Chapter 64 Mountain Tunnel - 8 The RV in the Dark...
The RV maintained a moderate speed as it moved through the dark tunnel. Lu Yi sat in the driver's seat, checking the RV's condition. After the attack by the bat-winged poisoners, the RV's left-side camera was damaged, and a plant cultivation box had lost signal. Fortunately, the solar panels were protected by steel roller shutters and were not damaged.
"Lu Yi, we're almost out of gas." Kai said to Lu Yi in a gentle, electronic male voice, "We need to leave this place as soon as possible and get to a sunny spot to use solar power."
“But it’s winter now, and there might not be any sunshine even if we leave here.” Lu Yi looked worriedly at the map on the glass screen. Anthony’s satellite positioning showed that they had reached the eastern edge of the Greater Khingan Mountains.
The only good news so far is that this extremely deep and long tunnel does indeed reach the Northeast Plain.
“The tunnel highway must connect to the city. If there’s really no sunlight, we’ll have to try looking for oil in the city ruins,” Kai said.
Lu Yi frowned. A thousand years ago, humans abandoned on the ground searched for supplies to survive until they mutated into poisonous humans. Could they really still find gasoline in the ruins of the city?
He sighed softly.
After checking the general condition of the RV, Lu Yi returned to the vehicle. Anderson was standing at the bathroom door looking in the mirror at the red mark on his neck.
"How's your neck?" Lu Yi asked with concern, walking to the frosty window and folding down a chair to sit down.
"The area with blisters will probably peel off." Anderson was extremely annoyed. As a former nobleman, he naturally cared about his appearance. "Hopefully, the red marks will disappear after the peeling."
Otherwise it will look too much like a burn, which is unsightly.
Looking at Anderson, who was only 31 years old and still very young and handsome, Lu Yi hesitated for a moment, but ultimately did not ask him if he planned to get married.
Anderson has suffered too much in his marriage.
The RV moved forward through the dilapidated tunnel, its wheels swaying slightly as they rolled over the uneven ground. With nothing else to do, Lu Yi went back to bed to warm Tang Bufan's bed, his hand instinctively touching the man's thin chest under the covers.
During the journey, the RV encountered a few scattered bat-winged poisoners, but they did not cause much damage to the RV, and Kai drove past them at high speed.
After driving in the dark for about half an hour, the RV left the tunnel and entered a thick layer of snow, then drove into another tunnel...
Lu Yi, holding Tang Bufan, fell asleep in the swaying car. Suddenly, he felt the man beside him get up. Lu Yi immediately opened his eyes and discovered that there was light outside.
The dappled moonlight streamed in through the gaps in the curtains, cool and clear. Tang Bufan sat there wearing a loose, worn-out sweater, turning his head to look out the window. His long black hair was draped behind him, and his exposed ears and a small part of his face were so white they seemed to glow.
Perhaps because he had been in the darkness for so long, the moonlight seemed so clear and bright that even the thin man sitting there seemed to have an unreal sense of light.
Lu lay there on one side, unable to help but stare in amazement, feeling a deep fondness in his heart.
His teacher is like the moon.
After staring at it for a while, Lu Yi finally came to his senses. He hurriedly reached out to touch Tang Bufan's pale hand, which was indeed almost cold.
"Teacher, it's cold." Lu Yi immediately sat up from the floor and picked up the wolfskin coat that was placed next to him, putting it on Tang Bufan.
Tang Bufan turned to look at him, his eyes dark and devoid of any emotion. He quietly met Lu Yi's gaze without any reaction.
Lu Yi suddenly felt afraid as he was stared at.
"Teacher..." Lu Yi grabbed Tang Bufan's hand, his Adam's apple bobbing, inexplicably nervous: "I'm Lu Yi!"
Tang Bufan remained unresponsive, sitting quietly on the mattress. Lu Yi looked at his emotionless eyes, his gaze trembled slightly, and his throat tightened.
He reached out and hugged Tang Bufan, repeating again, "Teacher... I'm Lu Yi... I'm Lu Yi..."
Tang Bufan let him hold him. Perhaps it was because Lu Yi's body temperature was high that he felt comfortable, so he gently rested his head in Lu Yi's arms.
Lu Yi's chest muscles were still stitched up, and the pain from Tang Bufan pressing against the wound through his sweater made Lu Yi feel at ease... He would rather be hurt by Tang Bufan than have him remain unresponsive.
"Lu Yi..." Tang Bufan called him softly, as if in a dream.
"I'm here!" Lu Yi immediately replied in a hoarse voice.
Tang Bufan gently nuzzled against Lu Yi's chest, rubbing against Lu Yi's wound. The pain made Lu Yi wince slightly, but he still clung to the man even tighter, seemingly enjoying it.
Tang Bufan lowered his long-lashed eyes.
"Chen Fei..."
"..." Lu Yixin's heart clenched, and this time she didn't answer anything.
Tang Bufan slowly closed his eyes and fell asleep in his arms.
Lu Yi held him, her eyes reddening. After a long while, she gently laid the man in her arms down on the mattress and covered him with a blanket.
He suddenly remembered that he hadn't brewed medicine for Tang Bufan for over a day.
Lu Yi suppressed his emotions, got up from the ground, and turned his head to find Anderson sitting on a camping chair against the wall, his silver-gray eyes looking at them.
"Love is purgatory, can you feel it?" Anderson asked him.
Lu Yi ignored his sarcasm and walked towards the kitchen in the cold moonlight.
"Welcome to Hell." Anderson smirked and looked down at the floating screen.
Anderson was watching the news. Suspected mutated poisonous people had appeared on the western border of the Federation, but their numbers were small and they were not very strong. Surprisingly, the northern federation was not the eastern federation that was most affected.
Several villages and towns in the Northern Federation have been invaded by mutated poisoners, resulting in heavy casualties. The Northern Federation has had to send troops to the border to be stationed in the midst of the extreme winter snow.
“That organization isn’t in the East District underground city,” Anderson concluded from the news. “They’re on the surface; otherwise, they couldn’t be conducting experiments all over the world.”
Lu Yi had the same guess. Each dungeon was being watched by the orc federation to which it belonged, and an army was stationed next to the entrance and exit of each dungeon. Every human entering and leaving was recorded, so it was impossible for them to be wandering around like that.
“That organization has a base on the ground,” Lu Yi said in the kitchen, his tall and slender body leaning against the counter, while the induction cooker next to him was simmering Chinese medicine, filling the air with a strong medicinal smell.
"But how come they have a base on the ground?" Anderson found it very strange. "Humans moved to underground cities because they couldn't survive on the ground. It wasn't until we orcs were invented that humans set foot on the continent again. Where did they find the time to build a new ground base?"
“Perhaps it’s not new, but old,” Lu Yi said in a deep voice. “In that small town in the desert, a mutated poisoner revealed that their ‘father’ was on the island.”
After Lu Yi finished speaking, his gaze sharpened slightly, and he asked Anderson, "Do you know about Penglai Island?"
“Penglai Base?” Anderson knew about it, of course. He then called out to Anthony, “Son, the map.”
"Yes, Daddy!" The AI boy immediately projected a holographic map into the air and automatically marked the location of the Penglai base, which is located in the southern part of the Bohai Sea.
Anderson stared at the map, frowning in thought: "I know this base was a maritime base built with great effort by ancient China, but isn't it too close to Taicheng?"
Taicheng is the central city of the Eastern Federation of Orcs.
"It's precisely because it's close enough that it's convenient for humans to escape from Taicheng to that place," Lu Yi said. "Check how many human prisoners have escaped since the establishment of the Eastern Federation."
“Anthony,” Anderson called to his son again.
"Searching..." The AI boy began reviewing network data, and after seven or eight seconds replied, "Since the signing of the peace treaty, a total of 116 humans have escaped from the Eastern Federation. 73 have been captured and brought back, 19 have died, and 24 are missing. Uncle Tang is one of the 24 missing."
"Only 24 people are missing?" Lu Yi frowned. This number was too small and did not match the organization's large-scale operations at all.
"Could there be concealed data?" Anderson asked. "For example, a human team that left the underground city under the guise of scientific research to conduct experiments on the surface, and then disappeared entirely?"
"The Eastern Federation would make such a huge mistake by making the entire team disappear?" Lu Yi thought this was too outrageous. The Western Federation would send a force to protect and monitor humans.
“If it’s research in aerospace, maybe it really is possible,” Anderson guessed. “The whole team escaped in a spacecraft, and afterwards the Eastern Federation covered it up to avoid public backlash.”
"..." When Lu heard him say that, he felt that it was not impossible.
Anderson stared intently at the floating map before him, then suddenly asked, "Madam, are you looking for that organization? Are you planning to send it to this Penglai Island?"
Lu Yi thought for a moment in silence, then nodded: "Yes."
Anderson looked up at him, squinting: "If that organization is really hiding on this island, wouldn't you have gone straight into their headquarters?"
Lu Yi fell silent; he knew what Anderson wanted to say.
Anderson sneered: "I think you've really gone mad from being in love. Don't you know your place? You're practically begging to be someone's hostage?"
Lu Yi felt helpless. Even though he had left the Western Federation and had no intention of returning, he was Hans's son, and that would never change. He couldn't just casually step into the headquarters of a resistance organization.
His gaze then fell upon the towering mountain on the North China Plain on the map.
“I’ll take the teacher to Taicheng first. Since that organization comes from the east, the Guo family can’t possibly be unaware of it,” Lu Yi said, swiping his finger across the floating map to see their current location. Their red dot was flashing on the map, indicating that they had left the Greater Khingan Mountains and officially entered the Northeast Plain.
The RV was heading south.
Lu Yi's gaze followed its path, his golden-green beast eyes fixed on a prominent star on the map. It was the ruins of a very large city, the ancient capital of China, Beijing.
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