Chapter 19: The Renaming of the Rain

Ren Huazhi, following Meng Qiuxu’s instructions, went to the intersection where the truck might turn, ready to wait for her prey.

“Xu… that little girl was swept up by the exhaust right in front of me and vanished into thin air. Can you confirm if a person can survive in the ‘other dimension’? If not, I’ll get angry for a bit.”

[You don’t sound very angry from your tone.]

“I’ll save the emotional outburst for when the truck arrives.”

[That’s a bit too utilitarian… wait a moment… oh, I see the stray cat running out! It’s still alive!]

“As long as it’s alive.”

Ren Huazhi reached out her hand to catch some rain, brought it close to her mask, and sniffed. As expected, it was the smell of her own magical power.

As the first being in the history of magical girls to be blessed a second time, although she hadn’t unlocked a new form or new skills, her mana bar had lengthened considerably. The waste magical power overflowing from her released power turned into raindrops, falling wherever she went.

One could say she had evolved from a primitive person into a cool primitive person.

In contrast, her excellent junior, Mangzhong, could use candle-lights to take damage for her and absorb them to launch a powerful attack. Now that was what a magical girl should be like…

[I’ve found the Nightmare’s movement pattern.]

“Can we finally wrap this up?”

[Just don’t let it get away again. It seems to be rampaging blindly, but it actually has an internal judgment logic. By default, it keeps going straight, but if it sees a ‘No Trucks Allowed’ sign at an intersection, it will definitely turn in that direction!]

“What a rebellious king of the road.”

[And the next no-entry sign in front of the Nightmare points in your direction. It’s one intersection away.]

“Got it.”

Before the Anti-Civilization Field enveloped her, Ren Huazhi proactively cut off the communication to prevent it from automatically restoring after the Nightmare was eliminated and recording conversations it shouldn’t.

Jingzhe still hadn’t arrived.

Or… she had arrived long ago, just without transforming.

Ren Huazhi herself was a magical girl who was (originally) a boy. She had seen it all after a hundred battles. No matter what kind of bizarre magical girl appeared, she wouldn’t be surprised.

Even if Xu Panpan was a magical girl, she wouldn’t be surprised.

Thinking back, when she went against the crowd to return to the battlefield and ask Ren Huazhi questions, was she actually planning to confirm her identity and then transform on the spot for a hot-blooded joint battle after a long separation?

Amidst the noisy rain, the once-distant roar of the engine gradually became audible again. The Nightmare was returning, just as Meng Qiuxu had predicted.

This time, Ren Huazhi wouldn’t bother with any fancy techniques she wasn’t good at. She was going straight to power mode.

She got into her stance and raised the gunblade.

She was going to face the truck head-on!

The truck’s headlights pierced the rain, casting a ghastly white light on Ren Huazhi and the surrounding road—the less than 1.6-meter-tall white knight, like an inadequate full-armor cosplayer at an anime convention, stood firm and unmoving under the threat of the hundred-ton king’s high-speed approach.

In this tense moment, Ren Huazhi thought:

‘Maybe I should give my moves a name?’

‘It would sound more impressive when I shout it out.’

Mangzhong had a move called “Three Thousand Candle-Lit Night,” which looked incredibly cool and perfectly matched Ren Huazhi’s imagination of a protagonist’s ultimate skill.

Fifty meters.

Thirty meters.

Ten meters.

Completely releasing the magical power in the gunblade and swinging it out—

“Three—”

Crap, a slip of the tongue!

She was just thinking about Mangzhong, and it just came out!

But in that split second before the copyright infringement case could occur,

Ren Huazhi looked up and suddenly saw the silhouette of something in the black smoke billowing from the truck’s roof—

It broke through the black smoke and leaped out!

“I have returned to the battlefield!!”

—Time seemed to freeze in that moment.

Ren Huazhi looked up in astonishment at the space above the truck’s cabin, where a racing motorcycle, wrapped in black smoke and lightning, was.

“What the…?”

The motorcycle exposed its usually hidden underbelly to her. The wheels churned up the smoke and dust, and the gleaming black cylinder and engine in the center of the chassis vibrated from running at full power, like the heart of a steel beast.

Thud!

Because of that momentary shock, Ren Huazhi’s blade was a fraction of a second too slow and was hit squarely by the full-speed Nightmare!

“Ugh?!”

The defensive enhancement Meng Qiuxu had promised kicked in. The actual impact transmitted to her body was reduced by 40%, and she took the remaining 60% with her magical girl constitution, but she was still sent flying.

‘I’ve been in two fights since getting the belt, why is it always getting hit and sent flying?’ Ren Huazhi thought in mid-air.

She calculated that she had flown five, ten meters. Just as she was about to land, she prepared to adjust her posture to break her fall. But her left hand, which wasn’t holding the gunblade, was grabbed. With a pull and a swing, she found herself lying on something both hard and soft.

The hard part was the motorcycle seat from another dimension.

The soft part was the rider’s slender back.

Ren Huazhi propped herself up, almost falling off the high-speed motorcycle again. Awkwardly, she had to wrap her arms around the rider’s waist.

The rider’s voice was very familiar: “Paying homage to the power of wind and change—the hunt begins!”

Golden lightning crackled around them.

“You are…” Ren Huazhi was almost certain of the answer in her heart.

“I am the magical girl Jingzhe. I got to be a knight for a bit, and I even saved another knight. My luck is pretty good today!”

“Huh?”

The voice was indeed Xu Panpan’s.

But the personality it revealed… there was a subtle sense of dissonance.

Jingzhe’s spring-green twin tails whipped around in the wind, lashing against Ren Huazhi’s mask from both sides. She was at a loss.

‘What kind of address is “another knight”?’

‘Didn’t you call me Brother Ren?’

‘You were just coming on to me with a confession-like atmosphere a moment ago.’

“You’re a new magical girl?”

Jingzhe asked without turning her head, controlling the motorcycle to ride parallel to the Nightmare, about two meters away. “Although I only awakened a month ago, I’m still your senior, you know. Feel free to rely on me.”

“Huh—”

‘There isn’t even a mistaken identity plot where you don’t recognize me because of the mask. Why has the affinity suddenly reset to that of a stranger?’

Ren Huazhi felt a chill run down her spine, as if with the magical girl transformation, something similar to Xu Panpan had taken over the body of the neighbor girl she was familiar with.

“Who… are you?” Ren Huazhi asked.

“I am the magical girl Jingzhe.”

Jingzhe revved the engine twice. The two speeding vehicles, one large and one small, flew down the empty highway that had already been evacuated, gradually leaving the city center and approaching the Yangtze River that stretched across the sky to the northwest.

Some cars left behind by fleeing civilians were parked in the middle of the road. The truck, which had inherited someone’s driving skills, didn’t crash into them, but instead displayed exquisite vehicle control, weaving left and right, calculating the distance to pass through the maze of obstacles.

Although Jingzhe was not one to be outdone, she could only follow behind the truck for now, replicating its safe path.

The smell of dust, kerosene, and the aroma of lard from a street-side baozi shop mingled in the wind, which beat relentlessly against their faces.

“The Yangtze River Bridge is just ahead… I asked the Doctor to drop my Magical Hunting Gear in the open space of the bridgehead park.”

“I understand.”

Large trucks were definitely prohibited from crossing the bridge during the day, and considering the usual traffic volume, there would surely not be enough time to evacuate.

Once the Nightmare saw the prohibition sign and drove in at full speed…

No matter how god-like the driving skills were, the result would be an incalculable number of casualties.

“I need to concentrate on driving. I’ll leave the coordination to you, the rookie magical girl who won’t tell me her codename.”

“It’s not that I won’t tell you, I just haven’t thought of one yet…”

‘So she’s already decided I’m a magical girl? This industrial-style armor doesn’t look like a magical girl at all, does it?’

“Then how about I pick one for you? It’s always raining wherever you go, so how about ‘Guyu’?”

“Guyu…”

“‘When the Guyu rain falls, all things are born.’ Use your rain to save all those lives!”