Chapter 21: Childish Game
Dark blue sky light seeped into the carriage through the gaps in the explosion-proof net, spreading mottled cold tones on the metal shelves.
The air conditioner’s hum maintaining 22°C intertwined with the regular vibrations of the wheels rolling over the railway track.
Yu Jing curled up in the corner of the metal rack in the storage room, her head pillowed on a large bottle of cola, the round plastic bottle transmitting a faint coolness that subtly tugged against the thin sweat seeping from the back of her neck.
Su Huan fiddled with a small electronic watch in his hand, his thumb brushing over it, displaying 05:27, then casually magnetically attached the electronic watch to the rack nearby.
He had kept watch all last night, and apart from the night demon that Gao Zhe had killed, no other dangers had appeared.
He continued to close his eyes and rest his mind.
Su Huan was very experienced with staying up all night; he could enter a half-dreaming, half-awake shallow sleep state.
Completely entrusting the watch to his body’s instincts.
This shallow sleep state had once sustained him through four days and two nights, until the mutated beast left due to excessive hunger.
Suddenly, a metallic clanging sound came from the fourth carriage, and Su Huan reflexively tensed his spine until he heard Yu Yue’s distinctive light footsteps, at which point his Adam’s apple slowly descended.
She was probably preparing breakfast.
He hoped to drink a bowl of seafood congee; this thought suddenly crossed his wandering mind.
Footsteps from Yu Yue sounded behind him, and the woman glanced at her daughter in the corner, asking softly, “Mister Su, what would you like to eat for breakfast?”
Su Huan lay on the chair, squinting his eyes. “Don’t be so polite, or I’ll always feel like you’re being sarcastic with me.”
Yu Yue bit her lower lip, somewhat troubled. She was much older than Su Huan, but she couldn’t call him Little Su, could she?
“Su… Su Bro?”
Aunt Yu added a bit of a drawn-out tone, not obvious, but different from how the group behind called him.
Su Huan suddenly felt it was pointless to fuss over this and said casually, “I remember there’s quite a bit of frozen seafood in the dining car’s refrigerator. Make some congee. In the future, prioritize eating the frozen stored food.”
“Okay.”
With this disturbance, Su Huan couldn’t squint anymore, so he simply got up and went to the fifth carriage to pull open the curtain.
The sudden bright sky light cut the carriage into stark contrasts of light and dark.
Su Huan squinted his eyes and looked outside the window; the mountains and fields were lush with vegetation, and among the originally verdant green, quite a few bright red plants had appeared.
In the deep shadows, it seemed like pairs of eyes were sizing up the train.
As the train advanced, the land and scenery were slowly left behind.
Su Huan returned to the sixth carriage and came to Yu Jing’s side.
She had come relatively early last night to relieve her mom, staying up for half the night, and by morning she was exhausted, so she lay here to rest.
The gray little shirt was tugged by the raised peaks, revealing the delicate skin of her lower abdomen.
Su Huan’s playful mood surged, and he squatted down, gently rubbing near her navel with his fingertip.
Not hard, just scraping with his fingerprint.
After a moment, Yu Jing opened her bloodshot eyes, glanced at Su Huan, and turned her head to sleep again.
Her graceful white neck was thus exposed right before his eyes.
Soon after, Yu Jing felt a faint itch on her neck again and sighed faintly, “How about you just give me a quick end.”
“No.”
Su Huan sneered and continued his childish game of tickling her with his hair.
You have to want it just because I give it to you?
Who exactly calls the shots?
Moreover, he felt that mentally tormenting Yu Jing gave him more pleasure than doing it directly.
Anyway, it was candy already in his mouth; the longer he savored it, the sweeter it felt when he finally ate it.
Yu Jing could no longer sleep at all. She opened her eyes and looked at the cold smile on Su Huan’s face, feeling irritated in her heart. She should have just gone with it that night.
Now, they might even be tired of each other.
As it was now, she had stirred up the man’s damn desire to conquer, and who knew how long it would take.
Yu Jing’s mouth curved up, revealing a beautiful smile. “Brother, how about we go to the room?”
“Shut up, disgusting!”
Yu Jing: “…”
This round of confrontation ended with Yu Jing’s flustered retreat.
Su Huan felt that although his body was very fatigued from staying up all night, his mental aura was high-spirited.
He first returned to the room, set down the sniper crossbow, then took out the notebook to record today’s logbook.
“December 19th, early winter, 28°C—”
“It seems I’ve shaped a hero.”
—”Train Conductor Logbook”
Arriving at the dining car, what met his eyes was a khaki blanket on the sofa, printed with a chubby orange cat wearing a mischievous smile, adding quite a bit of life to the carriage.
Yu Yue noticed his line of sight and said, “I saw the blanket was idle and thought it looked nice here…”
“Fine, fine, this kind of thing is up to you, no need to tell me.” Su Huan waved his hand indifferently.
He slumped on the sofa in a daze.
Around seven o’clock, Wan Xing and Qi Xiao Ba also came out.
The train slowly came to a stop in the suburbs.
Liang Kuan, with bloodshot eyes from staying up, walked into the dining car. “The nearest water plant is about ten minutes away; we’ll arrive soon.”
Su Huan took the seafood congee handed over by Yu Yue, sniffed the aroma. “No rush. Later, let the passengers off first, then you go rest.”
“Understood.”
Liang Kuan took the congee and drank it down in big gulps.
Su Huan’s gaze turned to Wan Xing. “Later, first collect the night demon corpse in the storage carriage. Besides the general energy crystal, see if you can get any other materials.”
The zombie’s greatest contribution wasn’t that general energy crystal, but the various bizarre ideas for bodily evolution.
This was something a researcher from a certain big company that Su Huan knew in his previous life had told him.
But currently, Wan Xing’s ability development was too low, and her utilization of zombies couldn’t reach the gene level.
Su Huan didn’t have high demands of her; as long as she could dismantle some useful materials, it was fine.
Like those claws, they were all high-strength materials.
Accumulated, they would all come in handy later.
Wan Xing nodded silently.
What she could do, Su Huan understood better than she did herself. No need to question; just do it.
Looking at the steam rising from the seafood congee, Su Huan mused, “Today’s work is just one task: check the train’s damage and continue completing the first phase of the armored train plan.”
Everyone acknowledged.
…
The carriage before his eyes was very “open.”
Su Huan thought for a long time before coming up with this precise and vivid description.
Hundreds of coin-sized holes densely pierced through the surface of the green-skinned carriage, passing through the buffer and insulation layers to poke out a hole.
Twelve panes of glass, only two intact; the rest were shattered into various kinds of debris.
The relatively weaker roof had even been clawed into a large pit by the night demon.
Honestly, Su Huan wanted to just detach this carriage.
Anyway, they wouldn’t need so many carriages for a while, and last night the passengers had 63 casualties.
What surprised him was that Dog Brother had survived, along with that family’s daughter-in-law. Although she looked frightened, there wasn’t even a drop of blood on her.
The tattooed man had died quite cleanly, killed in one strike.
Besides this, the carriages without steel plates attached behind had more or less some claw marks, but none as severe as this.
