Chapter 93: Delicious

As the muzzle drew closer and closer to the beast, a spark of excitement suddenly rose in Li Yunlong’s heart.

The creature looked fearsome enough, yet somehow a little foolish.

When he moved the barrel to the beast’s eye, it still did not move.

“Damn it, I’ll put you down!” Li Yunlong thought viciously, and pulled the trigger.

Click.

No blood sprayed as he had expected, no furious roaring, no frantic thrashing.

A single bullet popped lazily from the muzzle and drifted down, unhurried, into the gap between the beast’s teeth.

The beast’s eyes flickered.

Its mouth moved, producing a grating, teeth-on-edge crunch.

Li Yunlong watched in terror as the bullet that had fallen into its teeth was actually bitten flat.

He pulled the trigger again. The pistol gave a series of dry clicks, as if jammed, and several more bullets simply dropped to the ground.

The pistol seemed to have lost all effect here.

“Am I really going to end up here today?” Li Yunlong felt a chill run through him.

“What are you glaring at the allosaurus for?”

A voice suddenly came from beside him.

Li Yunlong whirled around.

He saw a young man sitting on a huge rock off to the side.

He had not had the spare attention to look that way before.

The young man wore a strange white outfit with a large fist emblazoned on the chest.

His clothes were spotless, his complexion healthy, his features handsome—utterly unlike men like them.

“Where did this fine young fellow come from?” Li Yunlong narrowed his eyes slightly.

Just moments earlier, with only a thought, he had come to this miraculous place.

Everything here was extraordinary.

Take the beast in front of him, for instance: he was sure that if it merely opened its mouth, it could chew him up as easily as a white steamed bun, and by nightfall he might be nothing but a pile of dung.

And this young man...

Wait. He had called this beast an allosaurus?

Qiao Mian also studied Li Yunlong from head to toe.

Average height, a large head and big feet, dressed in a patched Eighth Route Army uniform, with a pair of eyes that carried a certain roguishness.

“He doesn’t look quite as good as he does on television,” Qiao Mian thought. “But this unruly air...”

“Li Yunlong?” he asked.

“Old...” Li Yunlong instinctively began, then hurriedly corrected himself. “I am Li Yunlong. May I ask your name?”

Qiao Mian nodded lightly and pointed casually to a stone nearby. “Sit.”

Li Yunlong looked left and right, then plopped down on the rock.

He cast curious glances all around.

“I am the person in charge here. You can call me Mr. Qiao,” Qiao Mian said with a smile. “I assume you already understand why you were brought here?”

Li Yunlong looked at Qiao Mian and fell into brief thought before asking, “Could Mr. Qiao be one of the immortals from legend?”

He had never believed in ghosts or gods, but what had happened today was too strange to deny.

“No,” Qiao Mian said, shaking his head. “But once you are here, you will have plenty of chances to meet immortals, and even become one yourself.”

Li Yunlong said steadily, “Can immortals drive the Japanese invaders out?”

“You’re underestimating this place too much.” Qiao Mian smiled. “Perhaps you still haven’t figured out where this is.”

Li Yunlong said nothing.

His head was still a bit foggy.

Qiao Mian snapped his fingers, and a light screen suddenly appeared before the two of them.

Li Yunlong’s expression jolted as he looked on in shock.

The first thing to appear on the screen was a cannonball.

Amid thunderous blasts, one sailing ship after another was sunk.

Boundary markers for foreign concessions were set up...

Officials of the old empire gave speeches to outsiders, and foreign troops entered the Forbidden City.

Warlords rose in all directions, and refugees filled the land.

Japanese aircraft dropped bombs among crowds, while soldiers short on clothes and ammunition threw themselves forward without fear of death.

Bright red banners rose high, and a great figure announced the founding of a new government before hundreds of millions of people.

Towering buildings rose from the ground.

Traffic surged through the cities.

An atomic bomb exploded deep in the desert, and crewed spacecraft orbited the Earth...

A montage from A Century of China.

When the light screen vanished, Li Yunlong stood rooted to the spot, unable to make a sound.

His eyes had grown moist.

When Qiao Mian looked over, he hurriedly turned away and wiped at his eyes with his sleeve.

“Mr. Qiao... is that true?” Li Yunlong’s voice was a little hoarse.

Qiao Mian pointed outside and said, “That is the world beyond here.”

Li Yunlong did not quite understand.

“Theoretically speaking, the place you came from and this place are two different worlds,” Qiao Mian said. “But according to the course of development, the future of this place should have been the same as yours.”

“We really damn well won?” Li Yunlong blurted out.

Qiao Mian gave him a half-smiling look.

Li Yunlong grinned, then slapped his own mouth. “Mr. Qiao, I’m just a rough sort. Don’t mind me.”

“No matter. You’ll have plenty of time to verify it yourself,” Qiao Mian said. “Let’s talk about the important matters first.”

“Oh, right, the important matters. Go on,” Li Yunlong said.

As they were talking, Li Yunlong’s stomach suddenly growled.

Qiao Mian stopped speaking and looked at him with amusement.

Embarrassed, Li Yunlong rubbed his belly. “My stomach’s no good. It starts rebelling at the smell of anything good.”

His eyes darted slyly toward the self-heating hotpot in the distance, and the half bottle of Phoenix Wine beside it.

Qiao Mian saw what this fellow was after.

He laughed and shook his head.

“That’s someone else’s,” he said. “But if you want it, go ahead and eat. I’ll make sure to give him another later.”

“There are others here too?” Li Yunlong was surprised.

“You have many colleagues. I’ll introduce you to them in a bit,” Qiao Mian said.

“Well then...” Li Yunlong rubbed his hands together awkwardly.

He had always been blessed with a big heart.

After the initial tension, he had now more or less returned to normal.

Especially after discovering that Mr. Qiao was mild-tempered, unlike the cursing superiors he knew, he gradually began to show his true nature.

Qiao Mian waved his hand, and the self-heating hotpot and half bottle of Phoenix Wine floated over from afar.

This marvelous sight instantly sobered Li Yunlong from his momentary abandon.

When the two items landed before him, he still could not help swallowing hard.

“Can I eat now?” Li Yunlong asked, wiping his mouth.

His stomach kept rumbling, making even him a little embarrassed.

“Go ahead,” Qiao Mian said helplessly.

If he had known, he would have had someone prepare a proper table full of food and chatted with this fellow while they ate.

That was careless.

He had not thought this through.

Clumsily, Li Yunlong opened the self-heating box, and when he saw the steaming food inside, he swallowed hard.

Damn, it smelled delicious.

He grabbed the chopsticks, picked up a piece of meat, and stuffed it into his mouth.

The moment the meat in the hotpot burst across his tongue, Li Yunlong was so blissful that tears nearly came to his eyes.

“Delicious!” he cried out.

The allosaurus, which had not dared leave, was startled by the sight of him: why did this man eat with such ferocity?

Qiao Mian watched with a smile as he wolfed down his meal, and for a moment he felt a touch of sorrow.

Wasn’t the life they had now bought with the sacrifices of those who came before?