Chapter 48: The Shy Girl

Haa—haa—
Harsh, burning breaths escaped uncontrollably from her small throat, echoing weakly and desperately through the maze of rusted steel.

Lin Yu felt utterly exhausted.
Each breath was like swallowing glass shards laced with iron dust, stabbing her lungs with sharp pain.

If not for that hellish training she’d endured before, even with the physical boost of a magical girl’s body, she probably wouldn’t have lasted this long.

“This load’s a bit too heavy this time…”
She muttered with effort, her voice strained.

The “load” she spoke of—was the man she was carrying in her arms, Lu Shaotian.

Nearly one meter ninety tall, his body solid with hard muscle—it was like carrying a sack of cement.

The weight bore down on her arms, nearly crushing them.

“And seriously… this maid outfit is way too impractical! The damn skirt keeps swinging everywhere when I run—so annoying!”

If time weren’t so tight, she would’ve loved to find a corner and use [Transformation Time!] again, switching back into her sailor uniform.

At least that short skirt was easier to move in.

Thankfully, she could still hold on for now.

The enhanced physical capabilities of a magical girl’s body let her move with superhuman speed and endurance, sprinting through the industrial ruins while carrying a full-grown man.

But with that power came a damnable mix of shame and sensitivity.

‘Why the hell is my face heating up while I’m carrying this guy? I never felt like this during training!’

Just as the strange feeling struck her, a feral roar erupted from behind.

“Damn it! Where’d they go?! That brat gonna sprout wings and fly away or what?!”

“Search every inch! Second floor! Head toward the conveyors—more forks that way!”

Moments later, the pounding of a dozen heavy, chaotic footsteps echoed upward—like the drumbeats of death itself—closing in from the stairwell.

Beams of cold, pale light from flashlights swept wildly through the rust-stained steel labyrinth, tracing across the walls behind Lin Yu and casting her shadow in stark white.

‘Crap! They’re coming up!’

Her heart clenched tight.

She looked up—the path ahead was nothing but a tangle of abandoned conveyors and pipes, a labyrinth of metal leading deeper into a suffocating darkness.

This was the second floor of the old canning factory—the former processing and transport area.

Every passage looked the same, each leading somewhere deeper, somewhere darker, and far more dangerous.

‘Which way?! Damn it! Why doesn’t this dump have a single exit sign?!’

In that split second of hesitation, a blinding beam of light swept around the corner she had just passed.
The edge of the light grazed the hem of her fluttering black skirt!

“There! Over there! I see her! A chick in a maid outfit!”

A shout rang out—crude, excited, dripping with lewd intent.

“Ha! A maid outfit?! Too bad Brother Long ain’t here—he’d be losing his mind!”

“Was she the one who threw that flashbang earlier? Damn near blinded me!”

“Chase her! Don’t let her get away! Catch her and the boys are in for a good time tonight!”

Filthy laughter and pounding footsteps followed like maggots clinging to bone, relentlessly closing in.

‘God, if I ever get caught by these bastards… just kill me instead!’

A shudder ran through Lin Yu’s whole body.

Without caring which way she went anymore, pure survival instinct took over.

She tightened her grip on Lu Shaotian and dashed into the narrowest, darkest passage to her right!

At the end of the corridor stood an iron door covered in cobwebs—clearly long out of use.

She didn’t even have time to check whether the sign read “Power Room” or “Break Room.”

She slammed her shoulder into it, forcing the rickety door open, and slipped inside.

Bang!

With a pained grunt that made her teeth ache, she threw all her strength into shutting the rusted door from the inside.
Her trembling hands jammed the deformed iron latch into place, locking it tight.

“Haa… haa… haaa…”

Only then did she collapse weakly against the cold metal, gasping for breath like a fish thrown onto land, desperate for air.

Outside, the footsteps and curses of the pursuers grew closer… then gradually faded.

“Where the hell did she go?! Vanished into thin air?!”

“Think she ducked into one of the rooms? Kick ‘em open, one by one!”

“Kick your ass! This place is huge—we’d still be kicking when the sun comes up! Split up! She’s carrying someone, she won’t get far!”

Only when their voices had completely faded did Lin Yu’s pounding heart begin to calm.

She slowly slid down against the icy door, every muscle in her body trembling with exhaustion.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t considered fighting them head-on.
But without company-issued weapons, relying solely on her magical girl physique, she wasn’t nearly confident enough to pull off a “Come at me, I can take ten” moment like Ip Man.

After all, she didn’t have Ye Yemi’s powerful [Concept Contract Armament], nor Chen Bingbing’s master-level martial arts skills.

If she tried to fight barehanded, she’d likely just end up getting herself killed.

Worse still, she remembered something from company training—
Some lunatics in this Chicheng Gang had a habit of snorting industrial waste infused with psionic residue, treating it like “powder.”

“I remember… it was called something like ‘Dust,’ right?”

“Shit—don’t tell me that package I grabbed by mistake earlier had that stuff in it! No wonder they’re so desperate!”

Her pulse quickened as she tried to recall the classified documents she’d seen during training…

____________________________________________________________________________________

【Subspace Dust】

Official Designation: High-Purity Crystallized Psionic Byproduct

Black Market Aliases: Subspace Dust / Dust / Immortal Dust / Ghost Powder

Nature: Not a natural substance—it is industrial waste produced from psionic experiments.

Origin: Generated during unstable or immature psionic experiments, creating large quantities of volatile, high-concentration psionic residue.

Essence: This residue is unrefined subspace energy—akin to nuclear waste—highly corrosive and unpredictable to all living beings.

Form: Usually appears as coarse salt-like crystals in gray-white or pale violet hues.
At high concentrations, the powder even emits a faint phosphorescent glow in the dark.

Usage: Typically inhaled or injected.

Effects (on ordinary humans):

Short-term / light usage: Greatly stimulates latent potential for a brief period, granting superhuman strength, speed, and pain tolerance.
Also induces powerful hallucinations and psychological dependency, making the user feel “invincible.”

Long-term / heavy usage: The Dust begins to irreversibly erode both body and soul.
The user’s flesh gradually mutates toward the form of a Contaminant, losing humanity entirely and becoming a mindless berserker.
Their soul, overlinked with subspace, collapses—transforming them into a new source of corruption.

____________________________________________________________________________________

“Ugh…”

The more Lin Yu recalled, the more her heart pounded in fear.

“That woman called Scarlet Fox and that brat Ah Que—they didn’t look normal… could they be Immortal Dust users? Tch… good thing I ran when I did. If I’d fought them head-on, I might’ve really been the one getting wrecked… ow, my arms are killing me…”

Only then did Lin Yu realize—she was still clinging tightly to that heavy “bag of cement.”

Carefully, she eased Lu Shaotian’s body from her embrace, propping him gently against the wall so he could sit.

In the darkness, their bodies inevitably brushed against one another.

She could clearly smell it—that faint mix of sweat, tobacco, and something uniquely male.

Ordinarily, Lin Yu would’ve found such a scent unpleasant.
But for some reason, in that moment, it made her heartbeat quicken ever so slightly.

While adjusting his posture, her fingertips accidentally brushed against the heated skin of his neck.

That masculine warmth jolted through her like a mild electric shock, making her yank her hand back in panic.

‘Waaah—so hot! Is a man’s body temperature always this high?!’

The instant the thought formed, she wanted to slap herself.

‘Wait—hold up. I’m a guy too! What the hell am I thinking?! Calm down! Calm down! Calm down! This isn’t the time for some shoujo manga nonsense! People are trying to kill you, idiot!’

She shook her head violently, desperate to chase away those misplaced, girlish emotions from her already scrambled brain.

Yet the harder she tried to suppress them, the faster those thoughts sprouted—like weeds after a storm.

She didn’t even dare look again at the unconscious man beside her, terrified that her face—hotter by the second—would glow like a monkey’s backside in the dark.

Temporary safety brought no relief.

Lin Yu leaned against the rough, icy iron door, her ears tuned like radar for even the faintest sound from the corridor beyond.

At the same time, she placed all her hope in the high-tech device strapped around her wrist—a gadget that looked like it came straight out of a magical girl anime.

She activated the [Contract Bracelet], and a soft pink holographic interface bubbled to life, glowing faintly in the pitch-black room like a fragile beacon of hope.

The light reflected off her pale, delicate face, turning her green eyes into two luminous emeralds.

She immediately opened the communication module.

But the signal indicator at the corner of the display flickered in despairing red—an “X.”

‘Damn it! They’ve got signal jammers!’

Lin Yu’s heart plunged into her stomach.

Unwilling to give up, she tried again and again—
Emergency team channel.
Private frequency.
Even the red SOS icon—the top-priority distress line she’d never used before…

Nothing.
Every attempt vanished into silence, like stones sinking into deep water.

‘Those bastards planned this too well! Military-grade interference equipment—on their own turf, no less! Now what? Am I supposed to wait for Nightfire to realize something’s wrong and come find me? That’ll happen when pigs fly!’

Pacing anxiously in the cramped room—barely five square meters wide—she stirred up clouds of dust with every frustrated step.
The black-and-white maid skirt fluttered around her knees as she fumed.

“Cough—cough—cough—!”

As she doubled over from the dust clogging her throat, the “cement sack” behind her suddenly let out a low, pained groan.

“Ugh…”