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Seventeenth leaf
Yuu-chan 2025.05.21. 15:20
There weren’t any obstacles for a while. At some point, the asphalt under them vanished, leaving only the worn-down pathways on the wasteland’s soil. The behemoth armored vehicles still pressed a decent, smooth road into it to give them a nice ride.
Lu Feng noticed that his heart rate increased when they got off that man-made road, and there was nothing around them other than nature, which he hadn’t seen a long time ago. When he looked into the mirror, he couldn’t see the base anymore, only a small black line on the horizon, fading away quickly.
Lu Feng peeked at his partner. An Zhe gasped for air, drenched in sweat; he tensed and trembled in his whole body, and his face was red and white simultaneously.
“Do you want me to stop?” Lu Feng asked, clearing his throat, realising his voice was quite hoarse. An Zhe just closed his eyes, and didn’t react anything for a few moments, in which Lu Feng gradually slowed down a little, so as not to cause another shock. Their car made weird noises, and he was sure, the machine would fall apart if they hit anything else.
“I th-think I’m goh-going to faint.” An Zhe stuttered, and couldn’t stop shaking.
“Your wound?”
Lu Feng glanced at his shoulder, and sure enough, he noticed a small patch of fresh, red blood on his shirt. He reached out, and with one hand, caressed the wet forehead. It wasn’t extremely hot like at night, but hotter than his hand. Dr Ji said that he should not waste medicine for a small fever, thus, reluctantly, he withdrew his hand, and kept driving without a word.
An Zhe fainted as he said he would, or maybe just fell asleep from the excitement that depleted his energy. He wasn’t breathing fast anymore, his face also relaxed.
The rose knew he had to drive in line most of the time, but after a while, even the trail of the armored vehicles disappeared. He had to take a break around noon when the sun was at its highest. After so much noise, when he stopped the car, the silence was deafening. Even An Zhe woke up, blinking drowsily at him from the side.
“Time to eat,” Lu Feng said, getting out of the car to check their trunk. Seraing wasn’t joking, he packed full packages of food, a lot of compressed ones, some instant ones, but some dried ones too that they could cook or roast on fire. Lu Feng chose some dried ones, cookies and paste, and brought two water bottles back to the front. Sitting in, he gave An Zhe his portion.
“I think, despite the seclusion, they will come after us.” The young man said with his usual voice, but with a brief hoarseness.
“Mn.” Lu Feng agreed, and began eating the modest lunch.
“We really should go to a city first…”
“Okay.”
“Oh… I thought you would argue.”
“I understand the importance of it.” Lu Feng contemplated their next possible move. “Let’s go with this car until we find one. If we reach a city, we can leave the car behind. They will look for it, so if we take it with us throughout the whole wilderness, they will have an easier job of finding our hiding spot.”
“Ah… you’re right… Do you… know the Abyss well?” An Zhe’s voice was lower this time, but he sounded curious. Lu Feng shot a short look at him, and he found that An Zhe changed his position, leaning to the door, facing towards him, and surely scrutinising him: that light pair of eyes watched him intently. The gaze made Lu Feng feel warmer under his collar.
“Not me. Lu Feng.” He admitted. This was the very first time he could talk freely about how he perceived the man he was impersonating. “He had a lot of experience there. That was his favourite place. My original home wasn’t in the Abyss, and at that time, I couldn’t travel.”
“Oh… yeah… you said you’re a rose, right?” Lu Feng only nodded as an answer, focusing on his food, rather than reciprocating the other’s look, because he could feel it on his skin. “Can I see your true form once?”
This was just so surprising – a question that Lu Feng never imagined to get. He couldn’t resist looking up anymore. An Zhe didn’t turn away the whole time, taking small bites of his cookie.
“I think you wouldn’t like it as much as you like this form.” Lu Feng said after a few seconds of silence. “I’m not as beautiful as Madam Lu’s roses. And even Lu Feng thought I was pitiful.”
“Every plant is beautiful, even the flowerless ones… You don’t have to worry about such a thing.” Lu Feng wasn’t able to answer; his inside parts started tingling everywhere, even his toes in the boots. “So can your new family thrive in the Abyss?”
Lu Feng paused, quietly finishing his meal, and he drank a mouthful of water.
“I don’t have a chance to have a flower family anymore. I lost the seeds… more precisely, I left them in the Main City.” It was easy to say, and he stayed calm, but he couldn’t help but feel a bit of pain in his heart. He wasn’t alone, and he was completely fine with An Zhe being on his side… but his whole purpose of going to the base washed away with the late-night incident.
“Mn… you mean these?”
When he glanced at An Zhe, his whole body stiffened, and his mind went blank for a moment. The young man was holding a small linen sack, offering it to him. Lu Feng was stunned.
“How…”
“I asked Seraing to get it when he prepared the food.” An Zhe said gently, flashing a small smile at him. “I also asked him to bring my planter box. It’s supposed to be in the trunk somewhere… Once we are in a safer place, we should take it out to give them sunlight and water.” Lu Feng’s heavy feelings lifted off instantly when he held the sack between his palms. “Take it as my gratitude gift for saving my life… I wish I could do better…”
Lu Feng sighed, and suddenly leaned over the young man. An Zhe instantly quieted, his eyes widened, and he even held his breath while Lu Feng looked deeply into the light eyes from so close he had never been before. He put his hand on the car’s door behind An Zhe to keep his balance and not fall on him. He watched the slightly fluttering, long eyelashes enveloping his eyelids, the subtle blush growing on him like morning dew on the leaves, and felt the heat coming from his body.
“You just saved my species… it should be me saying what you’ve said… I wish I could help humanity to stay alive.” After a pause, he cleared his throat, and slowly backed away. “At least I will try to keep you alive… How is your wound? Can we continue?”
He grabbed the wheel, and when An Zhe didn’t answer, Lu Feng glanced at him. An Zhe turned completely red with lowered eyes, hiding half of his face in his palm.
“An Zhe?”
“…Mm. Go.” He also nested in his seat again, leaning to the backrest, and looked out the window.
Their ride was quite eventless after their escape in the morning. The car still let out small noises, and its front was badly demolished; the worn-down vehicle wasn’t the stealthiest object in the vast flatlands. They clearly attracted monsters, but Lu Feng was able to feel them from a few miles away, as they were all insect types. Thus they avoided encountering them. An Zhe asked some questions in the meantime, striking up conversations, like:
“How do you feel them?”
“It’s a vibration, rather than a feeling… but also a bit overwhelming. When I’m a rose, bugs don’t come at me in such huge swarms.”
Or:
“Was it really hard to live in the base without soil? Was the nutrient in our food enough for you?”
“When I’m a human, I work like a human. I feel the same hunger as anyone else, it’s different from my flower state. But in the beginning, it was weird that my skin can’t absorb the rain, or the sunlight feels cold and cutting, and not energising.”
“Ah… it would be so interesting doing some research on you… if I would have my lab. This is my field of profession, you know… Well, I guess it’s time to use what I studied in real life now… if I don’t want to hinder you and cause you trouble…”
Lu Feng only smiled at that.
Then, An Zhe had gotten exhausted. As the sun started to descend, and the sky darkened, he fell asleep, and Lu Feng kept driving in silence. He was blinded again for a while, as the big red circle just peaked into their car in the corner of the windshield from An Zhe’s side. Once it went down, Lu Feng eased, and he switched the reflectors on.
He soon realised, this was too easy of a first day. Their smooth escape came with certain “prizes”. He understood how correct Seraing was; their light didn’t reach pretty far, and the chances of him driving over a bigger rock or a hole in the ground gradually increased. Bushes came from nowhere, and he just wrecked them, but the car jumped up from time to time because of these inconveniences.
He slowly stopped the car. They brought a tent, so they should be resting at night. He started to become exhausted too, sitting in the car all day. It made his limbs slightly numb. An Zhe needed a check-up and a bandage change, and slowly, there was time for a better dinner. An Zhe had woken up again, quiet and humble, not complaining about anything.
But right when he was about to get out, he felt something. Instantly stiffening, he grabbed the wheel, and looked around.
They were in the middle of nowhere. Small bushes scattered around the car, and beyond them, the strong headlights made everything almost completely black. The aurora fluctuated in the sky, but its light was too dim, and the horizon sank into the shadows in every direction. If there was any movement on the ground, they couldn’t see. Especially with the wind howling relentlessly, like always, making every bush and plant or even small rocks to dance.
Lu Feng squinted. He felt a brief vibration under him.
“Insects?” An Zhe unconsciously whispered with a hoarse voice. Lu Feng didn’t turn towards him, he tried to look out his side of the car.
“I’m not sure.” It wasn’t certain if he could feel monsters other than his pollinators. He didn’t have any relation with animals from different classes, not much at least. “Do you feel it?”
“I…”
They both got the answer when they heard an explosion not far from them, and suddenly a harsh white beam of light came down from somewhere, pointing at them in the darkness. A small bomb landed on the side of the car, and it hit so close that the wretched vehicle almost turned on its side. An Zhe screamed while Lu Feng lost his breath.
There was no time to rest. Lu Feng pushed the gas, and the car cried out before accelerating… but it wasn’t enough this time. Now, Lu Feng could see it from the mirror: it was a couple of armored vehicles, coming at them fast, faster than their car, which was already so worn, it was a miracle, that they still could roll with it.
Lu Feng’s pulse was steady, but his nervousness increased somewhat. His stomach, though, was playing elevator – with their top speed, the car jumped in every single second after it hit the ground again. The shaking wasn’t the most convenient state for clear thinking, so he needed some time to realise, this won’t do. If he keeps going ahead in a straight line, the soldiers will catch up, and circle them. The car won’t live through another breakthrough escape scene, and their pursuers had such weapons that would blow them up at once.
“An Zhe…”
“Ah?” The young man couldn’t possibly keep his usual calm voice, but he tried his best.
“I have an idea. It will sound insane.”
“Ca… can it be more… insane than this?”
Lu Feng paused, and agreed, this was already an adrenalin-striking situation.
“Can you take the wheel for a moment?”
“Uh… ah?! Auh…”
Lu Feng had to jerk the car away from another explosive that almost hit them, and the car drifted and shrieked in displeasure.
“An Zhe!”
“O… Okay!”
Switching places mid-racing wasn’t the best of his ideas, the rose knew. For his excuse, he didn’t know, it would be so hard to press themselves over each other to the other side. He also had to keep his leg on the gas until An Zhe was in his place.
When the young man took over, Lu Feng opened the door on his side, and… changed. He knew that his flower head would only come out of his human-head… which made sense. He couldn’t create more flower heads than the one he had, at least not yet, he wasn’t sure if he could learn. As for now, he changed his right arm to his shoulder into tendrils and his head into petals. He lost his vision and hearing, but he could sense the vibrations through the remaining human body and from the air around him. He used his vines to protect his flower head from the gunshots, and he concentrated on the wind.
If he were in a stationary position, he would dance in the wind in the summer, and scatter his pollen around with the movement. It was a somewhat nice feeling, like a ritual or a hobby, if flowers could have hobbies. There wasn’t much to do in a day, but dancing in the sun and wind was pleasant.
He knew that bugs liked that too. The wind carried his scent and pollen around, attracting more and more of them, which only meant more and more buds and flowers in the next season, or even in the same blooming season, for the late-bloomers.
This was… incomparable to that feeling. Instead of the happy-dance in the warm summer breeze, he got a sharp, cutting-cold storm right onto his petals, almost blowing them all away, tearing him apart, and the light wasn’t warm at all, the sun had gone sleeping a long time ago. He even had to shelter himself while holding his human body in the jumping and shaking car. It was awful. He counted every half second.
Their pursuers were stubborn. An Zhe kept pulling the wheel to the side, also realising that driving in a zigzag was a better tactic than driving in a straight line, but the armored behemoths were right in their tow. It was like when a wasp attacked an ant, the size and velocity difference was overbearing, and the winner of a possible fight was certain.
Until other ants came to help their comrades, and flood their intruder.
Lu Feng wasn’t an ant. But he was a flower. Attracting bugs was his speciality, particularly in the summer season, which was the time of the main blooming period. The most fruitful season with the most pollinators. He already did it unconsciously when he brought the destruction to the human base, so in theory, he knew, it could work now.
He felt the familiar vibration surrounding them in every direction. He held it out as long as he could before he was unable to, shifting his form back, and pulling himself into the car again, slamming the door shut behind him.
Changing back seats would be just as troublesome, but Lu Feng realised that when he was a vine, he was moving much more smoothly in the narrow space – he should’ve thought about that before. Lifting An Zhe with his left-hand tendrils, while his left-leg roots and branches pushed the gas; then, when An Zhe was sitting in his lap, just slipping over his place, turning back to human form once again… it went down in just a few seconds, without complications.
By the time he took his original place, the reinforcement had arrived.
The soldiers slowed down, not because they wanted to give up, but because there was a messy battle forming in the sky above them. Maybe Lu Feng had overdone it a little…
Wasps or bees were asleep at night, but they were not the only pollinators he could attract. Moths buzzed in the sky – in their awakening, their natural predators, mantises had come; on the land, crickets had been chased by six meters tall centipedes, enveloping the field behind the armored cars, and their main target changed as they arrived. Sitting in the closed vehicle helped Lu Feng to cover up his scent as much as it could, and he was a human now. So, the insects’ target became the three behemoths that shot strong white light beams everywhere, and most importantly, began firing at them immediately. Of course, the insects fought among each other too.
Currently, Lu Feng’s and An Zhe’s car was the last on their prey list.
He didn’t stop or slow down, even though the ride wasn’t any better; it even worsened when one of their mirrors just disappeared in a moment, and the engine hood came off, and covered half of the windscreen, causing a long scratch in the middle of the glass.
Soon, the only noises they heard were just their car’s cry and their harsh breathing. Lu Feng had to use the other mirror to see what was happening behind them, but the gunshot flames were barely visible in the distance.
However, just like before, luck had to be followed by misfortune.
Their car gave in. It stopped so suddenly, that both of them fell forward, and the seatbelt dug into their bodies before jerking them back to the seat. Lu Feng lost his breath for a moment, and then… silence buzzed in his ears slightly.
He heard An Zhe’s painful gasps. The lamp above them no longer worked when he tried to switch it on, and their reflectors turned off as well. He only saw silhouettes of An Zhe. He had to reach out to use his hand to feel him. He directly touched something wet and hot. Feeling the thickness of the liquid, crumbling it between his fingers, he knew it was blood, he also began feeling the smell of iron.
“An Zhe.” He leaned over, and after some touching, he unbuckled the seatbelt. An Zhe couldn’t answer, just weakly grunted. Lu Feng continued to touch him, but after a minute he was a bit relieved. The young man was fine, the blood had come from his already existing wound. “An Zhe, we have to go.”
Even if they were far enough from the fight, the insects still could stumble upon them, if they stayed in one place.
“Ih… I… don’t think I can make it…”
“Of course you can.”
The problem was not carrying An Zhe. He could hold him on his back all day, and wouldn’t get tired of it, he was that tiny. But the stuff that Seraing gave them. They had to sort out very quickly what they could take.
Obviously, the medicine pack wasn’t in question; that and the linen sack were priorities on the small list, and made it into his side bag, which only contained a small notebook. He also put An Zhe’s stuff in there, like his magazine for his pistol or the Trial Court badge – the only thing he kept from his uniform. With the medicines being in such a bulky package though, his bag was completely filled, and he barely could put anything else in there.
Most of the canned food stayed in the car. Lu Feng chose the ones that they could eat without cooking. He found the planter box too. After An Zhe’s agreement, he took it out, and removed the box. He made a small hole in the ground for the plant, and put it in there. When he stood up, the plant almost disappeared in the darkness immediately. But if the roots would grab onto the soil, and maybe a small storm would come, they could survive. An Zhe insisted on pouring one of their water bottles on it, so Lu Feng let him.
The water. That was the most questionable item. They could only bring a few bottles, but how long it will last? Lu Feng was able to get nutrients from the soil, but even if he was only packing for An Zhe, it wasn’t a ton. They have to find a place to refill those bottles before they run out of them.
Lu Feng made a backpack for An Zhe from the two blankets, and filled it with food and four bottles. Nothing else could’ve been taken away.
Before continuing, he also changed An Zhe’s bandage, which had already been completely soaked. The young man didn’t let out a single noise, while he worked on a clean patch, and when he was done, Lu Feng helped him dress back. After that, he tied the backpack to An Zhe, and lastly, he tied An Zhe to himself as a backpack, and they left.
*
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