Doomsday Wonderland

Chapter 1363: Desperate Opportunity

No matter how optimistic Nu Yue usually was, she felt that she was in dire straits now.

She stared at the map on her phone that Han Suiping had provided for a long time, feeling increasingly despondent: she and Wan Qingge were currently located between the satellite base and the nearest town. Within a nearly a hundred-mile radius, there wasn’t even a single building worth marking on the map, let alone a hospital.

She couldn’t enter the satellite base with no car and no identity. If she were to carry Wan Qingge back step by step to the nearest town, he would probably breathe his last breath on this long journey. She didn’t even have the luxury of sitting still – the garrison at the satellite base could come at any moment.

A walkie-talkie discarded on the ground suddenly crackled. “Du Hu Squad, report the situation.”

Nu Yue was startled, realizing that her time was running out. In order to be able to save Wan Qingge, she had already put the rocket plan on the line; even if there was no way forward, she could not leave Wan Qingge here to be taken away by those people.

“Du Hu Squad,” the voice on the walkie-talkie said again, “Do you copy?”

Nu Yue sat up, ignoring it, and reached out to hold Wan Qingge. His injuries were so severe that when she reached under his arms, she was worried she might tear his body apart – it was at this moment that Han Suiping’s voice suddenly exclaimed in her ear, ‘Ah!’ startling her so much that she almost dropped Wan Qingge.

“I, I’ve come up with a plan!” Han Suiping said excitedly, barely containing his volume. It was unclear where he was hiding, but he had never dared to speak loudly. “It might be a bit risky, but there’s no other way. Besides…”

Nu Yue’s field of vision suddenly brightened a bit, and she hurriedly asked, “What is it?”

“Change clothes… Since they’re sending people over, before they arrive, change Brother Wan’s clothes.”

“What?” Nu Yue was slightly stunned.

“Take off the uniforms of the others, dress Brother Wan in them.” Han Suiping, so eager to convey his idea that he seemed to want to stuff his thoughts directly into her mind, said, “Then give the dead person his clothes. Doesn’t that mean swapping identities? We don’t have much time, so go change his clothes while you talk.”

When Nu Yue understood, her heart almost felt like it would burst out of her chest.

“In fact, there is a hospital not far from your current location, only a dozen kilometers away, inside the satellite base.” Han Suiping said a bit incoherently, “The people at the base won’t save Brother Wan, but if they see that one of their own is still alive, they will definitely take him to the base hospital, right? Oh, and can you use blood or dirt to smear his face? If they see someone nearly dead, they’ll definitely prioritize first aid before washing his face.”

Right—Nu Yue had forgotten that when Han Suiping told her there were few female employees at the base, he mentioned that they all worked in the base hospital and guesthouse, which was Wan Qingge’s only chance to survive.

She quickly removed Wan Qingge’s blood-soaked clothes and hastily stripped a dead person, not even sparing their belt or socks. After the voice on the walkie-talkie called a few times and realized there was no response, it anticipated something was wrong. With a click, the communication was cut off, never to be heard again – presumably, the next batch of people had already started heading towards them.

While Nu Yue was busy and sweating profusely, Han Suiping muttered, “But they know that the posthuman was injured in the explosion, and in the last communication, they knew he was still alive. There’s only one living person at the scene, and he’s injured by the explosion, so he’ll definitely be suspected.”

“It doesn’t matter.” After witnessing the car blown into the sky, Nu Yue felt much more relaxed and said with a smile, “I have a way to deal with this.”

“How?”

“Leave it to me.” Nu Yue said as she fastened the last button on Wan Qingge’s clothes. After smearing his face so much that even his own mother wouldn’t recognize him, she didn’t even have time to catch her breath before rushing to the dead body wearing Wan Qingge’s clothes and pulling out a plastic glove with particles covering the palm from her storage tool.

[Home is for two people. Why should only I clean?]

This dishwashing glove was designed to protect the housewife’s hands, with plastic particles on the palm that could replace dishwashing sponges and quickly clean dirty dishes. Originally designed for housewives, but after being used by many women for some time, it gradually absorbed their resentment: clearly, both husband and wife had to work, but women only received 70% of the salary of equivalent male positions in the workplace, and after returning home, women had to take on 70% of the household chores. Was this fair?

Being refused interviews because they were childless women during recruitment, being relegated to the sidelines after maternity leave, suffering from postpartum depression and still having to get up at night to breastfeed, coming home from work to continue cleaning and cooking… this pair of gloves, which had absorbed so much resentment, perhaps because it had seen too much of this reality, had turned from a tool for women into a weapon: every attack made with these gloves would cause a large-scale tearing effect due to the particles on the gloves.

Nu Yue turned over the dead body, aimed at its back, and slapped it with her palm.

She didn’t even touch the body. A burst of air exploded – under the shattered clothes, the skin, flesh, and organs all jumped and burst open, blossoming into blood-red layers as if it were a bright red flower blooming deeper inside the depths.

She was splattered with blood all over her face and didn’t even blink. Nu Yue slapped several times viciously until the body looked even more like it had been hit by an explosion than Wan Qingge did, and then she stopped. But the other three corpses were intact, and the difference was too noticeable; to avoid suspicion, and because she was so eager, she simply beat each corpse into a bloody mess, then hastily found a replacement outfit and cleaned her own face.

Throughout the process, Han Suiping didn’t even dare to breathe.

“Um, that.” After Nu Yue stopped for a while, he reminded her in a low voice, “There are military vehicles and ambulances coming up ahead… maybe you should hide for a while?”

Nu Yue quickly checked Wan Qingge’s breathing. Seeing that he was still clinging to his last breath, she quickly stuffed the dead body, wearing his clothes, into the car. She had a sudden inspiration, only stuffing the legs in, and arranged the body in a posture halfway out of the car, then hurriedly rushed into the checkpoint. Looking around, the only hiding place she could find was under the table.

“Hide quickly,” Han Suiping said. “The vehicles are coming!”

She hurriedly dove under the table, and at that moment, she couldn’t see anything except the legs of the chair in front of her; she could only listen to Han Suiping’s description.

“They’re here, they’ve arrived.” He said through her earpiece, accompanied by the sound of a car engine ringing outside, “They’re all fully armed… someone from the ambulance has come down and started inspecting the bodies.”

The footsteps of leather boots quickly dispersed, occupying the entire checkpoint. Someone shouted, “Split into teams and search. He must have accomplices!” Soon, the checkpoint door was kicked open, and two pairs of feet hurriedly walked in—in a place like under the table, it was like a joke; surely, a glance would reveal her.

Just as Nu Yue tightly curled up deep under the table, ready to attack as soon as someone bent down, a pair of legs suddenly walked straight toward the table, and the owner of the legs exclaimed, “Huh?”

“What’s wrong?” another person asked.

“You see, this surveillance feed is paused.” Two pairs of legs quickly blocked the table in front, but no one bent down to look; their attention was focused on the top of the table where Nu Yue had just seen several surveillance screens. “It should’ve been paused before they got into trouble. This, this must be the accomplice, right?”

Engrossed, the other person lowered his gun, and the black barrel fell into Nu Yue’s field of view. “Yeah, let’s report this quickly.”

“I’m the one who paused the feed,” Han Suiping whispered in her earpiece. “It was the only way I could think of to divert their attention away from under the table.”

Isn’t this good? But listening to his tone, he sounded very guilty.

“I didn’t have time to tamper with it, so I just used the camera to capture the real scene when they spotted you,” his voice grew quieter as he said, “But don’t worry! Most of your face isn’t visible.”

There was no other way. Nu Yue sighed.

The person in charge of the team was outside, loudly ordering everyone to clear the road; it seemed they weren’t planning to allow any more vehicles through. “Looks like one explosion wasn’t enough to kill him, he’s really like a cockroach. If I had known, I would’ve increased the amount of explosives… we’ve just wasted three lives for nothing,” he said as someone pushed the vehicle.

Nu Yue’s nails dug deep into the skin of her palm.

“Carry these brothers away,” he ordered again. “They’re all heroes who perished with the criminals.”

She sat under the table without making a sound. Nu Yue was small, and when she curled up into a ball, she was even more inconspicuous; she watched as the person in charge came in, looked at the screens, and then walked out and locked the door. Even when the room fell silent, she still couldn’t believe she hadn’t been discovered.

“Brother Wan has been taken to the ambulance,” Han Suiping continued. “They really think he’s one of their own!”

There were a series of emergency measures in the ambulance, and Wan Qingge, being as resilient as he was, would definitely hold on until they reached the hospital. Nu Yue breathed a heavy sigh of relief, feeling her whole body go limp – but she was far from being able to relax.

Now that the first checkpoint was closed, no one would enter the base anymore, let alone get a car. Even if she could get one, she would be suspected. This meant she only had one option: to follow the military and ambulance into the base.