For a minute, the atmosphere of the entire East Gate froze completely.
Bai Mo stared at Beard Xu, partly shielding Fu Yucheng, without any other movement. As for poor Mo Ziran, his entire being was frightened stiff.
“Captain Xu, I don’t think this is necessary,” Fu Yucheng said nonchalantly.
At the same time, his right hand had been quietly moving towards his back, slowly wrapping around his scimitar’s hilt.
“I’ll say it one last time: tell your men to raise their face guards and take off their goggles!” Beard Xu said sharply.
Fu Yucheng stared at him and shook his head. “I refuse.”
“You’re looking for death!” Xu Huo sneered. “Switch to level 1 alert mode! Prepare for action!”
The dozens of guards wearing exoskeleton armor that surrounded them all leaned forward slightly, index fingers on the trigger, ready to strike.
Fu Yucheng took a deep breath and gripped the handle of his blade.
Apparently, being friendly wouldn’t work that day. With that being the case, it’d be better to preemptively…
“Instructor Fu, your authorization from the fortress master!”
Suddenly, a deep voice broke through the deadlock.
Simultaneously, both Fu Yucheng and Beard Xu were taken aback.
A guard dressed in exoskeleton armor walked into the encirclement. He bowed to Fu Yucheng without hesitation and handed him a thin piece of metal with both hands.
“Thank you.” Fu Yucheng glanced at him thoughtfully and accepted the authorization.
“Let me see it!” Beard Xu stepped forward impatiently, seizing the piece of metal with his hand.
The thin piece of metal was no bigger than a playing card, and, in the afterglow of the setting sun, it emitted a strange light, resembling waves of water.
In the lower right corner of the metal piece, there was a line of elegant calligraphy – “Mo Ziwei”.
It was indeed Mo Ziwei’s handwritten authorization.
Beard Xu looked at it carefully for a long time before he reluctantly returned the authorization to Fu Yucheng. “You got lucky this time. Get lost!”
Fu Yucheng shrugged and accepted the authorization.
If he followed his usual ethics, he could now say a couple of cruel sentences to hurt the other, but, at that point, he was running out of time. Without saying anything else, Fu Yucheng strutted through the gate with Bai Mo and Mo Ziran, followed by the guard.
After they had walked a good distance, the four of them stopped.
“Song Lan,” Fu Yucheng said solemnly.
“Uh-huh.” The tall guard took off her face guard and goggles, and shook out her big mane of curly hair that looked just like a dark cloud. As expected, it was Song Lan.
She stretched out her hand and took the authorization back. “Consider yourself lucky. Since I have to go to a parking lot in a couple of days, I just got the authorization this afternoon. I happened to be patrolling the east gate today and I saw the three of you standing there stupidly. Fu Yucheng, you didn’t really want to attempt to take out dozens of opponents by yourself, did you? They were all armed with heavy firearms, are you out of your mind?!”
“Thank you, I will remember this favor,” Fu Yucheng said slowly, looking at her profoundly.
The tall beauty shrugged gracefully. “It’s fine, you don’t need to feel that you owe me anything. Moreover, I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing it for Ziran. I’ve been taking care of this child for years. You’d feel attached to even a small kitten or puppy in such circumstances. Besides, I don’t like Mo Ziwei very much either…”
Mo Ziran said anxiously, “But, Song Lan-jie, if you help us like this…”
Song Lan smiled and flicked his forehead. “It’s okay, you can rest assured and go with Fu Yucheng. I wore armor, so they won’t know who I am.”
After saying goodbye to Song Lan in a hurry, they went to the outer fortress and Fu Yucheng, after showing his ID, got his car back.
Patting his beloved vehicle, he said, in a good mood, “Alright, let’s go.”
Sadly, the good times didn’t last long. The off-road vehicle hadn’t been charged for a long time, so, after a while, a red light lit up on the control panel.
“Beep beep beep – remaining battery: 2%. Beep beep beep – remaining battery…” Noob faithfully reported the remaining battery status.
Fu Yucheng pressed his temples, feeling a headache incoming. “Okay, I got it, I got it! Stop making noise!”
Bai Mo, from the co-pilot seat, frowned. “We’re out of power?”
“Yeah.” Fu Yucheng sighed. “There’s no other choice, we have to take another trip to the windmill.”
The huge white windmill rotated slowly and tirelessly, just like the mythological Prometheus, constantly pushing a boulder up the hill.1
At the bottom of the windmill’s tower, Old Sun was crudely covering the vehicle with a tarp while nagging angrily. “A-cheng, you stinky boy, you haven’t even shown up for two or three years, and now, you come to bother me with this big mess! What sort of person do you think Mo Ziwei to be?! Do you not want to keep on living, so you decided to offend him? Even if you want to die, what about these two kids? You lousy brat…”
Fu Yucheng knew that Old Sun had a hard mouth and a soft heart, so he said sincerely, “My bad, my bad. By the way, Mr. Sun, how long will it take for the vehicle to be fully charged?”
Old Sun snorted. “The battery is almost empty… If you want it fully charged, it will take four or five hours.”
Fu Yucheng calculated silently in his mind. In four or five hours… would Mo Ziwei realize something was strange and catch up with them?
“Can you make it charge faster?”
Old Sun sneered. “Faster? Not unless you want your car to stop halfway through the desert.”
“Oh, okay.” Fu Yucheng closed his mouth awkwardly.
He would rather have a fight with Mo Ziwei than get trapped in the middle of New Sahara and end up becoming food for a lizard or a sandworm.
Old Sun set up the off-road vehicle, plugged in the battery and water pipes, and yawned. “Oh, it’s already this late. It’s going to take four or five hours for it to fill up anyway, so you three should also catch some sleep.”
Fu Yucheng nodded. “Alright.”
Old Sun led the three of them into a small, cluttered room. He took out two old sets of bedding and threw them onto the ground. “You can distribute them by yourselves. I’ll be right next door, so call me if you need anything.”
Bai Mo quickly laid the bedding and dusted it very carefully, making it clean and tidy. Mo Ziran’s hands and feet were much slower; after pulling and tugging for a long time, he hadn’t even laid out the mattress flat.
Bai Mo squinted at him with a bit of contempt, then looked at Fu Yucheng expectantly. “Yu-ge, same as last night?”
Naturally, what he meant was that, just like the previous night, he’d share a bed with Fu Yucheng and Mo Ziran would sleep on his own.
Fu Yucheng had nestled himself onto a dilapidated, small sofa in the corner of the room. He was flipping through Mo Hanchuan’s centuries old diary under the dim light.
He was reading with all his attention, and he didn’t hear Bai Mo’s words at all.
The teenager realized that he had been ignored. Pursing his lips a bit, he asked, “Yu-ge, are you asleep?”
Slightly coming back to his senses, Fu Yucheng raised his head, confused. “What did you say?”
Before Bai Mo could answer, Fu Yucheng seemed to realize something else and looked at Mo Ziran. “Ziran, when your older brother went to the Devil’s Antarctic with his group, what exactly did he go there to do?”
Mo Ziran scratched his head. “I don’t know the specifics very well. I was too young at that time…”
He pondered it for a while, and then said, “I remember that my brother mentioned that he was going to the Devil’s Antarctic to find something. However, when my brother came back, everyone said that the Devil’s Antarctic had been just a cover, and that he’d actually gone to the Dyson Cloud and became the leader of the rebellion, the green ghost…”
Fu Yucheng murmured, “Your brother didn’t go to the Dyson Cloud at all. The green ghost or whatever was just a rumor… Back then, he did go to the Devil’s Antarctic, and never returned.”
Mo Ziran, who didn’t hear him clearly, blinked with his big round eyes. “Yucheng-ge, what are you talking about?”
Fu Yucheng did not answer.
He closed the diary gently, deep in thought.
Bai Mo whispered, “What’s wrong?”
Fu Yucheng came back to his senses and looked down at the diary on the table. “I’m thinking… everything regarding Fort Hurricane is tied together. It’s just that I haven’t been able to connect the dots before.”
Bai Mo wondered, “What dots?”
Fu Yucheng rubbed his forehead tiredly. “I only got a general idea. It’s too late today. Let’s rest, and I’ll tell you about it properly on the road tomorrow.”
Bai Mo nodded. “Yu-ge, hurry and come rest. You don’t look too good.”
Fu Yucheng nodded.
In the second half of the night, Fu Yucheng was awakened by movement.
He opened his eyes and saw that Bai Mo had already propped himself up and was staring vigilantly at Mo Ziran, who lay next to them.
Mo Ziran was lying on the simple mattress with his eyes closed. His forehead was covered in large beads of sweat,2 and he was breathing rapidly, resembling a fire blower.
“Ziran, he…” Fu Yucheng was taken aback momentarily. “Why now…?”
Bai Mo looked at Mo Ziran’s pale face and frowned. “Is he sick?”
“No.” Fu Yucheng shook his head slowly. “I think Mo Ziran is about to awaken his psionic power. When most people awaken, they get a fever and fall into a coma for several days. He’s almost at the right age, and that, combined with the fright he received today, may have sped up the awakening process…”
He glanced down at his watch and looked a little embarrassed. “More than five hours have passed, the car should be fully charged. But… Mo Ziran is at a critical moment now, and moving him around may affect his awakening.”
The door screeched, and Old Sun walked in.
He waved his hand impatiently. “The car’s battery is full, you should leave as soon as possible. Otherwise, Mo Ziwei will catch up to you and I’ll be dragged into it.”
He seemed to notice something was off, and he looked down at Mo Ziran. “What’s wrong with this kid?”
Fu Yucheng sighed. “He is about to awaken.”
Old Sun’s sparse, pale eyebrows twisted together. “What do we do?”
“Why don’t I take him to the vehicle and have him lie down…?” Fu Yucheng hesitated.
Old Sun hesitated for a moment as well before speaking. “Don’t take him away, leave him here with me.”
Fu Yucheng shook his head and said, “You’ll get involved.”
“Don’t worry, the windmill belt stretches for thousands of miles. I’ll hide him in the machine room on the top of the tower. No one will find him. Besides, if you drive into the desert, Mo Ziwei’s drone will probably detect you. When the time comes, he will definitely grab you and not let you go. Why would he come to search my place?”
Fu Yucheng thought for a while, and finally nodded. “If that’s the case, then… Ziran will have to rely on you, Old Sun. I’ll come back as soon as possible, once this issue begins to clear up.”
Old Sun nodded. Then, he went to the kitchen to get a bag of ice cubes and placed them on Mo Ziran’s forehead.
Seeming to feel the coolness, the boy gradually quieted down.
“Old Sun, in case something happens, don’t confront Mo Ziwei. Tell him whatever he asks you about, and do whatever he asks you to do… be sure to wait for me to come back.” Fu Yucheng warned.
Old Sun smiled. “You stinky boy, I have eaten more salt than you have eaten rice, and crossed more bridges that you’ve ever walked!3 You’re actually trying to teach me lessons? Get out!”
“Thank you,” Fu Yucheng said solemnly.
He glanced at Mo Ziran one last time, and walked out the door with Bai Mo.
“Little Mo, fasten your seat belt and sit tight!”
Fu Yucheng stepped on the accelerator violently, and the off-road vehicle let out a loud roar like a wild beast, then took off at once.
Bai Mo was in the co-pilot seat, his hair getting messed up by the oncoming wind. Beyond the car window, the large brown rocky desert passed by quickly, and it felt as if they had returned to the days from two years back.
“Yu-ge, where are we going?”
Fu Yucheng kept his gaze locked onto the windshield, staring straight ahead and turning the steering wheel without answering.
After a long time, he slightly narrowed his eyes and slowly answered, “We are going somewhere where we can find what Mo Ziwei was looking for… something enough to bring down the current ‘Mo Ziwei’.”
Goodbye, Fort Hurricane!
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