The child’s mother, terror written all over her face, grabbed her kid by the little horns, hauled him up, and ran.
The corner of Zhang Xiangyi’s mouth twitched.
Then her gaze caught the blade glinting in the sunlight, and she sighed.
“See? Told you so.”
Xiao Xingzhi spread his hands, but under Zhang Xiangyi’s dead-eyed, you-are-not-getting-away-with-this stare, he silently lowered them again and gave a sniff. That faint, teasing aroma kept drifting up into his nose. So good~ So hungry~
“Zhang Xiangyi, do you have any money on you?”
Xiao Xingzhi asked it out of nowhere.
Her hand reflexively went to her inner pocket. “A little.”
She habitually stashed money in lots of places. She’d spread small amounts across several bank cards too, never much in any one of them, and kept some cash on hand as well.
Ever since her computer was stolen, she carried all her cash on her, terrified of losing even a single cent.
A household this poor couldn’t take any more snow piled on its frost.
“I want chicken-wing rice.” Xiao Xingzhi gazed at the food stalls like a man dying of thirst.
Zhang Xiangyi shot him down without mercy. “Expensive. We’re broke.”
Everything at a service area cost more, no matter what it was. These were things she wouldn’t buy even in normal life, and here, even less so.
As long as she didn’t starve to death, it was fine.
“Aw…”
Zhang Xiangyi pressed her lips together and consoled him. “Hang on to the money for now. We don’t even know when we’ll get out.”
If it came down to it, once the food they’d brought ran out, they’d have no choice but to buy from here. They couldn’t very well let themselves starve.
For the sake of her money, even if they couldn’t find their people, they’d better find the way out first!
The two paupers each took a sip of water, then climbed the steps and walked into the so-called little shopping mall.
Inside, the place was buzzing. Over by the food section it was wall-to-wall people, and the souvenir stalls came in a close second. Everywhere else… a scattered handful here and there, not even worth counting.
After making a full circuit of the mall, the two stood in a corner, each watching the other’s back.
“This doesn’t add up. They should be in here.” Xiao Xingzhi stroked his chin, thinking it over. “It makes sense that the Jiangcheng shelter can’t reach them from in here. One scientist with five special-forces escorts, even inside an instance, that’s not a team that usually runs into trouble.”
After all, they’d been in here this long without a single dangerous incident.
“Or… we get them to come find us instead?”
Some idea or other crossed her mind, and the corners of Zhang Xiangyi’s lips curved up despite herself.
“What are you plotting?”
A bad premonition suddenly welled up in Xiao Xingzhi’s chest.
“What do I do? What do I do…”
Zhang Xiangyi clamped down on Xiao Xingzhi’s sleeve for dear life, her eyes rimmed red and brimming with tears, her lips trembling. “Our baby’s gone! Our baby’s gone…”
“Don’t panic, we’ll go ask the staff to put out an announcement.” Xiao Xingzhi played along, sweeping an arm around her and tucking her into his chest, forcing the corners of his mouth down hard. “He’ll be fine, he’ll be fine…”
“This is all your fault! I told you to watch the kid, and you took him along to go see your mistress?! Oh… no, wait, which number mistress is this?”
Zhang Xiangyi shoved him away and, unable to hold back another second, started screaming at the top of her lungs, an avalanche of anguish seeming to sweep her whole body away. “Xiao Xingzhi! Do you even have a heart?!”
Her voice actually cracked.
Xiao Xingzhi, shoved off-balance, hadn’t even processed it before he saw Zhang Xiangyi in this state. If he didn’t know the real situation, he’d genuinely have believed they had a child together.
But the scene had already come this far… and the crowd of onlookers gathering around them was growing.
He couldn’t be the only one cast as the scum here.
“You’re really going to lecture me?”
Zhang Xiangyi: “?”
Xiao Xingzhi pressed on. “You said you had work, so you made me take the kid out, and then what? You went off mountain-climbing with that homewrecker? How do you have the nerve to come at me?”
“Who is Lin Xiangnan?! When did you two even meet?!”
“None of your business!”
“Zhang Xiangyi! You and I are exactly the same, pot, meet kettle!”
Zhang Xiangyi: “?”
Fine…
“And whose fault is that?!”
“My fault? My fault how? Have I not been good enough to you?”
“You can’t get it up and you blame me for looking elsewhere, do you have any idea what things your mother says about me? Xiao Xingzhi, all these years I’ve been carrying the blame for you, have you ever once thought about me?!”
As she spoke, the heavy cleaver in her hand suddenly found a use. She raised it and swung it straight at Xiao Xingzhi.
Xiao Xingzhi’s eyes went wide: !!!
She’s actually doing it for real?!
Before he could even dodge, the surrounding crowd seemed to clock that this had gone way too far. Someone rushed up to pull them apart, and Zhang Xiangyi was still kicking out at him, still swinging at him.
“Xiao Xingzhi! You ungrateful wretch! You think you’re hot stuff just because your dad’s a provincial governor?!”
“Zhang Xiangyi, you’re the ungrateful one! How much have you gotten off the back of my family’s connections? And now—”
The service area staff arrived in no time, and the two of them were immediately dragged apart and isolated, one to each room.
Staff member: “A married couple’s quarrel never lasts the night. Whatever the problem is, just sit down and talk it out calmly…”
Zhang Xiangyi shot a glare right back. “I have nothing to say to him! What? You sympathize with a cheating man?”
Xiao Xingzhi let out a “Ha.” “What is there to talk about with her? Didn’t you see that shrew? She was about to take a cleaver to me! Talk it out nicely? Talk about what? Or maybe you sympathize with a cheating woman?”
Staff member: “This…”
Staff member: “Wasn’t your child missing? Let’s find the child first.”
Zhang Xiangyi instantly seized the staff member’s hand, the arrogant fire from a moment ago vanishing on the spot, her expression panicked, tears spilling from her flushed, reddened eyes. “Yes, yes, the baby! The announcement? Where’s the PA system?”
And without giving the staff a chance to respond, she bolted out.
Over on the other side—
Staff member: “This…”
Staff member: “Wasn’t your child missing? Let’s find the child first.”
Xiao Xingzhi started, then immediately scrambled up and headed for the door. “Right, the kid! It’s all that shrew’s fault! If it weren’t for her—”
“Shrew?”
Caught off guard by Zhang Xiangyi’s smiling gaze, Xiao Xingzhi instinctively took a step back, but the instant the staff member came chasing out behind her, he hardened right up. “Yeah! What about it?”
“Heh…”
Even knowing it was all an act, Xiao Xingzhi still gave a full-body shudder, a tremor creeping into his voice. “Let’s find the kid first!”
Zhang Xiangyi coldly swept her eyes over Xiao Xingzhi, her gaze turning frosty, then settled it on the staff member beside her. “Lead the way.”
“Okay… okay…”
The staff member walked stiffly out in front.
“What’s the child’s name?”
“Zhang Zhuyu.”
“Xiao Xiangli.”
The two of them whipped around to stare at each other, neither had expected the other to speak just then.
The staff member studied them both, looking left, looking right. The atmosphere went a touch strange.
“Uh… hahaha, she’s an only child, so the older generation wanted the family line carried on and gave him the Zhang surname. My family didn’t agree either, so he ended up with two names.” Xiao Xingzhi flailed his arms and legs about, then scratched his head in awkward embarrassment.
Staff member: “So which one do I announce?”
This time Zhang Xiangyi kept her mouth shut. Xiao Xingzhi confirmed it out of the corner of his eye a few times before saying, “Zhang Zhuyu.”
She gets the Zhang surname, and zhuyu, “wishing him a safe and sound life.”
The staff member quickly spoke into the microphone. “Little Zhang Zhuyu, little Zhang Zhuyu…”
After repeating it three times, the staff member finally turned to look at the two of them, then said, with some complicated feeling, “Whatever’s going on between you two, in front of the child… it’s best not to act like you did just now. Kids can be left with real psychological scars.”
“Understood…”
Seeing the two of them suddenly go so humble, nothing like the cleaver-swinging state from before, the staff member’s nerve grew a little. “Giving the child a name like that, you can tell the two of you must have loved each other very much before…”
Zhang Xiangyi closed her eyes.
Xiao Xingzhi snuck a glance. Loved each other?
Xiao Xiangli?
Why that name?
Xiangli?
Then if they had kids in the future, what exactly would they be called?
No, wait, who said there could only be one?
One named Zhang Zhuyu, one named Xiao Xiangli.
Mm.
Xiao Xingzhi sank into his own little world and nodded in satisfaction.
Zhang Xiangyi waved a hand in front of his face for a good while, and when he still didn’t snap out of it, she rose onto her tiptoes and flicked him square on the forehead.
“What was that for?”
Xiao Xingzhi clutched his forehead, his wounded look enough to drown a person.
“I didn’t even use any force.”
So drop the act.
Xiao Xingzhi pouted, lowered his hand, pulled over a chair and sat Zhang Xiangyi down, then sat beside her. “Why did you pick the name Xiangli?”
“You really don’t know?”
Xiao Xingzhi: “?” Was he supposed to know?
“You talk too much.”
Xiao Xingzhi tilted his head. So…? What did that have to do with anything?
“Why’s it so noisy out there?”
In a pitch-black space without a sliver of light, a gap suddenly opened up. Down from above came a tall, long-legged man, armored head to toe and bundled up tight. Spotting his captain, he immediately reported, “Some couple lost their kid and got into a fight, which then dredged up this whole legendary scene of both sides cheating and coming to blows, hey, you have no idea, that—”
“It’s a moment like this and you’ve still got the energy to gossip?” Another man, sitting in the corner with an empty food wrapper crumpled in his hand, scoffed. “We’ve been stuck in here two months already. Keep this up and we’ll all die in this place.”
Their food had run out long ago. For a while now they’d survived on whatever cash the few of them had pooled together to buy the cheapest, most filling food they could find outside. Now even the money was gone, leaving only wild grass to eat.
But what wild grass could a service area possibly have?
The moment they tried to take someone away, or go work a job for money, or ask about anything, these “people” would mutate.
Into zombies. And upgraded versions, at that.
A service-area zombie had charged them once, if they hadn’t been strong enough, they’d have died here long ago.
“The country’s response wouldn’t be this slow. We can’t reach them, so they’ll definitely send people. It might be late, but not this late.” The man with a scar across his brow stayed silent a moment. “Conserve your strength. We’ll look for another chance to break out before long.”
“There’s something wrong with how time flows in here.”
The white-haired old man seated in the middle of the group suddenly spoke up. “If we can’t find the crux of this place, no amount of breaking out will get us free. The ‘people’ in here will block us, just like the last few times.”
“Academician Xu, do you have any good suggestions?”
“Wait! I wasn’t finished talking!”
The man who’d come in from outside, seeing everyone had completely overlooked him, immediately piped up. “I think someone’s come in to rescue us.”
The man with the scar over his brow shot back at once, “Be specific.”
“Don’t panic, Captain.”
“You—”
The group sighed. They knew his temperament, all they could do was bear with it.
“Just now they mentioned Lin Xiangnan.”
“Mayor Lin!”
“Probably. They said the man who’d cheated was Lin Xiangnan’s son. But as I recall, the mayor’s son isn’t married, much less has a kid, so…”
“So… how old is this couple? Just the two of them?”
The man stroked the wooden rifle in his hands. “Don’t know how many of them there are. But those two… they’re pretty young…”
Especially that girl. Cute-looking, and even when she got angry she warmed your heart somehow. So sweet!