Chapter 232 - 214: The Two of Us 2

Chapter 232: Chapter 214: The Two of Us 2

"Then what does that have to do with Cheng Qi?" Ye Qingniao asked, confused.

"It has nothing to do with him, of course, but it has everything to do with this vehicle..."

Lin Fan patted the armored vehicle he was sitting on.

"It recognizes this armored vehicle. It’s had success with it before... well, it almost succeeded."

Ye Qingniao obviously knew he was referring to Vehicle One, whose entire crew had been sacrificed, but she didn’t understand what that had to do with Lin Fan.

"Cheng Qi is sitting in the vehicle, and this thick layer of armor is protecting him,"

When Lin Fan saw that Ye Qingniao wasn’t reacting, he continued to explain,

"But if I were to get inside, this thick layer of armor would be protecting that ’tree’."

"Ah—I get it!"

Ye Qingniao suddenly had an epiphany.

"It let Cheng Qi in to set a mousetrap for you!"

"...What kind of lousy metaphor is that."

Lin Fan pinched her cheek with two fingers and casually brushed her soaking-wet hair back.

The really short parts of her hair would stick up again after he smoothed them back, looking fluffy. He continued to stroke it as he spoke,

"But that’s more or less what I mean."

"So you’re saying, the moment you seemed even a little weak or tired and got in the vehicle, countless tentacles would immediately swarm over and bind this vehicle shut, making it impossible to open any of the hatches..."

As Ye Qingniao thought through the scenario, a sudden wave of fear washed over her. Lin Fan felt her brow furrow and reached out to smooth it again.

"And none of your attacks would be able to tear apart an entire armored vehicle from the inside... You wouldn’t even be able to stand up straight. At that point..."

"At that point, the three of us would become a can of mixed fruit, and all it would have to do is wait..."

Lin Fan continued her train of thought,

"Wait until I’m suffocated into submission, despairing, and tenderized. Ready to eat right out of the can."

"Is it... really that cunning?"

After hearing Lin Fan’s deduction, Ye Qingniao lifted one side of the leather flap. Her bright eye looked at Lin Fan, seemingly in shock, and she murmured,

"I don’t feel like it is..."

"Not that smart? Not that strong?"

Lin Fan couldn’t see Ye Qingniao’s expression clearly. He just shook his head in the dark curtain of rain and said quietly,

"It’s just like me, just doing the best it can... Don’t think about it. What time is it?"

He didn’t want to continue the topic. He reached out to check the time but found his watch had been shattered during his several greatsword attacks, so he asked casually.

"...Uh, where’s my watch?"

Ye Qingniao was still lost in the "bad end" she had just imagined. Hearing Lin Fan’s question, she subconsciously lifted her hand to look, only to find her watch was gone, leaving only an empty, loose cuff...

Then she suddenly snapped out of it and, with a CHOMP, bit down on his finger.

"My watch snapped off, too!"

It seemed her watch, like a certain someone’s previously destroyed one, had been snapped right off by her swelling wrist and had fallen who-knows-where long ago.

"Stop it! It’s not my fault it snapped!"

Lin Fan pulled his finger out of her mouth, thought for a moment, then turned his head and asked hesitantly toward the vehicle’s interior beneath her,

"Cheng Qi... Don’t tell me you came here ready for a suicide mission and didn’t bring a watch, either?"

"I brought a watch! Let me see... Why isn’t it lighting up..."

Cheng Qi’s confident voice came from below, followed by some muttering. Then he said guiltily,

"Um, hehe... Mine was probably fried by the induced current from that lightning..."

"..."

"...Then how far have we gone east from the intersection?"

Lin Fan had already given up any hope that either of these two could be reliable. He asked the question while sputtering out rainwater.

"The dashboard is dead, too. There’s no exact reading, but we’ve probably gone four or five kilometers..."

"Let’s go another five kilometers to round it out. No rush, drive slowly..."

Lin Fan thought for a moment, then said decisively,

"Cyan Bird, help him keep an eye out. If there’s a zombie horde, we should still try to avoid it... I’ll keep watch from up here, too..."

"Oh..."

Ye Qingniao seemed to quite like her little "tent" and agreed reluctantly. Then she pulled her head back in, her hand yanking the leather flap in with her. The hatch slammed shut, leaving Lin Fan’s hand out in the wind and rain.

The roof of the vehicle was quiet once again. He pulled back his hand and looked at his empty palm, but his thoughts couldn’t help but drift to Chu Zhaozhao and Su Qing.

According to what Cheng Qi had said earlier, it was very inconvenient for a convoy of that size to travel at night. They would probably find a safe parking lot and wait for dawn.

It shouldn’t be hard for Liu Bin and the others to catch up with the convoy. After all, they had a specific route and a map. Besides, the main group’s passage should have cleared out most of the scattered zombies on the road.

His own situation, on the other hand, was a bit more troublesome.

He had a rough idea of Linjiang University’s location. In theory, he just needed to follow the outer ring road for about twenty kilometers, find a major intersection to cut north, and then turn east for a while to get there.

But theory was just theory. In this pitch-black, rainy night, just blindly driving along the ring road could lead to trouble. If a bridge had collapsed or they plunged headfirst into a zombie horde and got the vehicle stuck, it would be an even bigger hassle.

As for the tree behind them, that wasn’t an urgent matter.

It had taken another huge loss this time. And it wasn’t even a sneak attack; it had used all its direct methods and still failed to take down Lin Fan. It had even been hit by a massive lightning strike. As long as it really had a brain, it shouldn’t be able—or have the ability—to pursue them relentlessly in the short term.

If it wanted revenge, it would have to find a way to increase its strength... if it even could.

Lin Fan mainly wanted to get further away for peace of mind. In case that thing lost its mind and insisted on chasing them—it wasn’t that he was afraid, but mainly that he was truly tired. Nobody wants the building to collapse on them in their sleep.

With Ye Qingniao and her night vision by his side, Cheng Qi’s driving became much steadier.

But he still didn’t drive fast. If they encountered a collapsed road or some other obstacle, they wouldn’t be able to brake in time if they were going too fast. The armored vehicle’s center of gravity was too high, making it very easy to flip over if he lost control.

Lin Fan asked Ye Qingniao for a flashlight and scanned both sides of the highway. The buildings along the ring road didn’t seem to have been damaged by the earlier earthquake.

As they continued east, more and more zombie Life Value bars gradually began to appear in the darkness in the depths of Lin Fan’s vision.

Occasionally, even four-digit Life Values would flash by in the buildings along the road.

However, the heavy rain muffled all sounds. As long as the zombies weren’t on the road or very close to the roadside, they would only stir symbolically as the armored vehicle passed. Basically, no zombies would give chase.

The ones right in the middle of the road were even easier to deal with. A twenty-one-ton hunk of iron, even moving at just thirty miles per hour, carried a kinetic energy that no carbon-based life-form could hope to challenge.

All that was left behind were flat piles of rotten flesh pressed into the rainwater, and a series of delightful notifications for basic supplies appearing out of thin air in Lin Fan’s vision, like [Purified Water (S) x1], [Canned Meat x1], and [Scrap Metal x1]...

Watching these free supplies continuously fill up his inventory slots, Lin Fan felt the joy of a true hoarder welling up inside him.

This wasn’t traveling; this was stocking up.

If it weren’t for the existence of zombie hordes numbering in the thousands and tens of thousands, Lin Fan would have really wanted Cheng Qi to just drive the armored vehicle around the city’s outskirts until the end of time, just to see if his inventory had a limit.

"Lin Fan, the zombies are getting more and more numerous."

The armored vehicle slowly decelerated and stopped in the middle of the road. Ye Qingniao popped her head out again to speak.

Lin Fan had seen it too. Of course, when she said "more and more numerous," she didn’t mean there were hordes, but that the chances of seeing three to five, or even dozens, of zombies wandering at the side roads or in front of the occasional storefront were increasing.

And previously, Lin Fan had witnessed how the zombies surrounding the tree were layered by their three-hundred and five-hundred Life Value, which proved it had a certain degree of control over ordinary zombies.

Looking at these aimless, "wild" zombies that were like headless flies, Lin Fan actually breathed a sigh of relief.

This meant that they had basically left its sphere of influence.

After all, the zombies on Tianshui Road had all been lured to the intersection by it; Lin Fan himself had only made a small contribution.

"Can this vehicle be driven off without a key?"

Lin Fan had never driven an armored vehicle before and asked doubtfully.

"This vehicle doesn’t have a key..."

Ye Qingniao answered.

"But you don’t have to worry about it being driven off by other survivors or vagrants..."

Seeing his confused expression, she continued proudly:

"Because the entire electrical system is shot. Once the engine is off, the only way to start it again is for me to act as the battery..."

"Besides, not just anyone can drive this thing!"

Cheng Qi suddenly protested from the driver’s seat, eager to prove his worth.

"A normal person can’t even see the road! They’d drive right into a ditch!"

"Alright then, you guys decide... I was thinking we shouldn’t just make do in the vehicle. Sleeping like this just makes you more tired."

Listening to the two of them sing the same tune, Lin Fan suddenly realized he was out of his depth here, so he decided to just let them handle it.

"Let’s find a place and get a good night’s rest. We’ll decide on a route tomorrow at dawn."