Chapter 63 Mountain Tunnel - 7 *** ……
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At the same time Anderson woke up, Lu Yi also woke up. Hearing Anderson get up, he immediately looked up at him.
Anderson sat on the bearskin rug, reaching to remove the gauze from his neck. He was frowning and looked rather unwell, but his handsome face was no longer flushed.
Lu Yi looked down at Tang Bufan in his arms again. The man's face was deathly pale, and his breathing was so slow that it was almost imperceptible.
Lu Yixin was startled and immediately reached out from under the covers to touch his left chest. Only after feeling the man's gently beating heart did she relax.
He tiptoed out of bed.
"How is it?" Lu Yi walked over to Anderson's mattress and squatted down. His golden-green eyes looked at Anderson's neck and found that the dense blisters had flattened, but the skin in that area was still red.
“He’s not dead.” Anderson frowned and clicked his tongue. “That organization is a real pain in the neck.”
"Have some meat." Lu Yi pointed to the large plate of meat on the folding table. He and Tang Bufan had put it there to thaw before going to bed, and because the temperature was very low, they didn't have to worry about the meat spoiling.
Anderson was hungry, so he threw off the animal skin blanket and stood up. Lu Yi felt that he also needed to eat something, so he went to the kitchen and opened the freezer.
The two tall orcs began to wolf down the raw meat. Lu Yi thought that after he finished eating, he would go into the air defense base by himself to take a look, leaving Anderson in the car to take care of Tang Bufan.
Anderson suddenly burst into laughter as he ate. Lu Yi frowned and looked up at him. Seeing that he looked somewhat crazy, she was both worried and puzzled.
"why are you laughing?"
"Thinking about how pathetic we are," Anderson said, squinting and looking at Lu Yi, who also looked noticeably haggard. "Thinking about how pathetic you are."
Lu Yi was slightly taken aback. He turned his head to look at the car window. The frosted glass reflected his current appearance. He was wearing a loose, old sweater with frayed edges. His blond hair was a little messy because he had just woken up. His handsome face was a little thinner than before.
Lu Yi looked in the mirror carefully and was quite satisfied.
"I think I'm handsome now." Lu Yi reached out and touched his chin. "I've become more manly."
Since meeting Tang Bufan, he has become increasingly self-conscious about his young age, and sometimes Tang Bufan's use of his age to put him in a very uncomfortable position.
Anderson was speechless at his narcissism. He had intended to mock him, but the man didn't seem to care.
However, looking at Lu Yi's face, which had almost lost its youthful innocence, he had to admit that the past six months of wandering had indeed made Lu Yi much more mature.
"What's the use of being manly? Does anyone even care?" Anderson pointed with his chin at Tang Bufan, who was lying there asleep, and said sarcastically, "He doesn't accept you anyway."
"..." These words finally struck a chord with Lu Yi, who lowered his head and continued eating the raw meat, his expression becoming somewhat dejected.
My heart isn't with you. Lu Yi had never imagined anyone would say such a thing to him.
“The teacher likes me, but… liking isn’t everything to him.” Lu Yi lowered her eyes and suddenly told Anderson, “My father said something similar before. He said my mother likes him, but she is a leader of the resistance, so she can’t show that she loves him. Her madness is because she is held hostage by her organization and her accomplices. She has to show hatred because only in that way can she have peace of mind and not be blamed by her companions.”
Anderson frowned. He hated Anna and didn't want to hear anything about her.
Lu Yi slowly said, "At the time, I didn't quite believe my father's words. If you love someone, how could you bear to hurt them or leave them? But now... I vaguely understand. My teacher is also pursuing inner peace."
So when Tang Bufan said those words to him, his eyes were red.
"That only shows that you don't love them enough," Anderson said coldly. "True love means being able to give up everything for the other person."
After saying that, he reprimanded Lu Yi with some displeasure: "You're too spineless. You just let him leave? Don't you have any principles of your own?"
"Insist on what? Forcibly bind people to your side? Like my father?" Lu Yi felt bitter, recalling the scene he had witnessed since childhood: "No, that's just bullying people in the name of love."
Anderson fell silent, then suddenly chuckled, finding it quite strange: "It's unbelievable that Anna and Hans, two people like them, could have a son like you."
Lu Yi didn't know if he was praising or scolding him. He smiled faintly, not caring, and turned to look at Tang Bufan sleeping there. He still couldn't shake off the melancholy in his heart.
After quickly finishing the rest of the meat, Lu Yi told Anderson, "I'll go back to the base and see if there are any clues about that organization."
“I’ll go with you.” Although Anderson was still a little unwell, his allergy symptoms had almost disappeared.
"No need, you stay in the car with the teacher." Lu Yi wasn't comfortable leaving Tang Bufan alone in the car.
“We’ve basically wiped out all the poisoners in the tunnel, what could possibly happen to him?” Anderson rolled his eyes, thinking he was being overprotective: “Besides, we have Kai, he’ll contact us if anything happens.”
The air defense base wasn't deep, so Kai and Anthony were able to maintain a continuous signal.
Lu Yi hesitated for a moment before reluctantly agreeing to let Anderson accompany him, mainly because he couldn't control him at all.
The two then got out of the RV one after the other and opened the heavy, rusty iron door in the dark tunnel.
There was nothing on the first floor, of course. The two went down the iron staircase to the basement and began to check each room one by one.
The entire base was silent. Their sensitive ears couldn't hear a sound, but Anthony's radar still couldn't scan the third basement level. There was definitely something blocking signals on that level.
"Tell me honestly, what exactly is the relationship between Madam and that organization?" Anderson suddenly asked Lu Yi.
Lu Yi paused for a moment before realizing that the "madam" he was referring to was Tang Bufan, and then said, "He is a victim of that organization."
“You’ve already said that.” Anderson impatiently kicked open a broken iron door. “I overheard his conversation with that man. It involved a study? I know you know about that study.”
Lu Yi remained silent. Even though he trusted Anderson now, it was still inconvenient for him to reveal that Tang Bufan was a time traveler.
After thinking for a moment, Lu Yi said, "I'll talk to the teacher about it later and see if he's willing to tell you."
Anderson scoffed and went down to the second basement level with Lu Yi.
The long, gloomy corridor still bore the marks of the two poisoners' explosion; their green bloodstains were on the floor, walls, and ceiling, and the air reeked of a foul, fishy stench.
Because the base was sealed off, the smell did not dissipate easily, so both of them raised their arms to cover their mouths and noses to avoid being poisoned or having an allergic reaction.
Lu Yi saw the clothes of the two poisoners lying on the ground. They were two large linen T-shirts with rough fabric. He walked over and kicked them with his foot. He lifted the clothes with his military boots and saw some fragments of limbs. The dark green skin was soft and limp, connected to broken and rotten flesh, like rotten peaches.
Lu Yi asked Anderson, "About how old were those two poisoners? What did they look like?"
“Very thin and small, sixteen or seventeen years old, maybe a little older, just looked young.” Anderson covered his mouth and nose as he recalled, “He had no hair, and his flesh felt like rotten fruit when squeezed, but he was very clear-headed, almost reaching the level of normal human intelligence.”
Lu Yi frowned: "So that organization has completely mastered the method to restore the sanity of the poisoned people?"
"The price is becoming a monster." Anderson sneered. "If it were me, I would rather live in a daze than wake up to find myself with roots growing on my hands and feet and my skin hardening."
Lu Yi thought that even normal poisoners weren't good-looking.
“It’s a pity this place is too far from our Western Federation, otherwise we could send these remains to the research institute,” Lu Yi said, covering his mouth and nose as he continued to explore.
“They might already be at our Federation border,” Anderson said sarcastically. “The winged poison people are airdropping these ‘self-destructing’ poison people. With the power of this poison, all the low- to mid-level orcs will be wiped out.”
Severe allergic reactions can directly cause shock and death. Even high-level orcs reacted so strongly to the toxins, let alone low- and middle-level orcs.
Upon hearing this, Lu Yi immediately became worried.
The two pushed open the iron door that had locked the android. The air was thick with the pungent smell of burning, and the man had been burned to nothing but a metallic skeleton.
The two men walked over and squatted down, one on each side. Anderson looked at the man's eye socket, where the mini military knife was still stuck, and couldn't help but smile. He then reached out and pulled the mini military knife out.
"When the lady insisted on exchanging with me, she tossed me this military knife. I thought she was joking, but I never expected that this little military knife would actually save our lives." Anderson tossed the military knife, quite emotional.
The android wasn't burned to death; rather, its brain chip was damaged when the miniature military knife pierced its eye socket.
Of course, the lighter that Tang Bufan gave also had the effect of subduing the enemy.
"Now can you believe he's really not a member of that organization?" Lu Yi asked him, trying to disassemble the skull with both hands.
“That’s not necessarily true,” Anderson said slyly. “Maybe it’s all an act? I think Madam is quite a good actress.”
Lu Yi had no choice but to focus on dismantling the extremely hard skull.
"Besides, even if he's not really a member of that organization, it's still true that he wants to go find them, right?" Anderson squatted down and looked at him. "Then didn't he just lead you all the way to that organization?"
Lu Yi frowned slightly.
Anderson continued, his expression becoming more serious: "You are the successor to the throne of the Western Federation. Have you considered the impact your fall into enemy hands would have on the entire Western Federation?"
Lu Yi remained silent and removed a damaged chip from the skull.
Seeing that he was avoiding the question, Anderson gave a cold laugh.
Lu Yi then took out the nuclear battery from the android, only to find to his disappointment that it had been burned out and he could only throw it back into the charred remains.
Afterwards, the two went to the cafeteria at the end of the corridor, where they found a layer of black soil on the ground. The two mutated poison people lived off this soil.
They went down three levels and found that this level was the ultimate air defense layer with radiation protection barriers, which is why Anthony's radar could not scan this level. However, after searching around, the two of them found no clues about the organization, not even any useful supplies.
There were quite a few empty cans and water bottles, and a skeleton nearby. A thousand years ago, everyone else went out to seek survival, but this person stubbornly hid in this bunker and refused to leave. Dying alone was his fate.
“Since that android said it was there to lure us in, it wouldn’t leave anything that would reveal anything about the organization,” Anderson said disappointedly. “Let’s go.”
Lu nodded, pocketed the only chip he had gained, and left the air defense base with Anderson.
Tang Bufan was still sleeping on the thick animal hide and mattress. Lu Yi first squatted down and stared at him for a while, then gently touched his thin cheek with his fingers before getting up and walking towards the driver's seat.
"Brother Kai, let's start."
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