After Wen Jiuzhe got up and went to the car, a young girl from the convoy sat down beside Lin Guosheng and the others.
“Hey, was that handsome guy someone you knew before? What’s his name?”
“His name is Wen Jiuzhe. He’s a brother who worked with us at the martial arts hall before the apocalypse,” Lin Guosheng said.
“Linzi, I hear you all call him Ninth Brother. Is he older than all of you? Doesn’t look like it,” the girl said with a cheerful smile on her well-kept, fair, round face.
“Not at all. Our Ninth Brother is only a year older than me, but he’s impressive. Back then he was unbeatable at the martial arts hall— even Brother Chai couldn’t beat him. We call him Ninth Brother as a sign of respect, get it!”
“So impressive, and so handsome too. Linzi, introduce us sometime, yeah!”
Only then did Lin Guosheng understand her intention. No wonder the few brothers beside him hadn’t responded earlier—he was the only one foolishly answering everything.
“That won’t do. Ninth Brother already has a girlfriend. She’s in the car with him. Don’t even think about it,” Lin Guosheng said bluntly, completely unable to read the room.
This girl named Cheng Zhen had a forthright, cheerful personality and good popularity within the convoy. Several young men had a bit of interest in her, but she hadn’t taken a liking to any of them. Who would’ve thought she’d set her sights on Ninth Brother.
But that was normal. Wen Jiuzhe had always been someone people thought about.
Lin Guosheng still remembered back when they were at the martial arts hall… no, the children’s training center. Among the parents who brought their kids, as long as they were young women, they all liked to look at their Ninth Brother a few extra times.
If it was an aunt or older sister bringing the child, the bolder ones would even take the initiative to ask for Ninth Brother’s contact information.
Some people even insisted on enrolling themselves in the children’s training center just because of Ninth Brother, wanting him to teach— and it wasn’t just one or two girls. Brother Rong’s mouth went dry every day from rejecting them.
Boss Huang watched with heartache, feeling that such a great business opportunity was being wasted. He even discussed with Ninth Brother about partnering to open a gym, letting Ninth Brother be the coach—there would definitely be lots of girls willing to pay membership fees.
Ninth Brother snorted and said, “Why don’t you just open a club instead? I’ll be your top attraction. You can put a price on me and auction me off, how about that?”
Boss Huang clenched his teeth. “It’s not impossible, as long as you’re willing to go into that line…”
Then Ninth Brother smiled and beat Boss Huang up.
He really didn’t hold back. Boss Huang walked around with two black eyes and didn’t dare go to the training center for over half a month, afraid of running into him.
All of them understood why Ninth Brother was popular. He was good-looking, with an even better figure, wearing a black martial arts vest, ignoring everyone—forget the girls, even he thought it was cool.
But no matter how good he was, he already belonged to someone.
Cheng Zhen craned her neck to look toward Wen Jiuzhe’s car. “He has a girlfriend? Why didn’t I see her just now?”
Seeing that she still looked a bit unwilling to give up, Lin Guosheng said unhappily, “I already told you, his girlfriend is right there, and they’re very close. If you don’t believe me, ask Brother Rong and the others!”
Cheng Zhen looked at the others. Brother Rong had a good temper and said with a smile, “Ninth Brother listens a lot to his girlfriend. If she tells him to go back at ten at night, he’ll already be on his way back at nine-thirty.”
Cheng Zhen: “Huh?”
That man didn’t look like someone who would “listen.” That unruly aura—obedient?
“Yes. If his girlfriend tells him to squat, he won’t sit,” another young man, Ah Chuan, chimed in.
“One time I saw Ninth Brother sitting on the railing across the street from the training center waiting for a car. Xue Ling couldn’t climb up, so she told Ninth Brother to come down and squat, and she sat on his back. Ninth Brother just let her sit there obediently.”
Cheng Zhen felt they were exaggerating. It all sounded fake, and a hint of doubt showed on her face.
“Hey, don’t doubt it. Look how Ninth Brother barely pays attention to anyone else. You talk to him ten sentences, he might not reply with a single word. In front of his girlfriend, though, his mouth just keeps chattering. Sometimes she doesn’t even want to deal with him, and he still goes over to provoke her into scolding him.”
Lin Guosheng did not hesitate to lift Ninth Brother’s old secrets.
He had seen it clearly back then—Wen Jiuzhe was out eating a late-night snack with them when Xue Ling came to find him.
Before she even arrived, Ninth Brother had already told the owner to add a lot of things she liked to eat.
When she got there, he held the menu and pretended to ask what she wanted to eat. Xue Ling said one item, and he said the shop had sold out. She named another, he said that was gone too. He said several in a row were all unavailable, until she was so angry her face turned red.
Then the food he had already ordered was brought over. He opened his eyes and lied, saying he didn’t know who had ordered it, maybe it had been delivered to the wrong table, and urged her to hurry and eat, lest someone come over and take it away again.
The shop only had cold drinks. Xue Ling didn’t drink any, so Ninth Brother specially went nearby to buy her a room-temperature drink.
Lin Guosheng sat right across from the two of them. When he saw that there was oil at the corner of Xue Ling’s mouth and she was about to look for a napkin, Ninth Brother noticed first and pressed a tissue to her mouth.
If you say he was helping her wipe her mouth, he wouldn’t wipe properly. After wiping, he still had to tease her.
“You wiped your mouth, there’s oil! And you wiped it onto my nose!”
“Oh, I saw your nose was shiny and thought that was oil too, so I wiped it for you while I was at it.”
The two of them bickered a couple of lines.
The Ninth Brother back then—Lin Guosheng couldn’t quite describe it. That slightly keyed-up feeling, he had never seen Ninth Brother like that in front of anyone else.
Even the shy Ah Lu spoke up. “I’ve seen bite marks on Ninth Brother. His girlfriend bit him. On his waist—there were several.”
When sparring with Wen Jiuzhe, he had accidentally lifted his clothes and seen them.
Ah Lu thought it was strange and casually asked about it. Wen Jiuzhe said, “Xue Ling bit them. Why did she bite me? Her teeth were itchy, so she used me to grind them.”
That tone made Ah Lu’s teeth ache just listening to it.
Cheng Zhen couldn’t listen anymore. She felt something blocked at the back of her throat—maybe she had eaten too much at night and was stuffed.
At this moment, Wen Jiuzhe came back holding a ham.
Seeing several people sitting there without talking, he found it strange. “Why isn’t anyone chatting? Why are you all looking at me?”
How was it that no one had been chatting— they had just been talking about him nonstop.
Lin Guosheng lowered his voice and said to Cheng Zhen, “See that? Earlier he was sitting here talking with us, and for some reason his expression was bad. He went to the car to absorb a mouthful of immortal energy from his girlfriend, and when he came back, everything was fine!”
Cheng Zhen looked at Wen Jiuzhe’s face and felt at a loss for words. “……”
Wen Jiuzhe didn’t pay attention to her. He put down the ham he was holding. “This ham—everyone try some.”
“Oh, it’s ham. That’s a big one,” Brother Rong said as he came over to take a closer look.
“The ham’s grown mold. Can this still be eaten?” Lin Guosheng asked.
Cheng Zhen cleared her throat and cut in. “This kind of mold is fine. Where I’m from, we used to cure ham a lot. This piece is actually preserved pretty well, and the quality is very high. You just scrape off the outside and it’s edible.”
She smiled at Wen Jiuzhe. “You found it? That’s impressive. Good ham like this is really hard to come by now. Where did you find it?”
Wen Jiuzhe said, “I don’t know. My girlfriend found it. I just live off a woman.”
Cheng Zhen: “……”
Sis completely gave up. She stood up and left, rolling her eyes as she walked.
Scumbag, bad man, love-brained—any of that was fine, but a kept man was not.
Someone present let out a low laugh, while others felt it was a pity.
“She’s just leaving like that? I still had a lot more to say,” Lin Guosheng muttered.
He hadn’t even told Cheng Zhen the most explosive one yet!
One time, Xue Ling ran into trouble while out at a gathering. Ninth Brother went to pick her up, and Lin Guosheng went along. He heard Xue Ling, drunk, call Ninth Brother by a nickname—she called him Xiaoxiao!
His fierce and domineering Ninth Brother—his nickname was actually Xiaoxiao!
Lin Guosheng’s big mouth couldn’t keep it shut. That very day, the matter spread all over the training center, and everyone who teased and shouted “Xiaoxiao” got beaten up by Ninth Brother.
Lin Guosheng had it especially bad—he was beaten until he cried. After that, he never dared to call that landmine of a nickname again.
“What else didn’t you finish saying? You weren’t badmouthing me just now, were you?” Wen Jiuzhe asked with a smile, his hand resting on Lin Guosheng’s shoulder.
“Ah… no, of course not. How could we badmouth you? We were just chatting. Oh right, how do you eat this ham? Is it good?”
Wen Jiuzhe said, “Of course it’s good. I’ll slice some now for you to try. Linzi, eat more.”
Lin Guosheng was delighted. “Okay, I’ll eat more. Ninth Brother still cares about me!”
No one else had the heart to look at him. This kid really was thickheaded.
The ham really did taste good. Everyone ate quite a bit, Wen Jiuzhe included.
That night, they sat together until late before each went to rest, chatting about many things.
Wen Jiuzhe said he would part ways with them the next day. Everyone was reluctant, but the oldest ones, Brother Chai and Brother Rong, didn’t try to persuade him much. Only Lin Guosheng—when he watched Wen Jiuzhe drive away in the morning—almost cried.
“Brother Rong, why didn’t you all help persuade Ninth Brother? How great would it be for him to come live with us there. He and Xue Ling, the two of them wandering outside all alone—who knows, they might even get bullied.”
The attentive Brother Rong sighed silently. “Didn’t you hear Ninth Brother say that Xue Ling is sick? It’s not convenient for her to go with us.”
“She’s sick—that’s even more reason to go to the base. There are doctors at the base.”
Brother Chai patted the fool on the head. “Enough. Go start the car. We’re leaving too.”
The older ones all saw that something wasn’t right. Wen Jiuzhe had hidden Xue Ling away extremely carefully, not letting anyone see her even once. What kind of illness required hiding her like that?
When eating together, he hadn’t mentioned setting aside any food to take to Xue Ling either.
If Xue Ling still needed to eat, there was no way he wouldn’t consider her.
Most likely…
None of them said it out loud. With heavy hearts, they saw him off.
If it was really as they guessed, then where could he go? What would he do in the future?
“Leaving so soon?” Xue Ling raised her writing board.
“Still regretting that yesterday’s gossip didn’t get a follow-up?” Wen Jiuzhe drove the car onto the road.
“Don’t you want to chat more with your friends?”
“What’s there to chat about? Wasn’t one whole night enough?”
Xue Ling changed to a new question: “Was the ham good?”
“It was good. Everyone said it was good.” So there was still more than half left that he brought back.
Xue Ling was satisfied and put down the writing board.
Because she herself was hungry every day now, she especially wanted Wen Jiuzhe to eat until he was full. Whenever she saw something edible, she wanted to feed it to him.
After this accidental encounter with acquaintances and resting one night at the camp, Xue Ling urged Wen Jiuzhe every night to find a camp to rest at.
Wen Jiuzhe narrowed his eyes and stared at her suspiciously. “Tell me the truth. You want me to go to the camp— is it really for my safety, or because you want to watch the excitement and hear gossip?”
Xue Ling thought to herself, don’t underestimate all the chicken-soup-for-the-soul she’s drunk.
She used to look down on those chicken-soup videos, too.
Wen Jiuzhe still rested in the wild most of the time, only occasionally going to camps.
There was indeed plenty of commotion in the camps—affairs, quarrels, robbing things, all kinds of bizarre incidents.
Wen Jiuzhe, driving a car by himself, was targeted as soon as he entered the camp.
A sharp-faced man knocked on the car window and flashed the cards in his hand. “Bro, want to play a few rounds with us? We’re still short one person over there. Don’t worry, we don’t bet big…”
“Cards?” Wen Jiuzhe rested his arm on the window, revealing the muzzle of a gun, his smile not reaching his eyes. “I prefer hitting people. Want to try?”
After scaring the man off, Wen Jiuzhe even snatched a deck of cards from him, looking more like a bully than those preparing to set someone up.
He closed the window, held the cards, and said to Xue Ling, “Too boring. Let’s play cards.”
