Chapter 48: Holding Hands?
She remembered that the boy had kept his head down, clutching tightly to his mother’s hem. Faced with a room full of scorn, ridicule, and expulsion, he hadn’t uttered a single word; only his tightly pressed lips and rigid spine revealed a stubbornness far beyond his years.
In the end, mother and son had been ruthlessly cast out, vanishing into the torrential rain of the night, never to be mentioned by the Jiang family again.
Yet the man standing before her now radiated a cold, lethal aura. Fine flakes of snow dusted his short, ink-black hair; his brow was sharp, his jawline hard as granite, and every line of his silhouette warned others to keep their distance.
She could not bridge the chasm between the dust-trodden, pitiful child from her memory and this imposing powerhouse before her eyes.
Yet that face—those distinct, unforgettable contours around his eyes and brow—undeniably belonged to the very same person!
“J-Jiang Jue… is that you?” Her voice trembled, filled with incredulous probing.
Jiang Jue acted as though he hadn’t heard a thing. He didn’t spare her so much as a glance, treating her like nothing more than an invisible speck of dirt.
Reaching out, he naturally smoothed the collar of Chu Yang’s coat, which had been pulled askew during the girl’s sudden tackle. His fingertips, calloused from years of wielding steel, brushed lightly against Chu Yang’s jawline with a cool touch.
Chu Yang instinctively pulled his neck back, his chin tingling from the brief contact.
“Let’s move.” Jiang Jue’s voice was colder than the frost clinging to their gear, carrying a heavy, suppressed gloom.
He was plainly in a foul temper. The moment the words left his lips, he turned on his heel and strode away.
Chu Yang keenly picked up on the suffocating pressure rolling off the man. Swallowing the questions bubbling on his tongue, he hunched his shoulders and followed obediently, though a storm of confusion raged in his head: What is wrong with Brother Jiang? He was completely fine a second ago. Why did his mood take a nosedive the moment he saw Jiang Lin?
Beside them, panic seized Jiang Lin.
Over the past few days, she had lived in constant terror—shivering through freezing nights, chewing on chalky emergency rations when hunger became unbearable, watching people get torn apart by monsters, and tasting the bitter sting of betrayal when her companions left her behind.
She was thoroughly sick of this precarious nightmare where her life hung by a thread at others’ whims.
Running into Chu Yang was supposed to be her miraculous turning point. She remembered with absolute certainty how the old Chu Yang had trailed behind her like an obedient shadow, hanging on her every word.
Yet right now, he acted like a complete stranger who couldn’t wait to push her away. A surge of desperate resentment flared in her chest.
Without a second thought, she scrambled up from the snowdrift and lunged forward, reaching out to grab Chu Yang’s arm. “Chu Yang, wait—”
Before her fingers could brush his sleeve, a powerful hand clamped onto her wrist like an iron vise.
Jiang Jue had turned back, placing himself firmly between her and Chu Yang.
His grip wasn’t crushing, yet it carried an inescapable finality, as though the slightest twitch would snap her delicate wrist in two.
He looked down at her with zero emotion. There was no fiery rage in his dark eyes—only a bottomless, chilling indifference, tinged with sharp disgust at the unwanted intrusion.
A bone-deep chill crept from her wrist straight to her core. Jiang Lin shuddered violently, the rest of her plea catching hard in her throat.
The air around them instantly froze into a tense, suffocating deadlock.
Even the usually oblivious Lin Xiao picked up on the bizarre atmosphere. He nudged Su Mubai with an elbow, dropping his voice to a whisper: “Little Bai… do you think the Boss is pissed off?”
Su Mubai watched the silent standoff and understood the dynamic instantly—Jiang Jue’s fierce protectiveness of Chu Yang had never been subtle.
Still, it wasn’t his place to pry into such personal matters, so he merely offered a quiet nod.
Lin Xiao crossed his arms and stroked his chin, plunging straight into his own wild deduction: “So why is he mad? Could it be that he’s jealous because Third Brother has a pretty girl throwing herself at him while he’s still single?”
He paused, adding with an analytical squint, “Or is he worried Third Brother will fall for her tricks? Look at the way her eyes dart around—she definitely has an angle.”
Listening to Lin Xiao’s ridiculous theories, Su Mubai rolled his eyes in fond exasperation. Stepping forward, he addressed the trio to break the silence: “Boss, the snow is picking up and night is falling fast. If we linger, the temperature will drop even lower and the roads will become impassable. We should get moving.”
His calm, steady voice pulled everyone back to the task at hand.
Jiang Jue gave a slight nod and released Jiang Lin’s wrist, dropping it as though discarding a piece of filthy trash.
This time, instead of letting Chu Yang walk on his own, Jiang Jue reached out, took Chu Yang’s hand firmly into his own, and pulled him forward.
His palm was broad and calloused from years of combat, somewhat rough against the skin, yet remarkably warm and solid. It wrapped completely around Chu Yang’s smaller hand.
Chu Yang froze in shock at the sudden contact, stumbling a half-step before hastily catching his rhythm.
He stared down at their intertwined fingers, feeling the steady heat and rough texture of Jiang Jue’s grip, before glancing up at the man’s sharp, impassive profile. His mind was in absolute chaos: What… what is Brother Jiang doing? Holding hands? Brother Jiang actually took the initiative to hold my hand?!
Connecting this with Jiang Lin’s earlier gasp of recognition and the bizarre tension between them, a full-blown soap opera script instantly played out in Chu Yang’s head: Could Brother Jiang and Jiang Lin have been exes before the world ended? Were they torn apart by some wealthy family drama—like the Jiang clan looking down on his status? And now that they’ve reunited in the apocalypse, seeing his ex fling herself at his little brother made him… jealous? Is this his way of staking a claim to get back at her?!
At that thought, an inexplicable, subtle pang twinged in Chu Yang’s chest, like a tiny needle prick. The strange discomfort was fleeting, quickly swept aside by the thrill of his dramatic “revelation.”
He stole another glance at Jiang Jue, then looked back at the pale, tearful Jiang Lin behind them. One cold and fiercely powerful, the other delicate and strikingly gorgeous… From an outsider’s perspective, they really do look like a classic power couple, don’t they? Should I play matchmaker?
Sure, this Jiang Lin seems pretty self-serving, but what if Brother Jiang just has a thing for that type? Who am I to judge someone else’s taste in romance?
Chu Yang scratched his cheek, his face shifting through a dozen conflicted expressions as his thoughts tied themselves into knots.
Lin Xiao and Su Mubai were equally stunned to see Jiang Jue leading Chu Yang away by the hand. Trading a knowing, wordless glance, they kept their mouths shut and fell in step behind them.
Before they could take more than a few strides, however, the gathered refugees recovered from their shock. Desperation overtaking their fear, they swarmed forward, blocking the road.
“Please… sirs!” A man in wire-rimmed glasses who looked like a schoolteacher stepped forward, wringing his red, frostbitten hands in a frantic plea. “Have mercy and take us with you! We… we have nowhere else to turn! In this brutal cold, with monsters roaming everywhere, we won’t survive the night!”
“Yes, please!” A young mother clutching a toddler joined in, tears streaming down her hollow cheeks. “You’re all so strong—you must be Ability Users! Please, we’re begging you, take us with you!” Sensing his mother’s distress, the child in her arms began to wail softly.
“Take us with you!”
“Please don’t leave us behind!”
Cries and pleas erupted in a chaotic chorus.
A dozen survivors—men, women, elderly, and children—all stared at the four armed men with eyes brimming with raw terror, desperate hope, and pleading anticipation.
