LWDC Chapter 110

Chapter 110 – On the Road

Chapter 110 – On the Road

Chapter 110 – On the Road

The Hummer drove for a long time, with only brief lunch breaks and stops for gas—gas that was still reserve stock from Duan Yunhong’s space. They barely stopped before dark.

Ning Fei took over driving for the last three hours. After the sun had completely set, Duan Yunhong told him to stop and rest. They drove the car into a gathering point for car teams outside a base, planning to rest for the night and leave at dawn. The reason for not entering the base wasn’t because they couldn’t afford the entrance fee, but because they didn’t want their whereabouts to be tracked.

This base wasn’t large, and the gathering point outside it was unmanaged and chaotic. Big cars and small cars were parked haphazardly, interspersed with tents and the like. Car team members, local vendors, and idle people of unknown occupation wandered around. Ning Fei didn’t want to get involved, so he parked the Hummer on the outer edge, far from the large car teams. Duan Yunhong had no objections, and after stopping to reorganize, he finally turned on his mobile phone.

As expected, messages and system notifications flooded in like a tide.

Duan Yunhong had been prescient enough to turn off all message notification sounds and vibrations, so only the pop-up windows kept flashing. Some even just refreshed their numbers. Duan Yunhong simply threw the phone back onto the dashboard, planning to wait until the new message notifications stopped before looking at them. However, before the phone screen, which was constantly lit up due to the continuous stream of new notifications, could dim, the first call came in.

Duan Yunhong looked at the caller ID, and it seemed he was going to answer. Ning Fei intentionally gave him space to make the call, patting his arm: “I’ll get out and take care of some business.”

Duan Yunhong nodded, already answering the phone with one hand. Ning Fei got out of the passenger seat.

He really wanted to relieve himself. There used to be toilets at this parking lot, but after Ning Fei wandered around the vicinity, he found the toilets were pitch black due to a power outage. Moreover, the smell was enough to leave one speechless from a distance. Anyone who dared to enter at this time was truly unafraid of being asphyxiated by the stench in the dark.

Even so, someone had parked a car horizontally in front of the toilet door. The lights were on inside the car, and it seemed like people were playing cards. Seeing Ning Fei approach, someone leaned out of the window and shouted: “Water is 5 points per liter, using the toilet is 10 points for 5 minutes.”

—Turns out they were privately occupying resources to sell water.

Ning Fei didn’t even bother to say “I’m not buying,” and walked away directly. These people were charging for using the facilities, but they weren’t responsible for keeping the toilets clean. They were purely occupying the water source to make money. With that smell, it was a wonder they could still shout so loudly while playing cards. They must have become desensitized to it, thoroughly infusing themselves with the odor.

Ning Fei preferred to “liberate nature” in the nearby wild woods.

However, the small woods weren’t clean either. Ning Fei knew as soon as he entered that many people had relieved themselves there. Ning Fei was too lazy to walk too far in. Avoiding the “landmines,” he walked around casually until he found a relatively acceptable spot and prepared to take care of business.

Just as he stopped, the night wind blew through the woods, and a rustling sound came from behind him.

Ning Fei clicked his tongue, drew his gun, and turned around.

“Checking out someone relieving themselves? Your XP is pretty special, buddy.”

*

Bang—!

Duan Yunhong, who was on the phone, paused mid-sentence when he heard the gunshot from not far away.

He glanced in the direction of the echoing gunshot, but naturally saw nothing. He put down the phone, put the call on speaker, and minimized it to the background. He opened the messaging interface and quickly typed a few words.

The person on the other end of the phone urged him, and he continued: “…In short, I won’t be returning immediately. I will be approving and tracking projects on the mobile system, and you can call me if there’s anything. I have matters that I must handle in person. I will personally report the subsequent itinerary and work situation to the Minister. That’s it, don’t call me unless it’s urgent. You can contact me through messages and the system.”

With that, Duan Yunhong hung up the phone.

He looked at the messaging interface with no reply, ignored the other avatars with unread red dots, turned off the phone, and put it back into his space. When his hand reached for the car door, Duan Yunhong realized that he hadn’t unbuckled his seatbelt.

He unbuckled the seatbelt. Just in that brief moment of looking down, a knocking sound came from the side.

Duan Yunhong looked up and found that it wasn’t Ning Fei outside the car window, but a strange man. He looked to be in his forties, not tall, but quite fat, with a face full of fleshy rolls. Behind him stood another man, possibly under forty, tall and thin with a bit of a hunch. The tall man was holding something similar to a crowbar. The lower half of the man closer to the car was obscured, so it wasn’t clear if he was armed.

Duan Yunhong knew what they were there for and didn’t open the window at all.

The man outside waited for a while before realizing that Duan Yunhong didn’t plan to roll down the window. So he banged on the window glass again, more violently and loudly. He even raised a hammer to threaten Duan Yunhong. The meaning was clear: if Duan Yunhong didn’t open the window, he would “force it open.”

Faced with this ridiculous provocation, Duan Yunhong didn’t even bother to mock him. His hand lightly grabbed where the fat man couldn’t see, directly gripping a pistol.

Like the fat man raising the hammer, Duan Yunhong raised the gun.

The fat man’s knocking motion suddenly stopped.

Duan Yunhong knew he was scared and knew he didn’t have a gun. Even in this world, firearms in this country weren’t so common that “everyone has a gun, so it’s not chaotic.” The fact that these two idiots were carrying hammers and iron bars to “collect protection money” meant they didn’t have much of value.

In the end, in this obscure little place, what powerful organization would be collecting protection money from lone travelers?

As Duan Yunhong expected, the fat man retreated and backed away when he saw the gun. But he was probably too embarrassed to look so cowardly in front of his partner, so he could only muster a resentful expression and clicked his tongue as he backed away. However, before he could completely turn around and leave, suddenly an invisible force rushed towards them!

Yes, invisible. Duan Yunhong watched with his own eyes as if there was an invisible large foot, kicking the two men straight away!

The two crashed ten meters away with two loud thuds, defenseless like sandbags. Ning Fei’s figure then walked from the direction of the rear of the car, stopping next to Duan Yunhong’s driver’s seat.

“Trying to rob for money and sex, coming to your grandpa’s head? Did you ever consider why we’re acting alone? Is that thing on your neck just there to hold shit?” Ning Fei sneered. He was also holding a gun, the muzzle pointed at the two who had just gotten up. “Go back and make it clear to your local snake—oh, no, local little gecko. We’re just passing through and staying for one night, leaving at dawn. Don’t do things that are just asking for death. Got it?”

“…” The two didn’t speak, just hunched over, clutching their arms, and trying to sneak away silently, shrinking as much as possible. One of them might have hurt his leg in the fall, limping a bit as he walked, but he didn’t stop to check his injury or waste time, grabbing his companion’s arm and trying to leave quickly.

“Ah, right, wait a minute!” Ning Fei’s words made the two stiffen, involuntarily stopping and looking at him, in a state of wanting to leave but not daring to. Ning Fei pointed in the direction of the small woods: “You have an accomplice. I might have hit him in the leg, or maybe somewhere else. It was too dark, I couldn’t see clearly. Go see for yourselves.”

The more casual and indifferent his tone, the more scared the two cowardly thugs were, worried that the gun might accidentally go off as his hand waved around. The two hurriedly nodded haphazardly, quickening their pace to slip away.

“Tch, cowardly bastards.” Ning Fei’s gun hadn’t even been taken off safety this time. He shoved it directly into the holster on his lower back, the movement quite practiced. The car window next to him had been lowered at some point, and Duan Yunhong looked at Ning Fei: “Was that you who fired the gun just now? ‘Rob for money and sex’?”

“Yeah, I went into the woods to relax, and some idiot actually followed me in,” Ning Fei said sarcastically. “And even after I pulled out my gun, he still asked me how much for one time. He really had a humanoid creature growing on his dick.”

“It’s so dark, he might not have seen your gun,” Duan Yunhong narrowed his eyes almost imperceptibly, but maintained a calm, chatty tone. “Then, you didn’t kill him?”

Ning Fei smiled: “Hey, don’t be too demanding in a pitch-black forest. It’s enough to hit him and make him unable to move. Don’t demand such precision.”

Duan Yunhong didn’t believe he couldn’t hit accurately. Precisely because it was dark, wouldn’t the torso be easier to hit than the thigh? Ning Fei being able to accurately say he hit the leg meant he aimed specifically for it.

Ning Fei didn’t refrain from killing out of kindness. He was just considering that the two still had to spend the night in the gathering point and didn’t want to cause too much of a commotion, so he spared a life. But then again, being shot in this kind of place without immediate hemostasis and medical attention was still very dangerous. And it was also possible that he hit a major artery in the leg, which could be even more fatal.

But Duan Yunhong didn’t care about that, he just asked, “Then, after you fired the gun, did you relieve yourself?”

“I did, but can you not connect the context like that? It sounds like I pissed on him,” Ning Fei said, resting his arm on the car window. “I wouldn’t ‘reward’ him like that.”

“‘Reward’…” Duan Yunhong finally smiled, changing the topic. “By the way, you didn’t bring your phone?”

“The phone is on me, but it’s not turned on yet,” Ning Fei patted the pocket containing his phone. “What’s wrong? Were you looking for me just now?”

“I heard the gunshot, just confirming if it was you,” Duan Yunhong said, taking out a pump bottle and holding it out. “Hand.”

“Huh?” Ning Fei didn’t know what he was going to do, but he still reached out. Duan Yunhong pressed down, and a white foam landed lightly in Ning Fei’s palm, accompanied by a fresh lemon scent.

It was waterless hand sanitizer.

Ning Fei was a little speechless, rubbing his hands with the foam while complaining, “Only you would still be so particular about this. Hey, could it be that you chose the space ability because of your germophobia? That way you can store more cleaning supplies and the like, since others would consider it a burden.”

Duan Yunhong calmly put away the hand sanitizer: “I’ve said many times, I’m not a germaphobe.”

Ning Fei didn’t refute, just “Ha”d and gave him a playful look.

“You can go get dinner ready,” Duan Yunhong began to take out a camping stove and self-heating meals, stuffing them all into Ning Fei’s arms. “There’s drinking water in the back, you can open the trunk and sit in the car to do it.”

Ning Fei was forced to hold the items, scoffing: “Oh, so you were just trying to order me around. I’m making food, what are you doing?”

“I’m providing the supplies,” Duan Yunhong paused, then added, “I still have to make two more calls.”

“Director Duan is really managing a million things a day,” Ning Fei chuckled twice. “Fine, who am I to complain when self-heating meals are at least better than dry rations? This humble servant will go make food for Director Duan.”

Without waiting for Duan Yunhong to reply, he went straight to the back of the car. Duan Yunhong had already pressed the button to open the trunk. With a flick of Ning Fei’s wind ability, the trunk door was completely raised. The space here was indeed not small, with some supplies neatly arranged, probably just for show.

Ning Fei put down the things and climbed up, sighing softly: “It’s really big—”

Duan Yunhong felt that his tone was meaningful and looked back at him: “What are you trying to say?”

Ning Fei leaned on the back seat, smiling at him mischievously: “Nothing, just saying the space in the car is big.”

Duan Yunhong: “…”

The two were silent for a few seconds, and Duan Yunhong finally decided not to dwell on the topic and turned back to make his calls.