Chapter 271: Become Friends?
Translator: ryuxenji Editor: mjn0898, H2dH2mr
With a flip of his body, Luo Lang was at the front seat. He pulled out the information the other had keyed in earlier, trying to change their destination, but found that it had already been locked in by the other, with no way of changing it.
Of course, this was just a measure which would work against regular cadets like Luo Lang who were not in the hacker specialization. A competent hacker would still be able to crack this relatively basic lock, but unfortunately, Luo Lang did not have the skills on this front. He could only watch helplessly as the hover car flew towards the destination the other had set, unbelievably frustrated.
Luo Lang understood that to stop the travel route was impossible, unless he used violent means to destroy the hover car ... but, extremely rationally, he rejected this idea, because the hover car was flying rapidly at an altitude of over 100 metres. The moment it was broken, he would plummet along with the car. At this height, no matter how confident Luo Lang was, he could not guarantee he would be able to land safely. If things did not work out, he might once again be gravely injured.
Luo Lang really did not want to end up in Li Shiyu's hands again. Although the other truly had superior skills in treatment, his methods of tormenting others were also extremely masterful. Most importantly, 'for your own good' was putting it nicely — you really had no way of resisting, and would even have to grudgingly thank him for the torment after the fact ...
Besides that, Luo Lang also really wanted to know who the opponent was. An unknown enemy was most often the most fearsome and troublesome type. If he could find out some information on the opponent, it would undoubtedly be a great help to the New Cadet Regiment. More importantly, Luo Lang was also afraid that if he escaped this time, the opponent might turn their sights on the other members of the New Cadet Regiment. Other than Ling Lan, Qi Long, and Wu Jiong, Luo Lang's strength was obviously a bracket higher compared to the other members, and so his chances of escaping were also much better than any other member. For these reasons, Luo Lang decided to brave the tiger's den to probe the opponent's identity.
Having made his decision, Luo Lang no longer concerned himself with the hover car. He tied up the unconscious blue-uniformed senior by his side using the other's belt — the binding method naturally being the one Ling Lan had taught them — and then dumped the other in the backseat. Then, he stared straight ahead with a grim expression, silently trying to memorize the path of the hover car.
The hover car moved very swiftly. In less than 20 minutes, the hover car began to slow down from its initial rapid speed. Luo Lang readied his guard, because he knew he was about to arrive at the destination the opponent had set — the enemy was upon him.
Although the journey had taken less than 20 minutes, with the hover car's speed, they were likely to have already travelled over several hundred kilometres, already very far away from the Military Medical Research Centre. The surroundings were extremely unfamiliar to Luo Lang — towering mountains and dense forest were all around them. Besides the wailing cry of some unknown beast, the surroundings were so silent that it was rather unnerving. Luo Lang used the optical supercomputer of the hover car to zoom in on the environment, and found that other than mountains and trees, there was only more mountains and trees, no sign of human presence whatsoever.
Luo Lang's brow began to furrow tightly — he had originally thought that the hover car would bring them directly to the opponent's main camp, or perhaps a temporary outpost. Unexpectedly, he had been brought to such a bleak and remote area; this left Luo Lang at somewhat of a loss.
The hover car was slowing down more and more, even as its height was slowly descending. In the end, the hover car manoeuvred into a narrow gorge, and after passing through it, Luo Lang was greeted by the sight of an average-sized patch of grass. It was lush and verdant, with countless small blooms of myriad colours dotting this sheet of green, giving observers a sense of extraordinary beauty.
At the edge of the grassy patch was a sea of trees. Luo Lang could hear the sound of a babbling brook coming out from the trees, causing everything to seem that much more beautiful and harmonious. This made Luo Lang's initially high-strung vigilance ease a little, but only for a split second — Luo Lang very quickly had his guard up high once more, no longer lingering in his appreciation for that patch of lovely grass. Instead, he paid close attention to the movements of the hover car beneath him.
The hover car slowly moved onto the grass-patch and began to descend until it had landed fully. After that, the hover car emitted a mechanical voice, "You have reached your destination. Please disembark."
Following this announcement, the car doors swung open. Luo Lang did not choose to get off, instead turning on the A.I. again, trying to see if he could enter a new address. In this extremely foreign place, Luo Lang's first move was to try to implement a Plan B — he wanted to set it so the hover car would automatically return from this place back to the dormitories after waiting for 10 minutes.
But very quickly, Luo Lang found that he had failed. The other had already thought of this possibility, and had programmed the A.I. to shut off on its own the moment the hover car arrived at its destination, switching into parked mode. It would not accept any new instructions from Luo Lang, so Luo Lang really had no choice but to remain.
Seeing this, Luo Lang could not help but be chilled by the opponent's attention to detail. It should be known that the hover cars of the military academy would never turn off their engines. They were powered by photonic energy — whether it was sunlight or starlight, all of it would give the hover cars power. Therefore, the hover cars could theoretically continue driving on forever, unless some other mechanical issue occurred or their A.I. programming malfunctioned.
Luo Lang knew that this situation now meant that the opponent must have a high-level hacker on their side, one capable of modifying the operating system of the hover car's A.I., thus forcing the car to power down automatically when it arrived at its destination.
This arrangement of the enemy forced Luo Lang to stay, because there was nothing at all around here 1 — no village-houses, no stores, no hover car stops ... in other words, once someone came here, other than taking the hover car which had originally brought them here back, they would not be able to summon a new hover car over to pick them up, unless they used their communicators to request assistance from the academy mainframe ...
Luo Lang was almost certain that his communicator would be unable to contact the outside world by now. The opponent had planned things so thoroughly, so it was unlikely they would have missed such a large hole in their plan.
Sure enough, when he peeked down at his communicator, his communicator was displaying an alert saying 'signal disrupted, device out of contact'. Who knew how long his device had been flashing that alert — Luo Lang's attention had just been elsewhere, which was why he had not noticed till now.
Luo Lang knew that a tough fight was sure to follow. The opponent had set such an elaborate trap to draw him here, they would not just want to meet him for a chat. He sighed silently, getting off the hover car with his sense on high alert, stepping foot on this lovely patch of grass.
With his back to the hover car, he swept his gaze over the perimeter on all three sides before him. Seeing no one, he was frowning in puzzlement when he suddenly heard the sound of a hover car coming from behind him. Luo Lang snapped his head around and saw three hover cars flying swiftly towards him. In the end, the three cars circled around to surround him before they slowly descended to land.
Soon, 7 or 8 people had disembarked from the three hover cars. The person in the lead was dressed in a pressed white uniform, and he was smiling as he looked at Luo Lang. His figure was tall and stately, his face extraordinarily handsome — he definitely possessed the figure and appearance that Luo Lang dreamed of having — but his sparkling, flirty eyes disturbed Luo Lang. Those eyes just did not seem to fit the other's overall appearance somehow, resulting in a huge deduction in the overall sense of perfection.
The other youths were all dressed in blue uniforms. They looked to be about twenty years old, definitely senior cadets of the military academy; it was just hard to tell which year exactly they were from. They stood around almost randomly, but still keeping Luo Lang completely within their circle.
Luo Lang stared warily at the group. This behaviour of the other side let him know that these people were most definitely the ones who had tricked him here. The two sides stared at each other silently for 2 to 3 minutes, neither side saying a word.
Luo Lang clenched his teeth. From the looks of it, the opponent was not planning to speak up first. Thus, he decided to take the initiative. Looking towards the obvious leader of this group, the white-uniformed youth, who must be a dux of who knows what specialization, he asked coldly, "Was it you who set up this trap to bring me here?"
The white-clothed youth laughed and clapped his hands, "Bingo! How clever!"
"Bringing me here, what business do you have with me? I think, I have never seen you before, so I should not have offended you somehow," Luo Lang said.
The white-clothed youth laughed again and said, "Haha, of course not! Actually, I just wanted to become friends with you."
Luo Lang scoffed at these words, "Become friends? Using this kind of despicable method?"
The white-clothed youth frowned, and said sullenly, "Could it be that Yong-guang 2 didn't tell you that I wanted to discuss something with you?"
"Using a text message to trick me into going to the Military Medical Research Centre, then using the excuse of an examination at the examination centre to trick me onto a hover car and bringing me here by force. What do you think?"
Hearing all this, the white-clothed youth said exasperatedly, "Yong-guang misunderstood my intentions! I just said that I especially admired your performance during the arena fight, actually being able to achieve an upset, defeating a stronger opponent. This deserves my respect. I most admire your type of resilient and tenacious spirit. So, I told him that if I had a chance, I'd like to get to know you, maybe become friends or something ..."
At this point, the white-clothed youth began muttering to himself, "Yong-guang clearly said that he could help me do that ... how did things turn out this way?" So saying, he abruptly raised his head and asked Luo Lang, "Where's Yong-guang? Let me ask him what exactly is going on? I had clearly asked him to invite you here. This place is my favourite spot. I thought you might like it too, which is why I arranged to meet you here."
The white-clothed youth's expression was earnest, as if the truth was just as he said. With that explanation, Luo Lang began to doubt whether things were really like that — was it this Yong-guang who had made a mistake?
However, Boss Lan's cautionary words very quickly rang out in his mind. 'When you are still uncertain whether an other is a friend or foe, you need to guard against the other as if they were an enemy ...'
Luo Lang's heart clenched, cold sweat breaking out along his back. Without knowing it, he had slowly been letting down his guard. He abruptly stared penetratingly at the seemingly earnest face of that white-clothed youth, and said coldly, "No need. He is my hostage now. Why don't you tell me what you intend?"
Luo Lang's wary gaze made the lips of the white-clothed youth twitch, his gaze quickly becoming bleak as he said, "I really had no bad intentions." That said, he bowed his head somewhat mournfully.
"If you have no bad intentions, then help me unlock the settings of the hover car. It's getting late, I should go back now," responded Luo Lang coldly. No matter what the other said, he was determined not to believe it. Who would do such a bizarre thing as this just to make friends? It was suspicious however he looked at it.
Resigned, the white-clothed youth said, "Okay. I really don't know how things turned out this way. All of this was done by Yong-guang. You need to wake Yong-guang up, he should be able to resolve this."
Luo Lang peered intently at the white-clothed youth for a long moment. Then, without shifting his line of sight, his hand reached into the backseat of the hover car behind him, and smacked that person called Yong-guang awake.