17: Military boots shattering the moonlight? I'm holding the school beauty, completely unfazed!

The interwoven pattern of gears and wheat ears on that epaulette had a cold, hard metallic texture in Su Chen's eyes.

That was the insignia of the "Seventh Logistics Department." In previous post-apocalyptic survival guides, these people were jokingly called "Resource Harvesters," belonging to the military's most unreasonable and violent agency.

"It's Zhao Jianguo's old unit!"

Li Sisi leaned against Su Chen's ear, her voice kept extremely low. Her warm breath made his ear itch slightly.

"Su Chen, do you see that green glowing disk on their chests? That's a high-precision emotion detector. If there's even a hint of faking in your heartbeat or galvanic skin response, the alarm will be heard three miles away."

Su Chen narrowed his eyes, his gaze sweeping outside the window.

Ten dark muzzles had already locked onto all the bus's exits. That shivering sensation of being stared at by a venomous snake crawled up his spine.

Zhao Wanting bit her bloodless lips hard, her fingers clutching the hem of her clothes so tightly that her fingernails turned pale.

She whispered urgently, "That's my father's most trusted commando team."

"They won't touch me, but if you, a 'male survivor,' are judged to be a threat or an unstable factor, they will take you away for forced service immediately, or even... kill you on the spot."

Take me away?

That's trying to cut off my path to upgrading my harem!

Su Chen sneered in his heart. His brain, like a high-speed processor, instantly filtered out the options of escaping or fighting head-on.

In this narrow tunnel, playing close combat with fully armed special forces was just asking for death.

He turned his head, his gaze meeting Lin Mengyao's cold eyes, which were filled with panic.

"I'm borrowing you for a bit."

Before Lin Mengyao could react, Su Chen reached out with his long arm, grabbed her slender waist, and pulled her into his arms.

"Mm!"

Lin Mengyao cried out in surprise as she crashed into Su Chen's solid chest. A scent mixed with sweat and masculine aura instantly invaded her nose.

Su Chen's fingers domineeringly hooked her rounded chin, forcing her to look up.

The distance between the two was so close they could count each other's eyelashes.

Su Chen's deep voice almost brushed against her earlobe. "We're acting as a couple later. Don't slip up. Just say I'm a poor kid who took you away to elope, and you're a chaebol heiress running away from an arranged marriage. Understand?"

The tips of Lin Mengyao's ears turned bright red at a visible speed. She could even feel Su Chen's powerful heartbeat, like a drumbeat, against her chest.

But in that instant, she saw a flash of absolute calm in Su Chen's deep pupils.

That sense of stability from being in total control miraculously calmed her frantic heart.

As if possessed, she reached out her arms and hugged Su Chen's back, her fingertips lightly tracing an "OK" on his spine through his shirt.

Clang!

The bus door was violently pulled open, and a cold wind mixed with rain and the smell of gunpowder poured in.

The commando leader boarded the bus with heavy military boots. An infrared laser sight swept across Su Chen's face, and the green emotion detector emitted a faint hum.

"All females squat down! Males stand up and identify yourselves!"

The captain's voice sounded like sandpaper rubbing against the ground, cold to the core.

Instead of letting go, Su Chen held her even tighter. He buried his head in the crook of Lin Mengyao's neck, his voice raspy and filled with a desperate ruthlessness.

"Identify ourselves? The Lin Group treated her like a sacrifice to be married off to those chaebols. I brought her out here, and I've already planned to throw my life away on this road."

Lin Mengyao leaned into his arms, her shoulders twitching slightly as she let out suppressed sobs.

"Except for Su Chen... no one believes me. If you take me back, you might as well kill me now..."

The moment their body temperatures touched, the Extreme Yang Sacred Body within Su Chen began to circulate wildly.

An invisible warm current flowed through their touching skin, forcibly synchronizing Lin Mengyao's fluctuations with his own.

The captain looked down at the emotion detector in his hand.

The reading was as steady as an old dog, actually within the range of "deep emotional resonance," without even a hint of a lie.

"Captain, the reading is normal. They're just two desperate lovers."

A soldier with a gun nearby reported in a low voice.

Just as the standoff continued, Qin Ya pushed her glasses up and walked out from the shadows, holding a slightly old, folded photograph she had found from somewhere.

"Officer, this is a photo from their engagement."

Su Chen swept his eyes over it, and his eyelids couldn't help but twitch.

That was a fake photo Li Sisi had just urgently synthesized using the residual image processing software on the bus's system.

In the picture, Su Chen and Lin Mengyao stood under a blooming cherry blossom tree, smiling like a pair of idiots.

This intelligence analyst's efficiency is pretty good; I'll have to give her an extra reward later!

The captain took the photo, looked at it twice, snorted coldly, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it away.

"Talking about feelings in this world is the fastest way to die."

He turned around and said "Evacuate" into his communicator, giving Su Chen a look like he was staring at a dead man before leaving.

"Withdraw!"

The soldiers left as quickly as they had come, their heavy footsteps fading into the distance.

It wasn't until the tunnel returned to a dead silence that Lin Mengyao went limp as if exhausted, leaning on Su Chen's shoulder and panting lightly. Her nose was filled with that comforting "Yang Energy."

"Just now... my heart was really beating fast."

She murmured weakly.

Feeling the soft hands still around his waist, Su Chen's lips curled into a mischievous arc. He leaned down to her ear and teased.

"If you're going to act, do the whole set. Remember to hold me for three more seconds next time. The system just notified me that the bond value hasn't been maxed out yet."

Lin Mengyao pushed him away in embarrassment, only to find their "savior" bending down to pick a camouflage-colored sticker from the gap in the bus door.

That sticker had been intentionally dropped from the captain's side pocket when he turned around.

Su Chen peeled off the back, and a line of small military code came into view: [Su Chen, you are stronger than the protocol estimated — Zhao Jianguo]

"Heh, Old General Zhao's little schemes."

Su Chen casually stuffed the sticker into his pocket and sat back in the driver's seat.

The bus's engine roared lowly again, and the rugged tires crushed the gravel in the tunnel, slowly sliding out onto the pitch-black wilderness highway.

In the rearview mirror, Zhao Wanting looked at where Su Chen and Lin Mengyao had just been leaning against each other. Her eyes flickered, and for the first time, she didn't show any resistance because of Su Chen's "self-serving behavior."

The headlights cut through the thick fog at the tunnel entrance. On the distant horizon, an eerie, blood-colored setting sun was slowly rising, as if foretelling that something even more terrifying than the army was waiting at the next bend in the road.