IPC Chapter 30: Black Potato

Interstellar Power Couple

Translator: Asuka

Quality Check: Leslie

Editor: Chesh

First Published on Chaleuria

Chapter 30: Black Potato

Carrera probably knew that she had screwed up as well. She didn’t say a word for the rest of the journey and the speed of the aircraft accelerated, probably because she couldn’t think of another way to make up for her sin.

As a result, they reached Mount Rikalun—which was set to be reached in about fifty minutes—in thirty-nine minutes, and the aircraft proceeded to hover in mid-air.

Lu Xian led everyone down, leaving Lei Jue and Xiao Lingyu behind.

“Change your clothes.” Xiao Lingyu took out a set of summer clothes and handed them to Lei Jue. “It’s too hot outside, and your clothes are too thick. You need to change before you go out.”

“When did you prepare this?” Lei Jue took the clothes in slight astonishment. Xiao Lingyu and Lu Xian, who were physically fit, weren’t affected by the temperature so they would usually wear less. If they were to take off their jackets, they would probably be wearing short-sleeved shirts underneath. He, on the other hand, was different—he was afraid of the cold. When he was in Bulacca City, he hadn’t thought he would come here to visit, so he wore thick clothing and didn’t think of preparing summer clothes. It turned out that Xiao Lingyu actually thought of it for him.

“I saw you shivering when we climbed the mountains behind the house, so I felt that I should prepare an extra set of thick clothes in the aircraft. In that case, even if you wore less, you can still always follow Carrera here. After that, I felt that you also may need to change if the temperature was hot, so I kept another set of summer clothes here as well.” Xiao Lingyu smiled. “Don’t you think I should be rewarded for being so thoughtful?”

“Indeed.” With that, Lei Jue changed his clothes directly in front of Xiao Lingyu. To his surprise, when he raised his head after changing, he saw Xiao Lingyu suddenly clasping a hand over his nose.

“You… Xiao Lingyu! Really?” When Lei Jue saw the blood leaking out from between Xiao Lingyu’s fingers, he quickly passed a wet wipe to him. “Are you sure you don’t secretly have a nosebleed behind my back at night?”

“I don’t. I usually don’t dare to look at you at night,” Xiao Lingyu ambiguously answered and calmed his restless heart before continuing, “can you please give me a heads-up next time before you undress?” Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to take it when there was such a large stretch of fair skin in front of him no matter how good his willpower was, let alone the fact that he basically had zero willpower when it came to Lei Jue.

“And you won’t look anymore after I give you a heads-up?” If Xiao Lingyu really didn’t want to see, he could always shut his eyes or turn around in time when Lei Jue changed, right? Lei Jue covered Xiao Lingyu’s nostrils with his own fingers to stop the bleeding before saying with a smile, “Say, don’t tell me that I need to help you to ‘hide your boomstick’ again?”

“What do you think?” Xiao Lingyu shot him a dirty look. When he was certain that he was no longer bleeding, he extended his arms wide. “C’mere, I can carry you down.”

Qi Yu and Little Fan bought some food and camping supplies. They’d already met with Carrera’s aircraft, but since Carrera had suddenly accelerated so crazily, they fell a little distance behind and would probably take more than ten minutes to arrive. Therefore, after Xiao Lingyu carried Lei Jue to the ground, he told Lu Xian and the rest that they would go around to have a look, first.

“We’ll specifically look for the place where Little Fan said there’s drifter fruits,” Xiao Lingyu explained. 

“Alright,” Lei Jue answered and headed to the south, glancing up from time to time.

“The tree of the drifter fruit isn’t that tall, especially wild ones.” Xiao Lingyu tapped Lei Jue’s shoulder. “It’s as tall as your shoulder at most.”

“I’m not looking for drifter fruit, I’m just… casually looking around. I feel like I’ve done this before,” Lei Jue thoughtlessly muttered, lowering his head.

He also didn’t understand what was happening. When he saw these trees after they landed, he kept having the urge to look up from time to time, and there was also an inexplicable sense of familiarity as well. The same thing applied for the name ‘Rikalun’. He vaguely found it to be familiar, like he had heard it somewhere before. But the thing was, he’d never been to Mount Rikalun, nor did he have any memories regarding it.

“Could it be that it’s related to those previous memories again?” Xiao Lingyu held Lei Jue’s hand. “If you’re feeling uncomfortable, you must tell me immediately.”

“Sure,” Lei Jue replied and raised his left hand to have a look. He hadn’t used much of his healing skills recently. His wisdom line had originally become faint, but perhaps because he’d treated the poisonous snake before, the color had deepened again. Because of this, he turned on the communicator to find the picture of a drifter fruit and projected it to Xiao Lingyu’s chest, before caressing the ‘overseer’ to let it have a look. Then, with a wave of his hand, the overseer flew out.

“You’re not telling the overseer to look for the drifter fruit, are you?” Xiao Lingyu asked in a whisper.

Lei Jue smiled, with a look in his eyes that was seemingly saying, smart!

Xiao Lingyu was taken aback. Even though he’d always known that Lei Jue could attract all sorts of animals, he’d never heard of such a powerful ability to control animals before. What surprised him even more was that the overseer really did manage to find a drifter fruit tree, and even flew back later to show them the way.

Qi Yu’s voice resonated from the communicator, “Little Fan and I are here. Where are you guys?”

Xiao Lingyu replied that they were picking the drifter fruits and would return afterwards. Then he put both of his palms together in the form of a bowl.

Lei Jue quickly used both of his hands to pluck the fruits and then placed them in Xiao Lingyu’s hands. At times, he would accidentally touch Xiao Lingyu’s hands, sending a tickling sensation to Xiao Lingyu and making him laugh aloud in a silly manner. Upon seeing this, Lei Jue stuffed a drifter fruit in Xiao Lingyu’s mouth and said, “Here, eat this elixir and see if it can cure your laughing problem.”

Xiao Lingyu swiftly planted a kiss on Lei Jue’s mouth after eating the fruit. “This is what I call an elixir.”

“Are you sure it’s not an aphrodisiac, instead?” Lei Jue patted Xiao Lingyu’s chest. “Let’s go, young man. You need to calm yourself down.”

It was apparent that Qi Yu was prepared to come here for the purpose of having fun. He and Little Fan brought out the things. Each of them had one bag, which contained environmentally friendly paintball guns and paintballs, food and drink, as well as SOS signal transmitters. As for the overnight equipment and food that was inconvenient to carry, all of them were left on the aircraft instead.

Little Fan handed a smart food container to Xiao Lingyu. “You can place the drifter fruits here first, if you’re not in a hurry to eat them. Otherwise, since these things are too delicate, they can easily spoil along the way.”

Xiao Lingyu put most of them in the container and left a handful of them to be washed in the water, wanting to give them to Lei Jue. 

Qi Yu shook his head when he saw it. “Xiao Lingyu, you’re really a good henpecked husband of the new generation!”

Xiao Lingyu fed Lei Jue a piece of fruit and turned his head to say, “Alright, with these words of yours, I’ll make sure you’re the first one to have a good time later!” 

Lei Jue nodded. “Look for me if he doesn’t please you enough.”

“Are you going to help heal me?” Qi Yu’s eyes lit up as he looked at Lei Jue.

“I can shoot you one more time,” Lei Jue replied.

“No way!” Qi Yu’s mouth dropped and he turned to look at Si Qing. “Is this the one that you call a good and meek model wife?!”

Si Qing said with a poker face, “That’s what my dad said.”

Qi Yu almost went crazy when he heard that.

General Si Wannian had a loud voice, a tall figure, and a strength that could send a person flying three miles away with just one slap. For this reason, all those who were thin and small were well-obedient in his eyes.

Che Heng put his arms on Qi Yu. “Just because he can shoot me down doesn’t mean that it has anything to do with being obedient and docile. Haven’t you heard of the saying ‘If a bride weren’t meant to marry into a family, fate wouldn’t bring her through the door’?”

Indeed. An obedient person would not be able to rouse the interest of Xiao Lingyu, who looked like a playboy but was actually pure and loyal. One could just tell by looking into Lei Jue’s eyes that he was quite a sharp-witted person.

When Lei Jue finished the drifter fruits Xiao Lingyu washed for him, Lu Xian had also finished dividing up the team. Xiao Lingyu was the leader of Lei Jue, Qi Yu, Yu Le and Guan Tong, while Lu Xian would lead Che Heng, Si Qing, Little Fan, and Zhou Bin.

The two teams could be said to be well-balanced in strength. Xiao Lingyu then asked Carrera to randomly scatter ten colored flags in a certain area designated by them, and what they had to do was to get the flags one step ahead of the other team. They were allowed to shoot their opponent with their paintball gun if they encountered the other party in the process, and whoever was hit would be ousted from the field. If they had run out of paintballs, or it was unsuitable for them to open fire, they could also defeat their opponent with their bare hands. Whichever team had more flags after an hour and a half would win.

Lei Jue tried the paintball gun’s iron sight and realized that this gun was indeed different than the ones he was used to. Despite being a toy gun, it had a very good design, being rather high-accuracy. However, to his surprise, when he turned around after firing it, he saw that the group of people were all looking at him.

This kind of gun didn’t have any smart telescopic sight, yet Lei Jue had actually hit a small fruit 300 meters away. His marksmanship was just too outrageous!

Qi Yu was baffled. “Lei Jue, who taught you marksmanship?”

Lei Jue glanced at Xiao Lingyu with a spurious smile on his lips. “I had a good teacher.”

What an ambiguous answer! Xiao Lingyu thought to himself. Even though he knew that Lei Jue didn’t mean him, his heart still couldn’t help but skip a beat when he saw the look in Lei Jue’s eyes. With a light cough, he said, “You’re the one who’s quick to learn. Let’s go.”

The group broke up and Lei Jue started running. With a gun in his hand and a medium-sized field bag on his back, he could still run pretty fast. It was apparent that his recent training had paid off.

Xiao Lingyu was initially worried that Lei Jue wouldn’t be able to adapt to a real environment such as this, but now he was relieved to see him in such a good condition.

Much to his surprise, Lei Jue suddenly stopped mid-run.

“What’s wrong?” Xiao Lingyu asked.

 “It seems like someone is calling me.” Lei Jue pointed to the right side and said, “Over there. Did you hear it?”

“No.” Xiao Lingyu looked in the direction Lei Jue was pointing, but there was nothing but trees there. “Are you tired?”

“No, I really heard something.” Puzzlement flashed across Lei Jue’s eyes. The sound didn’t seem like a substantive sound right next to one’s ear, but more like a call from the heart. Even so, he didn’t feel at all irritable when he heard it. On the contrary, he couldn’t help but worry.

“Why don’t we go and have a look,” Xiao Lingyu suggested.

“Yeah.” Lei Jue changed his trajectory. Otherwise, he would be irritated when he recalled it from time to time in the future.

Xiao Lingyu wasn’t in a hurry to find the small colored flags anymore. He wanted to see if there was anybody there, or if it was just the underlying memories in Lei Jue’s mind that were troubling him again.

In the end, the two ran in the direction that Lei Jue mentioned for a while and found a large sturdy tree that was severely burned, with a scorched smell hanging in the air.

The tree looked like it’d just been recently wounded, and there were even little sparks of fire on the wounds, but it didn’t look like it was caused by a weapon.

Without any hesitation, Lei Jue went up to treat the wound on the big tree. Due to the fact that the scorched part was relatively large, it took him quite a long time to treat. Even so, he could clearly feel that the sense of being called was no longer there after he started the treatment.

This was the first time he’d encountered this situation after transmigrating, but he didn’t see anything special about this tree besides it being was taller than the other trees. Besides, this wasn’t his first time entering the woods, and he’d also seen many trees back at the top of the mountains behind the house. When Xiao Lingyu brought the tree full of bird’s nests back home, the root system of that tree was also slightly injured, but no such situation similar to this ‘calling’ had ever occurred before.

Then Xiao Lingyu hugged Lei Jue from behind and whispered in his ear, “Babe, someone is here.”

Just as Lei Jue was about to ask who it was, an unfamiliar voice resonated from their 10 o’clock direction, “Xiao Lingyu? Why are you here?”

With that, the newcomer looked at Lei Jue with a hint of inquiry and astonishment in his eyes.

Xiao Lingyu reluctantly whispered to Lei Jue, “This is the black potato I’ve mentioned to you before.”

As the person had camouflage paint on his face, Lei Jue was stunned for a while before finally reacting. What Xiao Lingyu meant was the person other than him in the Wood-Fire ship that’d been particularly hot on the Internet lately—the young figure from the Zhuo Family of the Southern Clearwater District, Zuo Yan.