novelTele Chapter 7 Hunter's Hut
Chapter 7 Hunter's Hut
Li Fulan wiped the blood from her palms on her clothes. Although the "nanny turned assassin" scene was exciting, the side effect was extreme exhaustion after the adrenaline subsided.
[Li Fulan, your body temperature is dropping. We recommend finding a safe place immediately.]
Commissioner Lin's voice came through the earphones at just the right moment.
"Nonsense, I know that without you saying it."
Li Fulan looked around. This was the outer edge of the Star Dou Great Forest, where the smell of blood spread faster than rumors. That wind baboon from before was just a ten-year-old weakling; if it had attracted a hundred-year-old Netherworld Wolf or a thousand-year-old Ghost Tiger, his physique wouldn't even be enough to fill their teeth.
To get back, you need to sleep.
If you want to sleep, you need to find a place where you won't get eaten in your sleep.
He dragged his leaden leg, trudging deeper and deeper into the woods. Luckily, or perhaps his protagonist's halo flashed slightly, he actually spotted a half-collapsed wooden hut after walking only two miles.
That must have been a temporary outpost left by bounty hunters who used to hunt low-level soul beasts in the mountains. There was a large hole in the roof, and through that hole, you could see the two moons of Douluo Continent that looked like a joke.
There was nothing in the room except for a rotten wooden bed that was just a frame and dried animal dung all over the floor.
But that's enough.
Li Fulan casually tore off a few handfuls of dry grass and spread them on the wooden bed, then took out the stone she had just picked up from her belt and held it in her hand for psychological comfort.
"Command center, I'm going to sleep."
He muttered something to the headphones.
[Received. Monitoring program initiated. Sweet dreams.]
What a load of rubbish.
He had barely been lying on that rickety bed, as hard as a slab of stone, for two minutes when that familiar, drowning-like dizziness enveloped his brain.
……
dark.
Spin.
weightlessness.
Then came the hard sensation under my buttocks.
Unlike the rough hardness of a wooden plank bed that carries a sense of decay, this is a cold, smooth, industrial hardness.
Li Fulan suddenly opened her eyes.
The stark white light pierced his retina like needles, causing him to squint instinctively. The rotten smell of the primeval forest in his nostrils vanished instantly, replaced by the musty smell of smoke and leather unique to interrogation rooms.
came back.
He was still in that interrogation chair, his posture unchanged.
"They're awake! All indicators are rebounding!"
The doctor in the white coat next to me, like a stock market investor who had just seen a stock hit its daily limit, stared at the screen and yelled.
Immediately afterwards, two large faces came closer.
One is Director Zhao's square face, which seems to say, "This is too big of a deal for me to handle," and the other is Commissioner Lin's poker face, which seems to say, "Hurry up and hand over the good stuff."
"How is it? Where's the stuff?" Commissioner Lin pushed up his glasses, his gaze scanning Li Fulan's entire body like an X-ray, finally settling on his waist.
Li Fulan didn't speak, but felt a dryness in her throat.
He laboriously raised his hand and pointed to the already cramped open space on the ground.
"Step back a little, don't get splattered with blood."
Although Commissioner Lin and Director Zhao were puzzled, they obediently took two steps back.
Li Fulan took a deep breath and mentally connected with the "Number Three Stomach" in her mind that had just been stuffed full.
freed.
"Bang!"
A dull thud resounded, causing the floor to tremble.
The mountain-sized carcass of the baboon landed abruptly and illogically on the floor of the interrogation room.
The visual impact is perfect.
If what we had just heard was nothing more than hearsay, then this grotesque corpse, still steaming and bleeding from its neck, was a stark reminder of the truth.
The nauseating stench instantly filled the enclosed room, ten times stronger than what Li Fulan had smelled in the forest.
"vomit--!"
Wang Bing, the young police officer who had been guarding the door, finally lost his composure and rushed out the door while covering his mouth.
Director Zhao's hand, which was originally on the holster, trembled upon seeing this scene, and he almost failed to pull it out.
"This...this is..."
He pointed at the corpse, its mouth open, but it couldn't utter a complete sentence for a long time.
That wind baboon died a terrible death.
His neck was swollen like an inflated balloon, and the clumps of white mycelium in his mouth looked like some kind of strange flower growing out of hell, appearing particularly eerie under the pale light.
Commissioner Lin remained silent.
He didn't even care that the blood on the ground would soil his shiny leather shoes.
He acted like a fanatical scientist who had seen the wreckage of an alien spaceship, stepping over the pool of blood and squatting down next to the corpse.
He didn't mind the dirt; he reached out and touched the hard, iron-like mane, then pried open the baboon's mouth to examine the mycelium.
"This is the biological structure of that world..."
"Its muscle density is more than three times that of primates of similar size on Earth..."
"This fungal infestation... was caused by your soul skill?"
He turned around abruptly, and the academic fervor in his eyes made even a seasoned veteran like Li Fulan feel a little uneasy.
"Yes." Li Fulan slumped in her chair, responding weakly, "Overtreatment caused cell proliferation. It's just a little trick a wet nurse uses."
"A genius idea!"
Commissioner Lin exclaimed in admiration, stood up, and without caring that his hands were still stained with blood, took out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped them clean, regaining his cool demeanor as an elite agent.
"Director Zhao, seal this body immediately. Use the highest level of biochemical isolation and airlift it to Beijing overnight. Every single cell in this body is priceless."
"Understood!" Director Zhao immediately turned around to make the arrangements.
The interrogation room finally quieted down a bit.
Commissioner Lin walked up to Li Fulan and looked down at him.
"Mr. Li Fulan, now that the verification has been successful, this place is no longer suitable for you."
"This lousy place doesn't even have a decent exhaust fan; it's really not a place for people to stay." Li Fulan fanned the stench in front of her nose.
"What I mean is, your security clearance level," Commissioner Lin corrected. "With this kind of cross-border transport capability, you're now a walking human nuclear arsenal, and a tempting target for all foreign forces. This police station can't protect you."
"Where are we going?"
"The National Security Bureau's Seventh Special Operations Base," Commissioner Lin announced, quoting a place name that sounded incredibly hardcore. "It's 300 meters underground, with an independent ecological cycle system and a full range of scientific research facilities. Unless the Earth explodes, it's absolutely safe there."
Li Fulan shrugged.
"It sounds like a luxury prison."
"It's a shelter," Commissioner Lin corrected, "and also your future home. You'll have to live there until you're able to protect yourself there."
"Alright, I have nowhere else to go anyway," Li Fulan readily agreed.
As long as he's fed, and as long as he can continue researching how to die (scratch that) and how to explore other worlds, it doesn't matter where he lives.
"However, I need to make a phone call before I leave."
"to whom?"
"Mom and Dad," Li Fulan pointed to her cracked phone on the table, "I can't just disappear, can I? They're waiting for me to come home this weekend for ribs."
Commissioner Lin paused for a second, then nodded.
"Sure. But you know the rules. The confidentiality clause."
"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing."
Li Fulan picked up her phone and skillfully dialed the number.
The phone was answered after two rings, and there was a lot of background noise on the other end, which sounded like it was coming from a vegetable market or a card room.
"Feeding? Son? Why are you calling so late at night?"
My mother's signature loud voice came through the receiver, carrying a comforting, homely quality.
"It's nothing serious, Mom."
Li Fulan changed her posture, propping her legs up on the table leg, and spoke in a relaxed tone as if she were talking about what she had for dinner that night.
"Just letting you know that the company just assigned me a big project, and I'll have to go on a business trip out of town for a while."
"Business trip? Where to? Is it far?"
"It's quite far, a classified unit, deep in the mountains, the signal isn't very good. We might not be able to contact them for a while."
While making up lies, Li Fulan unconsciously drew circles on the table with her finger.
"Kid, what kind of company do you work for that requires you to go into the mountains? You'd better bring enough clothes, it's cold in the mountains. Also, don't eat instant noodles all the time, they're bad for your stomach..."
My mother's nagging was like a warm current, seemingly out of place yet incredibly real in this interrogation room filled with the smell of blood and disinfectant.
"Okay, okay, I'm going to work, not to beg for food. The food there is great."
Li Fulan smiled, her eyes slightly sore, but her voice remained perfectly steady.
"Alright, Mom, that's enough. The car's waiting downstairs. This project has a high bonus; when I get back, I'll get us a bigger house with an elevator."
"Oh, why bother changing houses? Your safety and well-being are more important than anything... Alright, alright, go ahead and do it, don't delay important matters."
"It's over."
"Beep—beep—"
The phone hangs up.
Li Fulan stared at the black screen for two seconds, then stuffed her phone into her pocket and stood up.
"Alright, that's enough, you've told a convincing lie."
He dusted himself off and looked at Commissioner Lin.
"Let's go, lead the way."
Commissioner Lin gave him a deep look, said nothing, and simply made a "please" gesture.