Please support the translation by reading the translation and commenting on otakutl official site.
Thank you.
Everyone from Otaku Translation
Previous | TOC | Next |
Chapter 29: Arrival
As the sentry post guards suddenly appeared by the roadside, a rather inappropriate joke flashed through Wang Ping's mind.
For a period of time, jokes poking fun at female drivers had been quite popular on the internet in China. For instance, there was one about a female driver learning to drive, with a dog darting out on the left side of the road and a person walking on the right. The dilemma of whether to hit the person or the dog became a favorite topic for jokesters.
However, in this situation, the joke felt rather dry.
Before Wang Ping could decide whether he should feel relieved that there was no dog on the other side of the road, he saw one of the guards pick up his rifle from behind and aim it at him.
"Oh...fuck!!!" Wang Ping felt his scalp go numb instantly and hastily assumed a shamefully prostrate position on the steering wheel.
Whether during his service in the Foreign Legion or after joining Team Three, Wang Ping had faced gun barrels before. Or rather, his job often involved facing numerous overt or covert gun barrels. But rarely had he encountered a situation like this, where he had no choice. If these were poachers, Wang Ping would have already floored the accelerator and charged forward with a roar.
Moreover, Wang Ping hadn’t expected that the local police, whom he had previously looked down upon, would be so bold as to draw their guns directly.
"%!?$…Stop!..." The English mixed with Tanzanian dialect barked out from the guard holding the stop sign.
The two guards realized something was amiss. This off-road vehicle passing through the night didn't even have its headlights on, which was clearly suspicious, and it didn't seem willing to be checked either.
All vehicles entering Highway 144 must undergo personnel registration—it was a rule. Because Highway 144 led directly to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and three national parks, areas where poachers were most active. Any vehicle without proper registration and permission was prohibited from traveling on this road.
Perhaps sensing the smell of gunpowder, Rosette exhibited a strong desire to attack.
Wang Ping had no time to soothe it now; he could only pray silently that it wouldn’t jump out. No one would care if it was a protected animal at this moment—jumping out would mean certain death!
The two hundred meters vanished in an instant.
Seeing that they couldn’t intercept the vehicle, and it was too late to deploy spike strips, the guard holding the stop sign hastily jumped aside. Immediately, the other guard on alert fired his gun.
"Bang!" The muzzle flash lit up the opposite end, and the sound of the rifle shot exploded under the night sky, echoing far into the distance. In a previously quiet courtyard in the nearby town, lights suddenly turned on, and the clamor of people quickly arose.
"Thud!" The bullet flew past Wang Ping’s head, pierced through the backrest of the seat, and lodged into the rear seat cushion with a dull thud.
Fortunately, Third Brother Gu was lying sideways in the back, his body lower than the dashboard, so when the bullet flew over his head, it maintained a height of several centimeters. Otherwise, it would have been a chilling, heart-stopping moment.
The sudden sound of gunfire also startled Rosette, halting its poised-to-pounce stance. Mimicking Wang Ping, it buried its head deeply, cowering pathetically.
The off-road vehicle didn’t slow down at all as it sped past the checkpoint. Not only that, but it also veered off the road at the bend after the intersection.
Thankfully, the area here was mostly flat plains, with no hills. Seeing that they had passed the checkpoint, Wang Ping hurriedly turned the steering wheel and steered the car back onto the road.
In the rearview mirror, he could see the first guard who had tried to stop the car shouting and running towards the house, while the guard who had fired the shot seemed to be frozen in place.
Wang Ping paid no heed to anything else, flooring the accelerator as the car raced westward along the highway towards the final destination.
The guard who had almost been hit started the sidecar motorcycle parked at the white duty house and arrived at the intersection, fuming with anger.
"Atugo! What are you spacing out for? Get on the bike!" The motorcycle skidded to a stop in front of the dazed young man, and the guard on the bike shouted loudly.
"I…" Atugo, the young guard, raised his head, his eyes filled with confusion and fear. Looking at his partner, Atugo suddenly shouted, "My God! Kumi, that was a ghost car!"
"What ghost car! Are you scared stupid? You weren’t the one almost hit by the car—I was!" Kumi, the other guard, was furious, his eyes wide open.
"It’s true!" Atugo was almost in tears. "When it passed by just now, I saw it clearly—there was no one inside! Do you understand? No one! The driver's seat was empty! Kumi, do you remember the town's legend? Whenever night falls, the gates of hell open, and the guide takes the spirits back to hell! That might have been a ghost car carrying the dead! I… I actually shot at it… I…"
"Slap!"
Before he could finish, Atugo received a slap across the face.
Kumi shook his shoulders angrily, "Are you stupid? Ghosts only come out after midnight, what time is it now? It must be someone in the car avoiding the bullets by ducking down! Those are poachers! Snap out of it! Get on the bike and let’s chase them!"
"Uh…" Atugo hesitated, instinctively looking up at the sky, then said in realization, "Right, it’s not midnight yet, ghosts won’t come out! But…"
Atugo hesitated, "Kumi, if they really are poachers, their weapons are much more powerful than ours. Are you sure we should chase them alone?"
Kumi: "...” Damn it, I got so angry that I can’t think straight.
Far behind, the increasingly noisy town faded into the distance. Wang Ping didn’t dare to slow down at all, speeding along Highway 144.
Of course, there wasn’t just the one checkpoint at Makuyuni along this route. Thirty kilometers away, there was a larger town called Mto Wa Mbu. Being closer to Karatu, it wasn’t just a simple checkpoint but a formal inspection station.
However, by the time they reached there, they would already be within the range of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. From Mto Wa Mbu to the edge of the conservation area, within a twenty-kilometer radius, there were vast fields and forests.
To pass through smoothly, Wang Ping had no choice but to commit the misdeed of cutting across farmland. Hopefully, the local farmers wouldn’t be too angry.
The thirty-kilometer distance took only twenty minutes to pass through smoothly. This showed the benefit of Wang Ping choosing to break through at night. If it were daytime, military vehicles shuttling tourists back and forth on this road would be incessant. Even without anyone targeting him, such smooth passage wouldn’t be possible. Moreover, given Wang Ping’s current driving skills, getting into a car accident would be highly likely.
By the time the checkpoint at Makuyuni reported the off-road vehicle’s breach to Mto Wa Mbu, Wang Ping had already crossed through dozens of large fields in the outskirts.
...
Early in the morning, a message was relayed back to the Chinese Embassy in Tanzania. Not long after, Zhang Jianming, who was still searching for Gu Lang in the Maasai Mara grasslands, also received news that the off-road vehicle rented by Gu Lang in Dodoma had breached the checkpoint at Makuyuni.
Compared to official speculation, the embassy leaned more towards the theory that Gu Lang had been kidnapped and robbed by poachers. However, regardless of which scenario, the nature of the situation had now changed from the previous search and rescue mission.
After all, he was a Chinese citizen, and the domestic public security system had also contacted the embassy. Both emotionally and rationally, the embassy had a responsibility to protect the rights of its citizens abroad. Thus, Zhang Jianming, along with the rescue team, rushed non-stop to Makuyuni to assess the situation.
Meanwhile, Wang Ping was lying low in a patch of grass, gazing from afar at a shallow riverbank outside the woods.
The security team’s outpost was uniquely positioned. In this forest, there was a grove encircled by a river. On both sides of the river were shallow banks over ten meters wide, covered densely with sand and gravel, with sparse weeds growing sporadically, isolating the central grove into an island.
From above, it looked like a giant plant cell, albeit a dehydrated one.
This location was already ten kilometers deep into the core forest of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, surrounded by vast expanses of primeval forest.
Looking southeast, Mount Loolmalasin stood thirty kilometers away in the direction of the Great Rift Valley. Large swathes of forest extended from the mountaintop.
Driving the vehicle this far had already pushed Wang Ping to his limit. There was a path ahead, but he didn’t dare to continue driving so brazenly.
Even in a primeval forest, the spacing between trees was sufficient for an off-road vehicle to pass through. However, this was the security team’s territory, and there was no telling if some teammate was nearby, setting up a gun to monitor the riverbank.
Wang Ping wasn’t worried about his teammates firing rashly; he feared that his “awkward” driving posture might be spotted through binoculars.
He wasn’t ready to face his teammates in his current state.
But Gu Lang’s condition couldn’t be delayed any longer. After observing for a while and confirming that no one was coming to investigate, Wang Ping returned to the off-road vehicle, preparing to deliberately expose himself.
Please vote for this novel at
If you would like to support this translation, you may choose any one of the options below.
How to find a list of chapters
Please find the chapter label next to your favorite translator's name, and click the label.
No comments:
Post a Comment