CH 181

Just as Lin Chen used the principles of success to fool Duan Yang, Wang Chao also felt he needed to be taught something.

Of course, it wasn’t because he was also trapped in a desperate situation. He just wanted to drink something warm—the scene in the village in front of him was too weird.

It was hot and humid in the rainforest, showing signs that heavy rainfall was coming. The village was covered with a layer of white, gauze-like mist. The surrounding mist had the same color as milk, but the taste wasn’t as sweet and instead had a fishy smell.

They stepped forward on the fallen leaves all over the ground, unable to move forward for a while.

The front was empty.

The tawny land was overgrown with weeds. Plants grew especially fast in the rainforest. Some green vines had entangled thatched huts unique to the Gaomeng people, as if they were forbidden territory.

There was no one inside the huts. Sporadic thatches fell to the ground, and they found in one of the huts a little girl’s pink blanket that was hanging on the fence.

There was no one in the hotel. All that was present was a dilapidated wooden sign that was swaying with the empty wind, which showed “Accommodations” in the Dana language.

Walking along the village, they saw a simple elementary school with a construction aid sign and a medical station for Doctors Without Borders. Wang Chao followed Xing Conglian into the medical station and walked around. There were no people or doctors, but the medicine inside the cabinets was gone, leaving only empty white hospital beds that gave off a cold feeling.

Next to the medical station was a trendy shop that had its doors open. Many things on the shelves were scattered everywhere, looking like a mess.

Xing Conglian walked out of the medical station and turned towards the shop.

Wang Chao followed him in light steps and suddenly accidentally stepped on something slippery that he almost fell. Because the surroundings were too quiet and weird, he didn’t dare yell out loud and could only swallow his scream back down his throat. He covered his mouth and lowered his head. There was a clump of brown fungi on the ground. The fungus he trampled on looked like a horrific animal limb.

He raised his head and saw that his boss had already walked into the shop. After glancing at the things on the shelves, his boss squatted down and began to look through the messy goods thrown on the ground.

Wang Chao hurriedly followed and almost tripped again over the debris on the floor. He took a closer look and found that the ground was littered with everyday items such as condoms, paper cups, and soap, leaving no place for him to stand.

He peeked at his boss’ face again and saw the anger in his boss’ expression was fading and had turned rather cold.

“Boss?” he asked tentatively. “What the hell happened here?”

After he finished speaking, he noticed Xing Conglian’s sharp gaze sweeping towards him, so he quickly fell silent.

“What do you think is missing here?”

Wang Chao carefully bypassed the things on the ground and walked to Xing Conglian’s side, where he looked at the pile of colorful items on the ground.

“There’s no food?”

“What else?”

“There’s no drinking water, sweets, or alcohol…”

“What does this mean?”

“It means… someone took away the necessities to sustain life, but what about the alcohol?”

“To survive in the wild, alcohol is extremely important,” Xing Conglian replied.

Kang An and Moda Nar, the Gaomeng bar owner, walked at the end. The bar owner looked at everything around him as his eyes changed from suspicion to shock, and then from shock to horror. Finally, he took a few steps forward and stepped on the plastic bags all over the ground. He grabbed Xing Conglian’s collar and said angrily, “What the hell is going on here? What did you do to my people?”

Xing Conglian looked at Moda Nar’s expression as if he were saying, “Excuse me, are you mentally ill?” He stretched out his hand and pulled the bar owner back, picked up a box of cigarettes on the ground, opened it, took one out, and lit it. He then said to Kang An as he raised his chin, “Go back and get those two just now.”

“Why Boss?” Kang An was unsure of Xing Conglian’s intention.

Xing Conglian let out a puff of his cigarette and simply said, “Go.”

Perhaps because his boss was in a bad mood and was too scary, but Kang An stopped talking nonsense and quickly turned around and ran away.

“Where is your tribe’s ammunition depot? Do you know?” After he finished ordering Kang An, Xing Conglian lowered his head and picked out a pack of red things from the corner of a pile of debris, threw it to Wang Chao, and then walked out of the store without looking back.

Wang Chao took a closer look, only to find that his boss had just thrown him a bag of Skittles. He followed happily after. “Boss, Boss, didn’t you say you wouldn’t take a single needle or thread* from the masses?”

*(一针一线) Idiom referring to something very small.

“Shut up,” Xing Conglian said impatiently.

As the distant relative of the leader of the Gaomeng Tribe, Moda Nar was privy to some tribal secrets. He took them to the jungle outside the village and searched for a while before he mysteriously opened a giant tree and then walked in.

Wang Chao followed him into the tree, stunned. The trunk was hollow and hot. The stagnant air smelled strongly of gunpowder. Sure enough, there was a small cellar under the trunk.

When the lights came on, the scene in the cellar made the bald bar owner scream.

All the neatly placed ammunition boxes were overturned, and all the army-green iron boxes were empty, as if they had been looted. Just standing there, they could imagine the chaotic scene when the soldiers of the Gaomeng Tribe were fetching ammunition.

Moda Nar fell to his knees, covered his face, and started crying, only to receive a kick from Xing Conglian.

The bald bar owner looked at him with red eyes. “We’re late. My people are all missing!”

“Why are you being so emotional?” Xing Conglian said irritably.

Wang Chao whispered, “Boss, are the Gaomeng people so fierce? Did the entire village set off to fight some other tribe? Which tribe provoked them to this point? This must be some kind of revenge for killing the chief and taking the princess, right?”

“Do you think that’s possible?” Xing Conglian bit into the cigarette butt as he said lightly.

“Not likely. I heard the Gaomeng Tribe is more civilized and doesn’t have the position of a princess,” Wang Chao said regretfully. “But isn’t that what Kang An’s intelligence says?”

“Heh, usually the men go out to kill, but there aren’t even any old people or children left behind the village?”

“Then why did the people here suddenly disappear?”

“Maybe they ran to save their lives,” Xing Conglian said.

Thinking of the medicines and the life-sustaining necessities that were taken, Wang Chao took a deep breath. “Even the ammunition was taken away. Someone is chasing them, so they have no choice but to leave the village. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then where did they flee to? The radius of their action in a week is too large. Where can we find them, Boss?”

“Heh.”

After responding, Xing Conglian walked out of the underground ammunition depot with a cigarette in hand. Without saying a word, he stepped on the rotten leaves all over the ground and returned to the dock.

On the wide river in front of the dock, a good show was being staged.

Wang Chao hurriedly brought a wooden stake. In the distance, Kang An was chasing after the two poor militants who had just been beaten by his boss until they spat blood.

Kang An grabbed the side of the boat in the water, turned over, and punched one of them into the water with a left hook. The other man swung his oar at him, but Kang An quickly grabbed onto it and used his strength to pull the other man into the water as well. At this point, Kang An had already occupied the high ground and had decisively taken an oar and struck twice, leaving the two armed militants dizzy and helpless on the water’s surface. Perhaps feeling that his previous actions weren’t fierce enough, Kang An then dove into the water and dragged the two unconscious militants back as if he were dragging dead dogs from the river.

Wang Chao kept observing Xing Conglian’s face and saw that his boss took a last puff of his cigarette expressionlessly and stamped out the cigarette butt.

In front of Xing Conglian were the two militants lying on their stomachs. Kang An had woken them up. When they saw the scene in front of them, the two militants looked as if they had seen a ghost. They crawled back but were blocked by Kang An from behind.

Xing Conglian asked angrily, “Tell me, where are the people?”

“I… We don’t know… We were just passing by!” One of the militants, probably European or American, replied in stumbling Dana.

“Do you mean to tell me that in such a big rainforest, you have nothing to do but leisurely pass by here?” Xing Conglian stepped on one of the militants’ shoulders and sneered. “Aren’t you afraid of being hung up by the Gaomeng Tribe to dry?”

“It’s true that we’re just passing by by chance. Please believe us!”

“How boring.” Xing Conglian tapped the militant’s shoulder with his toe. “You came here on a whim, so you must have known that the Gaomeng Tribe had left in advance. And the reason you know this is because either someone tipped you off or you witnessed the entire tribe being hunted down. So, tell me, where are the people of the tribe?”

The two militants on the ground trembled. They looked at each other and exchanged a look. “We can’t say. The other party is too powerful. If they find out that we leaked information, we’ll die without even a grave.”

Xing Conglian took out a gun and put it to one of the militants’ foreheads. “Alright, if you don’t tell me, you’ll die now.”

When it came to showing off and intimidation, Wang Chao only admired his boss.

“Three days ago, we met a large group of the Gaomeng people. It was already dark at that time, so we rushed through the rainforest and found a big tree to rest on. Gunshots rang out in the second half of the night, and a dense group of Gaomeng people ran past us with a group of terrible soldiers chasing after them.”

“Yes, those soldiers were so well equipped that we dared not speak up at all and just hid tremblingly in the trees.”

“They were incredibly cruel. The ones from the Gaomeng tribe who fell behind were instantly killed.”

Xing Conglian interrupted the two. “Okay, just say it directly. Where are those soldiers from?”

“We saw a sign of a python entangling a jaguar,” one of them answered.

“Zaratul?” Xing Conglian frowned.

The other person’s hands started to tremble. “Can you say that name in a low voice. My heart is pounding just from hearing it.”

When he heard the name, even Wang Chao felt his stomach churn.

The three things: python, jaguar, and Zaratul—these things represented the Dana Rainforest Liberators Alliance. They were the most brutal militants in the Dana Region. Although the name of this organization sounded democratic, it was only in name. In the past ten years, the leader of the arm group and the tyrant of Zaratul had massacred nearly 50,000 people in Dana. The United Nations had repeatedly tried to intervene, but all their attempts failed. After all, the situation in Dana was too complicated. No matter which forces intervened from the outside world, they would be attacked by all the primitive tribes, militants, and mercenary organizations here.

It was precisely because dealing with Dana brought fewer benefits than costs that it had created today’s three-way zone.

Listening to the vivid account of the two militants describing a scene of bullets flying and blood splattering as if killing people was as easy as cutting melons, Kang An’s face immediately turned green. “Boss, Xiao Wu, and the others must be in great danger!”

Xing Conglian ignored Kang An and said, “Wang Chao, bring up a map.”

Wang Chao immediately turned on a tablet and brought up a three-dimensional topographic map of the entire Dana Rainforest. “Boss, please look.”

Xing Conglian handed the tablet to the two militants and said, “Where did you see the Gaomeng tribe three days ago?”

The two militants were still lying on the ground. They stared at the vast green on the tablet, studied it for a long time, and finally delineated an area northwest of them. “It’s probably here.”

Xing Conglian nodded after connecting the tablet.

Kang An came over anxiously and asked, “Boss, this is where they were three days ago. Where would they be now?”

Xing Conglian narrowed his eyes and kept zooming in on the entire area. “The first question you should ask is, Zaratul wants to kill people, but why haven’t they killed all of them in a week?”

“Why?”

“Because they don’t want to kill everyone.”

“I don’t get it!”

Xing Conglian didn’t speak anymore. He first marked the location of the Gaomeng Tribe’s garrison, and then marked the location where the entire tribe appeared three days ago. He connected the two points together, glanced at the tablet, kept zooming in on the picture, and moved the position of the map. Finally, he leaned back slightly, pointed to one place, and said, “Here.”

Wang Chao looked at the map and found that the location pointed out by Xing Conglian was an abandoned mine located in the rainforest.

“Boss, what does Zaratul want to do?”

“Drive the herd away and enter the designated trap,” Xing Conglian said flatly.