Chapter 34: The Wild Grass Field
“Are you really not planning to give me an explanation?” Kevin slung his backpack over his shoulders, matching Fang Yue’s pace.
“I can only explain once we find him. I’m still not entirely certain right now either,” Fang Yue said, walking ahead without turning his head.
They followed the river embankment, walking downstream along the direction of the current. Kevin had completely lost his sense of direction; he looked around in all directions as he walked. The moonlight was dim, with only the flowing water occasionally reflecting a glint of silver brightness. Other than that, everything was just the dark, pitch-black silt of the riverbank.
They stumbled along with uneven footsteps for a while before Fang Yue suddenly halted.
He tilted his head slightly, remaining completely still, as if sensing something.
Kevin couldn’t help but whisper, “What is it?”
There seemed to be something in the wind.
Fang Yue raised a finger and flicked it gently in front of his eyes. From Kevin’s perspective, it looked as though he were rubbing his eye, but he wasn’t—his finger was still two centimeters away from his eye.
It was an ethereal, thread-like strand of fine silk. Unlike a sticky spiderweb, it was smoother and more elastic.
It brushed lightly against Fang Yue’s eyelashes, causing them to quiver slightly. Then it drifted off as if nothing had happened, before abruptly looping back around to brush against his eyelashes once more, as if intentionally teasing him.
Fang Yue pinched it slowly with his fingers, not daring to apply too much force. Yet it was remarkably bold, wrapping around the tip of his index finger several times before sliding unhurriedly toward the base of his finger. As if finding that a bit boring, it hesitantly wrapped around his middle finger, touching his protruding knuckle and rounded fingernail.
Fang Yue rubbed its silky body gently with the pad of his finger.
“Not far now.”
“What? How do you know?” Kevin was still utterly baffled. It was his first time feeling that Fang Yue was acting a bit superstitious and mysterious.
“By instinct,” Fang Yue said, uttering the very first intuitionist phrase of his life.
He had always been an empiricist and a realist. He relied on rationality, logic, and objective experience to analyze and judge, rarely relying on feeling to make any decision.
This time, however, he chose to trust his feelings.
—
They continued along the river embankment, walking for a long time before finally reaching the end of the artificial embankment.
Unfolding before their eyes was a vast, gently sloping riverbed.
At this moment, the flowing water felt the expansive river channel and stretched out completely, rushing forward more rapidly and recklessly. The clear, roaring sound of the water was their joyful shout.
The dark clouds overhead gradually dispersed, revealing a clear crescent moon. Higher up on the riverbed, some exposed water plants held up crystal-clear, translucent water droplets. As the cold moonlight reflected upon them, they turned into exquisite, tiny gemstones.
The wind paused for a moment, and the body heat lingering on them lasted a bit longer.
Fang Yue came to a halt as well—that fine silk thread rested in his palm, no longer stirring, as if quietly waiting for something.
He looked around. On this open, barren beach by the river, only he and Kevin were present. Beneath their feet lay sticky, wet earth, while a patch of calf-high wild grass stood not far off.
The wild grass stood stiff and prickly, dense yet already turned a withered yellow. Summer had not bestowed any vitality upon them, much like that scorched, barren land where he had previously found Chi Xiaoxian.
Fang Yue led Kevin into the wild grass field. Finding a rock, he padded it with his backpack, sat down, and began cleaning off the mud and grit stuck to his shoes.
Kevin couldn’t resist asking, “Is he here?”
“We wait here.”
After finishing his cleaning, Fang Yue closed his eyes slowly, intending to rest his mind for a bit.
Kevin looked at him suspiciously, thinking to himself that this guy was acting more and more like a charlatan. If they could actually wait and find Chi Xiaoxian in this godforsaken place, he’d do a handstand dance.
While walking earlier, the physical exertion had brought some warmth, but sitting down now, he began to feel cold again.
His clothes hadn’t dried after wearing them for so long, so Kevin simply stripped off his damp garments and spread them over the grass to let the wind blow through them.
Looking at the weeds everywhere, a flash of inspiration struck him: “Can we start a fire? Will it attract zombies?”
“Go ahead and start it. The zombies will track us down once they smell our scent anyway; starting a fire makes no difference.”
“…You really know how to comfort people.”
“Not comforting, just stating facts.”
“Haha, you’re not very old, kid, but you talk like an old-timer. It’s going to be hard for you to make friends like this, and dating might be tough too. Young girls will find it hard to keep a conversation going with you. What’s the point of just having good looks…”
While muttering continuously under his breath, Kevin snapped two branches off a withered tree. He hollowed out a hole in the middle of the thicker branch, inserted the other, and rubbed his hands rapidly, mimicking the friction-based fire-starting technique from TV.
After a long while, the fire hadn’t started, but he was drenched in sweat, and a layer of skin was nearly rubbed off his palm, stinging with a burning pain. He couldn’t help muttering, “Fuck, why is wilderness survival so hard? I can’t even start a fire.”
Fang Yue opened his eyes, jumped down from the rock, and unearthed the stun gun from his bag.
Seeing him like this, Kevin took two steps back, asking nervously, “What are you doing? Just because I can’t start a fire doesn’t mean you have to shock me, right?”
“If you talk too much nonsense, I might consider shocking you,” Fang Yue looked at him indifferently.
“.”
“Keep rubbing the stick.”
“Ah?”
Kevin couldn’t figure out why he, a man in his thirties, was being ordered around so smoothly by a kid in his early twenties.
Kevin had no choice but to rub the stick with force again. Before long, a faint plume of smoke rose from the wood shavings, and Fang Yue pressed the stun gun right against it.
A cluster of sparks ignited into a flame.
“A stun gun can be used as a lighter?” Kevin stood flabbergasted.
“The principle is somewhat similar,” Fang Yue said succinctly. “Wood dust is naturally flammable; it catches fire upon contact with an electrical spark. It’s not using heat from friction.”
Having said that, he gathered some wild grass and laid it over the flame to burn. The fire grew higher and higher, steadily illuminating a patch of the grass field.
“Go clear the grass around us—clear a ring so a wildfire doesn’t burn down this entire area later.”
“Fine, fine, you’re the leader.”
Kevin let out a tut and stood up. Following Fang Yue’s instructions, he pulled all the grass within a two-meter radius completely bare, then piled it by his feet to keep feeding the fire.
The warmth brought by the fire was far too captivating. The two propped their clothes up with branches, flipping them back and forth, and they dried in no time. Fang Yue even wrung out Chi Xiaoxian’s SpongeBob bedsheet, hanging it up to dry as well.
Although both knew this barren land wasn’t particularly safe, warmth instinctively brought a wave of contentment.
Kevin couldn’t hold out much longer. After being busy for most of the night, waves of drowsiness surged over him. Sitting against a wooden post for a bit, his eyelids grew heavy, and he quickly drifted off to sleep, his head nodding up and down like a chicken pecking at rice.
—
Fang Yue lowered his eyes, gazing silently at the fire. The firelight reflected in his clear, pitch-black eyes, creating a contradictory sense of intense heat blending with cold serenity.
The fine silk thread he had been gently rubbing in his palm seemed to sense the warmth. It grew active in his palm, taking a patrol-like stroll around his hand before wrapping around his wrist, eventually settling into a peculiar bracelet shape.
Fang Yue let that hand hang down, using his other hand to toss a bit of dry grass into the fire from time to time.
Only one thing seemed left in the universe—waiting.
After a while, the wind picked up. The wind stirred the wild grass into gentle sways, and the flames danced dramatically like a circus clown.
His wrist twitched with an itchy sensation once more. Fang Yue reached out instinctively to touch it, only to find the fine silk thread gone.
Blow away by the wind?
It was so light and transparent that even if it blew away, he would have no way of finding it again.
Suddenly, a faint sound came from behind him.
It was rustling and fine, like the crunch of footsteps treading on wild grass and withered leaves—cautious, hesitant, pausing and stopping by turns.
Across the orange firelight, Fang Yue saw a hazy figure standing in a patch of grass not far away.
The figure paused in place for a moment, as if searching for something. Finally, the figure discovered the firelight and walked slowly toward this direction.
Fang Yue gradually made out those gray eyes.
Yet those eyes held no joy or delight of reunion; they reflected only the pale, hazy radiance of the moonlight, bearing a trace of unfocused daze as they stared blankly at a patch of empty space in the wilderness.
It was as if he didn’t recognize the person before him, nor understood why he had arrived here…
The wind blew his silver hair, obscuring those eyes from time to time, crisscrossing and severing his line of sight, making him appear increasingly distant.
“You…” Fang Yue hesitated to speak.
He seemed startled by the voice. His gaze flickered and swayed for a long while before finally focusing on Fang Yue.
He blinked as if snapping out of a dream. In the next second, however, his brain seemed forcibly shut down by someone pressing a power button, and his vision went completely black.
—
Kevin was frozen awake.
Day was just breaking, the morning light faint, with a thin layer of mist floating over the wild field. Clad in only his shirt, his hands and feet had long turned icy as iron, so frozen he temporarily lost all sensation.
Rubbing his eyes, he scrambled up to take a look, only to find Fang Yue gone, leaving behind only a pile of ashes from the extinguished fire where he had been sitting earlier.
Feeling a surge of tension in his heart, he was just about to call out Fang Yue’s name when he heard a bit of rustling movement not far away.
Tiptoeing toward that direction, he discovered Fang Yue sitting against a withered tree.
Their eyes met across the space, and Fang Yue raised an index finger to his lips, signaling him to keep quiet.
Kevin walked over quietly and caught sight of Chi Xiaoxian lying across Fang Yue’s lap, his mouth agape in shock.
Chi Xiaoxian was wrapped in the bedsheet, his body curled up, eyes tightly closed, his long, thick eyelashes completely unfluttering, seemingly in a deep sleep.
His cheeks were somewhat pale, and his naturally faint lip color now looked like a thin sheet of rice paper—appearing completely drained of stamina, having fallen asleep only after reaching absolute exhaustion.
Fang Yue’s arm was gathered behind his back to prevent him from sliding down, but to an outsider, it looked remarkably like he was holding him close, evoking an aura of seamless intimacy.
Kevin moved his mouth silently, wanting to ask something using lip-reading, yet not knowing where to begin.
Fang Yue seemed to have anticipated something right from the start, while he remained completely in the dark, unable to figure out the situation. Since Chi Xiaoxian was back, however, it wouldn’t be too late to ask once he woke up.
Kevin stood for a moment, sensing that an invisible barrier seemed to have formed around Fang Yue and Chi Xiaoxian. Within this barrier lay a subtle atmosphere, as if a warm filter had been applied to the surrounding scenery, making even the desolate, stiff weeds look considerably softer.
He didn’t know the details of anything else; he only knew this circle excluded him, making him feel inexplicably like a third wheel.
Kevin stood there stupidly for a long while before scratching his head and walking away.
The weather was far too cold, especially since the sun hadn’t fully risen yet; the chill in the air grew as rampant as the wild grass everywhere. Returning to where he had been lying earlier, he reignited the fire, intending to toast a slice of bread to eat something warm.
—
Chi Xiaoxian showed no signs of waking up on this end.
Fang Yue felt his body was very cold. A normal human body temperature should be around thirty-six or thirty-seven degrees, whereas Chi Xiaoxian’s seemed to be two degrees lower.
Such a body temperature was definitely abnormal. Fang Yue once thought he was suffering from hypothermia again, so he had no choice but to warm him with his own body heat—placing him on his lap, bending down to warm him with the heat from his chest. Yet the effect was minimal; after most of the night passed, Chi Xiaoxian’s body temperature still hadn’t risen to a normal level.
Fortunately, however, his breathing remained steady. Although his body temperature hadn’t risen to a normal value, he displayed no symptoms of hypothermia either.
It was just that while his breathing was steady, it was exceptionally heavy—resembling a deeper state of coma rather than sleep.
Fang Yue knew that at this moment, he had no other recourse but to wait.
What he hadn’t told Kevin was that Chi Xiaoxian had actually woken up once during the night.
Unsure whether it was a nightmare or an anomaly in his comatose body, Chi Xiaoxian’s body had twitched violently, like a young deer in the jungle leaping up at the sound of the wind, or a fledgling on a treetop startled into fluttering its wings.
Having stayed awake all night, Fang Yue woke up instantly. He instinctively tightened his grip around Chi Xiaoxian, fearing he would slide off his lap. Then he pulled back the bedsheet that had been gathered up to Chi Xiaoxian’s nose to check his complexion.
Almost simultaneously, Chi Xiaoxian opened his eyes slightly.
His eyelids were half-raised, his eyes moist, carrying a hazy mist of confusion, to the point where Fang Yue couldn’t be sure if he was looking at him.
That gaze flickered subtly for a long time—deep, shallow, dark, and ambiguous, like deep, murky water beneath a lake surface.
Fang Yue wanted to determine whether he was lucid, formulating a question in his heart.
“What did you do to me… at the bottom of the river?”
After a long pause, Fang Yue heard his own voice appear in the wind of the open field—light, careful, somewhat surreal, as if fearing he might startle Chi Xiaoxian.
Chi Xiaoxian gave no response for a long time. That distant gaze rested faintly upon him.
Just as Fang Yue thought his question would go unanswered and be swallowed by the wild wind, Chi Xiaoxian’s mouth began mumbling gently, as if wanting to say something.
Assuming Chi Xiaoxian was truly lucid this time, Fang Yue bent down to lean in close and listen.
Yet Chi Xiaoxian’s volume was extremely faint, consisting only of gas colliding and rubbing within his throat.
Like a butterfly silently fluttering its wings, the tiny airflow merely caused the side of his ear to itch slightly; he couldn’t make out a single word.
Fang Yue gave up. Just as he was about to straighten his body, his collar was gently hooked by a hand, the fingertips carrying a touch of chill, like snow falling upon his collarbone.
“What’s…”
Before his question could be asked, something cool and soft pressed against his lips.
Like a flower petal dampened by rain, brushing lightly across his lips, then drifting softly away.
Pure and natural, void of lust, resembling the simplest contact like touching fingertips.
Fang Yue’s brain went blank for two seconds.
By the time he snapped back to his senses, Chi Xiaoxian dropped his hand limply as if exhausting his final trace of power, closed his eyelids slowly, and sank into a deep slumber once more.
Fang Yue remained silent for a long time.
Managing to recover his normal heart rate with difficulty, he began pondering seriously the meaning behind Chi Xiaoxian’s gesture just now.
This movement came right after his question…
As he was thinking, he suddenly felt an itchy sensation on his neck. Raising his hand to touch it gently, his fingers caught that strand of fine silk once more.
Different from before, the thread seemed slightly thicker now, its tactile sensation against his skin far more distinct.
It tickled his neck, appearing to greet him like an old friend, then traveled unceremoniously upward along his skin.
Finally, it came to a stop at Fang Yue’s jawline.
Extending its transparent, delicate tentacles, it hesitated for a second, then touched Fang Yue’s lips with extreme caution as well.
Fang Yue: “…?”
