Chapter 39
Xia Chenxi looked away and half-covered his face.
“How was your first day of training? Are you adapting well?”
“Pretty good.” Ye Xuan stood up. “Let’s talk while walking. Today was even more exciting than I imagined yesterday.”
The two walked out of the venue.
Ye Xuan told Xia Chenxi everything that had happened from morning to night: the enthusiastic teammates, Team C looking for trouble, the domineering team leader.
And also the gift his team leader had given him.
Ye Xuan took out the short blade and showed it off in front of Xia Chenxi. He drew a few strokes through the air and asked, “Cool, right?”
Childish, Xia Chenxi said in his heart.
“You like it that much?”
Ye Xuan carefully put the short blade away.
“Of course. This is the first gift I received after becoming an ability user, and Brother Feng gave it to me.”
Xia Chenxi looked at Ye Xuan with a smile at the corner of his mouth, no one knew what he was thinking.
“Oh, right. I’m going out on a mission tomorrow. Brother Feng said it isn’t dangerous.”
“Mm. Your Team B can be considered the most relaxed team. The difficult missions won’t fall to you, and the miscellaneous work won’t be your turn either. So, what is your mission tomorrow?”
Brother Feng had only told him there was a mission tomorrow. He had not said what kind of mission it was!
Speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao arrives. Ye Xuan’s wristband dinged.
Ye Xuan looked and saw that it was a message from Brother Feng.
Luo Feng: I was too busy today and forgot to tell you about tomorrow’s mission. I’ll send the mission to you. Remember to accept it.
Ye Xuan opened his inbox and saw a mission notification. He tapped it open.
Team B Collective Mission
Participants: 5
Time: 9:00
Assist transport workers with ore transportation.
Reward: 500 virtual funds, 10 merit points
Accept / Decline
Ye Xuan tapped accept.
Xia Chenxi leaned closer to Ye Xuan and looked at the message with him.
“Ore transport routes are usually built away from zombie gathering areas. If nothing unexpected happens, you won’t even encounter zombies after a few trips. For a newcomer, this kind of mission is basically a free reward. Your team leader treats you pretty well.”
Ye Xuan agreed with Xia Chenxi. “He’s not only good to me. He’s good to every team member.”
“You’ve only met him on the first day, and you already know what kind of person he is?” Xia Chenxi naturally placed his hand on Ye Xuan’s shoulder. “Your team leader does have a good reputation, but knowing someone’s face doesn’t mean knowing their heart. It’s only the first day. How dare you make that conclusion?”
Ye Xuan said firmly and certainly, “Some people, after being with them for just a few minutes, you can tell they’re good people. Our team leader must be a good person.”
“But there are still many bad people in the world.” Like Quan Guanxi, who was bad on the surface. Even more terrifying were the countless bad people in this world who hid evil intentions behind their faces.
“What about me?” Xia Chenxi’s hand on Ye Xuan’s right shoulder quietly tightened. “When you first met me, did you think I was a good person or a bad person?”
Ye Xuan narrowed his eyes and studied him for a while, then failed to keep a straight face.
“I can’t lie to you.”
Xia Chenxi: “?”
“What does that mean?”
“When I first met you, you acted really strangely, so I had no particular feeling toward you.”
Xia Chenxi’s hand slipped from Ye Xuan’s right shoulder. He murmured, “Not a good person or a bad person, but no feeling?”
That hurt even more than hearing “bad person.”
Ye Xuan waved a hand in front of Xia Chenxi. “Hey, Xia Chenxi, what’s wrong?”
Xia Chenxi forced a smile. “Nothing. I was just surprised by that answer.”
Ye Xuan breathed a sigh of relief and complained a little, “Do you know you really acted strangely? When I greeted you, you didn’t respond at all. You ignored me. You never sent messages in the dorm group, and whenever we invited you to weekend gatherings, you never went.”
Xia Chenxi noticed something was wrong.
“You greeted me? When?”
Ye Xuan tilted his head slightly. “Are you pretending to have amnesia now?”
Xia Chenxi honestly shook his head. “I really don’t have any memory of this so-called greeting.”
He did not look like he was pretending, which made Ye Xuan start doubting himself too. He searched his mind for that memory and found where things had gone wrong.
“During military training, in the dorm hallway, and at the cafeteria. But you always had a straight face, like you were going to beat up anyone who came near you, so I stood pretty far away when I greeted you.”
Hearing Ye Xuan say that, Xia Chenxi vaguely recalled a few fragments. Someone had always been standing in the distance with one hand around waist level, doing who knew what. He was slightly nearsighted and could not see clearly, so he thought that person was exchanging signals with someone else. He was not interested in strangers’ business, so he had walked away directly.
So that person had been Ye Xuan.
And Ye Xuan had actually been greeting him.
The corners of Xia Chenxi’s mouth lifted, rising higher and higher. He had thought Ye Xuan always looked serious around him because he looked too fierce and Ye Xuan hated him.
So there had been a misunderstanding between them.
Ye Xuan watched from the side, completely confused. Why was Xia Chenxi suddenly smiling foolishly for no reason? That smile made his heart feel uneasy.
Xia Chenxi came back to himself and met Ye Xuan’s puzzled gaze. He coughed lightly. “I have mild nearsightedness. You stood too far away, and I didn’t look carefully. I thought you were greeting someone else. Usually, I studied in the library and didn’t look at my phone much. Besides, all your topics were about games, so I couldn’t join in. As for weekend gatherings, I had to work part-time. I didn’t have time to go.”
So that was the truth.
The knot that had always stayed tangled in Ye Xuan’s heart had been his misunderstanding of Xia Chenxi.
“Are you still angry? If you are, then I’ll apologize.”
It had been his misunderstanding of Xia Chenxi. Xia Chenxi did not need to apologize to him at all.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. What are you apologizing to me for?”
The two looked at each other and could not help laughing. The dusk stretched their shadows long, as if making up for the regret they had left behind in university.
“Xia Chenxi, you’re a good person. You are now, and you will be in the future too.”
Xia Chenxi bent down and looked Ye Xuan in the eyes.
“Then stop thinking that troubling me is such a difficult thing.”
After the two returned to the dorm, Ye Xuan insisted on entering the kitchen again to show off his skills.
“How about… next time?”
Xia Chenxi expressed deep concern toward Ye Xuan, who was wearing his apron and looking full of confidence.
The scene of Ye Xuan killing the fish last time was still vivid in his mind.
Ye Xuan held a spoon in one hand and a spatula in the other, his gaze firm. “No. To celebrate us clearing up our misunderstanding, I must personally poison…”
“No, personally cook for you to thank you.”
“What did you say?” Xia Chenxi asked. Had he misheard just now, or had Ye Xuan accidentally spoken his true thoughts?
“Nothing. Get out. This is an important kitchen zone. No entry allowed.”
Ye Xuan pushed Xia Chenxi out and used the tip of his foot to close the kitchen door.
Before closing it, he even threw Xia Chenxi a threatening glare.
If you dare come in and disturb me, you’re dead.
Since he could not stop him, he could only wait to clean up the mess. No matter how bad it was, it could not get worse.
Ye Xuan would not blow up the kitchen, right?
Holding this thought, Xia Chenxi went back to his room and took a shower.
When he came out again, the area outside the room was filled with smoke. He could not see anything clearly.
For a moment, Xia Chenxi thought he had transmigrated.
Then he saw a blurry red figure.
Red figure. Smoke.
Ye Xuan was not planning to blow up the kitchen.
He was planning to burn it down.
Xia Chenxi immediately rushed to the kitchen and saw Ye Xuan covering his mouth with his shirt while still stir-frying something in the pot that had completely lost the appearance of its original ingredients. The flames had already leapt up to the range hood. Even with the kitchen window open, it could not keep up with the speed at which smoke was being produced in the pot.
“Xia Chenxi, cough, you just finished showering. Don’t come in. You’ll get covered in smoke.”
Ye Xuan saw Xia Chenxi covering his mouth with his hand and walking to his side. He became extremely anxious, but he had to keep his attention on the pot and could not spare the focus to push Xia Chenxi out.
Xia Chenxi picked up the lid nearby, covered the pot, and turned off the gas stove.
“Hey, Xia Chenxi, it was almost done. What are you doing?” As he spoke, Ye Xuan choked on a few more mouthfuls of smoke.
Xia Chenxi removed the lid, lifted the pot in front of Ye Xuan, and pointed at the brown non-Newtonian fluid inside. “Were you planning to feed me this? Was what you said about poisoning me just now your true thought? Also, if I hadn’t come in, you would have burned down the kitchen.”
The originally clean white tiles were now blackened by smoke, and the whole kitchen was a complete mess.
Ye Xuan’s guilty gaze darted away. He had originally planned to make braised beef brisket with potatoes. He did not know where things had gone wrong.
Ding-dong, ding-dong.
The doorbell rang.
Xia Chenxi put the pot down and went to the door.
The front desk robot from downstairs was standing at the entrance, carrying a fire extinguisher.
“Someone said your kitchen was on fire. Do you need assistance?”
Xia Chenxi was still having a headache over the chaos in the kitchen and made to close the door. “No need.”
The door was blocked.
Xia Chenxi opened it again and asked, “Anything else?”
A smile appeared on the robot’s screen.
“Please pay a handling fee of 100. Scan my screen to complete payment.”
