Chapter 5: A Tentative Clash

Liu Shuzhi’s abnormal appetite secretly shocked Chen Fengshi. He was eager to find an answer for his own strange phenomenon, but he also did not want to be truly infected by the red mist.

Fortunately, Liu Shuzhi stopped after completing the first stage of the challenge. He patted his bulging belly, looking completely satisfied like someone who had stuffed himself full.

The noodle shop owner let out a sigh of relief, and Chen Fengshi also felt a bit more relaxed. Their situations were similar, but the gap in their appetites was huge.

Liu Shuzhi took out his phone, quickly typed on it for a while, and then put it down with a smile, saying, “Good things should be shared.”

That was a great spirit, but Chen Fengshi could not genuinely smile.

Even the amount Liu Shuzhi ate for the first stage of the challenge was basically at an impossible level. How could something like this be shared?

Unless…

So Chen Fengshi did not leave. He stayed and sat there with him. Liu Shuzhi did not plan to ask him to leave either. With a smile on his face, he chatted away very talkatively.

This made Chen Fengshi feel more and more that something was wrong. Liu Shuzhi was definitely not this kind of person normally. Perhaps the vast majority of introverts had a hidden wild side, but their friendship was absolutely not close enough for Liu Shuzhi to show this side of his personality.

After they chatted for a while, Liu Shuzhi’s stomach had room again, so he directly used his right to eat for free. Although Chen Fengshi could also continue eating, he always felt that eating again before being hungry enough would make him look too greedy. Actually, his eating appearance here was already doomed to look bad anyway.

Not long after, eighteen people arrived one after another. They were all from their school, both boys and girls, and came from different departments. But the common point was that they all came from poor or average families.

Since when was Liu Shuzhi so good at making friends? This was totally abnormal.

In fact, it was abnormal, because in Chen Fengshi’s eyes, the common point between these people and Liu Shuzhi was that their bodies were all covered by the red mist!

They filled the tables to Chen Fengshi’s left, right, and front and back. After they were all here, they shouted one by one that they wanted to take the challenge.

The noodle shop owner’s face turned pale. Even the cleaner, who originally had quite a few complaints about the boss, felt the situation was weird. When these eighteen people all finished the first stage of the challenge, the cleaner silently felt bad for the noodle shop owner.

There were three more people preparing to challenge the fourteen bowls of the second stage. If they won, they would get a reward of seven days of free all-you-can-eat.

When the noodle shop owner brought the noodles over again, he asked in a low voice with an ugly expression, “I haven’t offended anyone. You guys shouldn’t be hired by someone to mess with me, right? If you are, just tell me. Apologizing or whatever, we can talk about it.”

Chen Fengshi also felt bad for the noodle shop owner. With twenty of them eating like this every day, could this noodle shop even survive?

“Boss, it really isn’t like that.”

The noodle shop owner went silent and walked away with a pale face.

Then, it was Chen Fengshi’s turn to be secretly shocked.

Because after the boss walked out of this group of people this time, there was still a thin layer of red mist on his body that had not dissipated. Chen Fengshi watched him standing at the counter. Suddenly, he stood there silently and quietly. At the same time, more and more red mist covered his body, as if it was endlessly produced from inside his body. Finally, a beam of light made of red mist began to extend outward from the top of the noodle shop owner’s head…

It was the same for the noodle shop owner, and the cleaner standing next to him was soon covered by the red mist too…

Chen Fengshi understood. Being repeatedly exposed to the red mist, especially with Liu Shuzhi and a total of nineteen people infected by the red mist here, the noodle shop owner and the cleaner who helped deliver the noodles were attacked once every time they walked in and out of the crowd. Under such repeated accumulation, they were both completely infected by the red mist in the end.

After a while, the noodle shop owner and the cleaner both sat down, ordered the kitchen to cook noodles, and said they were hungry.

“You seem to be paying a lot of attention to them.” A girl at the table next to Chen Fengshi looked at him. There was no special emotion in her eyes, but a slight smile at the corner of her mouth seemed to hide a deeper meaning.

Yes, Chen Fengshi had already realized the situation. When these people came, they surrounded him in the middle. At first, the red mist on their bodies all came over, but after getting close to him, they all quickly retreated. And during his conversation with Liu Shuzhi, some of his words also made him feel something was wrong, like some kind of probing.

Was it possible that they suspected Chen Fengshi might know the secret of the red mist?

“This boss is worth feeling bad for… Suddenly meeting so many food gods like us, I’m afraid he might just close the shop.” Chen Fengshi acted calm. If Liu Shuzhi and this group of people were testing him, then he also needed to test this group of people.

“Don’t worry, the noodle shop owner won’t close the shop. Of course, we won’t stare at this place and eat here every day either. The remaining few shops in Xuancheng that have challenge rewards all need to be visited. Spreading out the pressure is the long-term plan.” Liu Shuzhi spoke very calmly. The sharp light in his eyes formed by his focused attention put more pressure on Chen Fengshi. Right now, it was a test of acting skills! Moreover, acting well might not necessarily guarantee passing the test.

“This method is really good, I must learn from it!” Chen Fengshi gave a thumbs up in praise.

Liu Shuzhi stared into his eyes and suddenly asked, “You seem to really not like me. When you came just now, you consciously kept your legs away from me. I don’t think I’m that dirty, right?”

“Ah?” Chen Fengshi put on a bitter smile and said with a wronged look, “This is really a misunderstanding! I was just afraid that physical contact would make others uncomfortable, so it’s just a habit of avoiding it. If you say that, then I have to explain with my actions!”

As Chen Fengshi spoke, he stood up, squeezed in and sat over, not letting Liu Shuzhi refuse or decline. He put an arm around his shoulder, hugged his neck, and said with a smile, “If I don’t act close to you, you won’t be able to believe me. Tell me, am I disgusted by you? Am I disgusted by you?”

Liu Shuzhi pushed his arm, using more and more force, but it was never as strong as Chen Fengshi’s. He could not break free at all, and could only keep saying words of apology in his mouth, repeatedly saying it was unnecessary, that he believed him and so on.

However, the more panicked he was, the more Chen Fengshi insisted on having such close contact. He had been thinking, if the red mist was unwilling to get close to him, did that mean he had the power to drive it away? Going along with Liu Shuzhi’s words was his deliberate attempt.

At this time, he could clearly see in his eyes that the red mist on Liu Shuzhi’s body was decreasing rapidly, decreasing. Someone next to them reached out to help pull him away. Chen Fengshi deliberately blocked them half-angrily and half-jokingly, saying, “Leave him alone! You all heard it just now, Liu Shuzhi actually guessed this about me. At least we are not without friendship! We haven’t sat at a table eating, chatting, and joking around together in the past, have we! Today, he actually doubts my friendly attitude toward him! This matter absolutely must be made clear!”

Chen Fengshi dragged it out for a while. None of the people who reached out to help could pull him away. Surprisingly, they did not take any more aggressive actions, but only tried to persuade him with words.

In just this short while, in Chen Fengshi’s eyes, the red mist attached to Liu Shuzhi was gone, and the red light extending from the top of his head had also disappeared.

Liu Shuzhi was stunned for about five seconds, then suddenly seemed to wake up. He looked around with a confused expression, and then looked at Chen Fengshi and asked, “I, why am I here? What’s going on…”

‘Can I really drive away and eliminate the red mist?’ Chen Fengshi was secretly thrilled. This was equivalent to seeing direct hope for helping Shen Ai. The story of a hero saving a beauty was very likely! But he could still keep his composure at this moment. He deliberately joked with Liu Shuzhi, saying, “You really know how to joke! Okay, okay, I’ll let you go, alright? Don’t use such a ridiculous trick as pretending to have amnesia. Anyway, my goal is just to make you take back your misunderstanding just now.”

Chen Fengshi let go of Liu Shuzhi and sat back.

Liu Shuzhi looked completely dumbfounded. He really didn’t seem to remember the situation, didn’t know why he was here, and didn’t know what Chen Fengshi was talking about.

However, his confused state did not last long. As he stood in the crowd, he was quickly surrounded by the red mist that surged over from all around. In just a short moment, a red light extended from the top of his head again.

‘Under this situation, it’s impossible to completely save him!’ Chen Fengshi secretly felt it was a pity. Looking at the red line extending from the top of Liu Shuzhi’s head, an idea came to his mind. He smiled, stood up, and reached out to touch the top of his head. With a smile on his face, he said, “Hey, hey, hey, still pretending to have amnesia? Come on, I’ll rub it for you and it’ll be fine. If that doesn’t work, I’ll knock you awake, okay?”

Chen Fengshi hoped that this might be able to cut off the connection of the line formed by the red mist, but he found that more red mist surged out from Liu Shuzhi’s body, all avoiding his palm and continuing to maintain a connected state with the extending red line from the side.

At the same time, it was as if the massive surge of red mist was severely consuming Liu Shuzhi’s body strength. In just this short while, in Chen Fengshi’s eyes, Liu Shuzhi looked like he had lost a whole circle of weight!

He hoped this was an illusion, but he did not dare to continue acting recklessly. He naturally pulled his hand back and asked with a smile, “Not pretending to have amnesia anymore, right?”

“It was my fault, I shouldn’t have misunderstood you.” Liu Shuzhi returned to his previous state, and then urged for more noodles, eating very fast. As he swallowed bowl after bowl, Chen Fengshi noticed that his face and hands seemed to be replenished in a short period of time, growing a circle of flesh and becoming full!

This was simply, seriously unscientific! Whether it was human muscle or fat, there was no way it could be digested and transformed this fast!

What on earth was the red mist!

Chen Fengshi knew that there was no way to figure it out clearly for a while, but he knew that he could drive away and eliminate the red mist, and he was not afraid of the red mist invading him. He had also tested out some details about the red mist. So now, the thing he should do as soon as possible was, of course, to be a hero and save the beauty, to save his goddess Shen Ai!

“I can’t eat anymore right now. You guys sit, I’m going back to school first.” Chen Fengshi stood up to say goodbye. The girl at the next table asked him with a smile, “Want to go back and find Shen Ai?”

Chen Fengshi was secretly startled, thinking that he hadn’t hidden it after all, when he heard the girl continue, “If so, you don’t need to go back. Shen Ai will come over here to hang out at noon. Are you planning to confess?”

Liu Shuzhi, who was eating noodles, looked up at Chen Fengshi at this moment and said with a smile, “You followed Shen Ai when I met her yesterday. You were probably afraid someone would beat you to it, so you couldn’t hold back, right?”

Chen Fengshi secretly breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t hidden well when he followed them yesterday, so it was very normal for someone to have seen him. “We’ll graduate soon, so I have to endure it no matter what. I have other business to find her for. Since she’s coming, I don’t need to go back, and I still need to ask a beauty to help me find out her whereabouts.”