Chapter 638: Xiaoyun’s Returns
"Wait, wait, wait, don’t shoot. If you don’t think I’m our commander, at least look at my clothes. I’m on your guy’s side."
As a group of soldiers gathered in the distance raised their rifles, Xiaoyun quickly realized they didn’t buy it.
"Wait, look, I even have an AKM... There’s no one else that could be in the city other than our army."
The moment Xiaoyun took out his rifle from his back to show, his face immediately started panicking as they started aiming it right at him.
"Whoa whoa whoa. I’ll put my gun down. No need to shoot... Here, can you see my ID? I’m a part of you guys, I swear."
Dropping the rifles made the soldier ease up a little as they lowered their rifle back down, but the situation was still extremely tense.
"How can you be our commander? He’s supposed to be at Luoping right now." One of the soldiers yelled.
"Luoping? What the hell did Wuli say to Yiming... Well, you all see my ID, thought, right? It says Chen Xiaoyun right here."
After yelling back at the soldiers one last time, one of them finally took out some sort of binoculars to check.
Next thing he knew, the soldiers were finally walking up with him with their rifles strapped to their backs.
"Commander, we didn’t expect you to be here." The soldier who led the front apologized, with the others bowing down in apology.
"It’s fine... But none of you guys have seen me before? My voice and face are pretty recognizable, no?"
"Commander Chen... Y-You might want to check your face." One of the soldiers in the back nervously murmured.
"My face?"
Reaching down to the pocket, Xiaoyun quickly took out his phone and turned the camera into selfie mode.
"What the fuck?"
Every inch of his skin, from his face down to his hands, was red—the same color as the living particles when he was inside the fog.
Yet, he couldn’t see any of it with his own eyes. Looking down at his arms, everything seemed to be fine.
It was almost as if the red particles had become invisible, only visible to everyone else except him.
"Do all of you see my skin to be covered in red?"
Seeing all five of the soldiers nodding, Xiaoyun’s mind quickly realized something had gone terribly wrong with him while trapped in the fog.
"Shit... Wait, what day is today?" Xiaoyun asked.
"The 16th, sir."
"What? It’s been that long already? Wait, I need you guys to get me a car... I’ll be right back in about a minute."
---
When Yiming waited at the front entrance of the base, he was finally met by several soldiers along with a person in a hazmat suit in the back.
"Xiaoyun?"
"Yiming, let’s talk somewhere more private."
Hearing Xiaoyun’s voice, Yiming didn’t question it as the two of them headed all the way back to the HQ tent.
"What took you so long? You know how long you had been missing for?" Yiming questioned with a hint of anger.
"I was trapped within the fog... But I got something very important from it. This is the flesh of the sphere that we managed to kill."
Looking over to the ziplock bag in Xiaoyun’s hand, Yiming could clearly see the glass vial with some mysterious dark red flesh inside.
"This might just be the key to dealing with the fog," Xiaoyun murmured as he examined the glass vials in the air.
"Xiaoyun... Where did you come out of the fog?"
"Just a few minutes earlier... What about it?"
"Did you not notice it’s all gone already?"
Xiaoyun froze for a second before putting the vials back down. He hesitated for a second before unzipping his hazmat suit.
"Don’t freak out. I’m still perfectly fine... I’m going to need your help to catch up with everything that happened while I was gone."
"W-What happened to you?"
Yiming instantly questioned as his face looked more and more nervous, unable to believe the appearance of Xiaoyun.
His skin was just way too red, almost as if he got a sunburn or some sort of severe rash all over his entire body.
"It’s just some side effect of the fog... It’s probably going to go away in a few days or so. Don’t worry about it."
The reassurance calmed Yiming down a little, but he still felt a little unnerved to look towards Xiaoyun.
"I-I see... Ahem, I’ll catch up with everything that happened."
A few minutes later...
"So the entirety of the 3rd army corps is back in Zhongshan city?"
"Not exactly, Wuli and a few of her soldiers are still here. But Han Bang had been put in charge as the temporary General."
As Yiming finished catching up with most of the news regarding the troop movement, Xiaoyun’s mind suddenly thought back to what he had said earlier.
"Not going to lie, Yiming, your lie about me heading to Luoping is not bad. Looks like all of the soldiers brought it." Xiaoyun complimented.
"I much prefer never needing to do that again. I almost got into trouble with Houqin."
"Don’t worry, it won’t happen again... Anyway, this is the area that’s still fogged up?"
Xiaoyun questioned as he looked over to the sandbox, which only had a very small area circled in red.
"Yep. It retreated all the way in this corner of the city ever since we burnt through all the tentacles."
"Why didn’t you go any further?"
"It’s too pressurized inside. Tianci had told me we needed a pressure suit meant for diving deep underwater.
Houqin already reported there wasn’t any in the inventory, and I already tried bombing it and nothing happened."
Hearing Yiming’s explanation, Xiaoyun nodded his head in acknowledgment.
"I see... So everything in Shenzhen is resolved at this point, other than just this very small pocket?"
"Yep."
"Bring me to this area later. I think I might have just got the solution for this." Xiaoyun murmured as an idea suddenly popped up in his head.
"Really? You sure?"
"Yeah. I’m certain this might work... But I need to take a shower first. My body smells like hot ass right now."
---
When the afternoon had arrived, Yiming was standing right next to a person wearing a hazmat suit once again.
No one else was nearby other than the two of them, with the dense fog right just three steps in front of them.
"This area is the remaining fogged area?"
"Yep... Xiaoyun, don’t try to stick your hand in, it’s going to hurt like hell. A few soldiers already tried it and got injured."
The warning made Xiaoyun a little curious, as what he saw in front of him was completely different.
There was nothing in front of him at all. What was supposed to be a ’dense fog’ was completely invisible.
He could see right through the fog, where a bunch of collapsed buildings lay on the ground, with one of the office blocks barely hanging on its last legs.
"You said bombing didn’t work, right?"
"We dropped artillery shells nonstop on this whole area for yesterday. The only thing we got was a bunch of smoke and sounds."
"Mhm... Yiming, this fog for you is extremely red, right?" Xiaoyun asked again.
"Yeah, it’s as red as the paint on your skin... Why are you asking that? Is there something wrong?"
"Let me go try something."
"Wait——"
To Yiming’s shock, Xiaoyun walked straight into the fog headfirst, seemingly to be perfectly fine as he stood still inside.
"This doesn’t make any sense. How the hell are you perfectly fine in there? You don’t feel pain or anything?"
"I don’t feel anything at all... I can’t see the fog either. Everything is clear to me inside."
As Yiming tried to stick his own arms into the fog, he instantly felt a sharp pain that pushed him back out.
"Fuck, this hurts," Yiming complained.
"I think I might have grown resistant to the fog... It probably explains why the color on my skin looks so red now."
Hearing the explanation, Yiming’s mind had no choice but to accept it as reality. But when Xiaoyun stepped out, he was shocked once again.
"Anyway, I’ll go into the fog myself later to explore what’s inside... Yiming, what’s wrong? Why are you looking at the shop over there?"
Xiaoyun curiously asked, noticing him suddenly turning around and looking in the other direction away from him.
"Ahem, you might want to look down," Yiming murmured as he cleared his throat.
"Look down... Huh?"
When Xiaoyun looked down, he froze for a second as his brain quickly realized the hamzat suit wasn’t there to block his vision.
More importantly, all of his clothes were completely gone. He was standing there, completely naked.
"Shit, why the hell did the fog rip my clothes?" Xiaoyun complained as he quickly created a new pair of clothes to put on.
"Maybe you stayed inside the fog for too long..."