Chapter 3 Crossing the Apocalypse - 3 "I understand." The orc...
A brief silence fell over the car, then the orc boy nodded knowingly.
“I understand.” He raised his hands to Tang Bufan: “I will try not to touch you.”
The resistance-seeking humans abhorred the orcs' touch.
After he finished speaking, he turned around to look at the huge carriage behind him, but he couldn't sense anyone else's presence.
Tang Bufan was the only person in the RV.
“This is a Type B armored cargo vehicle from the Northern Federation of Orcs…” The orc boy examined the truck. Although the vehicle had undergone numerous modifications, he recognized it at a glance. “Where is the original owner of this vehicle?”
Tang Bufan's heart skipped a beat, and he lied, "It doesn't have an original owner. I found this car."
The orc boy listened in silence. After a while, he turned back and gently exposed Tang Bufan: "The car's AI obeys you. It can't listen to you without the original owner's authorization."
The Type B armored vehicle is an important asset in the military, and its AI is of a high level, making it impossible for anyone other than a top-tier hacker to intrude and reset the system.
Tang Bufan's heart pounded when his lie was exposed. After a long while, he sighed helplessly and answered in a hoarse voice, "I killed him."
The orc boy was immediately taken aback.
He couldn't help but take another look at Tang Bufan. The man was very short, probably only about 1.75 meters tall. Although he was wrapped in a tattered black cloth, it was clear that he was very thin, the kind of person who had been starved for a long time.
His hands were still trembling slightly, indicating that he was already deeply poisoned. Could a body that could be blown over by the wind really kill an orc?
Facing the orc boy's questioning gaze, Tang Bufan felt nervous, so he turned around and asked him, "And you? You're a high-ranking orc, what are you doing here?"
The orc class is clearly divided. The higher orcs all live in the newly built federation. Even if they lead a team to collect supplies, they will not come to this godforsaken desert.
This is why Tang Bufan dared to reduce the RV's warning range to 500 meters. He had always done this to save energy, and as long as he went to a remote area, he would not encounter anyone. Who knew that this time the vehicle would overturn.
When Tang Bufan turned the tables and asked him a question, the orc boy immediately looked a little embarrassed.
"Actually... I was expelled from the Federation." The orc boy stammered, explaining somewhat embarrassedly, "I don't get along with my brother. My sister-in-law just asked me for help, saying that my brother was abusing her, so I... uh... used that as an excuse to challenge my brother to a duel."
Tang Bufan was slightly taken aback, not expecting to hear such a complicated family story.
"You like your sister-in-law?" He gave the boy a strange look, wondering why someone so young would do something so ruthless.
"No! Of course not!" The orc boy blushed slightly under his gaze and quickly waved his hands in denial: "I just want to leave home."
He paused, then added, "Any other reason would make people come looking for me... I don't want them to come looking for me."
"So you ran away from home." Tang Bufan understood somewhat.
“They were expelled.” The orc boy breathed a slight sigh of relief when he saw that the orc had listened to his explanation: “According to federal law, orcs who lose a duel are not allowed to return.”
Tang Bufan looked at his still somewhat youthful face and asked, "How old are you?"
17.
"Does this federal law apply to minors?" Tang Bufan asked him. "Aren't you only allowed to legally marry at 18?"
The orc boy was slightly taken aback, then frowned slightly, clearly not expecting this.
"I'll be an adult in six months." He tried to justify himself, "I should be eligible."
Tang Bufan neither agreed nor disagreed.
Since the boy appeared, apart from smashing his own car window, he has behaved very well and spoken very politely, which made Tang Bufan relax a bit and his body less tense.
"So you're trying to steal my car now?" Tang Bufan asked.
"No, I won't steal it." The orc boy lowered his head, looking slightly guilty.
Tang Bufan knew that he originally wanted to steal it, but he didn't expect that he was a human, so he changed his mind.
Just as there are pro-beast factions among humans, there are also groups of beastmen who love and care for humans, and this beastman boy in front of us is clearly one of them.
At least on the surface it is.
"Then you..." Tang Bufan wondered if it was possible to politely ask him to leave.
Where are you going?
Then he was interrupted by the orc boy.
"..." Tang Bufan paused slightly before slowly saying, "East District Underground City."
He found the orc boy to be quite perceptive.
"Then let me see you off." The orc boy smiled slightly. "It's too dangerous for you to travel alone as a human. I'll protect you."
"You are the greatest danger." Tang Bufan thought to himself, then looked up at the orc boy's enormous height of over 2.2 meters...
There was absolutely no way to refuse; one punch from them and he'd be dead. Tang Bufan sighed, hesitantly reaching up to touch his neck.
"Don't worry, I won't mark you!" The orc boy understood immediately, his one gold and one green eye looking at Tang Bufan earnestly and obediently: "I have no intention of traveling with anyone, and..."
He looked at Tang Bufan, who was completely covered by a tattered black cloth: "I don't even know what you look like."
That's true. Tang Bufan chuckled self-deprecatingly. In the past, he could have boasted about his good looks, but now he was no longer recognizable as a human being. Why would a high-level orc like him even look at him?
That's worrying unnecessarily. Tang Bufan considered the current situation and could only nod.
“Alright, you can come with me for now.” Tang Bufan knew he didn’t have the power to warn him, but he still lowered his voice slightly: “But you absolutely cannot interfere with my trip to the East District.”
"Don't worry, it won't affect anything," the orc boy assured him obediently.
Having received his assurance, Tang Bufan's attitude softened slightly, and he restarted the RV.
"Let's go pick some cacti from where we just came from."
The orc boy obediently sat in the passenger seat, and Tang Bufan noticed out of the corner of his eye that he would occasionally glance at him.
"Do you want to go back to the dungeon?" the orc boy asked Tang Bufan curiously.
Tang Bufan, driving, grunted in response and said to him, "No need to use 'you' with me, just use 'you'."
“Okay.” The orc boy obediently agreed.
After a while, she continued to talk to Tang Bufan.
“You’re a member of the resistance, and now you’re just wandering around here, which is tantamount to being a fugitive. The dungeon is definitely after you.” The orc boy told him the truth: “You can’t go back without connections.”
“I have connections.” Tang Bufan’s mind conjured up the image of the man in the white coat. He looked at the scorching desert ahead, his gaze becoming complicated. “I know a high-ranking official in the underground city. He’s a PhD. If I can find him, I can enter the underground city.”
That person said they would save him, even though four years have passed.
"Doctor..." The orc boy understood: "As long as you have a way back, I'll protect you on the way."
Tang Bufan gave a faint "hmm".
"By the way, what's your name?" Tang Bufan realized he didn't know his name.
The orc boy didn't answer him immediately, but thought for a moment before saying, "Lu Yi."
"Lu Yi?" Tang Bufan asked doubtfully, "Lu as in land, and Yi as in one, two, three, four?"
“Yes, the land as in land, and the one as in one, two, three, four.” The orc boy nodded, repeating his words.
"A pseudonym," Tang Bufan thought to himself, then continued driving indifferently.
Anyway, they were just passing through.
Because Lu Yi broke the right-side window, there was a lot of broken glass around the two of them. Luckily, Tang Bufan was wrapped in black cloth, otherwise he would have been cut in several places.
Tang Bufan was driving, and Lu Yi, having nothing to do, broke off shards of glass from the car window and threw them out, then used his hand to gather up the glass shards on the front desk.
"Be careful not to cut yourself," Tang Bufan casually reminded him.
"It's alright, it won't hurt me." Lu Yi said, picking up a beautiful piece of broken glass and looking at it in the dazzling sunlight. The light from the broken glass shone on his face, making his extremely handsome face look like a dream.
Tang Bufan was somewhat dazed. Even while driving, he couldn't help but glance at him again, sensing a long-lost innocence in him.
17...that is, the age of being in the second year of high school.
"At your age, you should be studying hard in school," Tang Bufan couldn't help but say to him. "I've heard that the illiteracy rate among orcs is very high. In this world, it's hard to even survive. In the apocalypse, it's not easy to have the opportunity to study. You should cherish it."
The lecture came suddenly, and the orc boy somewhat hesitantly put down the shards of glass in his hand.
Then he sat up straight.
“It’s summer vacation now,” he said to Tang Bufan. “I have good grades and I’ve been studying hard.”
"You're attending a military academy?" Tang Bufan glanced at his close-fitting white vest and dark green military trousers as he drove, a standard military training uniform.
“…Commander Academy.” After answering, Lu Yi’s eyes began to scrutinize the man who was completely shrouded in clothing: “You don’t seem to know much about orcs?”
Normal people know that high-ranking orcs receive special education and become commanders upon graduation, so they wouldn't ask a surprising question like, "Did you attend a military academy?"
Realizing that he had noticed something was wrong, Tang Bufan immediately regretted talking too much.
He has been in this post-apocalyptic world for four years, but because he has been hiding and running away, he still knows very little about this world.
Everything he knew was told to him by Wolfman and Eberron.
"I...I live in the slums of the underground city, so I don't know much." Tang Bufan hastily fabricated a backstory for himself.
Whether the orc boy believed it or not, he glanced at Tang Bufan again before going back to cleaning up the broken glass.
Tang Bufan silently breathed a sigh of relief.
The thought that he had run away at the age of 17 and was not studying properly was something that he couldn't get over.
Tang Bufan drove around thinking it over and over, and still felt it would be a shame not to try to persuade him.
“Go back to school after summer vacation,” Tang Bufan said to him seriously. “No matter how bad things are between you and your brother, you have to understand that your education is your own. You only have one more year left, it would be a pity to drop out.”
Here comes the lecturing again. Lu Yi suddenly found it a little amusing.
"Are you concerned about me?" he asked Tang Bufan with a slight smile, even though they had only known each other for half an hour.
“You’re a minor.” Tang Bufan knew he was meddling, but he couldn’t help it: “Your mother will worry about you if you run away like this.”
Lu Yi's smile faded slightly, which Tang Bufan noticed. Just as he was wondering what was going on, he heard Lu Yi say:
“My mother has passed away, and the only thing I remember about that family is her tombstone.”
Tang Bufan, who was driving, was slightly taken aback. The atmosphere in the driver's seat became somewhat heavy. Realizing that he had said something wrong, Tang Bufan apologized to the boy in a low voice.
"Feel sorry."
"It's alright, she's been gone for a long time." Lu Yi regained her composure and then asked him, "Were you a teacher before?"
Tang Bufan felt a lump in his throat, and his hand gripping the steering wheel tightened suddenly.
He didn't answer, but Lu Yi understood as soon as he saw Lu Yi's hands gripping the steering wheel tightly.
"Hello, teacher."
Tang Bufan suddenly felt a bit annoyed with him; he was so perceptive, tearing open his past in an instant.
A note from the author:
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