Chapter 34 Desert Ruins - 8 Lu Yi knew Tang...
After Lu Yi learned that Tang Bufan was a time traveler, Tang Bufan noticed that Lu Yi would glance at him from time to time. Although he had looked at him often before, he was looking at him even more often now.
The two ate across a small folding table, and Lu Yi kept asking Tang Bufan questions out of curiosity.
"Will everyone in the 21st century truly have a personal AI?"
"You mean cell phones? Of course, even elementary school students have them."
"That's great. Only high-level beastmen are currently qualified to have it. What's the name of your personal AI, teacher?"
Tang Bufan laughed, "I'm not going to name my phone."
Lu Yi didn't quite understand: "Wouldn't summoning AI be inconvenient?"
"Uh... AI wasn't as intelligent back then as it is now." Tang Bufan said, then started complaining about height: "I never thought that the average height of human males would reach 1.9 meters a thousand years later. Men in the Qin and Han dynasties were only 1.6 or 1.7 meters tall, but by the 21st century they were 1.7 or 1.8 meters tall, and now they are 1.8 or 1.9 meters tall. So they've grown 10 centimeters in a thousand years, right?"
Lu Yi looked at the meat on his plate and, somewhat amused, comforted the still-grumbling Tang Bufan: "Even a small teacher is adorable."
"How can you talk like that?" Tang Bufan said, annoyed.
After the two turned off the lights and went to sleep, Lu Yi couldn't fall asleep, so he couldn't help but sit up in the dark and stare at Tang Bufan from the headboard.
"Aren't you too excited?" Tang Bufan lay on the bed, looking at him speechlessly.
“Teacher, you’re a time traveler.” Lu Yi’s golden-green beast eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Look, we’re separated by 1200 years and half the Earth, yet we’re here now, talking face to face… Don’t you find that incredible?”
“Indeed…” Tang Bufan pondered, “I should be considered your ancestor.”
“Our ancestors were a bit…” Lu Yi thought for a moment, propped his chin up with his hand by the iron bunk bed, and corrected, “We are destined to be together across a thousand years.”
"You're quite romantic, but it's really fate that we met in such a vast desert." Tang Bufan had slept for a long time today, so he chatted with Lu Yi: "Were you chased there by Anderson?"
"No, actually I originally wanted to go to the Eastern Federation, but I ended up there anyway." Lu Yi confessed to Tang Bufan, "When I heard you say you were going to the Eastern District Underground City, I thought it was a coincidence."
What are you going to the Eastern Federation for?
"Wasn't the underground city in the East District severely damaged in the earthquake? The humans there are negotiating with the orcs of the Eastern Federation, trying to get their help to build a surface base. I'll go take a look."
Lu Yi continued, telling Tang Bufan, "If humans can return to the surface, it will greatly change the current situation. Humans will be able to get rid of their resource dependence on orcs, and the peace treaty may collapse. I want to see how the Eastern Federation will handle this."
Tang Bufan lay on the bed, tilting his head to look at him, and sighed, "You really are someone who pretends to run away from home but actually does research. It's a real shame you're not a politician."
Lu Yi felt awkward: "...Since we're going to be wanderers anyway, we might as well go to the Eastern Federation and the Northern Federation instead of going to other places."
After he finished speaking, he looked down at Tang Bufan with gentle eyes and said, "But my greatest gain from my wanderings is you, teacher."
"What, are you going to study me?" Tang Bufan asked him jokingly.
“I’m researching,” Lu Yi said, his golden-green beast eyes glowing eerily in the darkness. “I’ve been watching you.”
"..." Tang Bufan suddenly felt a little strange upon hearing this. He recalled that the morning after Lu Yi got into the car, Kai Ge secretly showed him the nighttime video footage from inside the car, in which Lu Yi was silently staring at him in the dark...
Tang Bufan felt a chill run down his spine.
So the observation of him started from day one... Tang Bufan lay on the bed, licked his lips, and reached out to nudge Lu Yi, who was still lying there staring at him.
"Alright, go to sleep. We have to go down to the mothership tomorrow."
"Okay, let me get you a glass of water first." Lu Yi stood up from the floor in the darkness, assuming that Tang Bufan was licking his lips because he was thirsty.
Listening to the sounds the orc boy made in the kitchen, Tang Bufan thought for a moment and made a rather self-deprecating decision.
“Lu Yi, if I die later… and you are really curious about me, I will allow you to dissect my body.”
Lu Yi paused slightly as he was filling the cup with water. After a moment, he said softly, "Don't talk nonsense. The teacher won't die... and I won't dissect you."
“But I hope you will handle my body.” Tang Bufan wasn’t pessimistic; he was simply making arrangements for the likely future. “I don’t trust anyone else to take care of my body except you.”
The sound of water being drawn came from the darkness. The orc boy didn't respond. After the tap was turned off, Lu Yi spoke up, subtly reminding Tang Bufan, "Teacher, do you understand that what you just said had another meaning?"
Tang Bufan was stunned for a moment, then thought back for a while before he realized what was happening, and his face instantly turned red in the darkness.
"I'm talking to you seriously! You... what have you been thinking about?" Tang Bufan was a little embarrassed and annoyed, and sat up from the iron bunk bed in the dark: "I'm serious."
Lu Yi brought over a mug, which Tang Bufan took. Lu Yi then sat down again on his makeshift mat.
He began to seriously consider what Tang Bufan had said.
Tang Bufan took a sip of water and looked at him in the darkness.
“Okay, I will take care of your remains, teacher.” Lu Yi sighed softly before saying, “But I don’t want to dissect you, teacher. I will cremate you, scatter most of your ashes into the free sea, and put a small portion in a small glass bottle to carry with me… or keep a piece of your little finger bone… is that alright?”
Tang Bufan stared blankly at the mug, thinking of Lu Yi's earrings and necklace, which were his mother's keepsakes... and that he would also have a small glass bottle with him in the future, containing himself.
"Okay." Tang Bufan's throat tightened a little, but he smiled and was very satisfied with Lu Yi's arrangement. "I would be very willing to continue being with you after I die."
Lu Yi smiled and said sincerely, "Although I've only spent a little over a month with you, Teacher, I've been very happy every day I've spent with you."
Tang Bufan laughed as well: "Me too."
His own little finger bone... Tang Bufan touched the mug with his fingers, another plan forming in his mind.
If he successfully enters the East District Underground City in the future, he will cut off his little finger and give it to Lu Yi.
In this way, they are not considered separated.
After chatting for a while, Tang Bufan urged Lu Yi to go to sleep. Perhaps because of the conversation, he lay in bed and thought of the 21st century for the first time in a long time. It had only been four years, but it felt like a lifetime ago.
The noisy school gate, crowded with students and parents, gradually quieted down after nightfall. The nearby snack street lit up with neon lights, and Kai, wearing shorts, made a phone call, and he came over in his sandals.
The two sat down at their usual barbecue stall on the street. The owner, wearing an apron, brought them a plate of meat skewers. The air was filled with the aroma of grilling. They then opened a bottle of ice-cold Coke with water droplets, gulped it down, and sat on their small stools with a "ha!" feeling refreshed and tingling all over.
The past is like smoke, blown away by the wind. Tang Bufan lay on the bed, his eyes slightly red, and slowly closed them.
Tang Bufan woke up unusually early the next day, probably because he had slept well the night before and was in good spirits.
Lu Yi was making breakfast in the RV, while Tang Bufan climbed onto the roof to arrange the vegetables in the four incubators.
Anderson lay on his side on a small, grassy dune not far away, his long silver hair spread across the grass.
Tang Bufan glanced at him while tending to the vegetables and noticed that when the man wasn't talking, he looked quite respectable.
Perhaps sensing Tang Bufan's gaze, Anderson opened his eyes and saw Tang Bufan crouching on the car roof looking at him. He raised an eyebrow and said sarcastically, "Am I good-looking?"
Tang Bufan asked him from a distance, "Lu Yi and I are going down later, are you coming down?"
Although Anderson was unreliable, he was still a high-level orc, and Tang Bufan thought that having more people meant having more strength.
Anderson chuckled, didn't answer, turned over on the grassy slope, and continued to sleep with his back to Tang Bufan.
Tang Bufan didn't mind being rejected. He closed the lid of the plant cultivation box and got off the roof of the car with two freshly picked lettuce leaves.
Lu Yi had already cooked the meat and told Tang Bufan, "The meat in the freezer is almost gone. I'll go catch a few fennec foxes and kill them first, otherwise Anderson might eat them."
"Okay." Tang Bufan nodded, broke off three lettuce leaves, washed them, took them to the folding table, sat down, and put the tenderest leaf into Lu Yi's plate.
"..." Lu Yi pursed her lips.
"Eat one piece; you can't just not eat vegetables at all," Tang Bufan muttered to him.
"Teacher, put it here." Lu Yi gently tapped the corner of the plate with his fork.
"Then you must have left it." Tang Bufan thought for a moment, then simply took the lettuce back, tore it into small pieces, wrapped a piece of meat around it, and handed it to Lu Yi's mouth.
"Eat." The tone was uncompromising.
Helpless, Lu Yi could only open his mouth and carefully avoid Tang Bufan's fingers to put the lettuce wrapped with meat into his mouth.
The lettuce was crisp, but Lu Yi felt bitter. He never thought that he, a hybrid tiger-gene beastman, would one day be forced to eat vegetables.
Tang Bufan slowly fed Lu Yi a whole lettuce leaf. Lu Yi was furious but dared not say anything. After finishing breakfast, he immediately ran off to catch a fox, while Tang Bufan put on his gear in the carriage.
This time, Tang Bufan carried an extra old backpack, intending to pick up some useful small pieces of trash below.
Once he was ready, Lu Yi returned with three fennec foxes, quickly removed their heads and skins, put them in the freezer, and then got off the mothership with Tang Bufan.
Lu Yi still put his arm around Tang Bufan as they walked, while Evelyn drove, scanning the mothership's structure and displaying it in their light screen glasses.
With Evelyn's help, the two moved through the pitch-black mothership with remarkable ease.
The fourth underground level is the living area, and the seventh level is the warehouse. Evelyn's scans showed that there were many boxes and miscellaneous items left on both levels, as well as a lot of human skeletons.
A thousand years ago, a group of people took refuge in this mothership, but obviously none of them survived.
Lu Yi first took Tang Bufan to the fourth-floor living area and began to look through the rooms one by one, picking up some trash.
But after searching through boxes and cabinets, they found that there were basically no usable supplies. After going around in circles, the two finally found two gold rings and a gold necklace on a human skeleton.
Gold remained a hard currency in the world, and the two later came across a market where they could exchange it for goods.
The main purpose was to exchange Tang Bufan's medicine, so the two were still happy to have found the gold.
“If the market has internet access, you can use my card. I have a lot of money in my card.” Lu Yi saw Tang Bufan carefully putting the gold necklace and gold ring into his backpack.
“Electronic currency has too many limitations; most people don’t even have an account.” Tang Bufan hooked his arm around Lu Yi’s neck, gesturing for him to take him to the seventh-floor warehouse: “Gold is much more convenient; let’s look for more gold.”
"Okay." Lu nodded, followed the sloping stairs back to the stairwell, and led Tang Bufan down.
There were more supplies in the warehouse. Tang Bufan picked up a folding military knife and a hand-cranked flashlight. He was squatting there playing with the flashlight to generate electricity when he almost fell off the sloping ground.
Lu Yi swiftly grabbed Tang Bufan's backpack and pulled him back.
"Why did it suddenly tilt forward?" Lu Yi was startled by Tang Bufan.
"...I was squatting down properly, and suddenly my body fell down on its own." Tang Bufan was also flustered by his own actions, something that had never happened before.
The two looked at each other and both understood.
Tang Bufan's brain is malfunctioning; the area responsible for his balance is beginning to be affected by the toxins.
The two remained silent for a long time afterward. Lu Yi and Tang Bufan followed even closer, searching through the dusty warehouse until they found a gold ring and a gold bracelet on a woman's skeleton, which eased their anxiety somewhat.
“This is an American space carrier.” Tang Bufan, wearing a light-screen glasses, examined the antique gold bracelet in the darkness. “But I guess this lady is Chinese; the carving is a Chinese style.”
"It's a pity that the entire North America has fallen." Lu Yi had heard of the ancient country of the United States, a world superpower a thousand years ago. It originally had several underground cities, but the air filtration system malfunctioned due to the use of parts and software made in ancient India, causing the underground city system to completely collapse.
Most of the top scientists and engineers from the American region were taken in by their West District underground city, with a small number going to the North and East Districts. As for the wealthy... the wealthy have little value in the apocalypse.
The two left the warehouse and continued downwards, but their haul was meager, and they did not find another mutated poisonous human.
“That mutated poison human should be the only successful one,” Lu Yi guessed. “Or perhaps it was abandoned by that organization because it grew too big to leave the power compartment.”
Tang Bufan thought of the terrifying face of the poisonous man, which was as big as a table and probably two stories tall. He figured it was impossible for him to get out of the power compartment, so he assumed it was an abandoned experimental subject.
"I wonder how he survived in the engine room," Tang Bufan remarked, hooking his arm around Lu Yi's neck and patting his chest. "Let's go up."
When the two returned to the ground, Anderson had already disappeared. Tang Bufan thought about Anderson's disdainful attitude towards him this morning, and realized that Anderson must have known all along that there was nothing down there, so he couldn't be bothered to pay attention to him.
Tang Bufan then took off his backpack and squatted down by the pool to wash the gold. Lu Yi stood next to him, worried, and only looked up when he saw that Tang Bufan was squatting steadily this time.
The hall was very tall and large, but the stairs were too high to climb. So Lu Yi said to Tang Bufan, "Teacher, I'll go up and take a look. Be careful."
“Go ahead, there are only some foxes and lizards here, just small desert animals, they can’t hurt me.” Tang Bufan squatted down and nodded.
The two had just finished searching the area below and found no signs of poison. Lu Yi felt quite relieved, so he walked to a sand dune, jumped high, grabbed the edge of a floor, and climbed up the wall like Spider-Man.
Tang Bufan looked up at the gold with envy for a while, then lowered his head to continue washing it, playfully putting the rings and bracelets on his hands, letting them hang loosely.
Afterwards, I took the gold backpack back to the RV to shower, planning to rehydrate and continue my journey that night.
Lu Yi came down quickly, bringing back the burnt-out chip from the beacon. Tang Bufan came out after taking a shower and saw him sitting at the folding table, using two thin connectors to attach the chip, while the other end of the wire was on Evelyn.
Tang Bufan dried his hair as he went over and realized that Lu Yi's bracelet could actually pull out two thin threads.
"Circuit connected... bypassing the damaged area... memory cell not fully carbonized detected, attempting to read data..." Evelyn's gentle electronic voice announced methodically.
Tang Bufan immediately knocked down a chair from the wall and sat down opposite Lu Yi, nervously staring at the small black chip.
"The information unit is encrypted, and we are attempting to crack it..."
"Crack failed, second attempt in progress... Reboot... squeak squeak squeak... heavy heavy heavy... heavy reboot..."
Evelyn suddenly emitted a strange electrical sound. Lu Yi sensed something was wrong and immediately removed the two connectors that were connected to the chip. His bracelet screen flickered and then went dark.
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