Chapter 1175: No Holds Barred
Before putting her plan into action, Lin Sanjiu encouraged herself. She told herself the same things that a girl partic.i.p.ating in a modeling contest might think before going on stage: she was slim enough, so this time she would definitely make it.
However, unlike a future model, she was secretly thinking that it would be great if she were short.
Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath and deactivated the card on the item in her hand. A palm-sized makeup mirror was pinched between her fingers.
Of course, after surviving in the doomsday for so many years, she had long abandoned the habit of caring about her appearance. If it wasn"t for the grand prize being so thoughtful in preparing her daily necessities, she wouldn"t even have this mirror. The reason she suddenly paid so much attention to her height and weight was that, without a doubt, her life now depended on them.
She turned the mirror around, casting the reflection diagonally outwards, and scanned the corridor back and forth. From this low angle and with such a small mirror, combined with her dim and hazy vision, the effect naturally wouldn"t be ideal. Nevertheless, she managed to roughly see something.
The guards varied in height, and they all seemed to be men—or at least they used to be men. It was difficult to determine their height while they were lying on the ground, but she guessed they were all in the range of 1.7 to 1.8 meters, which shouldn"t be too far off from her height.
Observing for a while, she noticed that when the first group of guards had just reached the pantry and hadn"t turned back, the second group of guards had already turned back. This meant that, before the second group of guards turned around, there was a precious gap of about two or three seconds. However, after several mental calculations, she realized that even if she rolled out from under the chair, stood up, turned around, and rushed towards the T-shaped corridor as fast as she could, it would still take at least four seconds. After all, with one missing arm, she couldn"t move quickly enough to crawl out from under the chair.
One second was enough for the guards to see her once they turned around.
Unless... she crawled out from under the chair before the second group of guards turned around?
"But won"t they see you at that moment?" Mrs. Manas asked, her voice a little tense.
Lin Sanjiu didn"t answer but instead focused on the movements in the two corridors on both sides of the T-shaped intersection.
After spending several hours here, she had become thoroughly familiar with the footsteps of the first and second groups of guards. When she was completely focused, she could easily block out the sounds of their footsteps from her mind. The only sounds left were from the left and right corridors of the T-shaped intersection.
Based on the distance of their footsteps, during those two or three seconds of escape window, the guard on the left side of the T-shaped corridor, whom Lin Sanjiu called the fourth group, would be walking with his back towards the intersection, going deeper into the corridor. Unfortunately, the guard on the right side of the T-shaped corridor, the fifth group, had just turned around at that moment and could clearly see the intersection.
"Their uniforms should be black, right?" Lin Sanjiu glanced at the mirror but couldn"t be sure due to the dark and foggy environment.
"Do you think I can see better than you?" Mrs. Manas replied unkindly.
"I think they should be," Lin Sanjiu said, rummaging through her card inventory. "The chairs in this row are not wide, and the legs are thin. If they stand and take a quick glance, they can see half of the floor under the chair. The reason they didn"t look under the chair was that I was leaning against the wall"s shadow, leaving half of the s.p.a.ce empty. It"s been quite a while, and I haven"t been discovered yet, so I"ve been quite lucky, but if I stay here, I will be discovered sooner or later. Don"t be unhappy. I have no choice but to take this risk."
Mrs. Manas fell silent and finally sighed. "The fifth card from the bottom."
"What?" Lin Sanjiu asked.
"The fifth card from the bottom is a black jacket."
Lin Sanjiu breathed a sigh of relief and quickly called out the jacket. Despite her awkward movements, she managed to put it on silently. She had already lost track of the one she had been wearing inside the counter—she once again realized that everything was extremely precious in the doomsday, and one never knew when something could come in handy.
Her fingers trembled slightly due to intense nervousness, and her heart seemed to thump in icy water and then be lifted out again. After counting down for seven minutes, as the first group of guards approached the chair, Lin Sanjiu tightened her entire body and slowly crawled out to the edge of the chair.
There were six guards, and three rows of footsteps. Although she didn"t know why there was an extra pair of footsteps in the second row, all six of them finally pa.s.sed the chair. Just as the last guard in the third row reached the end of the bench, Lin Sanjiu silently rolled out. Her heart was about to leap out of her throat, and this short roll felt like it lasted ten minutes, making her feel as if the gaze of the second group of guards was undoubtedly fixed on her. But when she steadied herself and quickly leaped up from the ground, there was not even a warning sound.
At that very moment, the leading guard of the second group happened to open a room door and glanced inside. Their patrol habits were different from the first group, as they always peeked inside the rooms during their rounds. If Lin Sanjiu hadn"t noticed this, and antic.i.p.ated that they would soon open the next office door, she wouldn"t have dared to roll out from under the chair at that moment.
But once she was out, she would be able to rush into the T-shaped corridor within two or three seconds!
As Lin Sanjiu stood up, she found herself right behind the first group of guards, only a foot away from them.
All sounds seemed to disappear, yet everything was eerily clear. In the next short two or three seconds, she entered a strange state: she forgot who she was and what the consequences would be if she got caught. Her mind was solely focused on a series of actions and processes—as if within the entire universe, only this one thing had meaning.
She huddled her shoulders and crouched down, trying to make herself as small as possible, using the bodies of the guards in front of her to block the line of sight from the opposite side. At that moment, the second group of guards closed the door with a "clang" and walked towards the first group of guards. As they got closer, her heart raced higher—but after exchanging greetings, the second group of guards turned around, completely oblivious, and returned.
They didn"t see her!
Gooseb.u.mps erupted all over Lin Sanjiu"s body. Her body moved faster than her consciousness, and with a twist, she dashed towards the left side of the T-shaped corridor. As she stepped into the T-junction, the guards on both sides of the corridor were indeed facing away from her. Her gaze swept over a sign on the wall, and she silently turned the corner, quietly following behind the fourth group of guards on the left side corridor.
The next second, the fifth group of guards turned their heads towards her.