Chapter 173

Chapter 173

Although Ye Qing thought it was improbable, after all, Gu Weidong should have been attending further training in Ji City and couldn't possibly be in the great northwest.

However, the name and rank mentioned by the female researcher matched, which filled Ye Qing with a bad premonition.

So, she urgently grabbed the woman's shoulder, trying to find out more about the missing Battalion Commander Gu, hoping against hope that the person the woman referred to wasn't the one Ye Qing knew.

But Ye Qing was destined to be disappointed.

Although the female researcher didn't know Ye Qing, seeing her tense expression, she replied honestly:

"Battalion Commander Gu is in his early twenties. I don't really know how to describe his appearance, but he has thick eyebrows and big eyes, and he's a tall guy, over 1.8 meters. Do you know Comrade Gu?"

Ye Qing's face immediately darkened. She didn't have a photo of Gu Weidong, and based solely on this female researcher's description, she couldn't be certain if it was him. However, from the information available, this person did match the Gu Weidong she knew.

Ye Qing's bad premonition grew stronger. She suddenly remembered something and, in a hurry, ran towards the communication office.

She had the contact number of Gu Weidong's training school in Ji City. Although she couldn't directly reach him, as long as Gu Weidong was at the school, it would rule out the possibility of him being the missing person in the great northwest.

The call was made quickly, but the feedback from Ji City was not good.

Gu Weidong wasn't there, and they were vague, only saying he was on a mission with an uncertain return date. They warned Ye Qing not to inquire further. This response chilled Ye Qing's heart. She instantly realized that Gu Weidong must have received orders from the military and was on a mission. It was too coincidental that there was a missing Gu Weidong of the same name in the northwest desert.

Ye Qing couldn't believe in such coincidences. She was 100% sure that the missing battalion commander was her fake boyfriend!

Ye Qing couldn't understand why she felt so panicked. As calm and rational as she usually was, she felt an impulse from the bottom of her heart. Without much consideration, she went straight to the office to find Colonel Zhang. She had to go into the desert again!

When Colonel Zhang heard Ye Qing's request, he was stunned and almost instinctively rejected it harshly.

In Colonel Zhang's eyes, a high-end medical talent like Ye Qing was far more valuable than a mere battalion commander. There were thousands of men like Gu Weidong in the military, but there were very few people in the entire country who could treat occupational exposure diseases for the scientists in the nuclear base. It was self-evident who was more important.

If Ye Qing ventured into the heart of the desert to search for someone and something went awry, Colonel Zhang would not be able to forgive himself even if he died.

Not expecting Colonel Zhang to reject her so bluntly, Ye Qing was thoroughly disappointed. It was now clear that she couldn't get any help from him. So, she had to think of another way.

Since she couldn't rely on Colonel Zhang, giving up wasn't an option for Ye Qing. Moreover, this matter couldn't be delayed any longer. They needed to find the person as soon as possible, or else even an iron-clad person wouldn't survive long in the desert without water or food.

After much thought, Ye Qing realized that without the support of a rescue team, she would have to act alone.

While Colonel Zhang was preoccupied with the rescue team, Ye Qing took the opportunity to sneak out.

She took no extra equipment, merely grabbing a raw corn cob and two boxes of matches from the military hospital's kitchen. Then, taking advantage of the chaos on the rescue team's side, she found an opportunity to jump into an empty military pickup truck. After confirming there was enough fuel in the tank, she slammed the accelerator to the floor and sped towards the desert.

With the corn cob, she could grow enough food. Whether eaten raw or roasted over a fire, it ensured she consumed quality carbohydrates easily. Along with the fruit seeds and poplar branches already in her bag, as long as she didn't lose these seeds, she wouldn't starve or die of thirst no matter how long she stayed in the desert.

Perhaps because no one expected a young girl of seventeen or eighteen to be able to drive, Colonel Zhang hadn't assigned anyone to watch her. By the time they realized Ye Qing was gone, she had already driven dozens of miles into the vast desert.

Though Ye Qing didn’t know exactly where Gu Weidong was, that didn’t mean she had no plan.

With the previous success of the vulture and wolf packs, Ye Qing could use the same trick again and summon and tame a new group of underlings to serve her.

After all, besides vultures and wolf packs, there were other animals in the desert, such as ground crows, wild camels, and Marco Polo sheep. As long as she encountered species capable of surviving in the desert, whether they were mammals or birds, they could all be used by her!

Ye Qing decided to cast a wide net. As long as she could find the person, she wouldn't hesitate to use her wood element abilities extensively.

After dispatching her tamed minions, she soon received useful information and found two groups of people in the vast sea of sand.

Believe it or not, despite not being the smartest approach, Ye Qing's method worked.

Three researchers were hiding under a **gobi shelter**, trembling and not daring to move as they tried to evade the pursuit of desert wolves. Another, dehydrated and delirious, was chasing a mirage in the desert, frantically searching for a pond until he was completely exhausted and on the brink of collapse.

Unfortunately, neither group included the person Ye Qing was searching for.

Nevertheless, it was good to have found these researchers. Ye Qing gathered them and loaded them onto a military truck. In the truck bed, she had prepared dozens of pounds of corn cobs and several large watermelons—enough to last them a couple of days until the rescue team arrived.

Ye Qing didn’t linger. After leaving the truck for the survivors, she moved to a new search location, deeper into the desert. Meanwhile, she once again lit a fire using **poplar wood** in the desert. On one hand, she wanted to use the fire to attract Gu Weidong’s attention; on the other hand, the heat from the fire would release the **spiritual energy** contained in the **poplar wood**, attracting more desert wolves and vultures.

She had realized that when it came to finding people, other species couldn’t compare to these two. Desert wolves had keen senses of smell, and vultures could see far from high up in the sky. The best part was that both could operate during the day and night without any issues, and their night vision was unaffected. If these two worked together, they would be an unstoppable search and rescue team in the desert. Therefore, Ye Qing needed to expand her workforce and lure more **slaves**.

Sure enough, after using this method for a while, desert wolves and vultures began to appear. The wild wolves and vultures she had tamed in the first two days were the first to arrive, followed by several more waves attracted by the **spiritual energy**. Ye Qing used the same method to put magical constraints on them, turning them into her obedient **slaves**.

Although she had a large number of **slaves**, Ye Qing had no personal belongings of Gu Weidong’s. It was impossible to identify him by scent, so she had to search blindly in the vast desert, which would take much longer than when she was looking for that lieutenant.

Fortunately, Ye Qing had strictly assigned roles to her animal helpers. Each one was responsible for searching a specific area within its capabilities, aiming to complete the first round of searches as quickly as possible. If any abnormalities were found, they would report immediately, and the desert wolves would go for a second confirmation.

After an intense and meticulous search, **around 4 or 5 AM**, Ye Qing found Gu Weidong unconscious in a sandpit, deep in the desert, over 100 kilometers in.

By this time, it was early October, when temperatures could swing wildly. During the day, temperatures could reach 20-30°C, but at night, they dropped to only 3-4°C. Trapped in the desert without food or water, severe dehydration set in, and with the rapid nighttime temperature drop, the body easily lost heat, leading to difficulty breathing, clumsiness, and eventually unconsciousness.

Gu Weidong, being clever, had managed to start a fire using **dried seabuckthorn branches**, keeping himself warm for some time. Unfortunately, the **seabuckthorn branches** didn’t last long, and there was no source of firewood in the desert, so his fire soon went out.

As a soldier, he shouldn’t have collapsed so quickly given his physical condition. However, they had encountered a sandstorm earlier, and Gu Weidong, like Ye Qing and the others, had been buried in the sand for several hours. By the time he crawled out from under the **sand dune**, he was already half-dead. In that state, he had gone without food or water for two days, which was quite impressive.

Ye Qing checked Gu Weidong’s pulse and saw that his body temperature was dropping rapidly. She quickly lit a fire and took out a military water bottle, slowly feeding him a small amount of watermelon juice.

The fire burned vigorously, and the temperature around them rose quickly, but Gu Weidong didn’t wake up. His body even began to shiver uncontrollably. Ye Qing reached out and touched his forehead, only to find that he had been frozen too severely earlier. Now, with the fire going, his immune system went haywire, and he immediately spiked a high fever.

Ye Qing had no choice but to use her **healing powers** to treat him. She took off her military coat and put it on him, then threw several large pieces of dried wood into the fire to keep it burning strongly. She couldn’t help but sigh as she looked at the still-unconscious Gu Weidong.

“I must have owed you in a past life, which is why I'm here to pay back my debt. Otherwise, why would I keep saving your life **time and again**? If it weren’t for me, you’d have **ended up as a mummy** in the desert of the Great Northwest!”