Chapter 87#

Two days later, Brother Zhou indeed came knocking.

This evening, Fu Yucheng and Ning Yue were eating when a knock suddenly came at the door.

Ning Yue got up and opened the wooden door of the rock bun. Seeing the person standing outside, he couldn’t help but be slightly stunned.

While drinking his gruel, Fu Yucheng greeted loudly: “Brother Zhou, finally here?”

While welcoming Brother Zhou inside, Ning Yue gave Fu Yucheng a fierce glare, his eyes seemingly saying, Are you looking for death?

He had Brother Zhou sit on the rock bun’s only tattered sofa, while he himself stood by the small dining table, intentionally or unintentionally blocking Fu Yucheng behind him: “Brother Zhou, is there something I can help you with? Brother Yucheng is new here and unfamiliar with the place; if he accidentally offended you, I apologize to you.”

Brother Zhou stared at Fu Yucheng, his gaze dark, and said nothing.

Fu Yucheng slowly drank the last bit of his gruel and casually pushed Ning Yue aside: “Xiao Yue, go wash the dishes.”

Ning Yue glared at him and whispered: “What are you trying to do?”

Fu Yucheng let out a helpless sigh: “Adult matters, kids shouldn’t worry about them.”

Ning Yue said angrily: “I’m twenty!”

Most ancestors of humans in this era had undergone gene telomere improvements and could live to over one hundred and twenty years old. The lifespan of some controllers even approached one hundred and fifty or even two hundred years. Twenty was indeed a bit young.

Fu Yucheng couldn’t help but mutter to himself that supposedly the younger someone was, the more they feared others calling them childish. He coaxed casually: “Alright, I know you’re twenty. If you don’t want to wash dishes, you can stay and listen.”

Brother Zhou, with a cold face, watched them bickering before suddenly speaking: “A-Cheng, let’s be straightforward. Name your price.”

Fu Yucheng asked knowingly: “What price?”

Brother Zhou stood up abruptly, extremely irritated: “Stop playing dumb! Do you really think you can swallow my nine gambling dens?!”

Fu Yucheng shrugged, picked up the stack of deeds on the table, and lightly tapped them against his left palm: “But Old Overseer Xu personally witnessed it—you lost these to me.”

Brother Zhou’s face flushed red: “Clearly you set a trap for me! You pretended to be a novice to deceive me and used that knife to lure me…”

At this point, he seemed to realize that complaining was useless, so he took a deep breath and softened his tone: “Thirty thousand transaction coins, how about it?”

Thirty thousand transaction coins was the total income of those gambling dens for two or three years; it could be said he was paying a heavy price.

Fu Yucheng stared at the other with a faint smile, non-committally.

Just as the other was about to burst into rage, he suddenly spoke: “I don’t want your transaction coins. Get me a position in the Rock Fortress.”

Brother Zhou was stunned, then realized what the other meant and couldn’t help but hesitate: “Newcomers at the Rock Fortress have to have their background information screened, and a reliable overseer must act as a guarantor. In your state, it definitely won’t work.”

“Whether it’s screening or guaranteeing, those are your problems, not mine.” Fu Yucheng tossed the deeds onto the table and shrugged, “Within a month, I want to be working in the Rock Fortress. Otherwise, I’ll give all these deeds to Old Overseer Xu; he’ll surely be happy to accept them.”

“You, you’re simply a rogue!” Brother Zhou glared at him fiercely, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

If Fu Yucheng planned to keep the nine gambling dens for himself, he could still find a way to kill the other and take the dens back. But if the other gave the dens to Old Overseer Xu, it would be all over.

Brother Zhou breathed heavily several times: “You want to enter the Rock Fortress so badly; do you have some scheme? If I act as guarantor and something happens to you, the Lord won’t let me off.”

He remembered the last overseer who, for just a small mistake, was stripped naked by the Lord and hung on the Rock Fortress cliff, pecked by black crows until his skin and flesh were mangled—he wailed for three days and three nights without dying. Brother Zhou’s voice couldn’t help but tremble.

Fu Yucheng shrugged: “I’m just infatuated with Princess Ling Sha, so I want to work in the Rock Fortress. I don’t ask for anything else, as long as I can catch a glimpse of her occasionally, I’ll be satisfied.”

Ning Yue turned to look at him, his expression very complex: “You…”

Hearing Fu Yucheng say this, Brother Zhou breathed a sigh of relief instead.

Princess Ling Sha was the apple of the Lord’s eye. There were at least eight hundred, if not a thousand, men on Titan who were infatuated with her. Indeed, many people entered the Rock Fortress to work just to see her once.

He thought back and forth and hesitated for a long time before saying: “Fine, I’ll arrange it for you. But it might not be a good job.”

Fu Yucheng said indifferently: “The type of work doesn’t matter, as long as I can see Princess Ling Sha.”

Being able to see Princess Ling Sha meant entering a relatively core position in the Rock Fortress… and being not far from the “Grim Reaper’s Wings.”

Brother Zhou nodded: “As long as you don’t mind. If you regret it then, I won’t be responsible.”

Fu Yucheng laughed: “I definitely won’t regret it.”

…

Fu Yucheng murmured: “I regret it.”

With great effort, he threw a large shovel of pungent mutant mantis droppings into a half-person-high dung bucket beside him, his expression somewhat numb.

“I should have known, I should have known long ago…”

He should have known—Brother Zhou was the overseer responsible for breeding beast pets; what kind of good job could he assign him?

Being a “poop scooper” might be fine if it were for small felines like those on the old Earth… but dealing with the droppings of these large mutant monsters was truly not a job for a human.

Fu Yucheng almost suspected Brother Zhou was deliberately retaliating against him and had once asked him. Brother Zhou put on an innocent face: “Only for this kind of work is the background check not so strict; I had no other way.”

After saying that, he laughed and patted Fu Yucheng’s shoulder: “A-Cheng, do a good job. When Princess Ling Sha comes to choose a mount, you’ll be able to see her.”

Fu Yucheng endured the stench and cleaned two giant beast pens, then carried dozens of dung buckets onto a cart and headed toward the side gate of the Rock Fortress.

This giant Rock Fortress was situated on a cliff at the edge of the settlement.

The fortress was built with large blocks of special sandstone from Titan, and the whole structure presented an ominous dark red color.

Inside were thousands of workers and servants, along with an army of thirty thousand—don’t underestimate this army; the entire Titan settlement only had a population of seven hundred thousand. The Titan Lord had relied on this army to control this settlement for fifty years.

Fu Yucheng slowly pushed the dung cart along a small path within the Rock Fortress. Both sides of this path were high dark red walls; looking up, one could see the pointed tops of the fortress.

Through these days of investigation, Fu Yucheng had roughly figured out some situations. The guards at the top of the Rock Fortress were particularly strict, with elite guards from within the fortress standing watch in shifts twenty-four hours a day without any interval. In all likelihood, the “Grim Reaper’s Wings” was in that place.

But how could he sneak in without anyone knowing?

Fu Yucheng pondered with his head down and, before he knew it, had arrived near the side gate of the Rock Fortress. He handed the dung buckets and cart to the workers at the “Sanitation Department” and washed his hands thoroughly before walking out the side gate.

Outside the gate, Ning Yue raised his hand from a distance: “Brother Yucheng, here, over here!”

Fu Yucheng found it somewhat funny. Since he started working at the Rock Fortress, this kid Ning Yue, fearing he’d be bullied, had come every day for the past month to pick him up from work, even stopping his singing at the bar.

Fortunately, after he returned the deeds to Brother Zhou, the other had compensated him with several hundred transaction coins. Otherwise, without Ning Yue’s singing income, even their daily living expenses would have been a problem.

Ning Yue grabbed his arm and looked him up and down carefully before letting out a slight sigh of relief: “Today’s work went smoothly, I suppose?”

Fu Yucheng let out a “tch”: “What do you mean ‘smoothly’? Try scooping poop for ten hours and see.”

Ning Yue said crossly: “I told you not to go, but you insisted. Even… even if you can see that Princess Ling Sha, so what? It’s not like you can marry her. With your status, people wouldn’t even bother to look at you.”

Fu Yucheng said dissatisfiedly: “Hey! What do you mean ‘with my status’? Even scooping poop is earning a living with one’s own hands—what’s wrong with that? You’re discriminating, I’m telling you.”

The two of them argued haphazardly while walking back. They walked for over an hour before returning to Ning Yue’s small rock bun.

Standing at the narrow doorway of the rock bun, Ning Yue was about to pull out his keys to open the door when Fu Yucheng suddenly blanked for a second and stopped him.

Ning Yue asked in confusion: “What’s wrong?”

Fu Yucheng lowered his head and mused: “Someone has been here.”

On the steps of the rock bun doorway was half of an inconspicuous shallow footprint.

Fu Yucheng felt a bit suspicious. He inconspicuously scanned the surroundings with his mental power but didn’t find anything unusual, so he shook his head: “Forget it, let’s go in.”

By now it was already late. After being busy in the kitchen for a while, Ning Yue brought out a table full of dishes and lit a small candle.

Although this table of food wasn’t exquisite, it had meat and vegetables, cold and hot dishes; it was very rich. Resources on Titan were scarce and food was very difficult to come by; Ning Yue had obviously prepared this table of food carefully long in advance.

Fu Yucheng couldn’t help but be surprised: “So many dishes?”

Ning Yue sat down opposite him, his expression somewhat bashful: “Brother Yucheng, do you remember what day it is today?”

Fu Yucheng asked in confusion: “Uh, payday?”

“…” Ning Yue was a bit disappointed and pursed his lips, “Today is the day we’ve known each other for three months.”

Fu Yucheng blanked for a moment, then looked at the other with a thoughtful expression. Ning Yue’s eyes wandered, appearing a bit afraid to meet his gaze.

Fu Yucheng hesitated for a moment but ultimately said nothing, choosing a piece of braised meat that was half fat and half lean and eating it with gusto: “Tastes good.”

Under the warm candlelight, the two of them ate dinner while chatting sporadically. For some reason, the atmosphere was vaguely awkward. After managing to chat for a while, they simply couldn’t find any topics and fell silent, making the atmosphere even stranger.

As if suddenly gathering courage, Ning Yue looked up at Fu Yucheng: “Brother Yucheng, what do you think… of me as a person?”

Fu Yucheng finally confirmed something and groaned inwardly. He could only force a smile: “Not bad, quite good.”

Ning Yue stared at him intently, seemingly trying to judge the other’s attitude, then tentatively and slowly leaned in.

Fu Yucheng blinked and stuffed a dumpling into his mouth: “This dumpling is good, thin skin and lots of filling, try it.”

With the dumpling in his mouth, Ning Yue blinked stupidly.

Fu Yucheng had a bit of a headache. He didn’t want to be too blunt and only hoped the other would back off, so he said unclearly: “As a kid, don’t spend all day thinking about things that aren’t there… do you understand what I mean?”

Ning Yue worked hard to swallow the dumpling and seemed to understand something, but he was still a bit unwilling: “Do you, do you only like women? Like Princess Ling Sha? But your statuses are too far apart; it’s impossible.”

Fu Yucheng was stunned, and someone’s image couldn’t help but surface in his mind. For a moment, he was speechless.

Seeing that the other didn’t answer, appearing to have tacitly agreed, Ning Yue’s expression gradually became very disappointed. He said no more and lowered his head to eat sullenly.

Fu Yucheng was somewhat helpless, but he indeed couldn’t give the other anything. He could only gently rub Ning Yue’s hair like a brother: “Xiao Yue, you’ll meet someone better.”

…

At this moment, not far outside the small rock bun, under the deep blue night sky, a person was standing quietly.

He stared fixedly at the rock bun’s small square window, his palms even bleeding from his nails, yet he didn’t dare make any move.

His eyesight was excellent; even from this far away, he could see clearly inside the window. Amidst the flickering warm candlelight, that person was dotingly rubbing someone else’s hair, just as he used to do to himself.