“No.” Xie Yi answered, having completely forgotten the high-end complex he’d rented earlier.
Ye Yi was still thinking about how to drive the man out, and hearing he had no place to stay, she felt awkward speaking up. After a pause, she asked, “Then what do you plan to do?”
“I see your place is pretty big, you can’t fill this much space living alone. Want to share the rent?” Xie Yi looked at the girl in the firelight and made his proposal.
With him around, it beat a girl fighting alone. In the next map, they might not necessarily meet again.
“My place is a bit pricey.” Ye Yi tried to scare him off with a high price. Really, she’d kindly brought him home, and now her place had been marked as a target.
She lived just fine on her own. After a moment’s thought, she added, “Besides, look at my place, empty, nothing here at all.”
Everything was in the bedroom and the system Backpack, so of course out here was empty, with nothing at all.
“Name your price.”
Ye Yi figured that after Xie Yi’s hospital trip yesterday, he probably didn’t have much money left, so she tentatively quoted, “600 a month?”
Even though his wallet had held a lot, there probably wasn’t much left now. There were plenty of places outside cheaper than this, he surely wouldn’t stay.
Xie Yi said nothing. He simply took out his wallet, pulled out 1,200, set it on the coffee table, and pushed it to the stunned girl, saying cheerfully, “New roommate, happy renting. Please look after me for the next twenty-five days.”
“How do you have this much money?” Ye Yi stared in disbelief at the thick stack on the coffee table, and the thought in her mind blurted out: “You didn’t rob someone, did you?”
Her body instinctively edged back, ready to bolt at any moment.
Watching Ye Yi’s whole reaction, Xie Yi smiled and assured her, “Relax, I’m a law-abiding citizen. I don’t do sneaky, thieving things.”
“How do you prove it?” Ye Yi didn’t believe him, would a bad person admit to being bad? She instantly regretted going soft last night and bringing him home.
Quietly she slid a hand behind her back, ready to strike first at the slightest sign of trouble.
“Random Teammates can’t harm each other. If you don’t believe me, try slashing me with a knife.” Xie Yi told her. From her questions, he could tell she was a newbie.
Anyone who’d been into a map a few times would know this rule.
Ye Yi didn’t believe him. She went to the kitchen, took a knife, and slashed at Xie Yi’s outstretched arm, and nothing happened.
She put more force into it and tried again. Still no reaction. Only then did she relax.
Knock, knock, suddenly there was a knock at the door.
Holding the knife, Ye Yi and Xie Yi exchanged a glance and, in wordless accord, walked to the door. Ye Yi looked out the peephole and shook her head at Xie Yi.
The person knocking, realizing no one had answered after all this time, knocked harder and called out impatiently, “Anyone home? The complex is organizing everyone to shovel snow, open up.”
Xie Yi waved Ye Yi back, signaling her to retreat, then stood at the door, opened the wooden door a crack, and, blocking the doorway, asked, “Uncle, what is it?”
“The outside of the complex is buried in snow, can’t get out. I’m here on behalf of property management to say each household needs to send one person out to shovel snow. How many people in your household?” The knocking man tilted his head to peer inside as he asked.
He’d knocked here forever and only now had the door opened.
Xie Yi shifted his body to block the man’s line of sight and answered, “Three people. What time do we gather?”
“Gather on the first floor in half an hour, get yourselves ready.” The knocking man smiled, gave the gathering time, and hurried off toward the stairwell to keep knocking on the next household’s door.
“We have to shovel snow?” Having heard their exchange, Ye Yi confirmed with Xie Yi, who was shutting the door.
“Mm. I’ll go in a bit.”
“You’ve still got a wound, can you manage?” Thinking of Xie Yi’s wounds, she didn’t even know who’d inflicted them—Ye Yi gritted her teeth. “I’d better go.”
It was just shoveling snow, wasn’t it? She could do it.
“This little wound won’t kill me. Just stay home and relax.” Xie Yi refused. He’d suffered worse wounds than this before and was still living just fine. Shoveling snow, it wouldn’t kill anyone.
“No. Then we’ll go shovel snow together.” Ye Yi shook her head, refusing. A healthy, bouncing person staying home while sending an injured man out to shovel snow in weather this cold, she couldn’t do a thing like that.
Besides, this was the place she’d rented, she had no reason to shirk. It was also a good chance to go out and scope out the situation.
She went back to the room, took out a bag of hand warmers, returned to the living room, tore open the packaging, counted out five, and handed them to Xie Yi.
Seated on the sofa, Xie Yi looked up at the hand warmers held out in front of him and shook his head in refusal. “I don’t think I need these.”
A grown man like him didn’t need to stick on hand warmers.
“It’s minus 30°C outside right now. You think going out in just a down jacket will keep you warm?” Ye Yi ignored his refusal, raised her hand, and slapped the warmers into his palm.
She stuck 5 warmers onto herself, front, back, left, right, then dug out four plastic bags, slipped them over her feet and tied them tight, tore open the soles, and used tape to press the torn bags snugly around the shoes, leaving the soles exposed. Once both shoes were done, she handed the remaining two plastic bags and the tape to Xie Yi, signaling him to do his shoes too.
Watching Ye Yi’s operation, Xie Yi was baffled and asked, “What’s this for?”
Wearing her shoes, Ye Yi took a few steps around the living room to test the feel, and, hearing Xie Yi’s question, answered, “Snow protection!”
There was so much snow outside, and she only had this one pair of shoes. Without some protection, would they still be wearable when she got back?
Xie Yi was stunned by the answer. You could do that? Didn’t everyone just wear their shoes straight out? Although a bit skeptical, he obediently followed Ye Yi’s method and slipped the plastic bags over his shoes.
Half an hour flew by. Ye Yi stood at the door listening to the footsteps in the stairwell, and once no more footsteps came from above, she put out the fire in the fire basin, grabbed the keys, and called Xie Yi to head down.
Watching Ye Yi descend the stairs step by step ahead of him, Xie Yi suddenly said, “In a bit, just stay behind me, don’t run off. It’s not safe out there.”
The natives were probably better off, they weren’t in mortal danger, at most losing some property. But people like them who entered maps wouldn’t get such considerate treatment from those types.
Once they marked you as a target, no one knew what would happen.
Ye Yi recalled the scene that night of a group surrounding one person, and nodded gravely.
Not everyone had 900 yuan of starting capital to rent a place and buy supplies. Most people had entered the town with nothing at all. With no money, how had they survived until now? People with a bottom line might earn money with their own two hands, but those without one would steal and rob, and, meeting their own kind, killing and looting wasn’t out of the question either.
She pulled the down jacket’s hood over her head to hide her face a bit, pretended to take the fruit knife from her pocket, and handed it to Xie Yi. “Here.”
She still had her gun, which could hold off danger in a pinch. Xie Yi had nothing, bare-handed, would he even be able to hold out if trouble came?
Xie Yi froze for a moment, then pushed the fruit knife back. “No need, I’ve got this.” With that, a metal dagger materialized in his palm.
Looking at the dagger, Ye Yi guessed: could his ability be daggers? But it wasn’t easy to just ask what his ability was, so she took the fruit knife back and pretended to hide it in her clothes.
Soon they reached the first-floor lobby. Before they’d even left the stairwell, they heard all manner of clamorous voices from the entrance.
Ye Yi and Xie Yi quietly moved to the very back, pricking up their ears to hear what everyone was saying.
“My household isn’t even going out, why should we have to shovel snow?”
“Liu Er, don’t I know you, a man who loves to slack off. If you’ve got the guts, stay home and never go out, starve yourself to death, you lazy thing.”
“This is a society of laws. I go out whenever I want, what business is it of yours? Mind less of other people’s affairs.”
After listening a while, Ye Yi didn’t want to hear any more. All this squabbling over such a small thing. The snow wasn’t heavy yet, shovel it and you could still get out. Once it fell heavier later, you couldn’t shovel it even if you wanted to.
The man who’d gone up to call them down climbed onto a table in the lobby and shouted, “Everyone, quiet down and listen to me.”
The crowd hushed, ready to hear what he’d say.
“You all heard the alarm the drone broadcast this morning. The snow’s stopped outside now. If we don’t take this chance to shovel it away and go out to buy some food to stockpile, then once it keeps snowing, we won’t be able to get out at all. Think about it: is what you’ve got at home enough to feed your whole family? Do you want to go hungry?”
“Anyone who doesn’t want to shovel snow can go back, but getting out later will be hard.”
The moment this veiled threat was out, the people who’d just been clamoring against shoveling muttered a few words with their heads down and fell silent. Soon, under the man’s leadership, everyone was assigned zones and the snow-shoveling began.
Ye Yi followed behind Xie Yi to their assigned zone, picked up the bucket at the door, scooped it full of snow, piled it to one side, and bent back and forth for a long while, yet had shoveled only a tiny bit of snow.
Shoveling snow this way was truly too inefficient. Ye Yi rubbed her waist. Even a normal person like her could barely stand it, she didn’t know how Xie Yi’s wound was faring.
She turned to look at Xie Yi shoveling, then looked down at the white snow level with her calves, and her mind suddenly turned: “Snow, can it be gathered?”
Why not give it a try?
She quietly crouched, put her hand on the snow. “A snowdrift detected. Gather?”
It really could be gathered. She silently thought, “Gather.”
An empty patch of ground, one meter by one meter, immediately opened up ahead of her, all the snow on it vanishing. Ye Yi stared blankly at the white glowing mass on the ground, that was far too big a commotion!
Xie Yi turned just in time to catch this. He quickly pulled Ye Yi down into a crouch, pretending to dig snow, and said in a low voice, “Hurry and put that away.”
The tug snapped Ye Yi out of it. She reached out, picked up the glowing mass on the ground, and, without even looking, tossed it into the system Backpack.
Careless. With this many people, it wouldn’t do to be spotted by someone else.
“That’s your ability.” Xie Yi asked quietly while shoveling.
A space ability?
“Something like that.” The exposed Ye Yi answered vaguely. She hadn’t actually said what her ability was, let him guess.
“What’s your ability?” Ye Yi asked, looking at Xie Yi curiously. Her ability had been discovered, she wondered what his was.
“Controlling metal?” Xie Yi wasn’t quite sure either, he was still only at the early stage of mastering his ability.
“Controlling metal, how do you control it?” Aside from seeing Brother Li conjure a gun from his palm when she’d first arrived, Ye Yi hadn’t seen anyone else’s ability.
Xie Yi took out the metal dagger from before and slowly controlled it, shaping it into a little metal dog.
Ye Yi said enviously, “Wow, amazing.”
Her thoughts jumped to the kang she’d wanted earlier. There was no earth, but she didn’t know whether metal could be used to make one. After thinking it over, she asked, “Can you turn metal into a hollow tube?”