Chapter 117 Mine Maze - Part 2: The Flying Vehicle! Tang Bufan...
"A flying vehicle!" Tang Bufan perked up and quickly asked, "Will the flying vehicle take me to Zero?"
"Probably," Xiao Hei said casually.
Tang Bufan couldn't help but reach up and touch the signal transmitter on the back of his neck, feeling somewhat pleased.
As night fell, the light from the flashlight became the only source of light in the mine. Tang Bufan would occasionally step on human bones. At first, he would feel disrespected, but after doing it many times, he became numb to it.
Gradually, they also encountered mutated poison people. They clearly recognized Xiao Hei and bared their teeth and roared at him. It was the natural aversion to orcs that Zero had edited into their genes. However, when they saw Tang Bufan, they showed expressions of excitement and admiration.
They worshipped Tang Bufan like gods, calling him "mother" and following him around on all fours.
Little Black shouted at them in a deep voice, "Get lost."
The mutated poisonous beings then stopped, baring their teeth.
"They're quite obedient." After observing them all the way and confirming that these poisonous people wouldn't harm him, Tang Bufan gradually relaxed. When he encountered a small poisonous person, he even reached out and patted its sparse hairy head.
"Although they have regained their senses, they are not intelligent," Xiao Hei said calmly, holding the flashlight. "Zero deceived them."
"What are you deceiving?" Tang Bufan couldn't help but ask.
"You." Xiao Hei turned around and glanced at Tang Bufan. The man had already taken off his hat while he was in the sack, and later he took off his mask to make it easier to breathe, revealing a beautiful face with bright features.
“He said you could save the poison people, but I think Zero is just using them as tools, just like humans use orcs as tools.”
Tang Bufan met his gaze and suddenly said, "If you had the chance to go to school, you would definitely be a top student."
Xiao Hei was taken aback by Tang Bufan's seemingly unrelated words, finding him quite strange. They were having a perfectly normal conversation when he suddenly brought up school.
Low-ranking orcs like him had no opportunity to go to school.
Xiao Hei fell silent again, continuing to lead Tang Bufan through the ant-nest-like mine.
Tang Bufan didn't know the time, but he felt that they had walked for at least three or four hours. Although Xiao Hei looked thin, he had been wandering all his life, so he had excellent stamina. Tang Bufan, on the other hand, couldn't keep up and felt a slight pain in the soles of his feet.
They entered a large mine pit. Xiao Hei stopped, and Tang Bufan stopped as well. The orc was holding a flashlight and staring silently at the empty, rocky ground.
"What's wrong?" Tang Bufan alternated between standing on his toes to relieve the pain in his soles.
"...It's gone." Xiao Hei said expressionlessly, "The aircraft has disappeared."
Tang Bufan was taken aback, then looked at the empty center with understanding, and immediately frowned: "What's going on?"
Xiao Hei turned to look at him, his eyes as black as an abyss. He suddenly asked, "Do you have anything on you that emits signals?"
Tang Bufan was startled, but denied it without changing his expression: "How could that be? You've searched my entire body."
"..." Xiao Hei stared straight at Tang Bufan, as if he had seen through his lie. After a moment, he said, "The aircraft has radar. If it detects an unidentified signal approaching, it will automatically hide in the mine tunnel and wander around in this mine."
After saying that, he nonchalantly took his flashlight and walked to a cave wall, where he lazily sat down.
Tang Bufan felt heavy-hearted as he listened. He walked to a relatively flat cave wall, sat down to rest, and pondered what to do.
That aircraft is very intelligent. Because Tang Bufan has a signal transmitter on him, it is playing hide-and-seek with him. In other words, if Tang Bufan doesn't remove the miniature transmitter from the back of his neck, he will never be able to see it.
Tang Bufan had already witnessed how winding this mine was; he had long since lost his way and finally understood why cave rescues were so difficult.
"So do you know where it is now?" Tang Bufan then asked Xiao Hei.
"I don't know." Xiao Hei's words made Tang Bufan's heart grow heavier: "We can only try to look for it."
After he finished speaking, he turned to look at Tang Bufan and asked, "Do you eat poisonous people?"
Tang Bufan was slightly taken aback, his expression changing slightly: "...No."
Xiao Hei calmly withdrew his gaze: "Then you'll be very hungry."
Actually, Tang Bufan was hungry right now, and that fist-sized piece of meat was not enough to fill his stomach... He suddenly shivered.
"What you gave me to eat this evening, was it...?"
"No." Xiao Hei brushed away the pebbles on the ground with his rough and withered hands and lay down. "It's dog meat."
Tang Bufan silently breathed a sigh of relief.
Xiao Hei turned off the flashlight, and the mine cave was instantly pitch black. In such an absolutely dark environment, even the best night vision was useless, and Tang Bufan felt like he was blind.
He could only grope around the area in the dark with his hand before lying down to rest.
In the middle of his sleep, Tang Bufan felt someone touching him. He was startled and immediately raised his hand to punch it. The thing that was touching him cried out "Ah!" and began to sob softly in the darkness.
"Mother, don't hit me..." It was the Poisoner; his voice wasn't loud.
Tang Bufan's heartbeat gradually calmed down, and he helplessly said in the darkness, "Don't disturb Mom's sleep."
Then he heard a lot of rustling sounds, some far away and some close to him. Tang Bufan felt a sense of fear and called out in the darkness, "Xiao Hei, can you turn on the flashlight?"
"Mother, here." One of the poisoners handed a flashlight to Tang Bufan.
Good heavens, they managed to get the flashlight back from Xiao Hei for Tang Bufan.
Tang Bufan turned on his flashlight and was met with a dense array of blood-red eyes, all staring down at him... He was nearly scared to death.
"Get lost!" Xiao Hei shouted from a distance. The group of mutated poisoners immediately turned to look at him, baring their teeth and their expressions were so fierce that they wanted to tear him apart.
But they couldn't, Father said the orc was a useful man.
"Mother." A somewhat shy voice came from the side. Tang Bufan turned his head and saw a little girl squatting at his feet.
Tang Bufan was taken aback. This little girl also had green skin, so he hadn't noticed the difference between her and the others at first glance. But now, after shining a flashlight on her carefully, he discovered that she had thick black hair and clear, non-red eyes. Apart from her skin color, she looked almost like an ordinary little girl.
She was still dressed, in a T-shirt dress that was so dirty it was almost black.
Tang Bufan immediately sat up from the gravel ground and looked at her in shock.
"You...you are..."
“U135, this is my number.” The little girl squatted down and moved to Tang Bufan’s side. She seemed to have a high status among the mutated poison people, and the poison people surrounding Tang Bufan all made way for her.
There was a number... Tang Bufan realized something, and the little girl took out an A4-sized piece of paper from the pocket of her T-shirt dress, opened it and showed it to Tang Bufan. It had a picture of Tang Bufan on it.
The photo was still different from Tang Bufan himself, but it was better than the wanted poster, and it looked about 80% like Tang Bufan.
Despite the poor living conditions, the little girl had protected the poster-like piece of paper very well. She looked at Tang Bufan shyly and said, "Father sent us out to spread the word and find you. He said that as long as we find you, we can be completely restored to human form."
After the little girl finished speaking, she looked at Tang Bufan's fair and beautiful face with envy.
"..." Tang Bufan gradually calmed down, his expression softening as he asked the little girl, "Where is father?"
"On the island," the little girl told him. "We all receive our education on the island, and we even have to take exams."
"Which island?" Tang Bufan pressed.
The little girl shook her head: "I don't know, we were brought out by a submarine."
Tang Bufan frowned: "Didn't you come in that flying machine?"
“That aircraft has been in the cave for several years.” Little Black walked over, and the poisoners, disgusted by him, all snarled and avoided him.
The little girl immediately got up and ran away. She looked particularly terrified, and her green face turned pale.
"Get out of here." Xiao Hei sat down next to Tang Bufan, staring gloomily at the mutated poison people.
Those low-IQ poisoners turned to look at the little girl, who hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
The mutated poisonous creatures immediately retreated from all the mine tunnels.
Tang Bufan wanted to call out to the little girl, but Xiao Hei stopped him.
“You won’t get anything out of her,” Xiao Hei said calmly. “She received brainwashing education from birth. After passing the test, Zero sent her out. One reason was to give those mutated poison people hope and make them more convinced and worshipful. The other reason was to let her, who was smarter, manage the poison people.”
“…She looks very young, only eleven or twelve years old,” Tang Bufan said, his voice trembling.
"Eleven or twelve years old...not young anymore." Xiao Hei turned to look at Tang Bufan, his eyes growing even darker: "I was only eight years old when I was first raped."
Tang Bufan was stunned. He stared blankly at the thin orc in front of him, who was only slightly taller than him, and suddenly a deep sadness welled up in his heart.
When the lower classes lack entertainment, bullying the weak becomes a form of amusement for some.
Tang Bufan suddenly understood why he wished for the world to be destroyed.
"...I'm sorry." Tang Bufan's voice was hoarse, his eyes slightly red, as he looked apologetically at the calm orc in front of him: "I'm very sad about what you went through. I'm so sorry."
"..." Xiao Hei looked at him silently, then turned his head away expressionlessly.
This was the first time he had ever been apologized to, and ironically, the person apologizing was not one of those who had bullied him.
The mine fell silent. Tang Bufan continued to grieve, lost in his own sorrow. He was always like this; when he encountered someone suffering a tragedy, he would feel indignant on their behalf, yet he was powerless to help.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" Tang Bufan then asked Xiao Hei beside him.
Xiao Hei stared into the darkness ahead. After a long, long time, he said softly, "There's nothing you can do for me. This is my life."
Tang Bufan suddenly resonated with this statement, and quite suddenly, he decided to tell Xiao Hei about his situation.
"I come from 1200 years ago." Tang Bufan's voice was hoarse. In the mine, where only the light from a flashlight shone, he began to slowly recount his story: "I was born into a single-parent family. Unlike the precious women of today, the preference for sons over daughters was very serious in the 1980s, so my mother was abandoned by the roadside and picked up and raised by my unmarried grandfather..."
Tang Bufan talked for a very long time, from his mother to his graduation, and then to his present life.
"I never thought that time travel would happen to me, but this is my life." Tang Bufan turned to look at Xiao Hei beside him: "It seems that we are all powerless to change our own destiny."
After he finished speaking, he raised his hand to touch the back of his neck, ran his fingers through his hair, found the small protrusion where the signal transmitter was buried, and squeezed it out forcefully.
With a soft "plop," blood spurted out, flowing down Tang Bufan's slender neck. Tang Bufan, still holding the bloody miniature signal device in his fingertips, threw it to the ground.
"Let's go, I need to find Zero." Tang Bufan stood up from the ground, his eyes slightly red. "I will never let him completely ruin my life."
He wanted to protect Lu Yi. The Beastman Federation was Lu Yi's home, so it was his home too. He was determined to fight Zero.
Does the earth belong to humankind? No, the earth has encompassed all things throughout history.
Xiao Hei stared intently at the resolute man before him with his dark eyes, and suddenly understood why the young master of the Western Federation had fallen in love with him.
"Alright." The thin orc slowly rose from the gravel. "I'll take you to find Zero."
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