Naming Technique of the Night

Chapter 109: 109, Autumn Hunt

Having left Prison No. 18, Qing Chen followed Uncle Li Dong through a long tunnel, traversing the prison’s surveillance perimeter and walking deep into the mountain.

Qing Chen once asked: why is there a secret passage inside the prison?

Uncle Li Dong explained to Qing Chen: Prison No. 18 was constructed by the Li Corporation.

When the Li Family built the prison, they left a lifeline in case one day their own clan members became prisoners, to prevent dying within its walls.

At that time, the corporation’s influence over the Federation wasn’t as substantial, and it was possible they could become the victims of power struggles.

Afterwards, the workers responsible for constructing the tunnel, on their way to City No. 10 for another project, all died in a landslide.

Thus, the secret of the tunnel remained known only to a select few within the Li Family.

Latterly, as the Li Family slowly grew more powerful, the original engineering blueprints in their possession somehow got lost, and even they forgot that their ancestors had left them a path to survival.

As the Li Family stood firm within the Federation, it seemed they no longer needed such a level of a safety net.

After Uncle Li Dong brought Qing Chen out, he made him carry a very heavy backpack, regardless of the boy’s injured feet, and they proceeded at a forced march pace.

“Have you heard that crackling sound in your bones again?” Uncle Li Dong asked.

“No,” Qing Chen shook his head: “It hasn’t happened again.”

Like all knights before him, since Laojun Mountain, there had been no activity from his genetic lock.

Uncle Li Dong smiled: “No worries, there will always be some other gains from this outing.”

“By the way, teacher,” Qing Chen asked, “our food will be gone in two days. What will we eat after that?”

Uncle Li Dong looked at the boy: “How should I know? That is certainly something for you, the student, to consider!”

Qing Chen: “…”

…

Early in the morning, the young girl Qin Yiyi got up, folded her tent, and threw it onto the vehicle.

From a distance of more than ten meters, she quietly observed the boy, only to discover that he was already cooking for the middle-aged man.

“Brother, do servants really not have a chance to regain their freedom?” Qin Yiyi asked Qin Tong.

“There are basically no servants who regain freedom,” Qin Tong said, “Servants are those closest to the powerful figures, hence they know a lot of secrets. So even if they are disabled, the company won’t let them leave; it’s more likely they’ll just kill them outright.”

Qin Yiyi sighed. Such a fine young man, yet he had become a servant.

What kind of family would sell their child to a company?

The Qin Clan might live somewhat harshly, with many children to care for, but she’d never heard of any plans to sell a child from Qin Cheng.

Thinking back to the night before, when the boy calmly applied medicine to her feet, Qin Yiyi thought that the boy must have endured many hardships to be able to face pain with such composure.

Just then, the sound of engines and loud music suddenly erupted from the north of the woods.

The music’s rhythm was especially exuberant, as if it could unsettle the heart from afar.

Before the northern convoy arrived, Qin Cheng saw over a dozen drones fly overhead.

“Those are the Chen Clan’s Border-011 model drones, armed with weapons! Hurry, get our own drones packed up!” Qin Cheng shouted.

But it was already too late.

The drones that had suddenly appeared surrounded their camp, and over a dozen armed drones directly shot down Qin Cheng’s drones.

Qin Yiyi felt a pang of heartache; those drones had been hard-earned through the exchange of game. With a few drones in hand, everyone could finally get a good night’s sleep when they went out hunting.

Qin Cheng took a deep breath and said, “Raise your hands, do not try to resist. It’s the Autumn Hunting Fleet of the Li and Chen Clans, we can’t escape.”

Everyone in the camp dared not move as the more than ten Boundary-011 drones patrolled around them, like scouts for the fleet.

Qin Cheng and the others were like lambs to the slaughter, raising their hands in preparation to be carved up at will.

In the blink of an eye, the fleet from the north zoomed in, its massive tires kicking up billowing dust on the ground.

Qing Chen and Uncle Li Dong pulled up the collars of their assault jackets and silently watched.

Uncle Li Dong said in a low voice, “Let’s not reveal our identities for now, I do not wish to kill them yet.”

Qing Chen blankly gave his teacher a look, “…”

The fleet consisted of more than thirty vehicles, 29 large SUVs with super-sized wheels, and seven pickups as supply vehicles, quite immense.

The exhaust of the off-road vehicles was not at the rear but mounted on either side of the vehicle.

In the midst of deafening music, someone revved the engine during a lull, cheering as the exhaust pipes on either side suddenly spat out flames.

Qing Chen felt some novelty; previously, Jiang Xue had told him that, because it was not possible to build “Yun Liu Towers” extensively in the wilderness, most vehicles used in the wilderness were powered by diesel engines.

Now, Qing Chen suddenly realized that the diesel engine Jiang Xue spoke of… seemed a bit different from the diesel engine he had imagined.

At the front of the fleet, a man wearing a mechanical eyepatch sat in the co-driver’s seat, controlling all the drones single-handedly through a neural interface.

Normally, such a person in the fleet was called “the First Mate,” responsible for all scouting and alert duties, camp security, and defense, acting as second-in-command in the fleet.

From the back of a vehicle, a young man got off and walked slowly towards the camp, but when he saw Qin Cheng’s two pickups, he cursed loudly.

Someone in the vehicle asked, “What’s wrong?”

The young man replied loudly, “These are Wilderness Hunters with a license from city number 18, lawful citizens, we can’t kill them.”

The pick-ups were spray-painted with a wolf’s head and a series of numbers, the legal identification number for the Qin family’s authorized exit from the city.

Someone from the fleet suddenly said, “It should be fine though, I see that their hunting recorders are off, the data centers in the rear won’t know. Let’s kill them, consider it an offering to the Autumn Hunt Sacrificial Flag.”

At that moment.

The voice of a woman from inside the car said, “You say you’re out here for the hunt but here you are bullying these ordinary citizens, that’s pretty low.”

With that, the car window rolled down, revealing a tall and sturdy woman at the driver’s seat of one of the off-road vehicles.

The young man beneath the vehicle whistled and burst into laughter, “Yino makes sense, let’s go!”

“Wait,” said the sturdy Li Yinuo, “compensate them for the drones we destroyed.”

“Alright!”

The young man took out two bundles of money from his waist bag and threw them onto the ground, then everyone turned and got into their vehicles.

The massive fleet hit the road again, leaving behind the camp, dusty and in disrepair, with everyone inside looking somewhat disheveled.

In the camp, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Qin Tong sat down on the ground, powerless, with a young woman nestling in his arms, sobbing softly.

Common folk faced with high-ranking individuals are so powerless.

Qin Yiyi turned back and noticed that both the middle-aged man and the young man had always been standing behind the tree trunks, in places that easily blocked the line of sight from others.