Chapter 1040: The Cat Detective
"He told us not to breathe, but he himself was panting happily," Bohemia complained while hiding in the bushes, crouching alongside Dr. Hu. They stared at the densely packed meat sprouts in the distance. Old Da's body had been left behind, and it was no longer visible from their spot. Thankfully, before he succumbed to his severe injuries and died, he managed to share what he knew, giving Bohemia a rough understanding of this world.
He said a lot, but in a nutshell, she concluded that Lin Sanjiu was, as expected, full of crap and couldn't be trusted.
"He's different; even if he inhales foreign objects, he can squeeze them out of his head like squeezing a towel," Dr. Hu said with a sweet, troubled tone. "But what should we do?"
"That guy said they will only start spewing foreign objects when they are fully matured or when they detect an external enemy. By that time, breathing will be dangerous," Bohemia pointed at the meat sprouts in the distance. "However, these ones obviously haven't matured yet."
Pausing for a moment, she continued in a hushed tone, "So, if we can tread lightly without harming them, we might be able to tow the truck out and drive away smoothly."
The meat sprouts clearly didn't like metal, and they were all avoiding the overturned truck. This left some gaps in the sea of flesh-colored pillars, allowing them to navigate through them and provide some breathing room.
"What do you think?" Bohemia asked.
Dr. Hu didn't utter a word or move, but his ears flattened slowly and his pupils widened—clear signs of extreme nervousness.
"W-well," when the cat finally spoke, even this proficient feline communicator stuttered, and a hint of a cat's meow slipped into his words. "L-lets-let's do that then. Meow!"
As they walked through the forest of fleshy pillars, neither Bohemia nor the cat doctor dared to speak. They treaded cautiously with every step, and in no time, Bohemia had broken out in a cold sweat. New meat sprouts had just popped up and appeared livelier than their predecessors. Wherever they went, the 'flesh heads' in the sky followed suit, and countless fragments of speech flowed into the ears of the two.
Wait a bit longer.
We're about to grow up soon.
Where is your soul? Is it in the brain? But the brain is just a mass of synapses and neurons... After dissecting it, could you show me where the human soul is?
Why do you wander around on the ground, eating, sleeping, fighting for survival? What is it all for?
Endless fragments surged one after another. Bohemia didn't even have time to decipher their meanings before she began to feel dizzy from the information overload—
It felt like trying to force a large amount of water into a narrow pipe. Just as she thought her nerves were about to burst, Dr. Hu turned around and exclaimed, "Great! It looks like this vehicle is still working!" It was as if a drowning person suddenly grabbed hold of a thrown lifeline. Bohemia seized onto those words, pulling herself out of the sea of consciousness fragments created by the sprouts. It wasn't until she touched the cool metal, feeling its tangibility, that reality returned to her perception once again.
Her face was pale, and her hands trembled as she opened the door of the driver's seat and dragged the corpse inside, tossing it on the ground.
"Are you okay?" Meowie Hu stood on the edge of the seat, seemingly unaffected, perhaps because of its feline nature. "They did ramble a bit."
"God damn it...they keep squeezing into my head. I just want to puke right now," Bohemia curled up in the driver's seat, and it took her a while to recover. "My method of cultivating consciousness...makes me more sensitive to these mental things, and I can't block them out..."
Dr. Hu pulled out a small bottle with his two paws and waved it under her nose. Slowly, she started to feel a bit better and placed her hands on the steering wheel.
Bohemia wasn't skilled in driving. Recalling Lin Sanjiu's technique, she slowly backed the truck out. The sprouts seemed to bid them farewell, bending down one by one. They swayed in front of the truck's windshield, leaving behind a trail of flesh-colored shadows.
Completely different, surpassing the flaws at their core.
Balance between satisfaction, pursuit, and achievement.
"Shut it!" Bohemia screamed sharply, her head pounding with pain. In the heat of the moment, she forgot that she was still driving. In frustration, she forcefully stomped on the accelerator, jerking the truck forwards uncontrollably. Dr. Hu was terrified and immediately shouted, "Stop!" But Bohemia had long since lost control of the wheel.
Amidst the sharp screeching of tires, the truck lurched and collided with something. Looking in the rearview mirror, they saw a slender, short flesh-colored figure swaying near the rear wheel, seemingly struggling to escape.
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts...
"The windows!" Dr. Hu's voice rose in urgency. "Quickly, close them—"
At this point, caution was no longer of any use. Bohemia immediately locked all the windows, forcefully turned the steering wheel, and rushed out of the forest of flesh-colored columns, just barely dodging another sprout that had recently emerged. The scream that resounded in her mind at that moment almost made her faint.
Dr. Hu reacted quickly and pulled out a pile of old clothes from somewhere, attempting to seal every possible gap in the truck where air might leak in.
"These are all things I obtained from research samples," he explained, "and they sure come in handy."
"Please hold your breath!"
Bohemia shouted, immediately closing her own mouth tightly. She wasn't very skilled at driving and had been swerving and bumping along the road, almost flipping off the side several times. Dr. Hu didn't take its eyes off the rearview mirror for a moment, its cat mouth buried in its paws, speaking in a muffled voice, "Meow, meow!"
"Huh?" Bohemia could only make a nasal grunt and quickly glanced at the rearview mirror. What met her gaze was a dense mass of something that suddenly exploded in mid-air, much like a hornet's nest being punctured.
The truck seemed to charge forward as if it had lost its mind, leaving one wondering why Bohemia hadn't crashed into the trees on the side of the road. Fortunately, the swarm-like cluster of fine shadows seemed incapable of flying and scattered in the wind, gradually disappearing from the rearview mirror.
Only then did both Bohemia and Dr. Hu dare to breathe a sigh of relief.
"I think we should be safe now," Dr. Hu checked the inside of the truck, "thankfully, the glass didn't shatter."
"Yes." Bohemia also let out a breath, grateful that they were saved by this truck they found at the scene of the accident. "I released the paper crane to find Lin Sanjiu and let it guide us."
Just as Meowie Hu nodded, its head suddenly lowered, staring silently at the driver's seat beneath Bohemia.
"D-Doc...tor?"
The little cat slowly raised its head, its eyes pitch-black.
"Um... I just realized that this truck wasn't damaged."
"So, what if it wasn't damaged?"
"How did the previous driver of this truck die then?"
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