Chapter 10: Grave of the Naive

Skinny’s anger instantly turned into a sad feeling of not knowing whether to laugh or cry. He grabbed his hair in pain and said angrily, “How could she be like this! When Xiao Baiqiu bumped into me back then, did she say anything? But today she actually—” Speaking of this, Skinny could not continue. Angry tears rolled down his face, because he actually knew the answer.

Chen Fengshi had nothing to say. Compared to meaningless words of comfort, Skinny perhaps needed to vent or get drunk more.

But Skinny did not want to smash bottles anymore, because they cost fifty cents each. His brain was not broken, and he had no grudge against money.

Skinny did not want to get drunk either. He patted Chen Fengshi’s shoulder and said, “Brother, thanks! I’m going back to the dorm! Let me be quiet for the next few days. Just treat Big Guy and me as if we are invisible!”

“I will tell Big Guy.” Chen Fengshi nodded in agreement. Looking at Skinny’s extremely lonely back, he felt sad, but he also knew that feelings and emotions could not be shared by friends. And the blow Skinny suffered was too great; he only wanted to lock himself in the dorm and forget the pain through games, so at this moment he could only respect that.

Watching Skinny enter the school gate, Chen Fengshi could not help but think of a sentence Skinny used to always say: failure is not scary, what is scary is not even having the chance to fail. Even though both are failures, the failure of confessing and being rejected is at least the result of mustering the courage to actively pursue, so it is easier to accept.

Chen Fengshi was in a bad mood. He ate eighteen bowls in a row at the noodle shop, and the intake of sugar made his mood calm down a lot. He really was not in the mood to take a car to the city to eat for free and then run back. Moreover, since he had decided to directly deal with the true body behind the red mist, of course he had to eat his fill to have the energy.

Chen Fengshi only paid the bill after eating twenty-eight bowls. When taking out the money, he found that the skin on both his hands was covered by a layer of golden mist!

Yes, it was very similar to the red mist, the only difference was the color.

This made Chen Fengshi secretly feel panicked. The strange changes in his own body and certain similarities with the characteristics of the red mist had long made him suspicious. Now seeing it with his own eyes, he could not help but hurriedly pay the bill. He had no mind to appreciate the noodle shop owner’s expression of doubting he was in a dream, and just found a parked car nearby, staring at himself in the car’s side mirror to observe.

At first, seeing that there was no golden mist on his face in the mirror, Chen Fengshi felt very happy. Looking again at his hands in the mirror, there was no sign of the golden mist becoming thicker, and its thickness was far from that of the red mist.

Just as Chen Fengshi was feeling lucky, he suddenly saw a thin layer of golden mist slowly oozing out from the skin on his face and neck, and soon the thickness was just like that on his hands!

Just like the red mist?

This was simply a terrifying development for Chen Fengshi. If his abnormality was just his body being controlled by another strange thing that was different from the red mist, wouldn’t that be an ironic tragedy?

Chen Fengshi stared hard at himself in the car’s side mirror. The top of his head, there was only the top of his head left. If a beam of light like the red mist also extended from the top of his head, then fundamentally it would be the same!

Time passed bit by bit. Chen Fengshi saw that his eyes in the mirror were bloodshot, and his teeth were chattering from clenching them too hard.

He did not know how long had passed, but there was still no bundle of threads made of golden mist extending from the top of his head.

How long would he have to wait before it came out?

Chen Fengshi stared hard at the top of his head in the mirror. He both hoped that such a thing would never extend from the top of his head, and thought that if it was going to appear after all, then it should hurry up and come out. Dead or alive, there had to be a result!

“Senior brother, I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry, I’m going to be late…” Suddenly a weak voice sounded from the side.

Chen Fengshi was stunned for a moment, turned his head and saw a girl wearing sportswear standing nearby.

Seeing him in a daze, the girl slightly raised the key ring on her finger, below which hung a car key.

“Sorry, did I delay you for a long time?” Chen Fengshi almost bounced away. Given his style of pursuing calmness, he could not help but blush in embarrassment at this time. He had foolishly stared at someone else’s car mirror for who knows how long, making the car owner wait on the side, and she might well think he was a psycho.

“It’s okay, only fifteen minutes.” The girl smiled and opened the car door. She seemed not to notice Chen Fengshi’s embarrassment, and instead asked warmly, “Where does senior brother want to go?”

Where to go?

Chen Fengshi was slightly stunned, and then he remembered. He wanted to find the true body of the red mist, which was actually not far. He just needed to go around to the other side outside the school and climb the mountain. It was just that the road outside the school, in terms of planning, had an unreasonable historical legacy. Simply put, a straight line would be at most a thousand meters, but in reality, the detour required three thousand meters.

This distance was originally nothing, but one thing Chen Fengshi learned in college was not to casually reject other people’s kindness, as that was often considered rejecting the possibility of becoming friends.

So, although Chen Fengshi did not know this girl, he did not rush to refuse, but said, “I’m planning to go mountain climbing. If it’s a detour for you, then forget it.”

“I’m passing right by there. It’s just a matter of turning around and going an extra three hundred meters.” The girl happily got in the car, sat down, and started driving swiftly.

As soon as she started, she asked, “Senior brother Chen probably doesn’t remember me, right?”

“Don’t even say I’ve met you, I absolutely won’t believe I would forget a beauty!” Chen Fengshi’s tone was very certain, because he really had no impression.

“Five years ago, when senior brother Chen was at the gate of Xijing School with my sister, my sister even introduced me to you.” The girl’s reply, however, very straightforwardly slapped Chen Fengshi in the face, making his originally smooth answer seem hypocritical.

Hearing this, Chen Fengshi instantly remembered, and then looked at the girl in great surprise and said, “You are Sister Yao’s sister, Little Yao? Impossible! You clearly had a round face plus chocolate skin, even the ‘eighteen changes of a girl growing up’ aren’t this exaggerated!”

Little Yao was very happy and didn’t mind having her old scars uncovered at all. Before college, she was ugly, with dark skin and looked a bit chubby, completely unlike her sister as if they weren’t biological. She had lived in the shadow of comparison with Sister Yao since she was a child. She herself didn’t know why she had changed so much in the past two years; it was a perfect interpretation of the ugly duckling turning into a white swan.

“Yeah, the change in the past two years has been big. Senior brother Chen hasn’t changed much though, just grown taller.” Little Yao’s voice was very quiet. Although she and Sister Yao were biological sisters, they were—completely different!

From middle school to college, Sister Yao was always accompanied by the nickname of a bus, and her personality was full of hostility; she was a veteran in the delinquent world. Little Yao studied obediently and was a good, compliant baby. Although there had been no news of her for a few years, it seemed her main style probably hadn’t changed, and she still belonged to a different crowd from Sister Yao.

“About your sister…” Chen Fengshi felt it was still necessary to mention it; he guessed Little Yao might also care about this matter.

“What’s wrong with her?” Little Yao’s question made Chen Fengshi realize that Little Yao was one grade lower, so the spread of news was inevitably delayed. If she didn’t hang out with Sister Yao’s friends, unless Sister Yao told her, it was normal for her not to know at this time.

Then of course he wouldn’t take the initiative to bring up such an atmosphere-ruining matter, so he hurriedly said, “Nothing, it’s just that I haven’t interacted much with your sister since college, and I haven’t heard any news about you, nor have I run into you at school these past few years.”

“It’s good that senior brother doesn’t play with those friends of my sister.” Little Yao’s stance was very clear, truly rejecting the delinquent group, and then she curiously asked, “Why was senior brother looking in the mirror for so long just now?”

Alright, for this awkward question, Chen Fengshi had secretly drafted a few sets of answering strategies, and now he chose the simplest one. “I zoned out thinking about something else, and just froze there.”

Little Yao gave an understanding hum. She didn’t drive fast, plus she was driving a super cute micro-car, a Smart, with low displacement. She drove unhurriedly, didn’t cut into lanes, didn’t speed, and frequently gave way to others. Her mindset was as good as a new driver just hitting the road, but looking at the stability of her operation, she was obviously an expert.

Even so, the car quickly reached its destination. The distance was limited, and there were few traffic lights on the road, which was simply not enough to chat a few more sentences.

Chen Fengshi thought about whether Sister Yao would be infected by the red mist again. Although he felt the reminder might not be of much significance, he still couldn’t help but ask Little Yao, “Do you meet with Sister Yao often?”

Little Yao’s expression revealed an unconcealable sadness, and she said softly, “We’ve never met at school.”

Chen Fengshi was stunned, not expecting their sisterly relationship to have become so bad. Although he wasn’t sure if it was good in his memory, it definitely wasn’t this bad. However, this was a good thing for the current situation, so he didn’t ask further, thanked Little Yao for the ride, and they exchanged phone numbers when he got out of the car.

Little Yao had other things to do, so Chen Fengshi didn’t delay her by the roadside. He just said he would treat her to a meal another day, and then watched her drive the Smart away.

Chen Fengshi turned to look at the mountain range. The red mist threads extending from the school direction gathered somewhere in the mountains. He raised his thumb and closed his left and right eyes respectively to estimate the position difference and calculate the approximate distance. The distance was not far, roughly the equivalent of climbing two or three mountain peaks.

Chen Fengshi walked fast all the way. With his current stamina and jumping power, whether climbing up or going down the mountain, he was simply swift and fierce. After crossing a mountain, he directly leaped over the trees, and then fell back into the woods. That feeling was simply awesome!

As for the problem of branches and leaves ruining his clothes and pants… well, he had dressed up to meet Shen Ai when he went out. Thinking that half a month’s living expenses were gone, of course it hurt his wallet! But then thinking that it wasn’t even enough for him to eat three meals now, he felt it wasn’t so painful anymore.

On the mountaintop, looking down from a high vantage point, the position on the opposite mountainside was where many red mist threads finally gathered.

Along the way here, the top of his head was covered with red mist. Chen Fengshi didn’t know if his whereabouts had been exposed. Seeing the destination right ahead, he took a deep breath, made his final preparations before battle, and then carefully moved over.

Through the clusters of woods, a large patch of red light could be faintly seen in the pitch-black forest on the mountainside. As the distance continued to close, it was already possible to see clearly that it was all red mist!

Chen Fengshi took a deep breath. Thinking that he himself was not afraid of the red mist’s harm, his confidence greatly increased, enough to suppress his fear of the unknown.

Chen Fengshi carefully approached, approached, and continued to approach… and then he discovered that inside the red mist above, there were actually people wrapped inside!

And he knew both of the people inside!

One was Sister Yao; the other was Liu Shuzhi!

Liu Shuzhi’s change was very bizarre. He was originally very thin, but now, the muscle mass on his body was so large that he was simply an elite in the bodybuilding world! The muscles on the back of his neck were so big that it looked like more than half of his neck was gone! Sister Yao, on the other hand, had no obvious difference in her body shape.

Liu Shuzhi suddenly opened his eyes, and his emotionless gaze fell condescendingly on Chen Fengshi’s face.

Chen Fengshi suddenly understood. He had feigned considering it for a day to stabilize the red mist, but in reality, the red mist had no intention of negotiating peace either. Instead, it was creating suitable combat power, and then eliminating him, its natural enemy!

The mutual deception between him and the red mist had been decided from the very beginning. The naive would enter the grave in minutes!