127: Chapter 127 If you want to live, show your worth.

Qin Feng ignored her, put on his clothes, walked to the cave entrance, and began to observe the situation outside.

The sky was already beginning to brighten.

He needed food, clean water, and, more importantly, to figure out their exact location and how to avoid the Yang Country army to return to Long Country.

Lanna watched Qin Feng's tall, upright back, her feelings extremely complicated.

Just then, she noticed the Chef had been staring outside for a while, so she secretly reached for her backpack.

Caught it, it was impossible for him to notice.

Lanna felt a surge of joy and quickly felt around in the inner compartment of the backpack.

It was empty!

Lanna's face turned completely pale in an instant.

That black metal box... was gone!

She jerked her head up to look at Qin Feng at the cave entrance, her eyes filled with horror.

As if he had eyes in the back of his head, Qin Feng didn't turn around, simply saying calmly,

"Stop looking, I have it."

He turned around, toying with the small, diamond-shaped chip in his hand, a playful smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

"Now, I think we can talk again."

"Second Lieutenant Lanna, or should I call you... the chief designer of the 'Hive' system?"

Lanna's last shred of hope was completely shattered.

She slumped to the ground, her face ashen.

In front of this man, she felt like a little girl stripped of her clothes and thrown into the snow, with no secrets left to hide.

Her trump card was gone.

The air inside the cave seemed to freeze in an instant.

Lanna stared blankly at the tiny chip at Qin Feng's fingertips—the crystallization of countless efforts by her and her team.

It was her final trump card, and her biggest secret.

And now, this secret had been completely exposed by the man before her in such an understated way.

She had lost, lost completely.

"How... how did you know?" Her voice was dry, trembling with a hint of despair.

"I guessed," Qin Feng shrugged, spouting nonsense.

Of course, he wouldn't tell her that he had a spider that could read data.

He walked over to Lanna, crouched down, and dangled the chip in front of her eyes.

"Now, let's talk about a new deal."

Qin Feng's gaze was as sharp as a knife, as if it could pierce through her soul.

"From now on, you are no longer a Second Lieutenant engineer for Bear Country; you are just my prisoner, my private property."

"On what grounds?"

Lanna was stubborn; she would rather die than be a prisoner, let alone someone else's private property.

And the other party was her enemy, no less!

Qin Feng ignored her and continued talking to himself.

"Your task is to cooperate with me, use all the information about Yang Country in your brain, and lead me safely out of here and back to Long Country."

"In return, I guarantee your survival. Don't worry! Our army has an excellent code of conduct, and prisoners are treated well."

He didn't even blush when he said this.

The last Yang Country prisoner he had hacked to death with a kitchen knife hadn't even reached his seventh day after death.

Lanna's fingernails dug deeply into the soft flesh of her palms.

Prisoner? Private property?

For a proud officer, these words were a tremendous insult.

She lifted her head, and in those azure blue eyes, a flame of defiance reignited.

"And if I refuse?"

"Refuse?" Qin Feng laughed, his laughter somewhat cold. "Do you think you have the right to refuse right now?"

He stood up, looking down at her, his voice laced with a hint of cruelty.

"Second Lieutenant Lanna, you need to understand one thing. This is the heartland of Yang Country, further from your Bear Country than it is from God. And I am the only lifeline you can grab onto here."

"Without me, within three days, you will die quietly here from wound infection, starvation, or being eaten by beasts in the forest."

"Believe me, that way of dying is definitely not pretty."

"Or, if you're lucky, you'll be discovered by a Yang Country patrol."

"How do you think they would treat a beautiful female officer from Bear Country?"

"Especially one who holds cutting-edge military secrets?"

Lanna sneered and immediately denied it.

"I don't believe the Yang Country people would dare!"

"Why wouldn't they dare?"

Qin Feng looked as if he were seeing a naive, adorable child.

"If they kill you, who would know? Besides, the Yang Country people have a partnership with your country, not with you."

"Besides, you are so beautiful, those Yang Country soldiers might just get a bit aggressive."

"After all, the bombing of the electronic relay base was the work of you Bear Country people; it's very likely they'd want to collect some interest from you."

Qin Feng's words were like a sharp knife, precisely stabbing into Lanna's most vulnerable spot.

She might not fear death, but she could not imagine what kind of torture and humiliation she would suffer if she fell into the hands of the Yang Country army.

That outcome would be ten thousand times worse than death.

The best strategy is to attack the enemy's plans, followed by attacking their heart, and only then attacking their city!

Qin Feng watched the changing expressions on her face and knew the psychological warfare had worked.

He threw a compressed biscuit over to her.

"Eat it. If you want to live, show me your value."

After saying this, he ignored Lanna, turned, and walked out of the cave, seemingly to scout the surroundings, but actually giving her a chance to think.

Lanna silently picked up the biscuit and took a fierce bite.

It tasted like sand, but she chewed it with immense force, as if venting the humiliation in her heart.

She felt that the Chef wasn't negotiating with her at all, but unilaterally informing her.

Moreover, Lanna knew clearly that with her injuries, if she left the Chef, she would surely die.

...

The next few days were, for Lanna, simply a hellish test of survival.

Qin Feng was like the strictest instructor, completely ignoring the fact that she was a wounded person, and even more so that she was a woman.

They began a difficult trek through the perilous Red Maple Valley.

Qin Feng's survival skills were so powerful that they made Lanna feel terrified.

He could easily distinguish edible plants and fruits in the forest, and use the simplest tools to set up the most lethal traps to catch wild rabbits and birds.

He could even accurately determine directions without a map by observing the stars and the orientation of lichens.

Lanna followed behind him, from initial resistance and defiance to later numbness, and finally, only a deep sense of powerlessness remained, along with a hint of reliance she didn't want to admit even to herself.

She had thought about running away more than once, but every time she saw Qin Feng's eyes, which seemed to see through everything, all her courage would instantly vanish.

She also thought about using her professional knowledge as a bargaining chip to negotiate with Qin Feng.

But she would soon fall into despair, because this man knew more than she did in many fields.

Once, they needed to cross a turbulent river, and Lanna suggested weaving a simple raft out of vines.

As a result, Qin Feng just glanced at her, then used less than half an hour to build a log bridge using the principle of leverage and a few pieces of dead wood.

At that moment, Lanna watched the man walking on the bridge as if it were flat ground, and for the first time, her heart wavered.

Perhaps... following him, she could really survive?

That evening, they rested by a pool under a waterfall.

Qin Feng used a dagger to neatly and cleanly process a freshly caught wild rabbit and roasted it over the fire.

Golden grease dripped into the flames, making a "sizzling" sound, and the aroma filled the air.

Lanna sat on the side, silently looking at the wound on her leg.

Qin Feng found some herbs and applied them to her wound.

At first, Lanna was very resistant to these so-called herbs, but after trying them a few times,

her injuries had improved slightly; it seemed the herbs worked.

Currently, although she still couldn't do strenuous exercise, she could walk normally.

She looked at the freshly bandaged wound on her calf, then at the man nearby who was focused on roasting meat, her gaze becoming incomparably complicated.

"Hey, Chef," Lanna suddenly spoke up.

"Hm?" Qin Feng didn't even look up.

"Who... who exactly are you?" This was a question she had always wanted to ask.

"A Chef who wants to go home." Qin Feng's answer was always the same.

Lanna smiled self-deprecatingly; she knew she wouldn't get any answers even if she asked again.

She changed the question.

"How much longer do we have to walk?"

"Don't know." Qin Feng tore off a rabbit leg, roasted to a crispy outside and tender inside, and threw it to her. "Depends on luck."

According to the red treasure book, this Red Maple Valley is the last primitive forest in Yang Country, and heading west is the fastest way.

But exactly how long it would take, Qin Feng couldn't judge.

Just then, the spider on guard nearby reacted.

Qin Feng's movements stopped instantly.

He stomped out the campfire and then made a hush gesture to Lanna.

His whole body, like a leopard, silently vanished into the nearby bushes.