Ningning had really been taking care of Lele with great effort, but he was too young. He couldn’t take care of a child as well as his dad.
After running for about twenty minutes, the little child’s head became heavier, and his vision blurred. He tripped over a tree branch and while holding Lele and fell directly under the slope.
Both children fell quite hard. When they rolled down the slope, Ningning closed his eyes, and his little hands and feet were all limp.
The pursuing Zerg caught up, lowered its head, and sniffed the scent on their bodies. It first bit onto Lele and lifted him up.
After carrying Lele, the Zerg turned around and left, not taking the other child that lay unconscious on the ground.
However, after a few steps, the thin, tall Zerg turned back.
It stared at the child lying on the ground for a few seconds before spitting out Lele. A strange and indescribable sound came from its mouth.
Shortly after this sound, three more Zergs arrived, one after another.
The Zergs communicated for a while.
One drooling Zerg was mercilessly driven away, leaving the other two Zergs. Each of them carried a child on their backs, following the lead of the thin, tall Zerg, crawling slowly.
The figures of the Zergs soon disappeared.
As for the hidden Wagner and Savi, perhaps due to their consistently good physical condition, even though they had a fever and broke a little sweat after being wrapped up by Ningning before he left, their spirits unexpectedly improved a bit.
“Ningning.”
“Lele?”
Wagner sat up and looked around. He saw Savi but not Ningning and Lele.
“Savi, do you know where Ningning and Lele went?”
“I don’t know.”
Savi, who was rubbing his temples, frowned and felt annoyed by his current physical condition.
He rarely got sick; the number of times he had been sick since childhood didn’t exceed three. Getting sick at a time like this made him both anxious and frustrated.
Wagner, realizing Savi didn’t know either, suddenly felt a not-so-good premonition.
“Lele is still running a fever. Ningning couldn’t have taken him out.”
Lele’s constitution was too weak, and whenever they went out to find food, they had to leave Lele behind.
Ningning would never recklessly take Lele out.
After Wagner finished speaking, he looked up and made eye contact with Savi, both realizing the severity of the situation.
During their brief nap, it seemed that something had occurred.
Wagner was about to go find Ningning and Lele when Savi suddenly stopped him.
“Lele left us a message.”
In the place where they were hiding, there was a note with a pen, both of which were at the bottom of their backpacks.
As this winter camp was an educational activity, each child had a pen and paper in their backpack.
When the teacher gave them the paper and pen, it was for them to try writing down their observations, serving as a diary.
However, during the consecutive days of escaping, they hadn’t used the paper and pen.
Savi spread out the crumpled note, and Wagner leaned in to take a look.
The note was scribbled with a few lines:
“The Zergs are here. Hide well, don’t come looking for me and Lele.”
“Make sure to hide well!”
“Hide my dad and brother, too!”
Ningning wrote a few crooked and twisted lines, using a lot of exclamation marks. After the exclamation marks, he hurriedly wrote words to intimidate Wagner.
“If you don’t listen to me, we won’t be friends anymore!”
Ningning and Wagner’s on-and-off friendship once again faced a rift.
Savi, after reading the note, didn’t take it to heart.
Anyway, he and Ningning weren’t really good friends; friendship ending was fine.
Wagner held the note tightly but remained motionless.
“Hey, you’re not seriously considering hiding again, are you?”
Savi furrowed his brow and asked Wagner, “It’s obvious that Ningning is hiding from the Zergs with Lele. They must be in danger now; we need to go find them.”
Wagner tightly clutched the note, still not moving.
He was too familiar with Ningning, so he easily guessed that Ningning had taken Lele away and hidden them after seeing the Zergs.
Moreover, the Zergs must have seen Ningning.
Ningning went to lure the Zergs.
Going to find Ningning now would be like Ningning wasting time hiding them earlier.
“We need to wait for the adults.”
Wagner’s eyes were red, suppressing his sob: “We must wait for the adults to come!”
Going out now would be like providing an extra meal for the Zergs. To save Ningning and Lele, they didn’t need to look for the Zergs but rather find the adults.
“Savi, let’s go to the spaceship.”
Even if the spaceship was covered by a Zerg cocoon, and there might be a Zerg mother inside, they have to go in, go in and make a call.
Savi had initially disagreed with Wagner taking risks, but now, apart from taking risks, they had no other options.
“Okay, let’s go to the spaceship.”
Savi clenched his small dagger and drew a totem on the ground. Then he knelt down with a thump.
After kneeling down, Savi closed his eyes again and murmured a long string of words that Wagner couldn’t understand. While saying these words, Savi’s expression was very devout.
After finishing these words, Savi knocked his head three times and then stood up, “Okay, with the totem protecting us, we will definitely achieve our goal.”
Wagner: “...”
Wagner looked at the totem on the ground and remembered Ningning, who had kowtowed to Grandpa Confucius some time ago.
Why were all the children nowadays becoming more and more superstitious?
Savi, who had finished kowtowing, took Wagner to explore the spaceship. On the other side, Ningning, in the damp and warm environment, was gradually awakened by the dripping water.
He slowly opened his eyes, and what he saw was the moss-covered stone wall above.
“Le, Lele.”
The little child wanted to call Lele, but his throat hurt badly, and he had no strength in his limbs. It was difficult even to sit up.
After struggling for a while, the little child finally managed to sit up. As he sat up, he saw a circle of green eyes around him.
The little child, surrounded by the green eyes: “...”
The little one’s head was almost overloaded.
He looked bewildered at the Zergs that had surrounded him in a circle and the cushion beneath him.
It dawned on him belatedly, “Are you... do you want to eat child pancakes?”
Child pancakes, as the name suggested, were pancakes that wrap up the little child.
Uncle Ling Qi’s meat pancakes were delicious; the little child could devour four in one go.
Having eaten so many meat pancakes, it was finally the little child’s turn to be a pancake himself.
Perhaps it was the aftereffect of the poisonous mushrooms, or maybe the little child’s head, which had just been knocked, was a bit slow to turn. At this moment, he looked at the circle of Zergs, and surprisingly, his first reaction was not fear.
He glanced at himself, then at the Zergs, his mind muddled: “There’s only one little child, but there are many of you.”
In that case, the little child wouldn’t be enough.
The somewhat dazed little child sat on the cushion, muttering for a while before slowly regaining consciousness and clarity.
However, watching these Zergs in a clear state was not as good as continuing to be somewhat dazed. At least during the dazed moments, he didn’t have time to be afraid.
“Where’s Lele?”
The little child stood up from the cushion. Even if he was about to be eaten, he wanted to see Lele first.
The little child spoke in the authentic imperial language. He didn’t know if these Zergs could understand, so he gestured with his hands: “Me, Lele on my back, where is he?”
He gestured for a while, and a Zerg emerged from the swarm.
It was the thin and tall Zerg that the little child had seen before. This Zerg looked at the little child and spoke slowly. His tone was strange and stiff, as if he had just learned a new language: “Little male is still here. Since you protected the little male, I can offer you preferential treatment.”
“I will let you sleep painlessly forever.”
Upon hearing the offer of preferential treatment, the little child subconsciously thought that the other party would let him go. However, he did not expect that the offered preferential treatment was to make him sleep forever.
“I don’t want to sleep; I want to go home!”
Seeing that this Zerg could communicate, the little child immediately seized the opportunity to talk to him: “My dad is waiting for me to go home. I want to go back with Lele.”
“No.”
The thin and tall Zerg’s tone remained flat. In a notifying tone, he told the little child, “None of you can leave.”
“You will sleep here, and our little male will grow up here.”
The little child listened, half puzzled and half understanding, “The little male you’re talking about, is it Lele?”
The thin and tall Zerg paused for a few seconds and nodded. “Yes, the name you humans gave him, simple and meaningless.”
The little child frowned, “...”
The little child furrowed his brow.
Lele’s name sounded much better than the term “little male”!
