane leveled out and stabilized.
If it remained stable, they could handle it even if more goblins came out of the vortex.
Wang Jiu looked at the white clouds in the sky outside, then turned back to see the flight time reminder.
Twenty minutes left. They should be close to the capital by now.
Would something happen in these twenty minutes?
She subconsciously glanced toward the cockpit and saw the Chief Purser holding the intercom, her face filled with terror. And then...
On the other side, as soon as the situation had stabilized, the Chief Purser had struggled back to her station, only to see a red indicator light flashing—a signal from the captain.
Alarmed, the Chief Purser picked up the intercom to ask about the situation.
The captain inside only managed to say, “The situation might be...”
He couldn't finish his sentence. The Chief Purser heard a chaotic noise, and then...
BOOM!! The entire cockpit door exploded!
At this moment, the capital airport's control tower and the air traffic control bureau were already aware of the general situation. Though they were shocked at first, they quickly began to handle it with caution after communicating with and receiving intervention from multiple authoritative departments. They had been in constant contact with the captain, but too much had happened in a short period.
Until they discovered a dangerous situation separate from Flight CU8266.
“The space agency has detected a strange, massive flock of birds at this location. Initially, they thought it was migratory birds, but the altitude is wrong—it's too high. Most importantly, they seem to be attracted to something. There's a strange presence at the center of their flight path, and it's expanding at a terrifying rate!”
“This location seems to be on Flight CU8266's flight path.”
“Contact them, quickly!”
“Calling CU8266, calling CU8266, what is your current situation?”
“We are now informing you...”
Just as they contacted the captain, they heard a dial tone, and the communication was cut off.
After several more attempts to call, the staff naturally suspected that CU8266 was in distress. They reconfirmed the positions of the plane and the mysterious flock of birds. That's not right. According to the flight path, they shouldn't have encountered each other yet. How could this be?!
“Could there be more than one mysterious flock? One that's outside the current aviation department's monitoring range but happens to be on CU8266's route.”
When someone proposed this terrifying hypothesis.
Everyone looked at each other in dismay.
And they also noticed on the screen that Flight CU8266, which had already entered the capital's airspace, was continuously losing altitude.
Although it was a slow descent, if it continued...
After the cockpit door exploded, BOOM!
A violent wind rushed in through the blasted-open door, along with a few scattered black birds.
They were probably the culprits behind this incident, but it could also be the massive black cloud of birds in the distance.
The plane had only grazed the edge, affected by the airflow and the birds, and had suffered this disaster.
Any incident in the sky can be fatal—this was a consensus among many in the aviation industry.
As these birds flew in frantically, the Chief Purser tilted her head to look inside. She could only see one pilot, half his body covered in blood, his hand still on the control panel. The other pilot was motionless.
Perhaps the situation had reached its worst point.
She also saw the completely shattered cockpit glass and the chaotic instruments.
In that instant, she, who had been endlessly dedicated, passionate, and resolute throughout her career, never giving up, was on the verge of despair.
But she still shouted out her discovery, because no matter how desperate she was, she was responsible for the passengers.
Most importantly, she subconsciously felt there was one person who could bring a glimmer of hope.
The female passenger who had shown abilities beyond that of an ordinary person from the very beginning.
She grabbed the intercom and said to everyone in the cabin, “Both pilots are incapacitated. We don't know the specific situation right now. I'd like to ask you all...”
She hadn't finished asking.
“Does anyone here know how to fly a plane?”
Wang Jiu asked in her stead.
This was a question from the depths of the soul.
Folks, can you fly a plane?
But to Wang Jiu's surprise, just as she asked, Xiao Li grabbed someone.
“I... I can!!” Wang Peng, the unremarkable, purely hedonistic rich kid who had repeatedly hit on Lao Wang, tremblingly raised his hand. But even if he hadn't, he would have been dragged out.
Wang Jiu didn't even ask if he really knew how, or how well. She just ripped off his seatbelt and grabbed him by the collar...
“Ah!!”
Wang Peng let out a pig-like squeal as Wang Jiu dragged him toward the cockpit.
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