Chapter 1873: Madman's Journey (49)_1

As the evening approached, the temperature began to drop. It was close to the rainy season in this desert climate. The temperature fluctuated drastically between day and night. Even in the heat of the day, being inside the cave would make one sweat; yet during the night, it would be so cold that even being in front of a bonfire required wearing a cotton jacket.

Shiller stoked the fire with more wood and made it a bit brighter. Meanwhile, Stark, who had somewhat recovered, began to organize the parts of the communication equipment they had scavenged from the army communications room Shiller had mentioned. The culprits had kidnapped him.

Despite the unbearable pain from the wound on his back, Stark was determined. With his arms nearly impossible to lift, he strained to search with the hand farthest from the wound for parts he could use.

Shiller squatted beside him and asked, "Do you need help?"

Stark was kneeling on the ground, panting with difficulty. He turned to look at Shiller, but what he noticed most were the beads of sweat dripping from his eyelashes.

"No, no need. How long has it been since you last slept?" Stark turned his head back to continue sorting through the parts, and said, "You haven't rested since I came here, right? Don't you plan on sleeping for a bit?"

"I don't need to sleep."

"Don't be silly. Everyone needs to sleep." Stark picked up a circuit board to examine carefully, and he continued saying, "Sleep not only restores physical strength but also relaxes the mind."

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

"Alright, I get it, you're a psychologist." Stark pursed his lips, and with a slightly irritated tone said, "Then go do something else. Don't just watch me. I don't need your help."

Shiller left.

Stark seemed even more irritated. He glared at Shiller's retreating figure. After drawing a deep breath, he forced himself to focus back on the circuit board in his hands.

After sorting through the components for a while, he found several circuit boards, a bundle of spare wires that had not been used, and some metal for assembling the casing.

Stark piled these things on the ground next to him. After fiddling with them for a while, he ran into difficulty again. Looking at Shiller who was sitting motionless by the bonfire, he cleared his throat, attempting to attract his attention.

Shiller paid him no mind.

Stark had no choice but to complain: "This is the drawback of dealing with an illiterate, isn't it? There are only components here, no tools, no workbench. What am I supposed to use to build the weapon for them, my imagination?"

Suddenly, Shiller made a silence gesture towards him. Stark, like a chicken with its neck wrung, dared not utter a sound.

In the silence, Stark also heard rustling sounds coming from the cave entrance. It sounded like something was stirring in the grass, most likely a probing cane.

Shiller disappeared.

Stark didn't see how he vanished. Then a dark head peered out from the cave entrance. It belonged to a local man wearing a jacket and a worn-out baseball cap, which made him look very young, but he behaved in a sneaky manner.

Upon seeing Stark, his eyes lit up, and he and two other individuals swiftly crawled through the entrance of the cave. Stark saw them all covered with grass, obviously they had come cross-country, even though the road Stark remembered was quite flat when he had arrived.

This meant they hadn't taken the main road; instead, they'd come over from the neighboring hilltop. But what were they up to?

Suddenly, the muzzle of a black hole aimed at Stark. Out of self-protection, Stark immediately raised his hands, shouting in English, "Don't shoot! What do you want?"

The group seemed not to understand English. Only one of them pointed a gun at Stark, while the other two approached him. They didn't seem like they were going to attack him, but they still knocked him to the ground.

The three young men were all very strong, stronger than Stark, to say the least. As soon as Stark was thrown to the ground, one of them started frisking him.

Stark immediately realized that they were likely locals who had heard the news and knew that the kidnappers had captured a wealthy man. They were here to search him for things they could loot.

Stark bit his tongue and remained silent. Suddenly, with a thud, the shadow holding the gun fell over. The two others turned hastily but saw nothing.

While lying on the ground, Stark saw, under the dim moonlight shining through the entrance, a shadow flash behind one of the men at an unimaginable speed. The man instantly collapsed.

By the time it came to the last one, Stark finally saw how Shiller killed. He picked up the man who had been rummaging through his body, grabbed him by the head with one hand and pressed his shoulder with the other. With a slight click, the man stopped moving.

In less than thirty seconds, Shiller had broken the necks of three men.

Lying on the ground, Stark now understood why Shiller had said he didn't need weapons to kill.

Stark's fitness trainer had told him that the method of twisting necks often seen in films and television shows was not so practical. It required a skillful way of exerting force, plenty of experience, tremendous strength, and sometimes, some luck. But if one had all these, why not attack the soft belly directly?

One of the three dead bodies was half lying on Stark, which had a tactile sensation completely different from that of a living person. Stark clearly felt the man's pulse slowly weaken and his body temperature gradually decrease, as if they were a piece of hamburger meat gradually becoming cold due to neglect.

This brought Stark unimaginable terror.

His breathing started to speed up. A sense of suffocation welled up from his throat, his fear drowned his inner peace, leaving him feeling desperate to escape.

Suddenly, a hand pulled him out of the pile of corpses. Shiller helped Stark sit down by the bonfire, then pressed down hard on his shoulders with both hands, making Stark feel as though he was about to be pressed into the ground.

This heavy sinking feeling somewhat calmed his wildly beating heart. Shiller pulled out a pill and placed it in his mouth. As Stark felt the pill gradually dissolve and turn bitter, he was finally able to breathe with ease.

"What's this?"

"It's a sedative. You've had a panic attack." Shiller approached Stark and eyeballed him. "You never told me you had any mental distress; otherwise, I would have taken them much further out."

Stark disregarded all of the critical points in that statement and clung onto the most insignificant one to negotiate: "You alone? At dawn? Without any weapons?"

Shiller titled his head seemingly resigned, Stark stared at him: "You were just lucky they were after me and didn't notice you hiding in the shadows. But if they were prepared, then just one shot and you'd be finished."

"I wouldn't."

"Nobody can't not." Stark snapped his gaze towards the corpse on the ground: "Do you recognize how scary guns are? If a bullet hits you anywhere on your body, the minimum probability for you to die would be fifty percent."

"I am a surgeon, I..."

"You seem to be one of them who doesn't know this fact any clearer than I do," Stark interrupted Shiller. "What if they saw you and shot immediately? What if they called for backup? What if they had a missile?"

"Then I would dump you and run."

Stark had no reply.

After a long silence, he gazed at Shiller with a complex expression: "Why are you so contradictory? Sometimes you're like a killer, other times you're like a child."

"I suffer from autism."

"God!" Stark stared at Shiller and walked to the corpse. His gaze followed Shiller, who started to drag the body. He asked, "They won't even spare an autistic child?"

Without responding, Shiller turned over the corpse of the man who seemed to be their leader, took the gun from his hand, and tossed it to Stark.

Shiller's action abruptly intersected Stark's ongoing talk. He was surprised to stare at the handgun that fell before him, and then looked back at Shiller and asked, "You actually gave me the gun?"

"Because you're the only one who can use it."

Stark swallowed something he was about to say. He realized that the doctor across from him was indeed a master at ending topics, and he also seemed to have a severe allergic reaction to sentimentality.

Unfortunately, what Shiller said was true, and Stark couldn't deny it: Shiller simply didn't need the gun.

"Aren't you afraid that..."

Shiller, who was searching another corpse, turned his head to look at Stark, his gaze falling on Stark's face, and at his arm and wrist.

Stark's like a cat with its tail stepped on, defensively rose and exclaimed, "My shooting skills are on point! I go training at a gun range every week!"

Shiller faintly nodded and tossed over a pack of cigarettes he found in the guy's jacket pocket. Just then he paused in his actions.

Stark noticed Shiller's halted movement, instinctively squeezing the gun in his hand, frowning, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Shiller immediately retrieved something under the cigarette pack. Stark noticed what seemed to be a metal badge.

Shiller rubbed the metal badge with his thumb while Stark came over to get a closer look. He saw a somewhat familiar symbol on the badge that he couldn't remember where he had seen it before.

"What is this?" Stark asked.

"A mercenary organization's badge." Shiller said as he remembered, "I saw it on the way out; there was a group of mercenaries patrolling around the lab."

Stark furrowed his brows deeply, the word 'mercenaries' causing various images to flash in his mind. Suddenly his eyes widened as an image of Erik wearing a uniform badge flashed in his mind, overlapping with the image in front of him.

"You said you saw mercenaries from this organization around the lab where you were? Do you know what they were there for?"

Looking at the badge, Shiller answered, "Some dirty work that the army can't get their hands dirty for. They usually contract mercenaries for it."

Stark kept his eyes on Shiller. Shiller shook his head and said, "You don't need to know. Knowing won't change a thing."

"Human subjects for their experiments, right?" Stark clenched his fists, "They can't possibly transport people from across the ocean over here, so they have to source locally."

Without saying anything, Shiller threw the badge into the fire and stood up to face Stark, "These guys seemed to be habitual thieves, whether foreigners or locals, it's better to dispose of the bodies or it will attract trouble."

Stark looked up at Shiller, and after a moment of hesitation, he said, "They actually don't know you're a killer. You didn't let them know you can kill."

"They don't need to."

"And I..."

"I did that so you can cooperate with the treatment. I'm no quack."