Chapter 93 (1/2)
”What are you talking about?” The girl was frightened, her distorted due to fear.
”Nothing important, I was just asking you if you've seen two people that I happen to be looking for.” The hooknose woman fished out two photos from her uniform pocket. ”Here they are, an eighteen or nineteen-year-old boy, and a twelve-year-old girl.”
”No… I didn't see them at all.” Seeing the familiar faces on the photos, the girl lied with a stutter.
Her incompetent lying skills sold her out to the professionally trained soldiers. The woman squinted at the girl, then grabbed the collar of her s.h.i.+rt, lifting the girl up so that she could see into her eyes. She scanned the girl's face, then threw her to one of the soldiers.
”Get someone to interrogate her. And I need two soldiers to be stationed in this community to get me some fresh information. His scent is everywhere, I'm pretty sure he stayed here for some time.” The woman then commanded the rest of the soldiers, ”Follow me! Our targets ran away already.
”Speed up, boys! No matter how far he goes, as long as he is still in Zheng Zhou, I'll trace him down.”
Chang galloped along the street in Zheng Zhou with Jing in his arm. He had no clue of how the military pinpointed where he hid. In this world of chaos, there was no wire or radio communications of any sort. That's why, it wasn't easy to put someone as wanted. No one knew where he and Jing had left to, even Qing Shui wasn't told.
Various thoughts filled his mind, yet his feet didn't slow down the pace. Chang was much faster and ran away from the troops with ease.
For the next hour, Chang spent every second on sprinting at an unprecedented speed from the east to the south. He didn't stop until he thought he had made enough distance from his pursuers. He placed Jing down since he was out of breath. Beads of sweat rolled down from his forehead, and inhale as much air as he could to relieve the burning in his lungs.
”Chang, who are they?” Jing asked, her foot brus.h.i.+ng the damp gra.s.s. ”Are they from the research inst.i.tute? Did Dr. Huang denounce us again? She is the only person in the community that knew about our past.”
”I don't think so...” Chang recalled the interactions between them and Dr. Huang—nothing unusual stood outl. ”I don't think she did it, even though she knows about us. Besides, I didn't see her leave the community in the past two days.”
”Then how did they find us? We also lost our worm box… What about food?”
”I don't know how they find us, but you don't need to be worried about food at all. Remember.” Chang patted the crossbow behind his back, saying, ”I'm more experienced in hunting now. The worst case is to steal, which I tried to avoid. But I won't let you starve, okay?”
”Chang, they are hunting us down though, our life is going to be turbulent. Are you sure we can eat our food comfortably with these hunters chasing behind us?” Jing asked her last question.
Her words became their nightmare for the following days.
In the next four days, they hid from place to places as if they were frightened prey. No matter how far they went, the troop always persistently caught up with them in a few hours.
For a few times, they almost got surrounded by the troop when they were having meals. Fortunately, Jing was always able to sense their presence at a distance, and Chang was able to act fast and decisive. Otherwise, they would have been captured by those armed soldiers.
Although escaping from their trail wasn't challenging, it made Chang more curious about why they were tracked down all the time. He realised that it may not be as simple as denouncement this time.
At dawn, Jing and Chang once again concealed themselves in an abandoned house in a small village nearby. Chang's curiosity and agitation almost bursted out from his chest. He asked, ”Why? Why are they still behind us no matter where we go? We even changed our clothing from time to time, but didn't find any tracking devices. How then? What makes them capable of tracking us?”
”I'm not sure, perhaps one of them is an EM, and that person may have developed some sort of an ability to track. Think about this, we used to have mammals who could tail their prey for a long distance,” Jing spoke, rubbing her chin.
”Tailing prey...” Chang browsed through everything Qing Shui had told him before, his eyes closed as he concentrated on recollecting every tiny bit of information. Finally, he recalled that Qing Shui exclaimed his praise to mammal olfaction. ”Some of their excellent noses are more than a thousand times more sensitive than a human's...”
”Perhaps, they traced us by smell like a dog?” Chang came to a sudden realization.
On the other side, the hooknosed woman was puzzled by a similar question.
”Manguang, I don't really understand this. No matter how hard we try, they always run away before we can encircle them. What's wrong?” the hooknosed woman asked her adjutant—a tall, broad-shouldered man with a skinhead.
”Madam, I'm afraid I can't answer this question, either. I thought it was pure coincidence until they slipped away from our strategic besiegement,” the adjutant replied. ”I brought some soldiers with me to check where we planned to ambush, but none of the traps we set up were activated. That means they discovered our presence by themselves, not by anti-detection devices.”
”That means… One of them is an EM as well?” The hooknosed woman lifted her eyelids.