Chapter 161: A Dog and a Cat, A Warmhearted Boy

If it gets sucked in... that simply won't do!

Lin Shenlu packed away his drone while glancing in He Ku'er's direction.

Not far away, He Ku'er was squatting on the ground, shouting anxiously.

"Someone come quickly! What should we do?" He Ku'er's voice carried a distinct note of panic.

Lin Shenlu paused in surprise. He hadn't seen anyone fall into the marsh nearby, had he?

Could the person have already been completely submerged?

That would be way too fast, wouldn't it?

"He Ku'er? What's wrong?" An Muxi called out hurriedly from the side.

He Ku'er immediately yelled back to Lin Shenlu and An Muxi: "Uncle, Sister An, come over here quickly! There's a little dog stuck in the marsh..."

He Ku'er's words left Lin Shenlu utterly dumbfounded...

Has she lost her mind with a fever?

The Northwest uninhabited wilderness... the Eye of the Demon at Ai'ken Spring?

Where on earth would a dog come from?

A wild dog?

Wild dogs aren't foolish enough to fall into a marsh...

Lin Shenlu and An Muxi quickly hurried over to He Ku'er's side.

Following the direction of He Ku'er's finger, Lin Shenlu looked closely...

Holy crap!

There really was a dog struggling in the marsh...

No wonder Lin Shenlu hadn't seen it clearly just a moment ago.

It was a brownish-tan little Toy Poodle!

The creature's coat blended right into the reddish-brown color of the marsh!

If one hadn't looked extremely closely, it would have been entirely invisible.

Fortunately, the puppy was very lightweight, so it wasn't in danger of being completely submerged just yet; its four paws were simply embedded in the ground and unable to be pulled free.

"Don't worry, it's fine for now... But where did this dog even come from?" Lin Shenlu rolled up his sleeves.

He looked down at the clothes he was wearing today...

They were probably ruined beyond repair.

"I have no idea. When I first saw the dog, it came running over with its head down, and then it got stuck right in," He Ku'er said with a very worried expression.

"Relax, it's not going anywhere..." With that, Lin Shenlu found the edge closest to the little Toy Poodle.

He lowered his entire body flat onto the ground, inched toward the edge, and stretched out his hand to reach for the poodle.

Thankfully, the little guy wasn't moving very fast, and it was only about eighty centimeters away from solid ground.

With one-third of his body plastered against the marsh surface, Lin Shenlu finally managed to touch the Toy Poodle.

The Toy Poodle was terrified out of its wits at that moment.

It struggled and dodged frantically, letting out low, whimpering cries.

"Don't be scared, buddy, I'm here to save you!" Lin Shenlu said through gritted teeth as he exerted all his strength.

Then, he finally managed to grab a firm hold of one of the dog's legs.

Lin Shenlu hurriedly scrambled backward using his feet to push off against the ground.

"Pull me back, quick!" Lin Shenlu shouted.

There was no time to waste; if the dog panicked and bit him, it would hurt terribly.

There wasn't even anywhere to get a rabies shot out in this desolate place.

He Ku'er hastily grabbed Lin Shenlu's legs and dragged him backward.

Lin Shenlu could feel his stomach, his thighs... and his dignity all scraping painfully across the harsh, barren terrain...

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Lin Shenlu's heart broke.

Of course, the dog was successfully rescued as well.

The puppy was shivering as it curled up nearby, its pitiful expression exceedingly endearing.

Lin Shenlu looked down at his clothes, which were now completely stained and dirtied.

"You guys keep an eye on this little fellow; I need to go back to the RV to take a shower and change my clothes..." Lin Shenlu sighed and said.

"Hold on... Uncle, don't go wash up yet. Let the dog wash up first... You're a full-grown human, why are you competing with a dog..." He Ku'er blocked Lin Shenlu's path.

"I swear..."

...

Before long, He Ku'er emerged carrying a freshly cleaned Toy Poodle.

"Look! Look everyone, this little guy has a metal tag on him!" He Ku'er called out.

They had discovered it while giving the dog a bath.

The Toy Poodle was wearing a collar.

Dangling from the underside of the collar was a metal tag.

Embossed on it were the dog's name and portrait.

Tuanzi?

"This little guy is named Tuanzi?" Lin Shenlu looked closely at the metal tag and said.

"Yeah... Oh right, there's more on the back!" He Ku'er flipped the metal tag over to the other side.

The reverse side featured a black design.

It was very cute and adorable.

One could tell it depicted a tall young man holding a dog on his left hand and a cat on his right.

Beneath the image were two English letters.

LL.

Along with a string of phone numbers...

"As for what this 'LL' stands for, I have no idea," He Ku'er sighed and said.

The blow-dried Toy Poodle stayed very quietly in He Ku'er's arms.

Then, it blinked its watery eyes and looked at Lin Shenlu.

"This owner was really terrified of losing it, even writing down a phone number! What's the use of writing it down... There's no cell service in this lousy place anyway..." Lin Shenlu muttered to himself.

"The only phones with no service are iPhones; domestic phones like Huawei and Xiaomi still have signal!" Sikaika and Li Bailing raised their own phones and chimed in from the side.

That made things rather awkward for Lin Shenlu... Could the lack of service in this place have something to do with the Eye of the Demon?

Ai'ken Spring is fiercely patriotic... very well.

This place really is supernatural...

As far as Lin Shenlu knew, there were over a hundred scattered drones lying around Ai'ken Spring.

They were left behind by photographers over the course of many years...

While some had crashed to the ground and broken due to poor operation, others had been corroded by sulfur on the ground, and still others were simply waiting for the passage of time to slowly erode them away...

Perhaps the Eye of the Demon possessed a strange gravitational pull that sucked the drones into it...

Fortunately, his own drone hadn't malfunctioned.

Lin Shenlu thought back to the drone that had almost been sucked in by the water's surface just now... and felt a lingering wave of fear!

Having examined the metal tag, Lin Shenlu put the pieces together.

Now it all made sense.

This must have been a dog belonging to a self-driving traveler, which had somehow gotten lost here.

The dog had wandered around searching, growing thirsty and desperate, and had ended up following a scent trail for water, which was why it had almost fallen into Ai'ken Spring.

While Lin Shenlu was teasing Tuanzi, He Ku'er had already used Sikaika's Xiaomi phone to dial the number.

"Beep, beep, beep, beep..." The call connected.

"Hello..." The voice on the other end of the line carried three parts anxiety, three parts weakness, and four parts helplessness.

"Hello... Are you LL by any chance?" He Ku'er asked, very curious about those two letters.

"Oh... It's me... Wait... How do you know that?" The young man on the other end of the line hurriedly asked.

He Ku'er thought to herself that this guy actually had a rather pleasant voice.

"Well... I found your Tuanzi at Ai'ken Spring..." He Ku'er said softly.

"Really! That's wonderful! That is simply wonderful! Where are you guys right now? I'll take a taxi over..." the young man said anxiously.

...

"How is it? How did the call go?" Lin Shenlu asked He Ku'er.

"He's in Huatugou, and he's taking a taxi over right now..." He Ku'er said, taking the little Toy Poodle that Lin Shenlu was holding.

The Toy Poodle rubbed its head against He Ku'er's chest... and then shifted its gaze back toward Lin Shenlu's chest.

By comparison, Lin Shenlu's seemed a bit more comfortable.

"A thirty-kilometer trip won't take long... But how did this guy get here without a car in the first place?" Lin Shenlu couldn't help wondering.

After all, this was Ai'ken Spring, a scenic spot right at the midpoint of National Highway 315... Did he really walk all the way here leading a Poodle?

...

Before long, Lin Shenlu and the others were resting beside the RV.

Against the backdrop of this magnificent and breathtaking landscape, right beside the churning Ai'ken Spring, Lin Shenlu had set up the RV's awning.

Herti and the three Naihe sisters were playing cards on chairs underneath the canopy.

An Muxi stood quietly outside the RV by the extended stove, brewing fruit tea.

Yan Wen and He Ku'er were playing with the dog...

Meanwhile, Lin Shenlu was inside the RV, looking at a row of bottles in the refrigerator filled with lake water of various colors.

Only in the refrigerator would they avoid turning stinky, right?

Come to think of it, Lin Shenlu had no idea what he was going to do with these bottles when he reached the final destination.

Mentioning offhandedly that he had a friend who loved water was just something Lin Shenlu had said on a whim.

Perhaps it was simply to serve as a keepsake, proving that he had been here and walked this path.

Putting an empty glass bottle back into the pink suitcase on the side, Lin Shenlu sighed. There weren't many of these bottles to begin with, and he constantly had to guard against this group of people walking off with them...

It would be one thing if An Muxi casually took a few bottles... but just moments earlier, when An Muxi went to fill a bottle with water from Ai'ken Spring for him, He Ku'er had also covertly swiped a bottle, intending to fill it with something...

If he hadn't rescued Tuanzi the Toy Poodle... Lin Shenlu might never have noticed...

The girl was playing around with his bottles...

He'd have to keep a much closer eye on them from now on.

...

Soon, a taxi pulled up nearby, and a bright, sunny young man stepped out of the car, hurrying toward Ai'ken Spring.

What was most astonishing was... this young man was holding a chubby orange cat in his arms?

It turned out the design on the tag was real after all.

This young man really did have one dog and one cat.

"Tuanzi!" The young man instantly spotted the little Toy Poodle in He Ku'er's arms.

"Thank you all so much! If it weren't for you guys, I really wouldn't have been able to find Tuanzi!" The young man pulled Tuanzi straight into his arms, pressing his face gently against the dog's fur.

And the orange cat in his arms rubbed affectionately against the Toy Poodle.

He Ku'er stood up and smiled, noticing that there was also a metal tag around the orange cat's neck.

The front was engraved with the cat's name... Wanzi.

So the Poodle was called Tuanzi.

And the orange cat was called Wanzi.

The two little darlings looked very sweet snuggled in the young man's arms.

...

"Hello everyone, my name is Li Lu... I'm Tuanzi and Wanzi's dad!" The young man, Li Lu, said cheerfully to the group.

He Ku'er nodded inwardly; so that was what "LL" stood for.

"I'm just really curious how you managed to travel with both a cat and a dog," Lin Shenlu asked from the side.

Li Lu sighed, took the fruit tea handed to him by An Muxi, and began to recount his story.

Naturally, the cat had found its way into He Ku'er's hands, while the dog ended up in Yan Wen's arms.

Cuddling cats and dogs while listening to a story was the ultimate pairing.

"I originally agreed with some fellow travel enthusiasts online to go on a self-driving trip together..." Li Lu began.

"There were seven or eight of us in total, across two cars... It was partly my fault; Tuanzi and Wanzi have been with me for many years, and I couldn't leave them at home, so I had no choice but to bring them along. Of course, I also consulted my teammates' opinions beforehand, and they all looked at photos and said it wouldn't be a problem... Besides, they genuinely loved Tuanzi and Wanzi at first."

Pausing for a moment, Li Lu continued: "So, with everyone's consent, we set off together... The first few days went well, and everyone took turns holding Tuanzi and Wanzi..."

"But as time went on, I suppose... starting yesterday, people began complaining that Wanzi ate too much, pooped too much, and scratched people... Someone else complained that Tuanzi kept hugging the girls' legs like a piston... Well, isn't that just how Poodles are..."

"I knew I was in the wrong first, so I didn't say much. But today, after we left Ai'ken Spring... my Tuanzi vanished... Wanzi is a cat and I've been holding her the whole time, but Tuanzi never wanders around randomly, so how could he just disappear? I searched for a long time and couldn't find him, but they were all urging me to leave and head to the next stop. However, there was no way I could just abandon Tuanzi..."

"So I told them to go on ahead without me; I was determined to stay behind and find Tuanzi! But after searching here all day long without a trace... I took a taxi back along the road to Huatugou... intending to spend the night there and resume the search tomorrow... I never expected I'd receive your phone call!" Li Lu said with joy.

His gaze turned toward the little Toy Poodle in Yan Wen's arms, filled with utter tenderness.

"That's going way too far! It must have been your teammates who got rid of Tuanzi!" Naihe said indignantly.

"People like that deserve a beating! If I caught one of them, I'd punch them right in their smug faces, and they wouldn't dare act high and mighty anymore!" Yan Wen chimed in to uphold justice.

...

Ten minutes later, everyone was chatting happily, and Yan Wen's gaze began to drift slowly toward Lin Shenlu.

He Ku'er, having had her fill of cat and dog cuddling...

"Uncle... Don't you think Tuanzi and Wanzi are adorable... Wouldn't it be so much fun if we could bring them along for the rest of the trip?" He Ku'er asked with a sweet smile.

"You don't even need to say it, I already guessed it..." Lin Shenlu waved his hand dismissively at He Ku'er.

"What did you guess? I haven't even said anything yet!" He Ku'er protested, displeased.

"What Big Brother Lin means is that the moment you stick your butt out, he already knows what kind of poop you're going to drop!" Yan Wen added a knife from the side.

"What Big Brother Lin means is that the second you open your mouth, he knows what you ate last night..." Naihe continued to twist the knife.

"What Big Brother Lin means is that he understands you just about as well as a farmer understands manure!" Sikaika chimed in as well...

...

"Uncle... Please let them come with us, just look at how pitiful they are..." He Ku'er kept pleading.

Lin Shenlu let out a sigh.

Indeed... given Li Lu's current situation, there was no way he could complete the rest of the journey on his own.

Unless he hiked the entire way while holding a cat and a dog, relying on hitchhiking to move forward.

But that would be far too inconvenient.

Making things convenient for others is making things convenient for oneself, he figured.

Letting Li Lu temporarily join their convoy could be considered an act of kindness.

Besides, having the company of a cat and a dog along the way sounded rather interesting.

"Li Lu can join the convoy, but I don't have space in my vehicle to haul them, so you guys figure it out amongst yourselves..." Lin Shenlu sighed.

"Fine by me! I'll take responsibility for Wanzi the orange cat! I'll carry this one..." He Ku'er said with a smile.

"Then I'll take the Poodle... I'm afraid of carrying it the whole way, though!" Yan Wen wasn't going to back down either.

"Me... I still prefer being by myself..." Herti indicated she didn't want either of them...

The three Naihe sisters looked at each other... Surely they weren't going to dump Li Lu into their car, were they?

...

And so, they pressed onward.

Li Lu truly hadn't expected... that because he lost his dog, he would end up leaving that other convoy...

And because he found his dog, he would end up joining a brand new convoy.

A convoy consisting entirely of beauties.

Sometimes Li Lu couldn't help but admire a man like Lin Shenlu, wondering how on earth he managed to travel around bringing so many girls along with him.

Even though his cat and dog had been taken over by two of the other girls... he could tell from their eyes that they genuinely loved Wanzi and Tuanzi.

And yet, here he was, crammed into the car with these three beauties!

"Hey little bro... How are your driving skills?" Naihe, who had originally been sitting in the driver's seat, suddenly thought of something...

Though the sisters had been taking turns driving their own car the whole way.

Still, who wouldn't want to kick back and enjoy the scenery if they could?

It was safe to say that among this entire group, only the three sisters were the least exhausted.

Because whether it was Lin Shenlu, He Ku'er, Herti, or Yan Wen, they were all driving solo without taking many breaks.

Therefore, Naihe curiously turned to ask Li Lu.

If he could drive, wouldn't that mean they had just picked up a free chauffeur?

Could the three sisters finally free up their hands?

"Uh... I got my license back in college... but I'm not a very good driver..." Li Lu said, acting a bit bashful.

"That's fine! There's hardly anyone on this road anyway... Just drive a bit recklessly and follow the lead car closely... Everything will be fine!" Naihe boldly handed the vehicle over to Li Lu.

"Are you guys sure?" Li Lu still felt rather nervous...

Even though he deeply yearned for the feel of a self-driving trip across the Northwest... to suddenly transform from a hitchhiking traveler into a self-driving chauffeur...

That was quite a thrill!

"We're sure, get in the car right now and keep up!" Naihe immediately hopped into the front passenger seat... and fastened her seatbelt.

"Alright!" Li Lu got into the car with a resolute expression, rubbed his hands together, and gave Naihe a firm look...

"Is the brake the left foot or the right foot again?" Li Lu suddenly blurted out.

...

On the road heading toward the Mangya Emerald Lake.

Lin Shenlu deliberately slowed down his driving speed. For one thing, the distance wasn't far—Mangya Emerald Lake was only about twenty kilometers away from Huatugou.

For another, there was a newcomer in their group now, making the Rose Team a two-man squad at last.

Naihe had mentioned in their chat group that the driver was a novice... so Lin Shenlu chose to take it a bit slower.

He treated it as an opportunity to thoroughly enjoy the scenery along the way.

...

Facing the gentle breeze, traversing all the way across the wild, desolate, and silent desert and Gobi, sweeping past endless bleakness, Lin Shenlu would drive straight into the mystical realm deep within Mangya—the Emerald Lake.

The off-road vehicles galloped along the lake embankment deep toward the heart of the lake, as if driving into a breathtaking dreamscape... Outside the windows, clouds and sunset glow chased the sun, and amidst the brilliant rays, the towering Kunlun snow mountains intersected with the oil-sand Dania landforms, magnificent and majestic.

Under the illumination of the sky and the reflected clouds, tens of thousands of acres of emerald waves shimmered with a magical, shifting light.

A pool of jade-green water rippled lightly, reflecting the snow-capped mountains and Dania landforms within its depths.

The lake water was translucent and crystal-clear, dyed a vibrant green like a precious piece of jade embedded deep within the Gobi, or perhaps like a celestial pond from the heavenly palace that had fallen into the vast, boundless sea.

Milky-white coral salt flowers bloomed amidst the rippling green waves. These crystal-clear salt flowers were pure and immaculate; some floated on the surface while others submerged deep beneath the water, clustered together in patches like flowers beneath the waves, colorful, lustrous, and radiant. They blended harmoniously with the emerald ripples, each enhancing the other's brilliance.

Draped in the evening glow, they strolled leisurely along the shores of the Emerald Lake. The sunset smoke of the Kunlun Mountains and the sunset light of the Dania landforms turned the lake surface into a mirror. The emerald lake blended the evening radiance, gathering the glowing clouds into its gentle green ripples.

People walked along the lakeside, their shadows swimming in the water; bending down to gaze at the water and flowers, their reflections were graceful and slender.

This mystical realm of the vast sea was tranquil, where one could only hear the wind whispering softly, listening to the murmurs between the snow mountains, the Dania landforms, and the rolling green waves...

The Emerald Lake, a pool of tender affection within the lonely vast sea, left one intoxicated and reluctant to leave.

The peerless and independent Emerald Lake is located within the territory of Mangya, Qinghai. Bordered by the Kunlun Mountains to the south and the Altun Mountains to the north, it is an artificial salt lake with a unique landform.

Due to the varying concentrations of minerals contained within the water, under the illumination of sunlight, the lake produces multiple colors such as pale cyan, emerald green, and dark green. Its pure and translucent green resembles jade, hence the name Emerald Lake.

This was the next stop for Lin Shenlu's convoy.

The Mangya Emerald Lake.