Chapter 72 Beijing Ruins - 8 Tang Bufan sat down...
Tang Bufan could no longer sit still. The burning sensation in his internal organs caused him immense pain. He slid off the folding chair and fell to the ground, clutching his chest in agony.
"Ugh!" He collapsed to the ground and vomited another mouthful of blood.
Anderson remained seated, looking somewhat bewildered; he seemed unable to understand.
After a moment, his face darkened, and he lowered his head to extend his foot towards Tang Bufan, his worn military boot lifting the man's chin.
"I'll give you one last chance. Tell me the collar code." Anderson's lips were taut, and his silver-gray pupils reflected the man's painful struggle: "Tell me, and I'll immediately have Anthony drive the car back to find little Louis."
Acute liver and kidney failure caused by drug overdose will not cause immediate death, but will result in a painful struggle for some time, which may last for several hours or just a few minutes, depending on the individual's physical condition.
But ten or so minutes... should be enough to get to Lu Yi's side.
"No..." Tang Bufan's mouth was full of blood. He reached out and grabbed Anderson's foot tightly, tears streaming down his face, his eyes red and swollen. "Speaking out means accepting your fate... but I don't want to accept this fate... I, Tang Bufan, refuse to accept this fate! I want to go back... I want to go back..."
"You can't go back!" Anderson bent down and grabbed Tang Bufan's blood-stained sweater, pulling him close and staring at him fiercely. "You know it's impossible! Why don't you face reality! Stop having unrealistic dreams!"
"A dream? Cough cough... Ugh..." Tang Bufan spat a mouthful of blood onto Anderson's face, tears streaming down his face as he forced a smile. "Then how do I know... this world isn't just a dream of mine?"
His eyes were somewhat unfocused, and his pupils were slightly dilated. Anderson couldn't help but panic, thinking that it shouldn't be this fast.
"Dad!" At this moment, the voice of the AI boy came from the RV. It reported to Anderson, "Brother Kai broke through my information blockade. His system seems to have been modified."
At that moment, the RV shook violently; it was two AIs vying for control of the RV.
Tang Bufan leaned forward due to inertia, and Anderson immediately reached out and caught him.
"Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly..." Tang Bufan was losing consciousness. He lay limply in Anderson's arms, his pupils slowly dilating, his blood-stained lips opening and closing as he murmured softly:
“I won’t die…I will go back…I will wake up…and find myself lying in bed…I just took a nap…had a nightmare…I will go back to school…and see the campus in full bloom…the bustling school gate…children wearing red scarves passing by me…smiling and calling out to me…Hello…Teacher……”
He seemed to be hypnotizing himself. Anderson couldn't hear Anthony's shouts; all he could hear were Tang Bufan's fragmented words. He couldn't help but reach out to lift Tang's face. The man also looked up in a daze, staring at him with unfocused eyes.
He suddenly cupped Anderson's face in his hands with tremendous force. Anderson thought he was going to yell at him, but instead saw the man smile at him, his features gentle and beautiful.
"Anderson, you and Lu Yi are nothing more than people in my dreams."
Anderson's eyes widened slightly, unable to describe his feelings at this moment. He had driven Tang Bufan to his death, but the man seemed to have let go of his resentment. At this moment, the RV slipped on the snow as the two AIs fought over it.
The wheels screeched as Anderson saw Tang Bufan take flight. He closed his eyes, his long black hair swirling in the air, brushing against his pale face. He seemed to be flying in the air, or floating on water. A beam of winter sunlight shone in through the window, shattering into fragments. Everything inside the RV was churning and spinning. At that moment, the world seemed like a truly ethereal dream.
I will go back.
Anderson seemed to hear the man's firm voice, which struck his soul. The next second, he reached out and pulled Tang Bufan into his arms.
With a loud "BOOM!", the out-of-control RV crashed heavily into an abandoned coffee shop on the side of the road.
***
Lu Yi, who was rummaging through the warehouse in the mall, suddenly turned his head to look in the direction from which the sound came.
It was the sound of a heavy object colliding, like thunder in the otherwise silent ruined city.
The location was some distance from here. Lu Yi listened intently in the dark warehouse, wondering if another building had collapsed.
He looked down and continued rummaging through the pile of women's clothing, then suddenly stopped two seconds later.
No, a building collapse doesn't happen in one loud sound; it's a continuous, rumbling sound as it crashes to the ground.
Lu Yi suddenly felt a strong sense of unease, which made his heart beat faster. Lu Yi had almost never felt this uneasy before. He paused for a second, and then rushed outside.
The orc boy's tall body transformed into a beast as he ran, shattering the mall's glass and leaping off the high building.
Teacher... Teacher!
As Lu Yi ran, he raised his hand to activate his bracelet. At this moment, he no longer cared that his whereabouts would be discovered by his father. All he wanted to do now was contact Tang Bufan!
"Hello, Louis." A gentle, electronic female voice rang out after a long absence.
"Evelyn! Contact Anderson's AI!" Lu Yi shouted anxiously, quickly leaping over an abandoned bus and jumping onto the overpass.
He looked in the direction from which the sound had come and saw some ash from the impact; sure enough, no buildings had collapsed there.
What caused the collision? Lu Yi was extremely panicked and quickened his pace, climbing over the overpass onto the road.
“Anthony is not responding to communications,” Evelyn reported to Lu Yi.
Lu Yi gritted his teeth, leaped high, and strode forward. The weather was unusually good today. The sun shone on the snow-covered desolate city, reflecting a dazzling light. Lu Yi's hair, which was flying in the wind, was also golden, but his face was very pale.
After a full-speed run, Lu Yi turned a corner and saw the RV that had overturned and crashed into the coffee shop.
Lu Yitong's pupils shrank, and his heart skipped a beat.
"No, no, no..." Lu Yi's eyes instantly turned red. His mind went blank as he rushed into the ruins and, with a burst of madness, managed to lift the RV that usually took him and Anderson two people to pull.
The RV was flipped right-side up, revealing the door. Lu Yi, panting, pulled open the metal door and saw Tang Bufan lying in Anderson's arms with his eyes closed and his mouth full of blood.
His vision blurred, and Lu Yi's legs suddenly went weak, as if all his strength had been drained away. He even stumbled on the steps when getting into the car and almost fell to the ground.
“Teacher…” Lu Yi rushed to the two of them, tears streaming down his face from his golden-green eyes. With trembling hands, he snatched the limp Tang Bufan from Anderson’s arms.
“…He’s dead.” Anderson looked at the sobbing boy with red eyes: “He’s gone back to his own world.”
"He didn't!" Lu Yi shouted at Anderson, his body trembling as he cried and carried Tang Bufan to the back of the carriage like a child.
Undeterred, he went to look for the medical kit that should have been placed next to the desk.
"The medicine is useless! Stop thinking about it!" Anderson followed, panting, and watched as Lu Yi carried Tang Bufan in one arm and straightened the medical kit from the messy ground with the other.
"No, no..." Lu Yi opened the medical kit with one hand, her eyes blurry with tears as she searched for medicine that Tang Bufan could take, when she suddenly heard the orc behind her say:
"I poisoned him with a drug, a special drug for orcs, which would cause liver and kidney failure in humans."
Lu Yi looked up in disbelief. Anderson, with red eyes, looked at him apologetically: "He's beyond saving. Give up."
"Why...why!" Lu Yi roared angrily at him, trembling as he hugged Tang Bufan.
“Because he was destined to die,” Anderson said in a deep voice, staring directly at the orcish boy who had fallen into madness. “Didn’t you ever think about this day?”
"..." Lu Yi's eyes widened, tears streaming down her face, but she fell silent.
Of course he had thought about it... In fact, he was afraid every day, afraid that when he woke up the man next to him would be lifeless and his body would be cold. So he had to hold him, warm him with his own body, touch him with his own hands to confirm the man's heartbeat, only then would he feel at ease.
"I've thought about it... I've thought about it... But... But..." Lu Yi leaned down, looking at the man in her arms with his eyes closed, and painfully grabbed her hair, her eyes wide open and her face contorted: "I can't accept it... I can't accept it!"
Lu Yi's somewhat unfocused eyes suddenly caught sight of the silver collar encircling the man's slender neck. Lu Yi snapped out of his daze and abruptly grabbed the collar with his fingers, starting to pry it off forcefully.
"I don't want the teacher to die... I don't want the teacher to die!" Lu Yi shouted frantically, forcefully prying at the silver collar, his five fingers clenched, veins bulging on the back of his hands, and his whole body began to tremble.
Anderson watched this scene and suddenly felt incredibly irritated.
"Let him go!" Anderson crouched down and grabbed Lu Yi's wrist tightly, his brows furrowed and his face contorted with rage. "He won't even tell you the password, don't you understand?!"
"What do I need to understand?!" Lu Yi shoved Anderson away forcefully, shouting at him with red eyes, "Get out!"
Anderson was pushed to the ground by Lu Yi, and his head hit the bathroom door hard. The ancient mirror that Tang Bufan had stuck to the door fell down and landed on the ground with a "thud".
The ancient mirror didn't break, but it smashed a set of red candles on the ground. The candles slid towards Lu Yi's direction due to the interaction of forces.
That was a set of numbers: 520.
With teary eyes, Lu Yi looked at the set of bright red candles and suddenly a memory flashed through his mind: in that dark gas station supermarket, he was carrying a wicker basket and following behind Tang Bufan, while Tang Bufan was holding an oil lamp shaped like Aladdin's lamp and browsing the items on the shelves.
...
Actually, there's not much useful stuff here.
"There are still some, I think." Tang Bufan reached out and took the 520-shaped candle off the shelf. "Look, isn't this a supply?"
At the time, Lu Yi didn't understand and only found it strange: "Why did people a thousand years ago make candles into numbers?"
“This means ‘I love you’.” Tang Bufan smiled at him in the darkness, his eyes reflecting the candlelight: “In Chinese, 520 sounds like ‘I love you’ in Chinese. We used to celebrate Valentine’s Day on May 20th.”
...
Lu Yi snapped out of her daze and focused her gaze on Tang Bufan's neck, where three combination dials were located in the center of the gleaming silver collar.
"..." Lu Yi's eyelashes trembled slightly, her heart raced, and then her trembling fingers reached for the collar, her calloused fingers beginning to turn the rollers:
【5】
【2】
【0】
"Crack".
The sound was very faint, but it sounded like thunder to the two orcs: the silver collar that had been around Tang Bufan's neck had come loose.
Lu Yi was stunned, and Anderson, who had fallen to the ground, was also stunned. After a brief moment of stunned silence, Lu Yi, with red eyes, bent down and opened his mouth to Tang Bufan, who had already lost his breath, revealing sharp fangs.
Anderson instinctively reached out to stop him, but then he seemed to hear the man's ethereal voice again:
Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly.
You and Lu Yi are both just figures in my dreams.
After a brief moment of bewilderment, Anderson sat back down. He watched as the orc boy's bloodshot eyes drooped, and sharp fangs pierced the man's pale neck, injecting venom...
Tang Bufan died. To be precise, his heart stopped for about two minutes, but he had a lump in his throat that he couldn't swallow. And the moment Lu Yi's fangs pierced his neck and injected the poison into his glands, every cell in his body began to burn.
Just like the Big Bang, the original gene chains collapsed, and the incredibly domineering orc factor stuck to them. Repair enzymes began to stitch up the new fragments, and powerful nerve currents were emitted.
Anderson saw Tang Bufan, who was being held tightly in Lu Yi's arms, suddenly raise his head and straighten his body, as if he had been electrocuted, and his heart, which had stopped beating, began to contract again.
Anderson gave a wicked laugh.
Welcome back to the nightmare, madam.
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