Chapter 72 - 2#
Fang Xiyu thought for a moment, then turned around to pick out a few pieces of clothing to bring along. “I’ll go with you guys.”
Mu Yanshen looked somewhat displeased. “Are you planning to abandon all your good friends like that? Not afraid they’ll report you missing?”
Fang Xiyu said, “I’ll ask Ziyue to leave a message for me. Besides, I’m practically half a master to Xiao Tang—how could I just leave him to fend for himself?”
Mu Yanshen didn’t believe a single word of it.
But since Chu Chenli said “Alright” from the side, no matter how much dissatisfaction and disdain he had, he had to swallow it.
When Fang Xiyu came out with his backpack, he saw the two of them standing by the wall, talking.
They stopped when they saw him, but Fang Xiyu had already caught part of the conversation—just some casual chatter, from whether they should eat at the tavern or take the chance to explore the other end of the city, to how the weather seemed good tomorrow.
Fang Xiyu smiled at them. “I’m really glad you two have made up.”
Chu Chenli gave a helpless smile in return. “We didn’t really have anything to argue about in the first place.”
He Ziyue and Hua Jin still had work, so naturally they couldn’t go along. That meant the journey would be just the three of them.
There weren’t many places to stay overnight in the urban area, and they had to walk another two or three kilometers toward the center before they found a hotel, with only the top floor’s two rooms left.
Fang Xiyu, being sensible, voluntarily chose the single room.
Mu Yanshen gave him a rather surprised look and even rarely offered a “Thanks.”
Fang Xiyu immediately had a bad feeling—
Just half an hour later, Chu Chenli brought Tang Beihe over.
The double room left for Mu Yanshen and Chu Chenli was pitifully small, with two single beds barely enough for an average adult man to lie flat, whereas the floor of Fang Xiyu’s single room was just spacious enough for a futon.
He’d chosen the room himself, so Fang Xiyu could only accept it with a forced smile.
Mu Yanshen, ever considerate, remarked that it was the perfect chance for him to bond with his half-apprentice.
Tang Beihe even piped up, saying if it was inconvenient, he could just make do on the lobby sofa for the night.
After all, he was used to roughing it out in the world.
Fang Xiyu: “…”
What more could he say?
Fang Xiyu had no choice but to sigh and start reassuring Tang Beihe.
If he really let him sleep in the lobby, then coming here would have been for nothing.
Chu Chenli’s concern for Tang Beihe wasn’t a whim—he’d heard from Xiao Bai that among Liang Yuan’s underlings, there were a few who often bullied Tang Beihe.
And recently, those same underlings had gotten involved in some shady business trafficking Awakening Stones. Liang Yuan had even seen them grabbing a frail child, forcing crushed stones down its throat.
After that, Liang Yuan never saw that child again.
Nor had that child appeared on any of the published casualty lists for Awakening Stone incidents.
Liang Yuan had fallen out with them before that, and although he still retained some authority as their former boss, plus the deterrent of his brother’s background, ordinary people probably wouldn’t dare mess with him—but they had numbers on their side.
Seeing their overwhelming crowd, Liang Yuan chickened out in the end. He didn’t dare look twice and quietly turned away.
Now he wasn’t even sure where those underlings were operating.
With the recent surge in disappearances, Chu Chenli couldn’t shake the unease from his prophetic dream. Better to stay close and keep an eye on things.
They’d arrived just in time.
As they settled down in Fang Xiyu’s room, Tang Beihe mentioned that he’d felt someone following him lately.
But he hadn’t even considered it might be related to Awakening Stones. He thought they were planning to ambush him with a sack over his head just to beat him up out of spite. Tang Beihe had actually been looking forward to teaching them a good lesson.
He’d been training hard with his two masters lately, making rapid progress—if he said he’d been completely reborn, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration.
Still, he hadn’t gotten too cocky. When his master told him about what was happening recently, he broke out in a cold sweat, his face turning pale.
When they warned him not to go wandering into empty alleys alone, Tang Beihe nodded frantically like a chick pecking at rice, insisting he valued his life.
Seeing him promise so earnestly, the others felt a bit more at ease.
But then Fang Xiyu’s ordeal began.
The kid, probably scared by what they’d told him, spent the whole night on edge, eyes wide open staring at the ceiling. He’d toss and turn, then, startled by something, roll back in fright.
That wasn’t even the worst part—he kept calling out for Fang Xiyu at random intervals.
Fang Xiyu was a light sleeper to begin with. At first, he had the patience to comfort him, but the more he responded, the more the kid’s anxious thoughts spiraled. By midnight, Fang Xiyu had to pretend to be asleep.
Only by dawn, when the sky was just starting to lighten, did Tang Beihe finally exhaust himself and fall asleep.
But Fang Xiyu couldn’t sleep anymore. He left the room with dark circles under his eyes.
As soon as he turned, his gaze met Mu Yanshen’s.
“Pfft—”
Mu Yanshen couldn’t help but laugh.
In contrast, Mu Yanshen, who had also gone to sleep on alert, looked perfectly refreshed.
Chu Chenli came out from behind, and seeing Fang Xiyu, he couldn’t hide a look of sympathy. “Want to come rest in our room for a bit?”
Fang Xiyu shook his head. “I’ll go up to the rooftop and get some air.”
Staying up all night wasn’t a big deal for them—it was just that his mind had been racing with too many thoughts, leaving him mentally drained.
Mu Yanshen was dispatched to buy breakfast, while Chu Chenli accompanied Fang Xiyu to the rooftop to cool off.
The hotel’s rooftop had been abandoned for a long time, with weeds sprouting through the cracks, but it wasn’t overly messy. By the entrance, against one wall, stood a rusty clothes rack. The edges were fenced off, and clotheslines hung from the taller poles.
The two stood by the railing. Directly below was Tang Beihe’s room, so they could hear any commotion immediately.
Looking ahead, they saw a sprawling district of low-rise houses.
There were hardly any tall buildings here.
Not that they were needed—the population wasn’t that large.
Still, even with the population reduced to a fraction of what it was before the disaster, this place was much livelier than the base.
Even though they’d been here many times, most of the faces they passed were unfamiliar, and from the rooftop, the distant buildings were all strange too.
If they lived here long-term, they might feel more inclined to explore.
Probably because it was still early, the streets were nearly empty. Only in a nearby square were workers already bustling about, carrying and assembling some sort of framework. Chu Chenli squinted for a while but could only make out the largest banner reading “Exhibition.”
“We might be able to see the sunrise,” Fang Xiyu said beside him.
Chu Chenli turned his head, following his gaze toward the horizon.
A faint orange glow was seeping through where the sky met the earth.
“No matter how the world changes, how battered and scarred it becomes, the sun will always rise from that direction.” Fang Xiyu got a bit poetic in the moment, leaning against the railing with a sigh. “Looking at it this way, the sun is the most faithful of all.”
“Creak—”
A faint sound came from the railing’s joints.
Chu Chenli’s attention was quickly drawn away.
Below the railing was a narrow alley. A dark figure crept furtively to the alley’s entrance, nervously glancing back, then peeking left and right outside.
After confirming no one else was around, he darted out of the alley at full speed.
“Do you think we can ever go back to how things were?” Fang Xiyu asked, growing sentimental. But receiving no reply, he turned his head. “A Li?”
The figure below slipped into another alley and disappeared from view.
At least it wasn’t heading toward this building.
Chu Chenli finally pulled his gaze away, looking a little dazed at Fang Xiyu. “What did you say?”
Fang Xiyu repeated the question. “Don’t you want to go back to how things were?”
Chu Chenli replied calmly and flatly, “No.”
Fang Xiyu scratched his head, realizing he’d been asking the wrong person. “Sorry, I forgot you don’t like talking about the past.”
“There’s nothing I can’t talk about; I just don’t think it’s very interesting,” Chu Chenli said. “But if there’s something you want to know, you can ask directly. It’s no big deal.”
Fang Xiyu suddenly didn’t know what to ask.
His thoughts circled around and eventually came back to his conversation with Shen Xuanyi.
Chu Chenli and Mu Yanshen had already gone out on several missions now.
Fang Xiyu wanted to ask about his feelings on it. “A Li, what do you think about those—”
He hesitated, scratching his hair again, then lowered his head, trying to find a gentler, more tactful way to put it—just in case A Li didn’t yet know about the captain’s thoughts.
But by the time he’d finally organized his words and looked up to speak, “I—A Li?”
…He was gone.
The spot where someone had been standing was now empty.
The railing let out another “creak.”
Fang Xiyu blinked in confusion, instinctively straightening up and looking around.
When Mu Yanshen pushed open the rooftop door, carrying packed breakfast with his elbow, he found Fang Xiyu staring at the ground in a daze. He looked left and right and asked, “Where’s A Li?”
Fang Xiyu pointed vaguely in a direction downstairs and let out a helpless sigh. “He’s… being a hero down there, probably.”
In a square two alleys away, several workers were unloading goods from a cart while others crouched nearby assembling parts.
It was a perfectly peaceful labor scene—until a figure suddenly burst out of nowhere, snatched something off the ground, and bolted.
The workers froze for a moment, not expecting someone to brazenly steal in broad daylight.
But they quickly snapped out of it, their faces turning pale as a crowd of them scrambled up and chased after the thief.
From upstairs, their heads looked like a dense black mass—quite a sight.
It seemed whatever had been stolen was important.
The thief wove through the alleys for several turns, and as the distance shrank, he finally tossed the loot over a wall at a corner. His movements suddenly became quicker, and he managed to pull ahead again.
The workers, not seeing his maneuver, kept chasing him around the bend.
But while the main workforce was chasing the thief, another sneaky figure crept into the square. He looked around nervously, scanning the trees and then the ground.
As he looked up, a shadow flickered beneath a nearby cart.
But when he bent down to check under the cart, there was only rubble and dust.
He had no choice but to continue searching.
An old man sitting nearby, guarding some things, frowned and asked what he was doing. The sneaky figure didn’t answer.
The old man looked frail, and the figure dismissed him.
The old man could only tap his cane on the ground in irritation, muttering, “The world is going to the dogs, going to the dogs!”
He assumed this person was also here to steal.
None of them noticed that, from the farthest cart behind the sneaky figure, a tiny form was carefully crawling out.
He looked no more than six or seven, frequently glancing back nervously.
Taking advantage of the figure bending down to look under something, the child suddenly sprang up and dashed toward the small grove behind the bushes.
The old man turned his head and exclaimed in surprise, “Hey, whose child is this? How did they get here all alone?”
The sneaky man froze: “Child?”
His face changed instantly. He spun around to see the little kid running as fast as his short legs would carry him. His expression twisted with anger as he chased after him. “Stop right there!”
The child ignored his shouts, clamping his mouth shut, holding his breath, his face turning red as he pumped his legs nearly into blurs.
But fast as he ran, he was still just a child—from head to toe, he barely reached the man’s thigh. He couldn’t outrun him.
The furious man took a few long strides up the steps and was quickly upon him.
The child was cornered against a bush.
An adult might have been able to jump over it, but for short legs, it was an insurmountable barrier.
Just then, he stumbled over a protruding rock and fell to the ground.
A shadow fell over him. The man who had caught up loomed above, his face twisted with anger and a hint of triumph. “Little brat, go on, run again! Thought you were so clever, huh? Managed to hurt my brother and sneak out—”
The child clenched his teeth, holding back tears, scrambling forward on hands and knees.
There was an open space next to the bush, but there was no way he was outrunning the adult behind him.
The shadow fell over him again.
Everything went dark. The child didn’t know if it was his vision blurring or tears clouding his eyes.
The next second, a hand grabbed him by the scruff, lifting him off the ground.
Even dangling in the air, the child didn’t stop struggling, flailing his limbs.
Flailing away, he bared his teeth, ready to bite the man hard if he got the chance.
Until the man’s furious voice rang out from behind: “Whose kid are you? How dare you snatch someone else’s child in broad daylight? Hand him over now, and I’ll pretend this never happened. Otherwise, I’ll call the cops and have you arrested!”
The twisting of the truth was almost laughable.
The child didn’t know the word “twisting,” but he knew this man was bad, and he hated his voice. He bared his teeth, putting on the fiercest face he could, and turned to glare at the man.
Their eyes met. They stared at each other for a moment, and then the child suddenly froze.
He wasn’t being held by the man.
So who was holding him?
After a dazed pause, the child struggled to turn his head. He saw the face of a stranger—a young man. Neither smiling nor angry, but with a gentle demeanor.
He set the child down and said flatly to the man across from him: “Someone else’s child? Doesn’t really look like one of yours.”
The man choked, caught off guard that this young man wasn’t fazed by his threatening glare.
The young man looked slender and weak, but he was still built like an adult. The man didn’t dare try to snatch the child by force, so he just stuck out his neck and kept lying through his teeth.
“Of—of course he’s mine! My cousin’s kid. That poor sister of mine died out there early. If I hadn’t kindly taken him in, this brat would’ve been eaten by stray dogs long ago! I spend money to feed him and clothe him, and this ungrateful little—just because of a small thing, he accuses me of abuse and runs away! Look how ridiculous this is! All my kindness thrown to the dogs!”
The child tried to explain, but his voice was drowned out by the man’s shouting.
He turned red with fury.
After three failed attempts to speak, he finally couldn’t take it anymore. He wrapped his arms around Chu Chenli’s leg and started wailing.
Chu Chenli: “…”
He tried to pry the kid off a few times but didn’t dare use force. With a cold face, he looked up at the man, who was clearly spouting nonsense.
The man inexplicably felt a chill run down his spine and cut himself off.
The moment his loud voice stopped, the child’s crying sounded especially shrill.
The sun was rising at the edge of the sky, and pedestrians were starting to appear on the road.
Unknowingly, time had slipped by. The workers who had failed to catch the thief were heading back. The man snapped out of it, cold sweat beading on his forehead.
He couldn’t waste any more time.
This older one didn’t look like he could fight anyway.
Comparing their builds in his mind, the man’s overconfidence swelled. His face darkened.
“I’ll give you one last chance. Hand over the kid, or don’t blame me for getting rough—”
As the words left his mouth, he charged at Chu Chenli, pulling out a small knife that gleamed coldly in the sunlight.
The child shut his eyes tightly in fright, his crying stopping instantly.
With the child still clinging to one of his legs, Chu Chenli spared a moment to think, then decided not to move that leg.
He reached out his hand.
The man’s knife was aimed directly at his eye. Chu Chenli didn’t dodge or even blink, simply raising his hand to catch the man’s wrist.
With a slight twist outward and a push downward.
A crisp “crack” followed by a shriek like a stuck pig pierced the air.
The noise was too irritating, so Chu Chenli simply shoved the man’s face into the ground.