Chapter 49: The Unbroken Thread

“No problem.” Chen Fengshi got out of the car. He wanted to go in, but Juzi said this place only received female guests. Because it was too late, there was no business inside. When she ran out just now, she did not dare to scream for help, fearing it would implicate others, so she did not attract the attention of the people inside at all.

Chen Fengshi did not insist. Even though he felt that, according to common sense, the other staff inside were very likely parasitized by Fungal Demons as well. The friend who recommended this place to her should have also been parasitized at the time. It was just that if their later area of activity was far beyond the connection range of the Fungal Demon Main Body, the parasitic Fungal Demon would gradually die.

Chen Fengshi looked around for a while. This neighborhood could not be considered too old, and it was not a fund-raising apartment built by the locals’ village, so the distance between the buildings was large enough, and the greenbelts were done quite standardly.

While he was looking around, Juzi, who had gone in, jogged out.

She wore a black off-the-shoulder top, paired with a white short skirt, and carried a black-and-white handbag. As she ran, she took out a necklace from her bag. She only slowed down when she saw Chen Fengshi, and put on the necklace. The heart-shaped pendant inlaid with a ruby was strikingly large. She then took out a pair of diamond-studded earrings and put them on, tidied her chestnut-red long hair, and then said with a smile, “Thank you so much, can I treat you to a late-night snack?”

Chen Fengshi wanted to go back to the hotel to sleep… He truly felt that if he did not go back to his hotel room and get a good sleep, he might be worked to death in these endless emergencies. But before he could say his refusal, his hesitant attitude was probably caught by Juzi, so she preempted him and said, “You can’t say you’re not hungry, right? Our feeling of fullness doesn’t last very long!”

Since Juzi put it this way, Chen Fengshi had to reluctantly agree, especially since she was a pleasing beauty. So the motorcycle started again. Juzi directed the way, and they drove all the way to a food street four kilometers away, near Tailai Garden. This place was an old food street; even in the early hours of the morning, there were places open, and some even specialized in business from night to dawn.

Eating seafood at this time always felt a bit weird to Chen Fengshi, but since Juzi picked the place, he naturally went along with the host.

The waiter here seemed quite familiar with her. After a brief chat, Juzi directly ordered a deluxe seafood platter. To avoid being too bored while waiting, Juzi asked for two portions of wet-fried beef hor fun, cold skin noodles, and other cold dishes, then asked Chen Fengshi, “What do you want to drink?”

“Tea is fine.”

“Don’t you want a little alcohol? Beer with seafood doesn’t seem healthy, but are you used to Jack Daniel’s?” Juzi seemed quite interested in alcohol. Chen Fengshi had never been interested in liquor. At the age when he was most curious about liquor, his dad made him drink until he threw up and passed out in various ways. In less than half a month, he begged his dad to let him go, and ever since then, he felt sick just hearing about liquor.

His dad did not go as hard on him with beer, probably because it was relatively harder to get drunk on. Besides, there were cocktails and such, which he would drink as a beverage on a whim.

Therefore, Chen Fengshi should have been even less interested, but this Jack Daniel’s was an exception. Among his best friends in high school, the one who went abroad once mailed him two commemorative bottles of this brand. At that time, the friend specifically reminded him on QQ that they were for collection and he shouldn’t drink them.

But would Chen Fengshi listen? He had no interest in alcohol, so how could he care about its collection value at the time? He just drank it, and then felt the taste was quite good, and he really liked the aroma of that alcohol.

It would have been fine if it was not brought up, but once mentioned, it immediately aroused his craving for that taste, so he hesitated between the desire to drink and rational refusal.

“Then let’s get two bottles, that should be enough, right?” Juzi did not wait for Chen Fengshi to stay conflicted. From his hesitant attitude, she caught the message that it did not matter either way, and made the decision directly. The waiter smiled and replied, “Of course, no other guests have ordered this alcohol, the manager prepared it just for you.”

Seeing there was nothing else, when the waiter was leaving the private room, Juzi reminded him again, “Don’t forget the ice cubes.”

“Definitely won’t!” The waiter agreed with a smile, closed the door, and left.

Only then did Chen Fengshi say, “My alcohol capacity is about two cups.” After speaking, he pointed to the smallest-sized cup in the small cabinet where the wine cups were kept in the private room.

“It’s okay, no matter how much you drink, the rest is mine.” Juzi was generous. If it were another man, he would probably be so ashamed that he would want to crawl into a crack in the ground, or he would be so afraid of being looked down upon by the beauty that he would stubbornly pat his chest and brag.

However, Chen Fengshi would not, because he was not ashamed of his poor alcohol capacity at all, but he agreed that having a good alcohol capacity could be a point of pride, because it was an outstanding talent after all.

“Impressive! Looks like you’re a alcohol fairy.”

“I really am, I’ve never been drunk. I always stay in a slightly floating state of being three parts drunk, so I especially love to drink, just to maintain that slightly floating state. It’s just that the time it lasts is never long enough.” Juzi was quite talkative.

But Chen Fengshi believed these words. He also had a female alcohol fairy in his family, who never got drunk. The capacity for alcohol was naturally a dominant factor. The ability to break down alcohol always had a limit no matter how much it was trained later in life, while a natural ability to never get drunk no matter how much you drank was something that just forced people to admit defeat.

“On the contrary, I’ll drink a little cocktail before bed as a beverage and to help me sleep. I wouldn’t drink alone at other times, afraid that being dizzy might mess things up.”

“I actually really like the feeling of being slightly drunk. It’s only at times like that that I make mistakes, and then I don’t blame myself for making them. When I’m sober, I easily think too much, and being cautious and worried feels especially tiring.” Juzi’s experience was quite interesting, especially to Chen Fengshi.

Because he felt that as long as a person was sober, then even if they made a mistake, they would not regret it or blame themselves, which meant it was a mistake they were destined to make. But if avoidable factors caused a person to not be sober enough, only then would that kind of mistake be impossible to self-forgive.

At this time, the waiter had already brought two bottles of alcohol, plus a basin of ice cubes, and the bottles were placed right in the ice.

Chen Fengshi liked the aroma of this alcohol, and he also liked the packaging.

Just then, a message suddenly came in, sent by Big Guy. ‘I heard a person with the rapid weight loss disease died. The school was afraid of more incidents, so they urgently arranged to send others with the same condition to a nearby hospital. Old Chen, do you have a way to help these people harmed by Evil Ghosts? Isn’t there a spell for recovery or something?’

After reading the message, Chen Fengshi directly turned off the screen. He felt very uncomfortable in his heart. He had hoped this kind of thing wouldn’t happen the most, but it happened anyway. Yes, among the photos sent by Skinny, some people were so thin that it seemed they had no flesh. If a person suddenly became thin to that extent, would there be problems with their bodily functions? Could they even bear it?

Juzi noticed his change and asked with a guess, “What’s wrong? Is your girlfriend unhappy that you’re still out?”

“…No, I don’t have a girlfriend.” Chen Fengshi did not want to mention these things at school, and the word “girlfriend” even more triggered the pain of his unfulfilled, hopeless pursuit of Shen Ai.

“Drinking is just right when you’re in a bad mood.” Juzi poured a cup for each of them without giving him a choice. It was the square kind of beer cup. Then she bit her lower lip as if making a request, pointed her index finger out, looked at Chen Fengshi, and said softly, “Just one cup! Just drink this one cup with me, okay?”

“…I feel like my emotional intelligence has been completely crushed by you.” Chen Fengshi smiled bitterly and picked up the cup. Actually, he also felt that this cup of alcohol was not enough to make him deeply drunk. Although he told others that his capacity for liquor was very, very poor, in reality, half a catty wouldn’t make him throw up, and he could still stay six or seven parts sober.

He just wouldn’t say it. Because his dad had used practice to trick him into understanding a truth: if you tell people your alcohol capacity is three taels, you will be forced to drink at least half a catty when you raise your cup. And when a person gets drunk, the one who suffers is themselves. If a person wants to save all their face, they have to suffer all the sins.

Chen Fengshi’s vanity had long been mostly destroyed by his dad. As for when a person should care about face and when they should care about substance, that was originally a balancing ability that took a lifetime to cultivate. Right or wrong, how to choose all depended on a person’s own practice.

At this time, his words were basically telling Juzi that if she made him drink more later, it would be bullying him.

“We just hit it off! Actually, I don’t usually like to urge people to drink, I just feel that if we don’t drink a little alcohol, it’s not easy to let down our guard when chatting. You have done me a great favor, and we are both companions who possess the Power of Life, so we should naturally be able to chat more and deeper.” Juzi seemed very enthusiastic and took the initiative to raise her cup, saying, “I’ll finish my cup! You drink as you please!”

After speaking, she directly tilted her head back and downed it in one breath…

I’ll finish my cup, and you drink as you please.

With this “as you please,” someone with slightly thin skin wouldn’t be able to just drink as they please, right?

Fortunately, Chen Fengshi was not a person with thin skin. He really just took a casual sip, and then put down the cup without his face turning red or his heart beating faster.

Even though he thought of the death at school and felt very down, he still didn’t want to use this as an excuse; even though he knew that if Big Guy found out, he would definitely say he was destined to be lonely for life.

No matter if Juzi had other intentions or not, getting drunk would give an opportunity to make mistakes, and as a man, he was supposed to just get drunk along with it.

But he was not Big Guy, he was Chen Fengshi, and he was just like this.

“How long have you been awakened?” Juzi didn’t seem to care how much or how little he drank, and she really didn’t look like she was forcing him to drink.

But Chen Fengshi knew that his earlier statement about his alcohol capacity had actually been pushed away by Juzi using Tai Chi, and she directly didn’t give him a chance to emphasize it again.

He felt that he was indeed too green. Compared to Juzi, a seemingly smart and capable mature beauty, he was just a rookie.

“Just a few days, what about you?” Chen Fengshi was of course very interested in matters of the Power of Life. He had only just learned about the organization, and he also knew that the Mutual Aid Association had more companions.

Juzi held up two fingers and said with a smile, “Two months. I’ve been very careful all along. I really didn’t expect that the place I went to today would suddenly have a Fungal Demon Parasite. There are really more and more places we can’t go now. If this keeps up, will Xuancheng still be livable—”

“Places we can’t go? Which ones?” Chen Fengshi certainly wanted to know. Juzi didn’t hide anything either. She directly asked for his WeChat, forwarded a piece of information to him, and said, “The latest Fungal Demon distribution map. When informants among the companions discover that an area has Fungal Demons, they just say a word in the group chat. The President and Vice President organize it and then send it to everyone in the group. By the way, you probably don’t know about the Mutual Aid Association and Fungal Demons yet, right?”

Chen Fengshi decided not to mention the Demon Extermination Association, and just maintained a silent posture waiting for what she would say next, so Juzi explained it to him.

After just a few sentences, the waiter brought the wet-fried beef hor fun, cold skin noodles, peanuts, and other side dishes. After the waiter went out, Juzi continued.

Regarding the nature of the Mutual Aid Association, the situation Juzi described sounded like it didn’t have any major differences from the information Little An knew. The difference was that Juzi was very satisfied with the current state of the Mutual Aid Association, and was also very proud of it.