Chapter 216 - Drifting Out.
Yang Dao rested at the mansion for a bit. Then after refreshing up the boy asked Mina to arrange a car for him. The lady was thrilled. This was the first thing Yang Dao has ever asked her to do for him. The business deals earlier were actually a favor the boy did to their family. Helping hand set up will change the face of this region in the coming days.
Eric was assigned as his guard. Dao was wearing peach-colored cargo jeans, a black graphic T-shirt that had an eight trigrams symbol printed over it in white color. He wore a pair of black casual sneakers. On his left wrist, a leather strip bracelet was tied. The boy was completely out of his formal and disciplined looks today. He was going out to chill, thus the attire was casual.
Eric opened the passenger cabin door for Yang Dao when the boy walked out, yet the latter bypassed him and came to the driver's seat. He opened the door and got on. Eric stood there, stunned. He did not expect this kid to pull off something like this. Yang Dao waited for five seconds before he turned to look at the dazed Eric and said, "Will you get in already?"
He was exasperated by this behavior. Eric woke up and got inside. The boy turned the key and the off-road jeep roared as he revved the engine. Yang Dao said, "Good car."
Then he put the thing in gear and they left. During the past two weeks, he had learned all the roads of this place. He drove the vehicle straight to the laborer settlement. This was his first goal of the morning. To check the rebuilding site.
The black jeep moved on the mountain terrain faster than Eric has ever driven here. His heart was almost in his throat. Yang Dao slowed down on the corners. He said, "Eric, do you guys not have any low clearance cars? This big guy cannot drift on the bends, you know. I am afraid if I pushed, then it will tip over. You guys get a better suspension and use the gyroscope chassis next time."
Eric could only nod. If someone was to tap his heart, they would hear the chief guard of the Orlenko family cussing a boy and calling him a beast. he could not help but ask, "Young Master Feng, how can you drive like this?"
Yang Dao raised his left eyebrow and asked, "What do you mean, like this?"
"This fast, I mean," replied Eric.
Yang Dao said, "Oh... that. Well, I learned how to drive in military training. I drive Quinn back home. Plus I have some experience in A1 racing. So you can say that it is all I learned from there. As for the reason I am not so afraid of these snaky roads? I ride them daily on my bike, you know. This is a car, much safer than the bike."
His tone made Eric fall silent. He did not expect this to happen. This boy was driving too fast. It was not like Eric has never driven this fast, but ever since he joined the Orlenko house, he had become used to this slow snail pace.
Yang Dao, however, did not believe in the concept of slow cars. His thinking was simple, Cars are made to make you reach your destination faster. Believing in this idea, the people reached the laborer settlement.
The boy parked the car and hopped out of it. He walked up to the people and asked where he can find the engineer. The person directly led him to the engineer.
The engineer responsible for the final touches was a Youngman. he wore formal clothes, with rubber boots and a hard hat. An orange vest could be seen on his torso. Yang Dao also wore an orange vest, and he came to the guy.
The engineer was surprised and greeted Yang Dao with a slight bow. he asked, "Young Master, anything I can help you with?" he knew the boy was here for inspection.
"yes, I wanted to ask you. Till when do you think the people in the village can come back to live?" asked the boy as his gaze wandered around the place.
The engineer replied, "The process is almost finished, the final round of painting will finish by tomorrow. Then just after a day, the people can move in."
Yang Dao asked, "Would they not have to wait for the residue smell of paint and chemicals to vanish before moving in?"
The engineer told him that the company used herbal paints so there is no harmful odor. Still, as a precaution, they asked the villagers to wait for a day. yang Dao nodded and then he took a tour of the place. he asked questions regarding the venue set up from time to time. he also suggested some minor changes.
The engineer nodded and wrote them down. The boy had a keen perception of the Feng Shui of the place so he also gave some suggestions regarding decorations, like rockery and stuff to use that. After an hour, Yang Dao left the place with Eric. His destination was the bandit camp. He had called Marian in advance to be ready.
The phoenix group had already set up the helping hand branch and plants here in the past two weeks. Marian was a worker in the plant and the supervisor. She was at this moment standing at the gates of what looked like an animal farm. The whole farm covered a mountain.
A black jeep parked at the side of the entrance and Yang Dao walked out. He came to Marian, who then took him around. She introduced him to the elderly responsible for the animal care and feeding, followed by the youth responsible for the heavy-duty work like shoveling the farm, bathing the animals, etc.
The farm had four animals. Fish, cattle, poultry, and sheep. The manure was all shoved into a bio-gas generation plant and then the slurry was being taken out to the mountains and buried under big pits as fertilizers.
The whole place was bustling with animal sounds or native chatter. The older people when realized Yang Dao's identity blessed him a lot. One even asked him to marry Marian, but the boy denied it. Then with a shy smile, he walked back to his car and was headed to the Murrow.
This was his last stop for the day. He climbed up the cliff and came to the Murrow. He found the cubs and played with them. He waited for a long time, but the leopard was nowhere to be seen. He frowned and asked Sushi.
"Can you look for their mother?" his voice was somber. Eric noticed something was wrong with the boy, but he did not dare to ask anything. Yang Dao waited as his sylph flew up in the air. After a few seconds the Sylph came back and said, "Master, I hope you can stay calm when you learn the news."
The boy asked, "What is it?" he felt his heart tighten.
Sushi flew in front of his face and said, "Master, I found the leopard trapped in a steel jaw. The body is badly mutilated. Seemingly, it tried to free itself. One of its limbs is detached from its body. You should go there to check if it is the same leopard."
Yang Dao was shocked and stood up. The boy then picked up the cubs in his arms. The cubs seemed to have sensed something bad. They started whimpering slowly. Sushi led them to the place where the Leopard was found. As they got closer, the whimpering of the cubs increased.
The boy was a kilometer away when he found the leopard's carcass. Normally he would have been enraged, but after that night his heart has become calmer and steadier. He noticed the rust and dirt covering the steel trap. After a sigh, he kept on walking.
The cubs also spotted the body and jumped out of his embrace. They rushed to the body and whimpered. Eric was surprised at how the boy came to this place. Yang Dao sat next to the steel trap and concluded that the trap was an old one. He gazed at the surroundings and found that the trap was dragged from another place.
He spotted a furrowed hole a few meters away. The leopard hunted and fell into the trap. The steel-jaw trap snapped and broke the bones of one of its legs. Then the poor creature was in so much pain that it mutilated itself and passed away.
Eric sighed and asked, "Young Master, what should we do now?"
"Bury the leopard near the Murrow. Clean up the region for any steel-jaw traps. I will ask Marian to tighten the patrolling forces." said the boy in a heavy tone. He stood up and walked over to the cubs, who were whimpering at the side of their mother.
He crouched down and placed his hand on the dead leopard's forehead. He said, "Go with peace. I will take care of your children."
The cubs had a great sense of familiarity with Yang Dao. They rubbed their head on his legs as they whimpered. The boy sighed and said, "She is watching over you from the sky."
After a few minutes, the guards, Eric called over, arrived. They carried the body back to the Murrow and dug a deep pit near it. Yang Dao also helped them. The boy did not want the leopard to be eaten up by the scavenging animals in the region. Although he understood it would be nature taking its natural course, his human heart has still not grown detached to this level.
He asked the cubs, "Will you guys come with me?" this simple question seemed to be pointless. After all, the cubs did not even learn how to hunt now. Yang Dao did not know why he asked them, but he did. The cubs gazed at the place their mother was buried and then walked up to the boy. They rubbed their heads against his legs.
...
The next morning, the people drove back in the cars. Today was the day when the team left the Diamond desert. Yang Dao drove his own car, Kiya, Sasha, Ayaka sat in the back, while Icarus sat in the front with a pale face.
The Dao Child was driving a luxury sedan, and he was drifting on the bends. Only the leopard cubs were excited, the rest were praying for safety.