Chapter 188: Chapter 178: Reunion

"Miss, how about you don’t kill me? Wait until dawn, and I can lead you down. This cliff is too steep, but I know a little path. You won’t fall to your death."

The boy proposed.

"You’ll lead me down? I’ll be surrounded by your tribesmen. What’s to stop you all from killing me then?"

Despite her anxiety, Tang Mo wasn’t one to let worry cloud her judgment. She was no fool.

"No way! I’m Abu, just some ordinary guy from down below. I stole the forbidden flower and bees, then snuck up here behind my tribe’s back. If they find out, I’m done for too. I’ll take you down, and we can just go our separate ways. How does that sound?"

Abu had laid his cards on the table. He had given Tang Mo a secret to hold over him, so now neither had to worry about the other betraying them.

Tang Mo carefully considered the feasibility of his plan.

It was still a bit of a gamble, but... ’I’ll take it!’

"Fine. We’ll wait here for dawn."

Tang Mo dragged her sleeping bag over and sat on the ground, waiting with Abu for the sun to rise so they could descend the mountain.

Know your enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles without defeat. Tang Mo wasn’t about to sit idle while waiting for dawn with Abu, so she started asking him about life down the mountain.

Abu had been getting beaten since he was a child; his upbringing was the furthest thing from pampered.

Someone who grew up in the wild understood the law of the jungle all too well, so a few blows from her didn’t bother him much. Instead, he told Tang Mo some of the more trivial details about the world below.

He was a smart man, and he seemed somewhat interested in getting on Tang Mo’s good side.

’This woman is no ordinary person,’ he could see that as clear as day.

From what Abu said, Tang Mo pieced together that his people hadn’t always lived here. They originally came from some remote, nameless rainforest in Asia.

But after the apocalypse began, they were hit by a massive earthquake. The entire tribe, without exception, fell into a giant fissure that opened in the ground.

By the time they came to, they found themselves here.

As for their language, that too had only appeared suddenly after the start of the apocalypse.

It was as if they were born with it, seamlessly emerging within a tribe that had previously never used spoken language to communicate.

Tang Mo glanced at Abu’s wrist. No ID Watch.

The government at the time had expended immense effort to distribute the ID Watches, and it was no exaggeration to say they had achieved total coverage.

Moreover, once the watches were on, they were impossible to remove. The only way was to go to S Base with a legitimate, approved reason.

Abu clearly didn’t look like someone who had ever been to S Base.

’Then what he said is very likely true.’

Tang Mo didn’t ask Abu about the treasure his people had discovered on the Xing Clan’s mountain. He wouldn’t tell her the truth about that even if she asked.

She did ask about Qin Ling, but Abu’s answer was vague. He only said that Qin Ling’s group was safe, and for anything more, he told her she would have to see for herself once she was down the mountain.

Tang Mo knew there had to be more to the story, but for now, she was greatly relieved just to know that Qin Ling was safe.

"Momo, what are you doing here?"

The horizon had just begun to pale when a familiar voice called out from behind Tang Mo.

It was Da Hua’s voice.

’This is bad.’

That was the first thought that popped into Tang Mo’s head.

"Da Hua, is that you? It’s me, Abu!"

Abu reacted much faster than Tang Mo. He immediately recognized the voice, turned around, and put on a look of pleasant surprise.

"Abu?"

Da Hua froze for a moment, then she was overcome with ecstatic joy.

’He didn’t lie to me! He really came back!’

Once she saw that it really was the Abu she had longed for day after day, Da Hua found herself hesitant to approach. Instead, she stood there, nervously twisting the hem of her clothes.

’I’ve been wearing these clothes for so long. They must look awful. Abu will definitely be disgusted when he sees them.’

As if he could read Da Hua’s mind, Abu stepped forward and looked her up and down.

"Is this a new outfit? It looks great."

Abu’s face was a mask of sincerity. If Tang Mo hadn’t just had her own run-in with him, she might have believed him herself.

"Really?"

The naive Da Hua couldn’t tell the difference, and her heart soared with joy.

"How did you end up with Momo?"

Da Hua had woken with a start just as the sky began to lighten and had been alarmed to find Tang Mo gone from the cave.

Abu had been exiled after his tribe caught him sneaking out in the middle of the night. She and Tang Mo were good friends now, and she couldn’t let Momo face the same danger. So, she had rushed out to find her, never expecting such a pleasant surprise.

"I’ve missed you every single day since I left. It took a lot of preparation for me to come back and find you. They’re just temporarily unconscious. They’ll wake up soon, don’t worry."

Abu explained, gesturing toward the fainted gorilla guards.

"After I knocked them out, I saw this lady. She thought I was a bad guy and wouldn’t let me in. So I sat down to explain all about you, and just as I was telling her, you arrived."

Abu gazed into Da Hua’s eyes, and their gazes locked.

Except, Da Hua’s eyes were filled with twinkling starlight, while Abu’s were as placid as a lake.

Watching this all unfold, Tang Mo was truly speechless.

If it weren’t for the fact that this was a man and a gorilla, not two humans, she might have actually been touched.

’Abu is such a scumbag. The biggest scumbag in the universe.’

’Lying so effortlessly was one thing, but he didn’t just lie to people—he was even lying to a gorilla.’

But there was nothing Tang Mo could do right now. She knew her place in Da Hua’s heart couldn’t possibly compare to Abu’s.

Anything she said now would be useless. She could only watch and see how things played out.

"Oh, so that’s what happened! You’ve been through so much, Abu. I knew you’d come back for me. You said we were good friends and that we’d definitely see each other again!"

Naturally, Da Hua had no reason to doubt Abu’s words.

’Thankfully, Abu isn’t completely heartless. He told Da Hua they were "good friends," not something more.’

Tang Mo relaxed slightly.

’But one look at Da Hua’s shy expression, like a young girl with a crush, told me that this "good friends" business wasn’t as simple as it sounded.’

’Is there ever such a thing as a purely platonic friendship between a man and a woman?’

’It’s the same between a man and a female gorilla.’

’Wait, does that sound wrong?’

Tang Mo sighed and put a hand to her forehead.

’Watching so much of this cringeworthy spectacle is making my own thoughts a little deranged.’

What gave Tang Mo a sliver of comfort was that the lovesick Da Hua, before taking Abu back, still had the sense to check if the guards were breathing. She even dragged them further away from the edge, saving them from accidentally falling off the cliff when they woke up.

Having done all that, Da Hua led both Abu and Tang Mo back to her cave before the sky grew too bright.

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