Chapter 5 Transcending the Apocalypse - 5 This RV is made of...
This RV was converted from a Type B armored cargo vehicle. The interior is very large, with windows on both sides. There is a large iron bed on the right side by the window, which is 1.5 meters long. This surprised Lu Yi. Although orcs are tall, 1.2 meters is usually enough for them to sleep. 1.5 meters is the standard size for two people.
Two people... Lu Yi seemed to be thinking, then continued to look around.
Because the bed is too big, the RV only has folding tables and chairs, which are placed opposite the bunk bed, like on an old-fashioned green train.
Near the driver's cab, there are nailed-on iron shelves, which are full of things. The kitchen and toilet are at the rear of the RV. The toilet is very small, just a big iron box, with a pile of firewood and sundries stacked next to it. Opposite is the kitchen, with a countertop connected to a half-person-high freezer, and then to a standing refrigerator. There is a one-meter-wide space between the refrigerator and the rear door, which can be opened outwards for unloading.
The car was old, but not dirty or messy. Lu Yi saw a dirty burlap backpack on the folding table, and a dirty gray-brown teddy bear leaning next to it.
The backpack is so small, it looks like something a human child would carry.
Lu Yi curiously reached out to touch the burlap schoolbag, but before he could touch it, it was immediately snatched away by a hand reaching out from the side.
The man, his face covered by a black cloth, quickly stuffed his backpack under the shelf with trembling hands. Then, his breathing became somewhat disordered, and he turned around, his dark eyes icy cold.
"Don't touch anything."
"I'm sorry..." Lu Yi apologized to him awkwardly again.
Tang Bufan walked back and pointed to the 1.5-meter-long iron bed frame.
“You’ll sleep in this bed,” he said, having already placed the worn-out bedding on it.
Lu Yi was somewhat surprised.
"And what about you?" he asked, then carefully looked around the RV to make sure there was no hidden folding bed.
"I'll sleep on the floor." Tang Bufan gently stomped his foot on the spot where the two of them were standing.
“How can this be?” Lu Yi frowned and glanced at Tang Bufan’s extremely thin body: “It’s very cold in the desert at night. Sleeping on the ground will affect your health.”
"It's alright." Tang Bufan was getting tired of standing, so he pulled down a folding chair and slowly sat down. "I've been sleeping on the floor."
He stared intently at the iron bunk bed, and Lu Yi immediately understood.
"This bed...was slept in by the original owner of the RV?" His tone became somewhat cautious.
"yes……"
"Because you killed him, you're afraid to sleep?"
Tang Bufan sat there with his eyes lowered: "Yes..."
Lu Yi fell silent. He pulled down another folding chair and sat down. After a while, he spoke gently to persuade him.
“You’re the owner of the RV now, you can’t sleep on the floor forever.” Lu Yi said, looking at the narrow passageway. “It’s fine now that it’s summer, but your body won’t be able to handle it in winter. The floor will be like an icebox.”
"Anyway, I might not even survive to winter," Tang Bufan said somewhat impatiently.
"But you want to live, don't you?" Lu Yi stared at him across the small folding table. He could tell that Tang Bufan had a strong will to live.
Tang Bufan fell silent, a hint of hesitation in his eyes. Lu Yi smiled and continued, "Besides, if I sleep in the bed, and I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I could crush your chest with one foot."
Tang Bufan glanced at his massive 2.23-meter frame and his firm, muscular physique... He could indeed crush him with a single stomp.
Tang Bufan bit his lip before nodding slightly.
He must live, even though he is deeply sinful.
Tang Bufan then slowly got up, and the folding chair automatically bounced back. He handed the dirty bedding that he had placed on the bed to Lu Yi. The bedding had not been washed for a long time, and there was a black oil stain in the corner.
"Can you accept it?" Tang Bufan asked him, feeling that the "spoiled" boy might not be able to stand this kind of quilt.
"It's okay." Seeing that he was struggling to carry him and his hands were trembling, Lu immediately reached out to take him.
He tentatively lowered his head to smell it, and then a slight smile appeared on his lips.
“It smells like you,” Lu Yi said to Tang Bufan. “You smell wonderful.”
From the moment he got on the bus, Lu Yi was very concerned about Tang Bufan's scent, but the man hadn't showered in a long time, so he couldn't smell it clearly. He had to lean over and sniff him to confirm that he really did smell good.
It was a very refreshing and subtle scent. Lu Yi couldn't quite describe it, but he felt it was somewhat like the incense that his mother burned in her room.
Tang Bufan was not pleased to hear his praise; instead, his eyes became complicated.
"They said that too..." Tang Bufan said in a low voice, "Unfortunately, I can't smell it myself."
Lu Yi's eyes immediately showed interest: "Them?"
"The original owners of the RV," Tang Bufan revealed another piece of information: "a couple."
Lu Yi looked at the 1.5-meter-long iron bed and understood what was going on.
Tang Bufan didn't continue speaking. He slowly moved to the kitchen at the back of the carriage, where a water purification and conversion device was located.
"If you need to use the toilet, just pee in this big glass jar. This water purifier can filter the urine into pure water, which we can drink tomorrow," Tang Bufan told him.
Lu Yi was slightly taken aback, then her face turned slightly red.
"You've never drunk urine before, have you?" Tang Bufan asked him.
"No...no," Lu Yilian replied somewhat embarrassedly.
"I survived the hardest times by relying on my own urine and this device," Tang Bufan said calmly. Then he looked at the water storage device inside. This device could also collect water molecules from the air, but this was a desert, and the air was too dry. It could only collect a maximum of 100 milliliters per day.
Tang Bufan took a mug and filled it with water. He hesitated for a moment, then asked the orc boy, "Do you want some water?"
"No, you drink it." Lu Yi looked at Tang Bufan's dry, peeling, dark purple lips.
Tang Bufan was grateful for his politeness, so he picked up the mug with trembling hands and drank the 100 milliliters of water.
His throat, parched all day, was instantly soothed. Coupled with a hearty meal of cactus today, Tang Bufan hadn't felt this satisfied in a long time. He watched the orc boy start spreading bedding on the ground and thought that perhaps meeting him wasn't a bad thing.
As long as he wasn't pretending to be innocent. Tang Bufan's eyes deepened slightly as he put down his mug and returned to the bunk bed.
Lu Yi had already laid out the bedding on the floor. Tang Bufan hesitated for a moment before sitting down on the bed. After doing some mental preparation, he slowly lay down.
He was sleeping on the edge of the bed, almost falling off. Lu Yi took off his black leather military boots and put them aside, then sat cross-legged on the floor.
"Aren't you going to take off the black cloth you're wearing?" Lu Yi asked him.
Tang Bufan knew that he was curious about his face and might even have expectations of him because of his smell, but he was destined to be disappointed. Tang Bufan was so ugly that he didn't even want to look in the mirror.
"I have a skin allergy, and these cloths can protect my skin," Tang Bufan whispered to him, both to avoid letting him see his face and to tell the truth.
The toxins on the ground were everywhere, corroding Tang Bufan's body. Coupled with the lack of water to wash his face and bathe, Tang Bufan had long since developed a skin allergy, with many tiny rashes appearing all over his body.
Upon hearing this, Lu Yi's gaze fell on Tang Bufan's dark purple lips, and his expression became much more serious.
“We’ll go to that poisonous town tomorrow to find the antidote,” he said to Tang Bufan. “After the poison is removed, your skin will improve.”
"Hmm." Tang Bufan nodded lazily, closing his eyes wearily. "Let's go to sleep, to save electricity and extend the life of the lamp."
"Okay." Lu Yi obediently replied and lay down on the floor.
"Brother Kai, turn off the lights."
"Okay." The RV's AI spoke in a gentle, electronic male voice, and the room was plunged into darkness.
Goodnight, Xiao Tang.
Goodnight, Teacher Tang.
The last voice was from Lu Yi. Tang Bufan, who was sleeping on the edge of the bed with his eyes closed, trembled and almost shed tears.
***
"Little Tang, it's time to wake up."
Tang Bufan heard the middle-aged man's gentle voice. He opened his eyes drowsily in bed and saw Eberon sitting in his wheelchair, fiddling with the cutlery at the folding table.
The sun shone warmly through the car window, and the air was filled with the enticing aroma of meat. Tang Bufan squinted at the extremely thin middle-aged sub-beastman in front of him.
"Eberron, you look beautiful today," Tang Bufan said to him.
"When isn't my wife beautiful?" Uncle Wolf walked out of the driver's seat, leaned down and kissed Eberlen, then smiled at Tang Bufan: "Little Tang, aren't you getting up?"
"I'll get up now..." Tang Bufan said, struggling to prop himself up with his elbows. He was surprised to find that he was sleeping on the iron bunk bed that Eberron and Uncle Wolf shared, and a small, bluish arm was wrapped around his waist.
That was a child's arm... Tang Bufan's heart pounded wildly, and his body suddenly felt even heavier. He stiffly turned around and saw a swollen and festering face. The child, who had swelled up to the size of a giant, stared straight at him with round eyes.
Tang Bufan stopped breathing, and the next second a pair of strong orc arms came down fiercely from above, like a vengeful ghost.
"How dare you sleep in our bed! You killed us, how dare you sleep in our bed! This is our bed!"
Tang Bufan woke up with a shout, his eyes filled with tears. The lights in the RV were on, and a human face was facing his bedside.
Tang Bufan's heart skipped a beat, and he convulsed and shrank back.
"Sorry! Did I scare you?" Lu Yi, who was sitting on the floor, quickly stepped back and raised his hands.
Tang Bufan then realized that he was having a nightmare, and everything in the dream was still very clear. He lowered his head and sat up from the bed, his body trembling as he covered his face with his hands.
Large tears spilled from between Tang Bufan's fingers, soaking the black cloth wrapped around them. Lu Yi watched helplessly, wanting to approach but not daring to.
After more than ten minutes, Tang Bufan's heaving chest gradually calmed down.
"I'm sorry." Tang Bufan lowered his hand, his bloodshot eyes looking at the uneasy orc boy beside him: "I dreamed about some things from the past, it has nothing to do with you."
"No, it's my fault." Lu Yi felt extremely guilty. "I shouldn't have sat on the edge of the bed and scared you."
But he slept on a makeshift bed on the floor, so when he sat up, he was facing Tang Bufan's bed.
Tang Bufan had no intention of arguing with him about this. He wiped his red and swollen eyes one last time and turned to look at the driver's seat.
"Brother Kai, what time is it now?"
"4:29 a.m.," the gentle electronic male voice replied.
Tang Bufan then got off the iron bunk bed with trembling hands and feet. He said to Lu Yidao, who was still sitting on the floor, "Let's get ready. We'll set off at dawn to find that poisonous town you mentioned."
He needs an antidote; the toxins are eroding his brain nerves, and his nightmares are getting worse.
"Okay." Lu Yi immediately went to put on his military boots.
The water collection device had accumulated a little more water overnight. Tang Bufan, clutching his aching head, drank it all in one gulp and then went to the driver's seat.
As soon as he sat down in the driver's seat, a long string of data immediately appeared on the windshield of the RV.
The bad things remained bad, while the good things grew old day by day. Kai told Tang Bufan that the RV's battery capacity had shrunk by another 1%, and that a replacement battery needed to be found as soon as possible, otherwise the RV would eventually be unable to operate due to the low battery capacity.
Tang Bufan had a terrible headache and sat in the driver's seat, clutching his forehead in pain.
After reporting everything, Kai Ge played a video for Tang Bufan.
The video is dark and silent; it's from the RV's internal surveillance system, recording everything that happened last night.
The time was 1:37 a.m. Suddenly, a pair of fluorescent eyes lit up in the darkness. They were the kind of eyes that only animals have. The owner of those eyes silently sat up from the ground and turned to look at Tang Bufan, who was sleeping on the iron bunk bed.
The surveillance footage jumped rapidly, and the glowing eyes blinked repeatedly in the darkness. Lu Yi stared at Tang Bufan in the dark for a full hour, and during that time he tried to reach out and touch him several times.
But he ultimately didn't touch Tang Bufan, and at 2:30 he lay back down and closed his eyes again.
The recording stopped, and Tang Bufan turned to look at the back of the carriage. The orc boy was in the kitchen, looking at the urine jar with a conflicted expression. He clearly didn't have the courage to urinate and filter the urine into water for Tang Bufan to drink.
Kai secretly played this video for Tang Bufan to warn him to be careful. Tang Bufan understood, but he couldn't get off the bus at the moment.
"Go to the toilet," Tang Bufan said to the orc boy who hesitated to urinate. "With cactus to eat, I won't be too thirsty today."
Upon hearing this, Lu Yi breathed a sigh of relief and put down the large glass jar with a sense of relief.
After a while, he also came to the driver's seat and sat down in the passenger seat.
“I can go out hunting for you today. I’ve seen quite a few animals in this desert, some of which don’t look severely mutated and should be less toxic. You can eat them,” Lu Yi said to Tang Bufan, then paused and looked at him with some concern.
“But I’m a little worried that if I go out, you’ll leave me behind and drive off…”
Tang Bufan remained silent. He did indeed have this plan, but looking at the dark green cacti stacked on the dashboard, he sighed softly.
"Don't worry, I haven't eaten meat for over a month, and you know where the antidote is. I need you." Tang Bufan assessed the situation and assured Lu Yi, "I won't drive away."
Hearing this, Lu Yi felt relieved and immediately said excitedly, "Then I'll go hunting when the RV stops to charge."
Tang Bufan nodded and reached for the dagger on the dashboard, but Lu Yi grabbed it first.
"Would you like some cactus? I'll peel it for you."
"Just one is enough." Tang Bufan didn't try to take it from him. His hands were shaking badly, so he sat there and started thinking about what Lu Yi had said yesterday.
According to him, the town of poisonous people is about a three-day drive from here, and it's a strange town.
"Are you sure the poison people in that town have consciousness?" Tang Bufan asked again. He had never heard of poison people with consciousness.
“Yes, and a lot of them.” Lu Yi deftly peeled the skin with his dagger, and said with certainty, “They even run a hospital.”
"A hospital?" Tang Bufan was even more incredulous. "Are you really sure?"
“I saw it with my own eyes.” Lu nodded and handed him the red fruit pulp in her hand.
Tang Bufan took the fruit, his brows furrowed: "If they can run a hospital, it means they have top-notch talent there, at least master's level intelligence... This doesn't seem like a poisoner at all."
“It’s a poison person,” Lu Yi said definitively. “Their skin is bluish-green, and their blood vessels are clearly visible, indicating severe polarization.”
"Polarization? What does that mean?" Tang Bufan didn't quite understand.
“Hmm…the smart ones are very smart, and the not-so-smart ones…they don’t even seem alive.” Lu Yi’s expression became somewhat serious: “You’ll know what’s going on when you get there.”
It was a very strange town infested with poisonous people. If Tang Bufan hadn't needed the antidote, Lu Yi wouldn't have wanted to go there again.
A note from the author:
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