The short but brutal ambush battle finally ended. Realising that they could not gain an upper hand, some of the members of the enemy had retreated. Hao Ren returned to the mercenary group and saw Nolan jumping down from the truck, which was mounted with the heavy machine gun. The girl, who was seemingly just a teenager was still expressionless as if everything that happened was just make believe; she never once showed sings of panic or anger.
“Khiton’s a turncoat. He’s defected to the rangers,” Nolan informed her teammates about what happened in the truck flatly. “It was my oversight.”
Hao Ren remembered the scene where she fired back with the rotary machine gun on the truck amid heavy enemy fire. She was brave but reckless, and she could have been killed by exposing herself in the rain of bullets. As an outsider, Hao Ren did not want to comment, so he just nodded with a wry smile. “You’re impressive.”
“Our leader is fearless in the battlefield. But she can always come out of it alive. It’s the luck of the grey fox.” Ulyanov said with a sullen voice.
Nolan shook his head. “There have been times when I was that lucky, just that you guys didn’t remember… Well, let’s not talk about this. Are you really a civilian?”
Nolan was of course talking to Hao Ren. As her voice trailed off, the mercenaries cast their suspicious eyes on Hao Ren. Though Hao Ren had not perform any superhuman manoeuvre, to be able to sneak up under the nose of enemy and singlehandedly take out several armed soldiers was surreal enough. Ulyanov nodded to Nolan. “He knows how to fight, he knows how to advance using cover, and his movement are all very professional. He is no rookie on the battlefield.”
“You really want me to explain… I can make a few excuses,” Hao Ren put his cards on the table, thinking that if worse comes to worst, he could go alone anytime. “I don’t know how to tell you anyway.”
“Forget it. I’m not interested in your skill,” Nolan looked at Hao Ren for a while. She shook her head as she handed over something to him. “Thank you for helping us. Take it. It’s your gold. You deserve it.”
Hao Ren took the gold matter-of-coursely. Then Nolan took out another god bar. “And this is the gold that you threw out… I’m curious how rich you really are. Do you usually use gold bar as weapon?”
Hao Ren finally knew what kind of concealed weapon he had taken out from the dimensional pocket…
The mercenaries looked at Hao Ren as if he was an extra-terrestrial creature. Unarmed and loitering in Lawless District, without regard to his own safety, carrying around quarter-pound golds, and using them to pay for things and as weapon. Everyone thought that he was a moneybag with no brain but took out several professional soldiers with bare hands… Where did this freaking oddball come from? What was actually wrong with his brain?
Hao Ren knew that the more he explained the more trouble it would cause. So he had better not saying anything but putting out an innocent smile. He then bent over and picked up the blonde—the temporary body of the MDT. “Let’s get out of here quickly. It’s not safe here.”
“You still take her with you?” Ulyanov asked, astonished.
Hao Ren nodded with a forced smile. “Of course, if I leave this fellow behind, it will annoy me to death.”
Nolan was wide-eyed, holding back the words “she is dead” that were already on the edge of her lips. Others also exchanged a look, probably with some speculations on their minds: this man must have probably been mad.
The mercenaries took the truck and left the place with Nolan at the wheel. The truck was a modified armoured carrier. As the heavy machine gun had risen to the roof, the cabin became very spacious. Hao Ren saw a body lying in the carriage cabin, brain splattered. It must be Khiton; the traitor Nolan had mentioned. Khiton was supposed to meet and extract them, but for some unknown reason he hooked up with the enemy.
It seemed that the situation in Lawless District was more chaotic than imagined.
“The two recruits are dead,” Nolan’s voice came from the driver’s seat. “Khiton is also dead. We have suffered huge losses in other teams too. We must find ways to get more recruits.”
“Tsk, I still like those two new recruits,” the only female mercenary in the team except Nolan said as she spat on the ground. “They were both good men…but what a waste; I was thinking to get laid with them tonight.”
Hao Ren choked, coughing uncontrollably. It seemed this woman was quite open-minded.
Other than Nolan, who drove in front, there were only four mercenaries in the carriage. The two young recruits tasked with weapon retrieval from the battlefield were dead. Enemy’s large-calibre firepower hit them directly on their bodies; so bad the condition of their bodies that it was totally irrecoverable. The only thing recovered were their dog tags. The mercenaries talked about their dead comrades, other than a little forlorn and sad, there was nothing much. To these people, death was commonplace especially on the battlefield like the chaotic Lawless District.
Hao Ren looked at Nolan, through the bulletproof window that separated the carriage and the driver. Something suddenly crossed his mind. He kicked Khiton’s body with his leg. “Why didn’t this traitor shoot us using the heavy machine gun on board? We would be dead if he did.”
Nolan lifted one hand, pulled her hair up from behind her head, and said without looking back. “All the heavy weapons in this vehicle need my physical connection to be operational.”
As she pulled up her grey long hair, Hao Ren saw a piece of mirror-like plate inlaid on the back of Nolan’s neck. There was a groove on the edge of the plate, which suggested the plate was openable.
He remembered he had learned something this world. So he asked hesitantly, “Are you the second generation Evolved?”
“Now the schools of extremist Naturals don’t teach that anymore?” Nolan’s voice sounded helpless. “Only the first generation of Evolved have this kind of visible modification, the second generation of Evolved have the electronic parts implanted in the body as soon as they are born; it’s not visible from the outside.”
Ulyanov pointed to the blonde’s dead body beside Hao Ren. “Isn’t your girlfriend the second generation? Didn’t she tell you about it?”
“She is not my girlfriend…” Hao Ren forced a smile on his face. “In fact… Well, think whatever you like. I too am confused.”
The vehicle gradually left the ravaged city out to the suburbs, which was even more battered. Through the narrow bulletproof side window, Hao Ren could see the deserted land, barely any plants left. The ground was full with pits and signs of corrosion as if the place had once been bathed in thick acid. Looking at the destruction, he wondered how far the war had spread in this world. If words leaked from the mercenaries were anything to go by, he might not be able to find a single inch of land where war had not ravaged. Even the ‘peaceful city-states’ where the common people lived in, was in fact only serving as food-producing base for a certain legion, and surviving under the protection of the army.
Hao Ren felt something weighted down his shoulders. He turned around and saw the blonde’s body had fallen on him, apparently shaken by the bumpy ride. He used his hands to hold the stranger girl whom others were mistaken as his lover. He felt a little emotional as he began to wonder what kind of person the girl whom the MDT was ‘parasitizing’ was, where she came from, and why she appeared in this chaotic battlefield and eventually died.
It was only his cranky thoughts.
“How long have we been ‘dreaming’?” Hao Ren asked casually in his mind. “Do the family members know what’s going on here?”
“It’s has been over four hours, Vivian just tried to wake you up, but I stopped her,” the MDT replied, sounding listless, probably was bored being trapped in a stranger body. “You’d better stay a little longer to explore a little more here. To be honest, you don’t want to disappear suddenly in front of these people, do you?”
The MDT was still retaining control on its own body in the surface world when it entered the Plane of Dreams. So it could also serve as parrot between both worlds.
“What’s your future plan?” Ulyanov’s voice suddenly interrupted Hao Ren’s thoughts.