"Qing Luo, you’re not deceiving me here, are you?"
"This isn’t very valuable information, not mentioning it is just not wanting to cause trouble, inexplicably making more enemies."
Qing Luo took the bullets, her deep blue eyes sparkling with a hint of amusement, "You brought your gun with you too, right?"
"If it’s not on me, can it even be called a gun?"
"But without bullets, can it be called a gun?"
"Without bullets, a gun is still a gun," laughed Song Lili, saying.
Not saying anything further, she turned and walked over to Lin Xinglan, stuffing as many fruits from the ground into her pockets as possible.
"Tang Xiaohua... are we doomed?"
"If it’s dooming time, doom on your own."
After Song Lili spoke, she continued walking downhill according to the map. Without luggage, her pace was even faster.
Lin Xinglan saw Song Lili leave, immediately followed, "Do you know where our luggage is?"
"It was taken by Luo Shengnan’s group."
"Luo Shengnan? She’s our squad leader, how could she..."
Song Lili glanced at her, "How could she? I want to ask you how you could not watch our luggage! Let someone take things right under your nose, and you don’t have a single clue!"
"I really was too tired... I got up at four in the morning, earlier than usual, and then just kept walking without stopping, and besides, I truly didn’t expect our own classmates to rob..."
Lin Xinglan murmured on, tears once again starting to fall,
"Alright, alright, if the luggage is lost, it’s lost."
"But if we can’t find the luggage back, won’t we freeze to death at night? Might we die of hunger on the way?"
Although Lin Xinglan wasn’t very bright and lacked experience in outdoor hiking, over the eight hours from the early morning until now, she had somewhat understood the importance of that backpack.
"We can look for food again, water too can be figured out, at the most it’s just three days, as long as the physical strength sustains, being thirsty and hungry is just a matter of enduring. It’s summer now, and the altitude of Luoshu Mountain isn’t really high, the climate isn’t that extreme, won’t freeze to death. Anyway, at night, try to get by at the mountain foot," Song Lili said to Lin Xinglan.
"Actually, you don’t need to comfort me, us being in such a plight, it’s my fault."
Song Lili grunted a response.
Lin Xinglan pouted, only able to hang her head in dejection and jog after Song Lili.
Yet, Song Lili couldn’t bear to see people this dispirited, as it also dampened her own mood, so she continued chatting with Lin Xinglan,
"Do you know, a significant portion of our border guards have to work in extreme weather, in the far north during the winter, with temperatures reaching minus forty degrees, they have to guard the borders, standing for hours on end. Special forces reconnaissance soldiers, when scouting in the wilderness, may go days without anything to eat or drink, so hungry they might have to gnaw on tree bark, and even when exhausted, they can’t rest properly... Go back 200 years, and the country wasn’t wealthy then, the common people were suffering, and the soldiers suffered even more. Our country’s army is made up of generation after generation of soldiers who have endured hardship and hunger and have tenacious vitality. Compared to that, aren’t you getting discouraged too early?"
Lin Xinglan, crying, suddenly laughed out loud,
"Xiao Hua, isn’t your motivational talk a bit too blunt?"
"Yes! But... it actually works!"
Lin Xinglan wiped her tears, cheered up, and kept pace with Song Lili.
"Even if we can’t find the luggage, we still have to keep going, to give up now... would be too early," Song Lili muttered, "Moreover, even if it’s not for the things in the backpack, we have to fight back for this dignity!"