Chapter 736: The Rescue Team
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Woyu only stopped snoring several minutes after he was untied.
He smacked his lips and lowered his head. Then, when he saw the scene in front of him, his eyes widened. The rope which Lin Sanjiu used to constrain him was loosely dangling by his arms, and as he moved, it fell off his body.
From Lin Sanjiu’s angle, he seemed stunned.
The telecommunication device was sitting quietly in front of him. It released a faint green glow into the night sky, resembling a glow-worm resting on a leaf.
“Hmm?” He looked like he still unable to comprehend why he was sitting there alone. He surveyed his surroundings and quietly call out, “Hey…y-you, are you there?”
Lin Sanjiu lay even flatter as she held her breath and observed the man through the shrubs.
“If you’re not around, I’m going to leave…” the young man mumbled as he grabbed the bedsheet with both hands. He stood up with some rustling sounds and accidentally stepped on the pair of pants that Lin Sanjiu threw over. He quickly put the bedsheet down and wore the pants hastily. He took the telecommunication device and was just about to leave when he suddenly stopped. As he froze, he perked his ears up.
‘Woyu is also a posthuman, so I guess he noticed something.’ Lin Sanjiu exhaled soundlessly.
She did not know what the other committee members were using. Somehow, she was completely unable to detect them with her [Higher Consciousness Scan]. It was almost as if they were invisible. She could only faintly sense the people approaching the slope in her hypersensory state. When the group of people reached the forest, her [Higher Consciousness Scan] was blocked by the thick trees around them. In the end, she deactivated her [Higher Consciousness Scan] and decided to use Woyu as bait.
The other committee members would lower their guard the moment they discovered their companions. That would also be the best time for Lin Sanjiu to take all of them down at one go.
The young man held the telecommunication device and listened intently as he walked toward the entrance of the forest. As the night breeze weaved through the trees, it almost seemed as if the forest was only filled with the sound of rustling leaves, which was like the ebbing sea waves. The ambient sounds dampened the presence of the incomers.
“H-Honta?” Woyu pitched his voice very low and asked, “Is that you over there?”
He waited for a while, yet there was no response from the dark. Woyu wondered if it was because his voice was too low to be heard.
After a short bout of rumination, Woyu flipped the telecommunication device, once again filling the sky with its bright blue light.
Duu…
A flat dial tone rang out into the night sky.
A rustling noise came after the first dial tone. It sounded distant and faint like an illusion. Woyu could not hear it well, but he was somewhat relieved. He closed the telecommunication device and examined his surroundings again for any sign of Lin Sanjiu. After that, he scurried into the forest in front of him and disappeared.
Lin Sanjiu did not make any move as this was not the best time for her to go after him.
Woyu had just left not long ago and would be on his highest alert. Besides, judging from the beeping of the telecommunication device, Lin Sanjiu was certain that he was not very far away. She went into her hypersensory state and zeroed all her senses in that direction. As she tried to sense for any movements, she began counting in her heart.
The bush swished as she crept out of her hiding spot. However, Woyu did not detect anything and continued to move down the slope.
As an effect of the hypersensory state, Lin Sanjiu had merged along with the hillside.
She could clearly feel the gentle breeze from the distance and she saw the swaying silhouette of the trees. Her footsteps pried the foliage open along with the eddying of the wind, and the susurration whispered as her clothes rustled against her skin. The sounds melted into the night sky. If one closed their eyes, they would not be able to differentiate if it was her footfalls or the wind when she walked past them.
Woyu was very cautious. He had been looking left and right into the darkness along the way. Nevertheless, he did not notice somebody behind him. A few minutes later, after seeing that there was nobody around, he let out a sigh of relief and activated the telecommunication device once more.
The moment the device was connected, he heard a clear rumble of machinery wafting from the forest in front of him. His eyes glowed. Following the direction of the sound, he waved and hollered out in a low voice, “Honta! Over here!”
The first man that emerged from the forest looked like a walking tree. He was over two meters tall and had a husky muscular build. He was in his blue military vest, his massive arms bare to the wrist and glistening with sweat.
Lin Sanjiu poked her head out slightly and observed the man. She saw that there was some kind of gadget coiled around the man’s arms. Its outline looked huge and heavy, but Lin Sanjiu had no idea what the gadget was as it had merged with the darkness.
‘There should be more than one person…’ The second that thought surfaced in her mind, another series of footfalls erupted from the forest behind the man.
The first thing that came into her vision was a strip of red and a band of white. After the white came the red again. Umbels of red and white kept on swiveling before Lin Sanjiu’s eyes, giving her the impression that the person had made the Barber’s pole her skirt. The person wearing this skirt was a petite girl. Her face was so small that it was covered by her hair, leaving only her pointy chin to appear once in a while to greet the people around.
Lin Sanjiu held her breath. She seemed to have made the wrong decision.
Even though Woyu was bad at combat, it did not seem to be the case for the committee members. Her heart clenched and she felt a faint nervousness in the pit of her stomach the second she set her sight on the first two people. She had not felt this way for a long time. Just like the animals in the wild, the longer the posthumans survived in the apocalypse era, the more sensitive they were towards danger. If Woyu was a meerkat, then the people coming out from the forest were no doubt hyenas.
Even a lion would have a hard time taking up arms with a pack of hyenas.
It was at this moment that the third person came into her view. He was carrying a similar telecommunication device as Woyu. A pair of spectacles was sitting on top of his high cheekbones, and the lens caught both the light from the device and the moonlight. His cheeks were sunken and it seemed like there were holes on his face.
Lin Sanjiu clenched her teeth hard. There was one more person.
The fourth person wore the same matching deep blue attire as his three other comrades. Lin Sanjiu felt she had seen the shirt somewhere, but she could not place where. The shirt covered the fourth incomer’s body like a tent. It was baggy and coupled with his white pallor, it gave him the appearance of a clock.
The four committee members were standing in front of Woyu. Lin Sanjiu surveyed them in a full circle, yet she could not find Lil Grass around. Perhaps he was too weak, so the committee did not dispatch him as part of the retrieval team.
“These people…They are tricky,” Mrs. Manas mumbled in her brain, sounding a little worried, “Do you have the confidence to defeat all four of them?”
Lin Sanjiu thought for a moment and replied hesitantly, “I can’t tell either…”
Suddenly, Mrs. Manas asked, “What was that sound?”
Dumbfounded, it was only then that Lin Sanjiu realized there was a slight click coming from the direction of the five people not far away. Her muscles all pulled tautly as a sense of familiarity crept into her mind.
She had a hunch that she knew the sound, and when Woyu began speaking, her suspicion was proven right as her blood turned cold.
“Who…who are you guys?” His voice was faltering and his teeth were chattering madly as if he was about to bite his tongue. “Where is Honta? Why…why do you guys have our…”
Woyu did not know them. In other words, they were not members of the committee.
The man wearing the glasses lifted the telecommunication device. He stared silently at Woyu as if he was asking whether Woyu was talking about the device in his hand. When he tilted his head, he exposed his sunken cheeks under the moonlight. It looked horrible as if somebody had made a hole out of his face.
“That…that’s ours!” Woyu shouted in a voice that was sharp and faint like a needle, “This telecommunication device belongs to our committee!”
“The committee,” said somebody among the group as he chuckled, “is gone.” Four of them looked like shadows surrounding Woyu who fell silent. He stared vacantly at the one who had spoken as if he found it hard to comprehend the few simple words that tumbled off his lips.
After what it seemed like an eternity, Woyu began to speak again, “They are on their way…” This time, however, his voice was firmer and he spoke a lot faster. “Honta said he’s sending a team to retrieve me. They’ll be here soon. I suggest you all…”
The girl clicked her tongue.
“Cut the crap.” After that, she turned her body around. Her shirt fluttered, and the red and white stripes on her skirt dazzled their eyes. “Nobody cares what you think, alright?”
Woyu closed his mouth. However, the expression on his face suggested that he did not do that voluntarily. It must have been the girl’s doing.
“You were captured by a woman, weren’t you?” the pasty-faced guy asked in a husky voice. When he spoke, aside from his lips which parted slightly, none of his facial muscles moved.
“Where’s the woman now?” the muscular man, who was about two meters tall, chimed in. He looked the most ordinary out of the four.
Woyu only starting to speak after a short while, “I…I don’t know.”
The young man kept his head low as he continued, “But I can bring you to the place where I last met her…” As he said that, he pointed at the forest.
Then, seizing the chance before the few people came back to their senses, Woyu suddenly broke into a run, darting straight towards the spot where Lin Sanjiu was hiding.
