Chapter 43 Grassland Market - 8 Poisonous People?! ...
A poisonous person?!
Tang Bufan's eyes widened in shock. He pressed his body against the edge of the tower's stone wall, trying to find the poisonous man's figure in the darkness. However, as a human, his eyesight was too poor. He could only hear the crowd in the market starting to scream.
He was suddenly lifted up by Lu Yi's arms.
"I'll take the teacher back to the RV!" Lu Yi said in a deep voice to Wan Bing and A Fei, then glanced down and calmly ordered, "There are many poisoners. Using this tower as the center, summon everyone here! A Fei, lead the notification; Wan Bing, lead the battle!"
Without waiting for their response, he took Tang Bufan and climbed down from the stone tower.
Ah Fei was initially very panicked. Although he was over thirty years old, he had only been a market manager for a short time and this was the first time he had encountered such a big incident. However, after Lu Yi gave him some instructions in a deep voice, he calmed down instantly.
Wan Bing's furrowed brows relaxed considerably. The two exchanged a glance on the tower, both feeling reassured.
"Do as the commander orders!" Wan Bing, being older, said to A Fei, "When you see the guards, tell them all to come find me!"
Afei nodded, then spread his wings and jumped off the tower.
The market was in chaos. Tang Bufan was held tightly in Lu Yi's arms. He saw many people scrambling to pack up their belongings in the dark, while others took advantage of the chaos to start looting. The looting turned into fighting, overturning braziers and torches, and setting fire to the dilapidated tents.
Some people were screaming, some were crying out, and even more terrifying, Tang Bufan heard a "hehehe" laugh in the deep darkness.
"Is it a mutated poison human?!" Tang Bufan asked Lu Yi in a panic, since he couldn't see him.
"Yes." Lu Yi's expression was very serious, and the gentleness of his youth had been gone.
"How did they get here?!" Tang Bufan asked in shock. If they were mutated poison people, low-level beastmen wouldn't be able to handle them at all!
"I don't know." Lu Yi carried Tang Bufan as they quickly weaved through the chaotic market, his brows furrowed.
Tang Bufan was anxious, and the cries of the ordinary beastmen around him made him feel sad. But he could only huddle in Lu Yi's arms, helpless. He hated himself to death. How could he be so useless!
Fortunately, Lu Yi quickly took him back to the RV. Several poisoners had already climbed onto the roof of the RV, but the RV was sturdy, so Kai Ge ignored them. Only after Tang Bufan entered the RV did it turn on the old and dim light.
"Don't get out of the car!" Lu Yi said to Tang Bufan in a deep voice, and then turned to leave.
"I know!" Tang Bufan responded loudly to reassure Lu Yi, then quickly walked to the iron bunk bed, pulled out the heavy weapons case, and took out a sniper rifle from it.
"Xiao Tang, the mutated poisonous creature is powerful. I don't recommend you open the window!" Kai's electronic male voice sounded more anxious than usual.
"I'll just open a crack." Tang Bufan's eyes were sharp. He put on his light screen glasses, extended the gun barrel through the window crack, and with the help of AI, fired four shots in the dark. Three of them hit the head, and only one of the more alert poisoners managed to dodge them.
His firing attracted a number of poisoners, who ran toward the RV in the darkness. Tang Bufan watched through the light screen glasses, and the AI marked more than a dozen of them with red circles. Tang Bufan clicked his tongue, put away the gun before one of the poisoners pounced on him, and locked the window.
"Brother Kai, let's go to the stone tower!" Tang Bufan strode into the driver's seat with his sniper rifle in hand, and the black steel RV started up in the darkness.
Tang Bufan sat down in the driver's seat and saw two poisonous people devouring a sub-beastman alive not far away. The sub-beastman was screaming and crying in pain on the ground. Tang Bufan gritted his teeth and suddenly remembered seeing someone with a child on the way to the market...
Tang Bufan's heart sank, and he immediately ordered Kai Ge, "Kai Ge! Turn on the roof spotlight! Use the external loudspeaker to tell everyone to get the children, the sub-beastmen, and the elderly into the RV!"
"Xiao Tang, the interior space of the RV is limited, so we suggest abandoning the elderly." Kai Ge's gentle electronic male voice sounded somewhat cold and ruthless at this moment.
Tang Bufan felt a pang of anxiety. He thought of Old Mr. Wang, bit his lip, and steeled himself to say, "Then it's the child and the sub-beastman!"
"Okay, Xiao Tang." Kai immediately turned on the roof-mounted spotlight and, as Tang Bufan instructed, loudly broadcast the message through the external speaker in the darkness:
"Children and sub-orcs under the age of forty, please come to the RV. Family members orcs, please come with us for protection."
The RV slowly drove toward the stone tower, its bright searchlights quickly attracting all the orcs and poisoners in the vicinity. It became almost a magnet, with all creatures starting to run toward it!
Tang Bufan immediately grabbed his sniper rifle and headed towards the RV door. A dull thud landed on the roof of the RV. Tang Bufan looked up and couldn't tell if it was a poisoner or an orc.
But he didn't care anymore. His heart was pounding as he walked to the car door, took a deep breath, grabbed his sniper rifle, and flung open the RV door!
A sub-orc crawled in first, and Tang Bufan breathed a sigh of relief. His partner, after being pointed at by Tang Bufan with a sniper rifle, swallowed hard and consciously stepped back from the car door.
"Help me!" Tang Bufan shouted to him in the darkness, "Don't let the poisonous man get closer!"
“Okay!” Although the orc did not know Tang Bufan, he still responded tacitly and began to follow and protect him.
Soon, another sub-orc was brought in by his partner. His legs were already weak, and he sat on the ground crying and wailing, trying to pry his partner away. Tang Bufan, seeing him blocking the doorway, angrily kicked him.
"Get out of the way! Don't block the doorway!"
The orc who was crying his mind out was kicked aside by Tang Bufan. His partner, seeing that Tang Bufan dared to kick his wife, was so angry that he tried to crawl into the RV. Tang Bufan was terrified by the man's bloodshot eyes, so he immediately pointed his sniper rifle at him.
"Get out! Get out of here!"
The orc was reckless and didn't seem afraid of Tang Bufan's sniper rifle, but he was dragged out of the car by his clothes by the other orcs outside.
"Don't block people's way! There's a child here!"
"Let my wife in! My wife has a bad leg! Let my wife go in first!"
The area outside the car was completely blocked. Tang Bufan was breathing heavily when a sub-orc suddenly rushed in and bumped his shoulder hard, but he couldn't feel any pain. Perhaps it was because of the chaos, but his vision started to blur. Nevertheless, he still trembled as he tried to hold onto his gun and maintain order inside the car.
"Don't push!"
"Don't block the door!"
"Stop crying!"
Tang Bufan roared desperately, feeling like he was going crazy. He couldn't understand why these adult sub-beastmen were even more disobedient than children, crying and howling, and making even more noise...
A strong arm suddenly pulled him into a hug, and the familiar body temperature instantly cleared Tang Bufan's dizzy head. He turned around, still holding the sniper rifle, and sure enough, it was Lu Yi.
"To the driver's cab." Lu Yi came in through the sunroof. He picked up Tang Bufan with one arm like he was carrying a child, and put him on his arm. With his other hand, he pushed through the increasingly crowded people and brought Tang Bufan from the carriage back to the driver's cab.
Lu Yi politely asked one of the sub-orcs sitting in the driver's seat to leave, and then placed Tang Bufan in the spacious driver's seat. Another sub-orc holding a child sat in the passenger seat. Lu Yi glanced at them but did not ask them to leave. He then instructed Kai Ge to close the metal partition between the driver's seat and the passenger compartment.
"Don't go into the carriage anymore, just sit here." Lu Yi touched Tang Bufan's sweaty forehead with concern and told him, "No one can come into the driver's cab, those sub-beastmen might make the RV go out of control."
I just let a clearly illiterate orc sit in the driver's seat. How dangerous! Although Kai is the RV's AI, he has less control over the RV than the manual buttons in the driver's seat.
Tang Bufan's breathing gradually calmed down. The metal partition door blocked the chaos in the carriage. He looked up and nodded at the landing point, realizing that he had been negligent.
Seeing that Tang Bufan had calmed down, Lu Yi felt relieved and walked past him, opening the driver's side door.
"I'm going out to fight. Take care of yourself."
"Be careful." Tang Bufan looked at him intently.
The orc boy smiled gently at him and then jumped out in the night breeze.
The car door closed, and Tang Bufan turned to look at the passenger seat, where the sub-beastman holding the child was looking at him uneasily.
"Is there anyone else in the family who can take care of the children?" Tang Bufan asked him.
“Yes…” The dirty-looking orc patted the child’s back and responded timidly.
"..." Tang Bufan sighed, then gently said to him, "You've worked hard."
Under Kai's loudspeaker announcement, a protective circle of orcs had formed outside the RV. To protect the partners and children inside, the orcs had all transformed into beastmen, their muscles bulging, and they were fighting hard against the attacking poisonous humans. Many single orcs, finding it safer with so many people around, also cleverly gathered around.
Tang Bufan sat in the driver's seat and saw that the market had become a mess. The tattered tents were trampled on the ground, many of them were on fire, and the dead orcs lay on the ground, their limbs being torn apart by the mutated poisoners...
Tang Bufan couldn't bear to watch any longer, so he checked the RV's surveillance footage. The RV was already packed with people. The sub-beastmen who couldn't get in were placed on the roof by their partners. Some of the smaller children were brought into the RV and held by unfamiliar sub-beastmen, crying loudly as they did so.
He felt utterly powerless. Tang Bufan could only sit in the driver's seat and watch silently. If Lu Yi hadn't pulled him into her arms in time, he might have fainted right there in the car.
Given his physique, he probably would have been crushed to death. Tang Bufan belatedly felt a sense of fear upon realizing this.
The RV slowly drove the crowd to the foot of the stone tower, where a bunch of sub-orcs seeking refuge had also gathered. The orcs surrounding the tower made way for the RV, and Tang Bufan saw Mr. Wang through the light screen glasses. He was squeezed into the crowd, and he silently breathed a sigh of relief.
No one slept that night. As dawn broke and the sky turned red, the poisoners who had launched the night attack finally withdrew.
After discovering that the orcs had formed a protective circle, they did not attack rashly. Lu Yi was still at the front blocking the way, so they avoided the market and continued their advance in the latter half of the night.
“They are not the same species as the mutated poison people we encountered in the desert, and they are not as intelligent,” Lu Yi said to Tang Bufan. The two stood at the door of the RV, bathed in the morning light, watching the sub-beastmen and children who had taken refuge leave, both of them exhausted.
The reason they were keeping watch here was that a sub-beastman stole something from the RV when he left, and another kind-hearted sub-beastman discovered it and shouted for Tang Bufan to come.
Tang Bufan was furious and took back the few bottles of medicine that the sub-beastman had stolen. What a heartless bastard! These were his life-saving medicines.
The search revealed that quite a few people had stolen things from the car, young and old alike. Finally, Lu Yi and Wan Bing came over, and the people realized they were scared and took the items out of their clothes.
But Wan was still not at ease, so he ordered two sub-orcs to search each of them thoroughly.
"Was it done by that organization?" Tang Bufan asked Lu Yi, frowning as he leaned against the RV.
“It should be, but they didn’t call out ‘father’,” Lu Yi said to Tang Bufan. “Besides having relatively low intelligence, they are also very cold-resistant; they are cold-resistant mutant poison humans.”
The mutated poisonous humans on the other side of the desert are mixed with desert plant genes, so they are heat-resistant.
Tang Bufan noticed something was wrong yesterday because these mutated poisoners were moving north, while winter was approaching and they should have been migrating south.
"North of here is the Northern Federation..." Tang Bufan pondered, looking at Lu Yi: "Is their destination the Northern Federation?"
“Or the whole world.” Lu Yi said in a deep voice, “I think that organization is using mutated poison people to fight against orcs all over the world.”
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