Chapter 16: More Than Just an Autosave You Can’t Go Back To

Ren Huazhi was tight on cash and couldn’t afford to buy furniture for the newly established safe house on the riverbank in Mason’s Village.

She couldn’t even afford ordinary furniture for daily activities and temporary stays, let alone security measures, professional equipment, and so on… Apart from the table that came with the cellar, the place was completely bare.

She could probably scrounge some of Meng Qiuxu’s discarded treasures. That tech geek, like an early Apple fan, loved to chase the latest models, so her second-hand goods were likely still in 70-80% new condition. But in theory, Ren Huazhi wasn’t close to her yet and couldn’t bring herself to ask.

“Simple, I’ll just pick up a set, won’t I?”

Now it was time for her auto-loot ability to shine.

The fact that picking up the gunblade had led to a series of troubles had already been cast to the back of Ren Huazhi’s mind. She eagerly began to plan.

The last time she had gone to Mason’s Village to scout, she had glimpsed many overturned old tables and chairs through the doorless frames of the abandoned houses. With a little sifting, she should be able to find plenty of usable ones. This part could be a selective process. As for high-end furniture like sofas and beds, she would be lucky to find any at all, and she would also have to worry about quality issues…

Ren Huazhi did not want to be lying in the house one day when the sofa or mattress suddenly exploded with a bang, and a demonic rusty spring shot straight into her delicate buttocks.

‘I wonder if there’s a Nightmare of that type… Would it be the same as the [Crashing Helicopter] I encountered before?’

It was all downhill from Purple Mountain to Mason’s Village. Ren Huazhi let her bike coast forward, thinking about this and that.

When she was contemplating the origins of Nightmares, she felt her IQ skyrocket, almost on par with the “Doctor” Meng Qiuxu, who had skipped grades to finish her undergraduate degree and was about to be recommended for graduate school. Tonight, she could churn out a thesis like a novella, publish it in a Nightmare academic journal (not yet founded), and be a high-level intellectual.

What a fresh and unique experience that would be, surely it could be used in a novel… In a daze, the dark green road sign for Mason’s Village appeared ahead, and Ren Huazhi reluctantly woke up from her beautiful dream.

Turning at the weed-infested intersection, she entered Meng Qiuxu’s home security surveillance zone. The coverage area was so large that Ren Huazhi didn’t know if what she was doing was legal, but the crazy woman probably didn’t care. Ren Huazhi had only managed to persuade her to remove the cameras on the other side of the river. For her identity’s safety, she would have to find another way sooner or later…

As for now, it was time to transform.

Many Kamen Riders seemed to have a classic scene of transforming while riding a motorcycle. Although Ren Huazhi was riding a shared bike, she wanted to try and imitate that graceful feeling.

She reached behind her with one hand and unzipped the guitar case.

She took out the belt and pressed it against her abdomen…

The belt that was supposed to secure the transformation device just dangled there, swaying with her movements.

“…I remember it could fasten itself, couldn’t it?”

During that unatmospheric first transformation at the funeral home entrance, Meng Qiuxu had just pressed the belt against her stomach, and it had extended from both sides and clasped behind her. Why wasn’t it working now?

“Out of battery?”

Ren Huazhi flipped the belt over but didn’t see anything like a power switch or a battery compartment cover. It seemed to be rechargeable, and the port was Type-C.

Type-C power cables have several different voltages. A tablet charging cable can’t be used to charge a phone, or it will rapidly age the battery. She didn’t know if Meng Qiuxu had taken precautions against this. Since she wouldn’t be the one paying for repairs or a replacement, she decided to use her only phone charging cable to replenish the belt’s life.

Ren Huazhi parked her bike on the side of the road, took out her power bank from her pocket, and plugged it into the belt’s port.

The high-beam on the front of the belt flashed on right in front of her eyes, making Ren Huazhi yelp and almost fall over.

“Meng Qiuxu, I’ll kill you—”

[Comrade, you finally remembered to check the belt’s battery level. By the way, why do I seem to hear a girl’s voice?]

“…I sang my throat raw at KTV and now I’m stuck in the high notes. You’ll just have to bear with it.”

Ren Huazhi spouted nonsense without batting an eye.

[Alright then, you’ve got quite the inner scream. But let’s put that aside for now. A Nightmare has appeared in the city. You need to go quickly.]

“I just plugged the belt in to charge! Aren’t you afraid it’ll fall apart mid-fight? Are there no other magical girls to take the job? Do I have to be the one to go?”

[One has already taken it.]

“Then what’s the…”

[It’s “Jingzhe,” a newly awakened magical girl. Don’t you want to see her fighting style?]

“Just debuted? What do you mean, ‘see her fighting style’? You’re just sugarcoating it. You just want me to be her bodyguard, don’t you?”

[Hehe.]

“Which young lady is this? I’ve never heard of a probation period where a senior has to help them adapt. Even the famous magical girl, The Flower Arranger, and her apprentice Mangzhong weren’t this coddled.”

[Jingzhe’s situation is a bit special. I’ll have to trouble you.]

“If you can’t fight, then retire!”

[So strict, Kamen Rider.] Meng Qiuxu didn’t seem to mind Ren Huazhi’s negative attitude, or perhaps she had expected it. Her tone still carried a teasing smile. [Have you decided on a codename yet?]

“I’m busy, no time to think about it.”

Ren Huazhi looked in the direction of her bike’s handlebars, towards the dilapidated Mason’s Village hidden in the trees. Then she looked in the direction of the bike’s rear, towards the elevated highway she had come from. Actually, she was quite happy to participate in a “hero saves the damsel” plot. If Meng Qiuxu had mentioned it before she left the city, she probably would have gone to help. But now, with her destination in sight, turning back felt like a frantic, inefficient chase…

[—Jingzhe gives me a very unstable feeling, just like The Flower Arranger when she first awakened a year ago.]

“What did you say?”

Ren Huazhi froze.

[It’s as if what’s driving her isn’t a sense of justice to protect the city, but… emotions like revenge and venting. We still don’t know what The Flower Arranger was seeking back then, and she’ll never be able to tell us now. So, at least for the current Jingzhe…]

‘The Flower Arranger back then?’

Her debut novel, which she had spent thousands of nights painstakingly crafting, the 800,000-word final draft, was on a USB drive, ready to be submitted to the publisher the next day, when a Nightmare passed by her door.

Under the influence of the Anti-Civilization Field, all the text documents on the USB drive, as well as the previous versions on her laptop, were turned into gibberish.

Ren Huazhi still remembered that the work was called “The Flower Arranger,” about a gardener who cultivated flowers on a space station. The pen is the author’s blade. Her blade was blunted. She could never recapture the feeling of writing, let alone reproduce the words exactly.

Ren Huazhi also remembered that the Nightmare was a rooster type. She didn’t know which god had had a nightmare of being brutally murdered by a rooster, but the fear and resentment had overflowed from the dream and condensed into a three-meter-tall, cartoon-style white rooster with vacant eyes and its tongue hanging out.

Although she herself was not injured, the story she loved like her own wife and child had died, easily killed by the Nightmare. She had practically shed tears of blood…

She had never forgotten the anger and hatred of that time. Even after personally slaying the perpetrator, what had been lost to the wind would not return. She had held on with this empty feeling for a few more months, but in the end, she had given up the name and responsibility of a magical girl.

—But Meng Qiuxu was saying that now, another magical girl had appeared, harboring a hatred similar to her own back then.

“I’ll go take a look.”

Ren Huazhi said.

“Let’s just consider it preventing another cliché and boring ‘self-destructive tendency’ from dragging out the plot. If it’s always the same old thing, the readers will get tired of it.”