Chapter 1836: Journey of a Madman (Part 49)

Near the evening of that day, the temperature became lower and lower. At this time, it was close to the rainy season in the desert climate, and the temperature difference between day and night was very large. When it was hottest during the day, one could sweat even staying in the cave, but at night, one had to wear cotton clothes even while roasting by the campfire.

Schiller used more wood to make the fire burn more vigorously. Stark, who had recovered a bit, began to organize the communication equipment parts that he had scavenged from the military communication room that Schiller mentioned.

Although the wound on his back was still hurting like hell, Stark just had a drive supporting him. In the situation where he couldn't even lift his arms, he tried hard to search for parts that might be useful with the hand that was further away from the wound.

Schiller walked to his side and squatted down, looking at him and asking: "Need help?"

Stark knelt on the ground, breathing with some difficulty. He turned to look at Schiller, but what he saw more clearly were the sweat drops dripping from his eyelashes.

"No, no, how long have you not slept?" Stark turned his head back to continue searching and said: "You haven't rested since I came here, right? Don't you plan to sleep for a while?"

"I don't need to sleep."

"Don't be silly, humans all need to sleep." Stark picked up a circuit board and looked at it carefully, saying: "Sleep restores more than just physical strength. It will let your spirit relax."

"Do you think relaxing the spirit here is a good thing?"

"Alright, I know you are a psychologist." Stark pursed his lips and said in a slightly angry tone: "Then go do something else, don't watch me here, I don't need your help."

Schiller left.

Stark seemed even angrier. He stared at Schiller's back with wide eyes, took a deep breath, and tried hard to put his attention back on the circuit board in his hand.

He picked and chose among the parts for a long time, found a few circuit boards, a bundle of spare wires that hadn't been used yet, and some metal used for assembling the shell.

Stark piled these things on the ground beside him. He fiddled for a long time and started to have trouble again. Looking at Schiller's figure sitting motionless in front of the campfire, he cleared his throat, wanting to attract the other party's attention.

Schiller didn't notice him at all.

Stark had to complain slightly: "This is the bad thing about dealing with illiterates, isn't it? There are only parts here, no tools, and no workbench. What do I rely on to build weapons for them, imagination?"

Schiller suddenly made a shushing gesture to him. Stark was like a chicken whose neck had been pinched, not daring to make a sound.

In a silence, Stark also heard rustling sounds coming from the cave entrance. It sounded like something had moved the grass, very likely a probe stick.

Schiller disappeared.

Stark didn't see how he disappeared. Then a pitch-black head poked out from the cave entrance. It was a local man wearing a jacket, wearing a tattered baseball cap on his head. He looked very young, but he was sneaky.

He saw Stark and his eyes lit up. He and two other people climbed up to the cave entrance quickly. Stark saw that they were covered in grass clippings, obviously having come over cross-country. And Stark remembered that the road he came by was clearly very flat.

In other words, the other party didn't take the main road, but climbed over from the hill next to it. What did they want to do?

Suddenly, a pitch-black gun muzzle was aimed at Stark. Out of the need for self-protection, Stark immediately raised both hands and shouted at them in English: "Don't shoot! What are you doing?"

The other party didn't seem to understand English, but one of them pointed a gun at Stark, and the other two walked toward Stark. They didn't look like they wanted to attack him, but they still threw Stark to the ground.

These three young males were all very strong, at least much stronger than Stark. Stark had just been thrown to the ground when one of them started to grope up and down on Stark's body.

Stark immediately knew that they might be locals who heard the news, knowing that the kidnappers had caught a rich man, and wanted to come over to loot the things on his body.

Stark gritted his teeth and didn't make a sound. Then only a "thud" was heard, and the black shadow holding the gun fell down. The other two turned their heads in a panic, but they couldn't see anything.

Stark, lying on the ground, saw by the dim moonlight shining into the cave that a black shadow flashed to the back of one of the black men at an unimaginable speed, and the other party immediately went limp.

By the time the last one came, Stark finally saw how Schiller killed people. He picked up the person who was bending over and groping on Stark's body, grabbed his head with one hand, pressed his shoulder with the other, and only heard a slight "click," and the other party stopped moving.

Schiller twisted the necks of three people in thirty seconds.

Stark, lying on the ground, now understood why Schiller said he didn't need weapons to kill.

Stark had heard his fitness coach say that the method of twisting necks often appearing in film and television works was not that easy to use. It required extremely skillful exertion methods, rich experience, and enough strength, and sometimes it depended on a bit of luck. But if there were these, why not attack the soft abdomen directly?

One of the three corpses was half-draped over Stark. That was a touch completely different from a living person. Stark clearly felt how the other party's pulse gradually became weak, and how the body temperature dropped, as if they were a piece of hamburger meat that was gradually cooling down because no one cared about it.

This brought unimaginable fear to Stark.

His breathing frequency started to become fast, and a feeling of suffocation came from his throat. Panic drowned his heart, so much so that he desperately wanted to escape.

Suddenly, a hand dragged him out of the pile of corpses. Schiller helped Stark to sit down by the campfire, and then pressed his hands hard on his shoulders, making Stark feel like he was about to be pressed into the ground.

This heavy sinking feeling made his wildly beating heart calm down a bit. Schiller took out a pill and stuffed it into his mouth. Feeling the pill gradually melt and become bitter, Stark finally caught his breath.

"What is that?"

"Sedative. You had a panic attack." Schiller walked to the opposite side of Stark, looked into his eyes, and said: "You didn't tell me you had a history of mental illness, otherwise I could have taken them further away."

Stark ignored all the points in this sentence, but grasped the least important one and asked back: "You alone? At dawn? Bare-handed?"

Schiller tilted his head as if helpless. Stark stared at him tightly and said: "You were just lucky. Their target was me. They didn't find you hiding in the shadows. But if they had been prepared, you would be finished with just one shot."

"I wouldn't."

"No one wouldn't." Stark turned his head and looked at the corpses on the ground and said: "Do you know how terrifying guns are? The probability of you dying from a bullet hitting any part of your body is at least fifty percent."

"I am a surgeon, I am more... than you..."

"You are not more clear about this than me!" Stark interrupted Schiller's words and said: "What if they found you and shot directly? What if they called for people? What if they had missiles again?"

"Then I would drop you and run."

Stark was speechless.

After a long while, he looked at Schiller with a complex expression and said: "Why are you so contradictory? Sometimes like a killer, sometimes like a child."

"I am an autistic patient."

"God!" Stark stared at Schiller without blinking, stood up and walked to the corpse. His gaze always followed Schiller. When Schiller started to drag the corpse, he asked: "They don't even let go of autistic children?"

Schiller didn't answer. He turned the corpse of the black man who was the leader over, took down the gun he was holding in his hand, turned around, and threw it to Stark.

Stark's incessant words were interrupted by this action. He looked at the handgun that fell in front of him in shock, and then turned to stare at Schiller and asked: "You actually gave me the gun??"

"Because only you can use it."

Stark's subsequent words were choked back again. He found that this doctor in front of him was really a conversation terminator, and also an incurable "touching allergy" patient.

Unfortunately, what Schiller said was the truth, and Stark had to admit this point. Schiller didn't need to use a gun at all.

"Then you aren't afraid..."

Schiller, who was searching another corpse, turned his head. His gaze fell on Stark's face, and then on his arms and wrists.

Stark almost jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on and said: "My marksmanship is very accurate! I go to the shooting range for training every week!"

Schiller nodded perfunctorily and threw over a pack of cigarettes he had touched out of the other party's jacket pocket. But just at this moment, the movement of his hand paused.

Stark looked at Schiller's movement pause. He couldn't help but clench the gun in his hand, frowned, and asked: "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." Schiller immediately took out the thing under the cigarettes. Stark saw that it seemed to be a metal badge.

Schiller rubbed the badge with his thumb. Stark walked over and leaned to the side. He saw that there was a slightly familiar logo on the badge, but Stark couldn't remember where he had seen it for a while.

"What is this?" Stark asked.

"A badge of a mercenary organization." Schiller said while recalling: "I saw it on the way I ran out. A group of mercenaries were patrolling around the laboratory."

Stark frowned deeply. Hearing the word "mercenary," a few images flashed through his mind. Suddenly he widened his eyes. The pattern of the armband Erik wore flashed through his mind, and the two overlapped.

"You said you saw mercenaries of this organization? Around the laboratory you were in? Do you know what they were here to do?"

Schiller looked at the badge and said: "Because there are some things the military is not convenient to come forward directly, usually mercenaries do it."

Stark continued to stare at Schiller. Schiller shook his head and said: "You don't need to know. Knowing it won't change anything."

"Raw materials for human experiments, right?" Stark clenched his fists tightly and said: "They couldn't transport people from across the ocean. They could only take materials locally."

Schiller didn't say anything, threw the badge into the campfire, and then he stood up and said to Stark: "This group of people might be a gang of thieves, but it's hard to say whether they are outsiders or locals. It's better to deal with the corpses, otherwise it will cause trouble."

Stark looked up at Schiller. He hesitated for a moment and said: "They actually didn't know you were a killer. You didn't let them know you would kill people."

"They don't need to know."

"Then I..."

"That was to make you cooperate with the treatment. I am not a quack." ===== CHAPTER 1837 =====