Chapter 50: Cyberpunk

Mo Yubai corrected her course just in time, performing a graceful flip to land back onto the crude wooden raft.

By now, Rolling Pin Auntie had calmed down, and Mo Yubai slowed her rowing speed. Now she only needed to make sure she didn’t hit any rocks or steer into a dead end.

But looking at the crystal-clear water, the urge to gather free resources bubbled up in her mind again.

As a woman of action, Mo Yubai decisively pulled out an empty container and began filling it with water.

Unfortunately, before even three minutes had passed, the scenery around her began to change again.

The winding river channel transformed into a massive ice rink, and the wooden raft beneath her feet turned into ice skates.

Her surroundings became a vast expanse of white. Amidst the white, she could clearly see protruding triangular ice spikes and rapidly rolling iceballs.

Mo Yubai stared blankly for a moment. I remember this level being a grassy field when I played this game before. Why did they crank up the difficulty?

With the blazing sun overhead and a vast glacier beneath her feet, Mo Yubai truly understood the meaning of experiencing fire and ice at the same time.

Xiao Ling was also at a loss, turning into a little fireball one moment and a little iceball the next, not knowing what to do.

First having Xiao Ling return to her body, Mo Yubai bent her knees slightly and extended her arms naturally to maintain her balance, then began to glide gracefully across the ice.

She focused her mind, constantly on guard to dodge the ice spikes suddenly shooting up from the ground and the iceballs hurtling toward her. The sun warmed her hair until it was hot to the touch, but waves of freezing air seeped into her legs.

Listening to the melody of her blades dancing on the ice, Mo Yubai suddenly felt a long-lost sense of ease.

In this vast world, it felt as if only she and the ice remained. Every spin and jump carried an indescribable lightness.

Heaven and earth coexisted with her, and all things were one with her^[1].

Mo Yubai slowly closed her eyes. No longer using her sight, she perked up her dog ears to listen.

Listening to the sound of ice spikes bursting through the ice;

Listening to the sound of iceballs rolling at high speed;

Listening to the sound of her own skate blades carving the ice;

Listening to the sound of coins clinking against her;

Listening to the sound of Rolling Pin Auntie hot on her heels.

Spinning, jumping, changing lanes, accelerating, dodging, every movement felt slowed down countless times, as if practiced a million times before. Time itself seemed to stand still.

With her eyes gently closed, Mo Yubai felt the lightness and agility of the moment. Recalling the freedom and wild abandon she had felt in the air just now, she realized her speed had finally broken through its limit.

Suddenly, her tightly closed eyes snapped open. As if anticipating it, she tilted her body slightly, letting a falling iceball brush past her.

Iceballs of all sizes rained down from the sky, vanishing without a trace the instant they touched the ice.

But instead of dodging them like before, Mo Yubai leaned forward and quickly pulled out a tarp, agilely catching the falling iceballs.

She put them in her backpack to see if they were edible:

[Small Iceball: Made of purified water]

Great! Now she had iced drinks!

Mo Yubai turned her gaze to the large iceballs she had been dodging earlier, and immediately glided over gracefully to meet them.

Stored in the backpack. Oh yeah! Made of purified water!

Hehehe, collect! Collect! Collect! Collect, collect, collect!

Mo Yubai sang at the top of her lungs on the ice rink in excitement, “Good luck comes, wish me good luck, good luck brings joy and love~^[2]“

Behind her, Rolling Pin Auntie listened to the wildly out-of-tune singing, and her fierce expression almost crumbled into one of disgust.

Unfortunately, not long after Mo Yubai started collecting them, the iceballs and the ice rink vanished completely.

Dazzling neon lights and shadows flashed before her eyes. High-rise buildings shot up from the empty ice rink, completely blocking out the sun. Under a gloomy gray sky, fine rain drifted onto her cheeks. At this moment, a cyberpunk night city unfolded before her.

Mo Yubai darted between the skyscrapers at high speed. Stepping off the exaggerated graffiti on the walls, she leaped to dodge a red laser that suddenly flashed before her.

By now, her body was feeling intense fatigue, and sweat dripped from her eyelashes into her eyes.

Mo Yubai blinked to clear her vision so she could see the robots ahead more clearly.

Watching them rush toward her, Mo Yubai turned from the main road into an alleyway without hesitation.

To her surprise, she spotted a neon-colored treasure chest as soon as she entered the alley. She rushed forward, and the moment she touched the chest, a laser gun with a ten-minute countdown appeared in her hand.

Mo Yubai looked at the gun in her hand in awe. The barrel was a bright, gleaming silver, and its size fit her palm perfectly. She experimentally turned around and pulled the trigger on the robots behind her.

A fluorescent blue laser instantly sliced the robot in half. Mo Yubai fell in love with the weapon immediately.

She turned back to attack Rolling Pin Auntie as well, but to her surprise, the auntie was completely unaffected, swinging her rolling pin at her without mercy.

Mo Yubai quickly accelerated to put some distance between herself and Rolling Pin Auntie. After twisting and turning through the alleys, she ran into a dead end.

She scanned her surroundings, leaped with all her might to grab a roadside sign, and flipped herself onto it. Carefully stepping on its edges, she jumped from sign to sign, climbing higher and higher.

Finally, judging that she had reached a sufficient height, Mo Yubai flipped and landed on top of a high wall.

Just as she was about to climb over, the continuous drizzle caused her foot to slip, and she began to plunge straight down.

At the critical moment, Mo Yubai fired her gun without hesitation, blasting through a towering utility pylon.

The pylon collapsed with a crash, landing across the surrounding residential buildings to form a bridge-like structure.

Mo Yubai quickly threw out a knotted nylon rope from her backpack, catching it firmly in the middle of the collapsed pylon. Gripping the rope tightly, she swung with the momentum onto a lower rooftop shed.

It all happened in the blink of an eye. Mo Yubai didn’t even have time to retrieve the nylon rope before she scrambled to her feet and jumped off the shed.

After a moment, having collected all the coins in the area, she turned and walked back onto the main road.

Just then, a shrill siren wailed in the sky. The robots had realized the utility pylon had been maliciously severed and had dispatched robot enforcers to capture the fugitive.

Mo Yubai’s mouth twitched as she watched the flying saucers closing in on her from all directions. Is a pincer attack really necessary over one little utility pylon?

“Xiao Ling, how much time is left?”

“Host, hang in there, just three minutes left!”

Watching the flying saucers that would reach her in less than a minute, Mo Yubai’s mind raced.

The laser gun’s time limit had expired, leaving her with only melee weapons. Going head-to-head against cyberpunk weaponry was suicide.

Flying saucers blocked three directions ahead, and Rolling Pin Auntie was behind her. She had nowhere to run.

Mo Yubai gritted her teeth and quickly choked down a sausage. It nearly made her eyes roll back from gagging, but her stamina was instantly restored.

After coughing twice, she dropped to the ground the moment the flying saucers stopped, crawling through the gap between them.

Fortunately, the robots’ flying saucers completely blocked the path behind her, slowing down the furious Rolling Pin Auntie.

Mo Yubai’s eyes lit up when she saw a familiar manhole cover icon. She pried it open with her machete without hesitation and leaped down into the sewer.

The robots reacted quickly, abandoning their flying saucers to pursue her down the sewer alongside the furious Rolling Pin Auntie.

Mo Yubai looked in pleasant surprise at the double-coin icon at the sewer entrance. She rushed toward it without hesitation, and the coins instantly duplicated into two parallel rows.

She spread her arms and kicked away the rats scurrying toward her, touching as many coins on the walls as she could.

Seeing the robots appearing at the two bends ahead, Mo Yubai asked softly with a smile in her eyes, “How much longer?”

“Five seconds.”

Hearing this, she raised an eyebrow. A mischievous grin spread across her face, her dog tail wagging frantically. She turned around without hesitation and executed a slide tackle right next to the furious Rolling Pin Auntie.

Under Rolling Pin Auntie’s incredulous gaze, she grabbed the rolling pin in her hand and tried to yank it away.