Chapter 103
Chapter 103
After seeing what had happened, Liu Ye realized this was too much for him to handle alone. He needed to call the police-but he did not have a phone.
He thought about heading back down the mountain, only to notice fog rolling in all around him. Descending in this weather would be dangerous.
For now, he decided to give the two men a proper burial. If he left them lying around in this weather and they started to stink, what then?
He dug a pit and buried them. After looking around for something suitable, he planted their weapons in the ground beside the grave as headstones.
“What a mess this has turned into.”
All that digging had made him hungry. He was just about to warm up the fish soup when a wet thunk came from behind him.
Liu Ye turned in confusion and found another man lying across one of the “headstones.” He was a Numbered One too.
Liu Ye stared in silence.
The man had waited for Liu Ye to turn away before trying to ambush him. Unfortunately, the fog had been too thick to see the ground. He leaped down from above, landed directly on the two upright weapons, and then…
Liu Ye looked at the fish soup in his hands, then at the man.
“I swear…”
There was no helping it. He could hardly eat with a corpse lying beside him.
So he started digging again and buried this man as well.
The organizers, meanwhile, were growing furious. They immediately ordered every Numbered One in the area to converge on Liu Ye and kill him.
Except…
Liu Ye had only just lowered one man into a pit and patted the earth flat when another figure shot past him and flew straight into the yawning mouth of a hippopotamus behind him. The animal instinctively clamped its jaws shut.
Crunch!
Liu Ye stared in silence.
Why was there a hippopotamus in the mountains?
No, that was not important. What mattered was that he had just filled in the last grave, and now they had sent him another body! Was this some kind of special event run by the scenic area?
Nothing for it. Time to dig.
With considerable effort, Liu Ye excavated another pit and finally buried the latest victim.
In the distance, yet another man charged toward him with an ax, roaring at the top of his lungs. At that exact moment, a bird passed overhead and let something drop…
Straight into the man’s open mouth.
“Urk…”
The man clutched his throat, eyes bulging as he struggled to breathe. A foul stench filled his mouth, accompanied by a sticky, nauseating sensation that made his eyes roll back.
He clawed at his throat to no avail. Somehow, the bird droppings had wedged themselves in there with a perfect seal.
By the time Liu Ye reached him, the man had successfully departed in search of poetry and distant lands.
Liu Ye stared at him.
“Are you people playing tricks on the village idiot or what?”
Three days later, the wealthy spectators stared blankly at their screens, while Liu Ye stared just as blankly at the hundred-odd graves before him.
He had not had a moment’s rest over the past few days. All he had done was dig holes. And here he had wondered why Little System had been kind enough to send him on vacation. So it had wanted free labor out of him all along!
The System had nothing to say to that.
What frustrated Liu Ye most was that he did not even know whom to ask for his wages.
Even he, a staunch believer in science, was starting to have doubts. Was the feng shui here unusually good or something? Why were all these people lining up to kill themselves? Or had he taken a wrong turn and wandered into a newly opened cemetery?
The wealthy spectators had also been frightened. Something about this man was deeply unnatural.
For the first time, they felt their own safety was in jeopardy.
The only reason they dared gather here was that the Numbered Ones guaranteed their protection. But with that kid on the verge of wiping out every Numbered One, how could they possibly stay?
Several people immediately prepared to leave.
“Wait!” Fox Mask shouted.
“Please, everyone, be patient! We will take care of him.”
With that, Fox Mask left the chamber. He entered a dark room, summoned the man in charge, and demanded furiously, “Where did you find that kid?”
“I don’t know! There’s no record of him in our files!” the manager replied, his face aggrieved.
“Forget it. That doesn’t matter anymore. Release No. 1 and have him take care of the brat.”
The manager’s face went white at the mention of releasing No. 1.
“Sir, if we release No. 1, things might get out of control.”
“As if they aren’t out of control already! We have no other choice. Release No. 1, now! If anything happens, I’ll take responsibility,” Fox Mask said.
The manager had no choice but to take the keys and head downstairs.
He descended into the underground levels of the base, entered one passcode after another, and eventually arrived before a massive door.
The sight of it made him swallow hard.
No. 1 was the most dangerous of all the Numbered Ones. They went through several teams of guards every month, and even the researchers had no way to control him.
Trembling, the manager inserted his keys and unlocked several locks before entering the final code. The door slowly opened.
“No. 1, you-”
A huge hand shot out and seized his head before he could finish. The manager was dragged inside in an instant.
Crunch. Crunch.
The sounds of chewing and swallowing came from beyond the door. A short while later, a heavily muscled man stepped out.
He looked toward the stairs.
“Why did you let me out?”
“We have a job for you!” Fox Mask came down the steps and tossed him a photograph. “Kill this kid.”
No. 1 glanced at the picture and sneered.
“You’re getting more useless by the day if you need me for a job this easy. When it’s done, I want a thousand people.”
“Agreed.”
No. 1 laughed wildly and charged out.
A special device implanted in his brain allowed him to lock on to his targets with incredible speed. In less than ten minutes, he had located Liu Ye.
At that moment, Liu Ye was crouched on the ground, doing something with a stick.
Not that it mattered. Whatever he was doing would not save him from his impending death!
No. 1 raced at Liu Ye with a massive ghost-head saber in hand and swung it at his skull.
Just as the blade was about to strike, Liu Ye abruptly thrust his arm backward. The stick in his hand swept up with the motion.
Smack!
Sizzle…
Xiaoshuai cracked an egg into a pan, then sprinkled chopped scallions over it.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” John said in surprise.
“I wasn’t born with a silver spoon like you. My family didn’t have much when I was a kid, so I had to learn to do everything. Give me a minute. I’ll make a soup and we’ll be all set.”
Neither of them trusted the food prepared here, so they had decided to rely on themselves.
Meanwhile, No. 1 lay on the ground, clutching his groin as his entire body spasmed.
Liu Ye frowned down at the pole and net bag in his hands.
“How are you supposed to make a bug-catching net? Why won’t this thing stay on?”
He looked up and finally noticed No. 1 foaming at the mouth on the ground.
“Good heavens! What happened to you?”
Liu Ye hurried over. No. 1’s face was scarlet, and foam poured from his lips. Could he have eaten something poisonous? This was serious.
The others had already been dead, so there had been nothing Liu Ye could do for them. This man was still alive. He could not possibly stand by and let him die.
After a rigorous analysis, Liu Ye concluded that the man must have eaten something he should not have.
According to what he had learned from television, the proper treatment was to induce vomiting.
“Induce vomiting… induce vomiting…”
Liu Ye looked around. What could he use as an emetic?
Then his gaze fell on a pile of…
Brother Guiwa had once told him this stuff could make people vomit, hadn’t he?
No time to hesitate. It was an emergency. He would have to treat a dead horse like a living one.
No. 1’s eyes bulged. He shook his head frantically, trying to speak, but Liu Ye had already pried his jaws apart and would not let him close them.
Seeing that the man was conscious, Liu Ye hurried to reassure him.
“Don’t worry! I’ll save you. I promise I’ll save you! There’s nothing to be afraid of. Come on, open wide!”
“Mmmph! MMMMMMPH!”
Half an hour later, No. 1 was still vomiting uncontrollably. He had even brought up bile.
“I’ll kill him! I swear I’ll kill him!” No. 1 roared through streaming tears and snot.
“Blaaargh!”
Before that, however, he still had quite a bit of vomiting left to do.