Huo Li chewed twice and the juice of that young tender leaf instantly filled his mouth, even more bitter than Chinese goldthread. Snapping awake, he directly used his earth ability to remove the cover of the small earth bed before sitting up and twisting his body, wanting to spit out that extremely bitter mouthful of ‘chinese cabbage’.
“Huo!!! Li!!!” The black-haired youth’s furious voice came from behind him.
Keeping the leaf in his mouth, Huo Li turned around and was horrified to find that from the bottom of the chinese cabbage he had just torn and eaten, several strands of black filaments were extending out, and the other end was connected to the youth’s left shoulder that was currently missing an arm!
Finally realising what kind of foolish thing he had just done, Huo Li froze all over. That mouthful of chinese cabbage juice was so bitter that his tongue wanted to run away, but he still didn’t dare to move. He could only maintain this strange posture as he listened to the youth angrily accuse him:
“Last night, I thought long and hard before coming up with a good plan to save the world without needing to turn my entire body green! When dawn arrived, I transformed my left arm into a chinese cabbage. Just when I spread the leaves to absorb the first rays of sunlight, when they still haven’t accumulated any organic matter, you actually……
That’s my arm! You actually broke off a piece and wanted to eat it! You also put it into your mouth and chewed it to pieces! And now you actually want to spit it out onto the ground?!”
Realising that he was currently holding a piece of his little boyfriend’s arm in his mouth, Huo Li really wanted to apologise, but he was unable to talk with the bitter pieces of leaf and juice in his mouth. Under Xiao Yi’s murderous gaze, he didn’t know whether he should swallow, but he didn’t dare to spit it out. In the end, he still summoned up his courage and swallowed that bile-like chinese cabbage mixture into his stomach.
“Xiao Yi, I didn’t intentionally eat your……” Body? This word sounded really weird. Huo Li lightly coughed to hide his embarrassment and quickly changed the topic:
“Xiao Yi, I still have a few bottles of red wine in my space. Why don’t you drink some to replenish your organic matter?”
“No need. It’s fine if I just bask in the sun for a while.” The black-haired youth coldly said, cutting off Huo Li’s action of taking out the red wine:
“You’re actually able to eat such a bitter cabbage? I specially designed the leaves to be extremely bitter to prevent insects and rodents from eating it. I had thought that I would finally be able to photosynthesise in peace. Even rats wouldn’t want to eat this kind of chinese cabbage, right? But as a result…… you!”
Huo Li stood frozen to the spot. Looking at the chinese cabbage that was fluttering in the wind, he decided to quickly shift the topic to something work related: “Xiao Yi, are you thinking of accumulating organic matter through photosynthesis and then gradually spreading your black strands around the entire world?”
“Yes.” The black-haired youth said. “Isn’t your brain not powerful enough? How about I accumulate some brain power for you to use against the D system? But, how much brain power do you need? If I can used my black strands to connect with the 600 tonnes of brains of the 400,000 survivors in the world, would that still not be enough for you to use?”
Huo Li cautiously reached out and separated the chinese cabbage leaves, slightly adjusting their angle towards the sun so that every leaf would be able to receive the maximum amount of sunshine. He then silently sighed and said to the black-haired youth:
“A large portion of each person’s brain is used to maintain their life functions. Even if I make the entire world’s population fall into a deep coma when I fight against the D system, they still need to use a large part of their brain capacity to maintain their breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure and so on. Also, the mainframe of the D system covers the entire globe, controlling at least several hundred thousand of the computer systems in research institutes. So in terms of brain power, I would need 2 billion people to be able to contend against the D system.”
The black-haired youth looked at Huo Li who had suddenly arranged his cabbage-shaped left arm into a large green sunflower. Taking a deep breath, he restrained the urge to curse and asked in a businesslike manner:
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“This world has already been in crisis for 50 years. When the D system first started rebelling, why didn’t you come to save this world? At that time, D planet should have had at least tens of billions of residents, right? Also, the D system back then wouldn’t have had as much computing power.”
“Ktf G rsrafw wbgf bg ifrr xcfk jybea atf Vjinjalbc Ciiljcmf yfobgf lar gfyfiilbc, rb bc atf vjs la aegcfv jujlcra tewjclas, la mbwqifafis mbcagbiifv jii bo G qijcfa’r fzafgcji mbwweclmjalbcr. Qtfc atf Vjinjalbc Ciiljcmf’r tbra rsrafw olcjiis vfvemfv atja G qijcfa kjr tjnlcu j mglrlr, la kjr jigfjvs 2 sfjgr ijafg. Ca atja alwf, atf kbgiv’r abaji qbqeijalbc tjv jigfjvs vgbqqfv ab afcr bo wliilbcr. Qtfc P rjk atlr wlrrlbc vfajli, P xcfk atja ws jylilas kbeiv yf tjgvis bo erf tfgf, rb lc atf qjra 50 sfjgr, P cfnfg jqqilfv obg atlr wlrrlbc.” Leb Ol fjgcfrais gfqilfv, yea tlr gluta tjcv atja kjr lcmfrrjcais gecclcu jibcu atf mjyyjuf ifjnfr gfnfjifv tlr cfgnbercfrr.
“That’s not a problem!” It was finally the time for him to display his brain capacity. The black-haired youth joyfully said: “You need 2 billion people; that is 3 million tonnes of brains. The brain cell content of my black strands roughly take up 50% of my body weight, and its computing speed is also much faster than a human brain. It means that so long as I can accumulate 6 million tonnes of black strands through photosynthesis, then it should be enough to control the D system.”
“Uh, are you intending to plant this kind of chinese cabbage over the entire world?” Huo Li reached out and touched the tender green leaves of the chinese cabbage that was blooming brightly in the desolate sand dunes. He hesitantly said with concern:
“Your body, this kind of, um, appearance, isn’t it too…… eye-catching?”
Hearing this, the chinese cabbage retracted its green petal-like leaves and turned into a pool of black strands. They then bubbled up towards the youth’s shoulder and once again formed into an arm.
“I’m not say that a chinese cabbage is bad……” Huo Li quickly explained himself.
“Wait a bit.” The black-haired youth said and then took out the ragged suit from his space. After extending black strands from his left hand and completely absorbing the suit, he now had some excess organic matter. He then manipulated it to turn into a small field of short rapeseeds before looking at Huo Li: “Is this fine?”
“Good, extremely good!” Huo Li quickly said. “We can first find a location where humans are hiding and borrow some food from them to use as raw material for the plants to expand. And then we’ll go to the next human base. When we’ve expanded to a certain level, we can seize the crude oil fields currently controlled by the machines and then your black strands would be able to rapidly increase.”
“Borrow some food? At most, the two of us would be given a few kilograms of organic matter, right? You want to use this as a starting point to expand? Even if I can triple the amount of organic matter through photosynthesis every day, that would still be too slow! How about we first find a relatively large human base and then threaten them to lend all their food. We’ll then return it all after a day. This way, our progress would be much faster.”
“Threaten them to ‘lend’ all their food?” Isn’t this clearly stealing?
“What’s wrong? Do you have a problem? Anyway, I can definitely pay it all back.” The black-haired youth said and thought to himself: Look how considerate I am. Knowing that you are reluctant to control ordinary people, I decided to take over the task of ‘persuading’.
“There’s absolutely no problem.” Huo Li obediently said. “Let’s head off now!”
“Wait.” The black-haired youth said. “My brain capacity isn’t enough. I can’t instantly learn the language of a different planet. I asked 2d14 to download a language course for me so I’ll be learning it for the next 2 hours. You can understand D planet’s language?”
“I roughly learnt it from the information those mechanical soldiers sent out yesterday during the fight.” Huo Li said. “There’s no need to rush. Take your time to learn.”
Hence, the black-haired youth continued to sit on the ground and alienated all of his body, besides his head for studying the foreign language, into a vast expanse of beautiful flowers and black strands. The remaining head stood in the centre of the flower field, the mouth opening and closing from time to time, silently reading the new language’s vocabulary (because he didn’t even have lungs or vocal cords, so he couldn’t make a sound).
If an ordinary person saw such a strange scene, they would definitely be so horrified that their soul would leave their body. However, Huo Li just sat at the edge of the flower field and focused on the youth’s delicate side profile. Looking at him earnestly learning the foreign language, he thought: how can my ‘little boyfriend’ be so cute?
Two hours later, it was already late morning. The sun was shining brightly onto the desert. Having finished his crash course on a foreign language, the black-haired youth retracted all the rapeseeds and black strands and turned back into human form. The 15 extra kilograms of black strands produced through photosynthesis were put away into his space. He then embarked on a journey with Huo Li to collect food.
Thus, the two of them used dozens of teleportation seals and jumped around on the surface of D planet. After half an hour, Huo Li finally detected signs of human activity 8 kilometres away when they landed. Acting rich and imposing in front of his ‘little boyfriend’, Huo Li took out another teleportation seal and brought Xiao Yi directly to that location.
The two of them stood on the sandstone ground and saw a small abandoned mine pit, obviously concealing many survivors hiding from the slaughter of the mechanical soldiers. Xiao Yi directly walked over towards the survivor who was covered in black from head to toe, hiding at the entrance of the mine and serving as a guard. Before the guard could react, Xiao Yi grabbed his shoulder and lifted him up, curtly saying to him:
“I am a Salvation Alliance saviour, Xiao Yi. That person is my colleague, Huo Li. Now, take us to your base. Due to the requirements for saving this world, we will need to borrow all your food. They will be returned after 12 hours.”
Having been picked up by Xiao Yi, the guard was completely stunned. He tried to pull out his gun while incoherently saying: “Are you guys new bandits in this area? Our base has armed forces. I warn you, don’t try to steal our supplies! Stop! All people entering this base must receive non-mechanical identity confirmation!” The guard was a 17 or 18 year old young man. Before his hand could reach his holster, Xiao Yi was one step ahead and seized his gun. He then dragged him into the mine.
“Help! Pay attention everyone! Unconfirmed humans have intruded!” The brown haired young man shouted in D planet’s language as he was dragged along, warning his comrades inside the base!
The three of them walked all the way to the edge of the mine pit. Looking down, the pit was roughly 50 metres deep and in the shape of an irregular circle with a diameter of more than 120 metres. The walls of the pit were covered in dug out passages, with their entrances all concealed with dark grey curtains and even rocks. This should be to prevent being discovered by drones. Thousands of large metal and plastic jars were arranged at the bottom of the pit, filled with some unknown dark purple viscous liquid.
The youth saw a rope ladder that was painted the same ash black not far away from him. He walked along the jagged edge of the pit before climbing down.
At this moment, there were already people in twos and threes at the bottom of the pit vigilantly raising their guns and aiming in the black-haired youth’s direction. The youth didn’t want to waste any more time going down, so he simply lifted up the guard and leapt off the pit wall!
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!” The young man that was forced to jump off a cliff let out an ear piercing shriek.
Then, under the gaze of many horrified survivors, the two of them steadily landed on the ground. Huo Li also jumped down behind them.
“Mechanical soldiers have invaded!”
“They’re holding Branson hostage!”
Dozens of human survivors hid in the passages, only exposing the muzzle of their guns to aim at the black-haired youth and Huo Li, whose physical strengths were clearly unlike ordinary people.
“Throw over a machine identifying device!” Huo Li shouted at them in D planet’s language. The black-haired youth also cooperated and pointed a gun at the unlucky young man’s head, threatening: “Hurry up! Don’t dawdle!”
In this current state of hostility, that group of survivors quickly threw over a flashlight-size identifier in order to temporarily preserve Branson’s life.
Huo Li caught it and switched on the power to scan himself. “Ding! Non-mechanical body. Safe.” He then walked to the youth and scanned his body. The small device issued the same prompt.
At this moment, the atmosphere between the two sides finally eased a little. A survivor then shouted at Xiao Yi: “Could it be that the bandits wanted to rely on you two to steal our supplies? First release Branson. We’ll forget about the previous things!”
“You’ve misunderstood.” The black-haired youth said. “We’re not here to steal your food, but rather to ‘borrow’ it. We will definitely return it later.”
“How much do you guys want to borrow?”
“All of your food. We will return it in 12 hours.”
“Bandits! You guys don’t deserve a natural death!” The survivor clearly regarded the youth’s truthful words as a provocation. “In this apocalypse, we absolutely cannot tolerate this kind of tyrannical behaviour! I will count down from 10. Release Branson, or else we’ll turn you two into sieves!” The red-bearded survivor was determined to solve this with military force regardless of the young man’s life.
“10, 9, 8, 7, 6……”
Along with the countdown, the black-haired youth quickly planned his action path for when they opened fire……
“5, 4, 3, 2……”
En. The plan was complete. He could control these survivors with zero casualties. The black-haired youth tensed up, waiting for the fight to commence.
“…… 1, 0!” Red beard instantly revealed a happy expression and shouted:
“Mister Yi, Mister Huo, you’re back!”
Originally so scared that he had almost peed his pants, the young man Branson said in embarrassment to the youth next to him:
Mister Yi, you don’t need to support me anymore. I can stand by myself. It’s all my fault for carelessly falling off the rope ladder.”
The black-haired youth: “WTF!!!”
This chapter took me so long to translate 
Eh?? I’m confused o-o
Also, Xiao Yi literally everytime Huo Li does something he doesn’t like: how are you so dumb, i am utterly surprised that you survived this long, is your brain filled with mush? god, you disappoint me =_=
Thanks for the chapter! 🙂
why are you confused??
I didn’t quite understand that last scene. Does that Branson know these two or what?My brain isn’t processing much atm and I’m not sure if I missed something ^^;
Hou Li took control of everyone’s brains.
This last part was Hou Li thinking, ” En. The plan was complete. He could control these survivors with zero casualties”
Then it swaps to 3rd person narration where Xiao Yi has no idea whats happening.
OHHH!! Thank you so much for the explanation! <3
Late, but I think from beginning to end it’s all XY’s thinking. He is strong enough to subdue them all without harming anyone only to be stopped when everyone “changed” (under mind control, obviously). That’s why XY was so surprised, all from his perspective.
Our ML can control minds… maybe he messed up with their memory?
Oh, I was going to say the same thing, that Huo Li can manipulate people’s minds, so they change their tune the second things are about to go bad, which he did in the last world for Xiao Yi’s little animal. But this was answered already ahaha xD
What is happening? (ᅌᴗᅌ* )
Xiao Yi in this chapter 🌾🌾🌾🧑🏻🌾🌾🌾 and under it is a flat line :’D
Wow, Surname Hou really is lovesick with no chance of recovery. But i’m here for it!👌
Xiao Yi is so aggressive yet still cute ☺️
Thank you for translating 💕🙏💕
Showing off in front of his “little boyfriend” 🤣
Thanks for the chapter!!!
I wonder if he’s a member of the saviour alliance?
Thanks for the great translation ♥️
Many thanks for the update! XD
So will Huo Li also get some filter water?
This person surenamed Hou is probably the most bullied ml I’ve ever read about, but at the same time it’s very cute? 😂😂😂
thank you for the chapter! They’re all brawls and a little brain XD
“irritating boyfriend! he does things ahead without me. I should have gone solo”
“…” but…
(I love how the BBS developed to a mutual aggression between ML and MC. ML got bit by a lovebug)