"I'm fine," Lu Chenheng interrupted her, his answer crisp and clear, even with a hint of impatience at being interrupted. He quickened his pace, as if trying to distance himself. "Focus and pay attention to your surroundings. The tranquility of the wasteland is just an illusion."
Wen Shifei paused, watching his deliberately distanced back. An inexplicable bitterness and a deeper suspicion welled up in her heart. He seemed to be resisting her concern, resisting any attempt to probe his mental state. This unnatural resistance was even more unsettling than his silence. She took a deep breath of the dusty air, suppressed her surging emotions, and refocused her attention on the terminal. The signal scanning ripples on the screen were smooth, without any abnormalities.
Around noon, they took a brief break amidst a cluster of heavily weathered boulders. Wen Shifei leaned against the shadow of a massive rock, resembling a monster's fang, and carefully examined the terminal. She attempted to reinterpret the garbled fragments of code she had captured the previous night, her fingers rapidly tapping on the virtual keyboard, her brow furrowed.
Lu Cheneng stood on a rise not far away, his back to her, like a silent sentinel. He seemed to be gazing into the distance, or perhaps simply lost in thought. The wind ripped the hem of his coat, making a rustling sound. Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a mutated sand scorpion, covered entirely in a dark purple chitinous shell and endowed with sharp mouthparts, silently emerging from a crevice in the rock. Its slender tail stinger gleamed with a faint blue luster. Its target was Wen Shifei, who had her back to it, completely absorbed in the terminal.
The venom of this sand scorpion is enough to paralyze an adult's central nervous system in seconds!
Lu Chen's pupils suddenly constricted! A cold command, like the meshing of precision gears, instantly replaced all thought! His body moved faster than his mind! Without even turning around, his right hand reached for his waist with lightning speed beyond human limits. He drew his gun, swung his arm, and aimed! The movement was seamless, as smooth as if he'd practiced it thousands of times! The muzzle of the gun locked firmly on the scorpion!
Just as his index finger was about to pull the trigger——
A completely different kind of fear and resistance, originating from the depths of his soul, struck his nerves like a high-voltage current! No! Can't shoot! The loud gunshot would reveal their position! This thought was so strong, it was imprinted with the memory of Wen Shifei roaring "Hide! Don't shoot!" countless times in danger!
The two wills collided violently in his mind!
The action of pulling the trigger froze at the last 0.01 second! The muzzle trembled slightly! The sand scorpion seemed to sense the fatal threat and stopped abruptly, its tail sting raised high!
"Shi Fei! Scorpion! Under your feet!" Lu Cheneng practically roared, his voice hoarse and extremely suppressed! He finally made a choice, choosing the more "inefficient" warning method that came from Lu Cheneng's instinct!
Wen Shifei trembled at his roar and ducked her head. Seeing the poisonous creature so close, she reacted quickly, rolling on the spot. At the same time, the alloy dagger she had been holding in her hand flashed with a cold light and flew out!
Phew!
The dagger pinned the mutant sand scorpion to the sand with pinpoint accuracy! The stinger twitched in vain a few times before stopping.
Wen Shifei got up in shock, her heart pounding, her back instantly soaked with cold sweat. She looked at Lu Cheneng, who was still aiming with his gun drawn, but the muzzle was lowered. He slowly turned his head, the look behind his goggles extremely complex, with lingering cold murderous intent, lingering fear after being forcibly suppressed, and a hint of... confusion and struggle that Wen Shifei had never seen before. His movements and momentum just now were inhumanly fast and terrifyingly calm, just like the state he was in when he was controlled by the chip! But the roar and stiff stop at the last moment were clearly his own!
"You..." Wen Shifei's voice trembled a little, "You just..."
Lu Chenheng shoved his pistol back into its holster with a sudden, almost rough movement. He avoided her gaze, his voice unusually low, filled with suppressed irritation and a hint of indescribable fatigue: "...It's okay. Next time...be more careful." He turned away, no longer looking at her, and walked to the side, sitting with his back to her, as if the thrilling scene had never happened.
Wen Shifei stood there, watching his back, then the nailed-to-the-ground sand scorpion. A chill ran down her spine. That moment just now... something was definitely wrong! That wasn't Lu Chenent's normal reaction speed and fighting style! It was a highly optimized, icy, "weapon" instinct! It was still there! It hadn't been completely formatted! Had it simply... gone deeper? Or even... learned to disguise itself as an instinctive reaction at crucial moments?
The thought sent her reeling. She silently walked over, unsheathed her dagger, wiped the blood, and put it away. She didn't question him further, simply gripping the terminal tightly in her hand and cranking up the scan frequency to its highest setting. Unknown signals, the shadow lurking within Lu Chenen's body... This wasteland was far more dangerous than she'd imagined.
After a rest, they continued on their journey, the atmosphere becoming even more oppressive. Lu Chen's silence was like a physical barrier. Alarm bells rang wildly in Wen Shifei's heart, and all her senses were heightened to the extreme. Half of her senses were alert to the danger outside, while the other half was closely monitoring every subtle movement and change in Lu Chen's aura.
After trudging through this suffocating silence for several hours, the terminal on Wen Shifei's wrist vibrated again! This time, it wasn't a faint beep, but a continuous low-frequency buzzing! In the center of the screen, the bar graph representing signal strength suddenly soared upward, fluctuating violently! At the same time, an encrypted data stream, countless times clearer than last night's, yet still indecipherable by standard programs, washed over the screen like a waterfall!
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