Chapter 83: I Love Listening to Stories

"Who is it?"

From inside the two-story self-built house, another man, appearing to be around fifty, stepped out.

When he saw Yu Dazhang tightly gripping the boy's arm, his eyes instantly turned fierce.

"Let go!"

Yu Dazhang remained unmoved, still holding the boy's arm, pulling him slightly closer before saying:

"First, pay for my clothes."

Both men turned their gazes to Yu Dazhang's clothing.

After a moment, the middle-aged woman spoke.

"Your clothes are fine—there's no damage at all."

"What kind of eyes do you have!" Yu Dazhang shouted:

"Can't you see it's coming apart!"

The middle-aged woman leaned in closer to look:

"There's nothing."

"Trying to weasel out of it, are you?" Yu Dazhang glared at them.

"Enough, enough." The man, seeing the woman about to argue further, stepped forward and shoved her aside, then said to Yu Dazhang:

"Just say how much."

Yu Dazhang spread his palm and extended it forward:

"Fifty thousand. Not a cent less."

"What?!" Both shouted in unison, their previously cold expressions instantly replaced with fury.

"Is it really that much?" Yu Dazhang lifted his head, looking down at them with contempt:

"If you can't afford this, no wonder you live up on the mountain."

The man and the middle-aged woman said nothing, glaring at him with anger.

"How about this," Yu Dazhang said, sounding surprisingly reasonable:

"If you won't pay cash, fine—I'm hungry. Feed me instead."

This place is definitely suspicious.

He deliberately acted like a reckless troublemaker to provoke them, lowering their guard.

What's Zhang Sen's condition? Are the two missing officers in the cellar?

None of this is certain yet.

The only thing confirmed right now is… that smell of blood is definitely human blood.

With Yu Dazhang's current sense of smell, he couldn't possibly be wrong.

There's a clear difference in scent between animal blood and human blood.

Sheep blood smells hot and heavy, pig blood is foul, chicken blood has a sour stink—only human blood is salty and metallic, with a sharp iron-rust odor.

Right now, the priority is to keep them calm.

Even if you're curious, don't go near the cellar—right now, exposing your back is no different from suicide.

That's also why he's been holding onto the boy.

"If you want to eat, why didn't you say so earlier?" The man stepped aside, gesturing for him to enter:

"Come in—we're just about to eat. An extra pair of chopsticks won't hurt."

Yu Dazhang smiled, pulling the boy along behind the man.

Inside, he was stunned by the interior decoration.

Outside it looked old and worn, but inside it was dazzlingly opulent.

It was exactly that kind of place where gold leaf covered every surface, glowing bright.

If he had to describe the style in four characters, Yu Dazhang could only say: gaudy yet grand.

He released the boy and sat on the living room sofa, chatting nonsense with the man.

Throughout this, he appeared to focus entirely on the man, but in truth, he kept using his peripheral vision to observe the other two people in the house.

In this village, he dared not relax for a second—anyone could be a threat.

The woman moved quickly, and soon the dishes were set on the table.

Four dishes and one soup—fairly generous.

"Come on, eat while it's hot," the man said, inviting him over as he sat down at the table:

"Just ordinary farm food—I don't know if it suits your taste."

Yu Dazhang didn't hesitate; he sat beside him, picked up the chopsticks, and rubbed them twice with his hand.

"Eat!" the man urged again.

Yu Dazhang rubbed the chopsticks two more times.

"Try this mushroom stir-fried with cured pork," the man pointed to a dish and recommended:

"We picked these wild flat mushrooms ourselves—they're very fresh." Yu Dazhang opened his mouth wide and blew two puffs of air onto the chopsticks.

"Go ahead and pick some up—don't be shy," the man kept urging.

Yu Dazhang separated the two chopsticks, holding one in each hand, crossing them and rubbing them together vigorously.

The man stopped offering. He felt that if he kept insisting, his own chopsticks would be worn down to nothing.

He picked up his chopsticks, casually grabbed a bite, and began eating on his own.

Yu Dazhang still didn't move his chopsticks—he called out to the middle-aged woman:

"You come eat too."

The woman glanced back at him, her face cold, and said nothing.

"Don't mind him, you eat." The man gestured with his chopsticks:

"Where we're from, whenever guests come to the house, the wife and kids don't sit at the table."

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Saying this, he turned his head and barked at the middle-aged woman:

"Stop pacing around in front of us, take the kid out and visit someone."

The woman nodded upon hearing this, then took the little boy and walked out the front door.

Yu Dazhang still hadn't picked up his chopsticks. Watching the mother and son leave, he set his chopsticks down and turned to stare at the man:

"Is that kid really yours?"

Hearing this, the man's hand holding the food froze mid-air. He slowly and deliberately swallowed the food in his mouth, then raised his head and said flatly:

"Why suddenly ask something like that?"

"The kid doesn't look like you." Yu Dazhang said in a joking tone:

"But he does look a lot like that old hag. Did she cuckold you?"

He was deliberately trying to provoke the man.

From the moment he entered the room, he had noticed the man always stayed on the side closer to the bedroom.

Although he was in the living room, whether sitting on the sofa or at the dining table, he deliberately kept himself nearer to the bedroom.

As if only that way did he feel safe.

Most importantly, Yu Dazhang noticed the man had been in a state of alert the whole time.

On the surface he looked calm and composed, but in reality his arm muscles were taut and his eyes slightly narrowed—he was ready to launch an attack at any moment.

Even while maintaining this state, the man still ate as usual.

If it were someone without guard up, they really would have been fooled by his act.

This showed it wasn't his first time doing this; it had become habit. He must have dealt with many people this way before.

"Looks like you're not that hungry."

The man put down his chopsticks, wiped his mouth directly with his palm, then took out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. After taking a hard drag, he said:

"Since you're interested, let me tell you a story of my own."

"Sure." Yu Dazhang said with a smile:

"I love listening to stories."

The man took another drag of his cigarette, slowly exhaled, then said unhurriedly:

"1988, I was twenty-six back then."

"Don't think I'm that young—I'd already been working on ships for five years and been to at least twenty countries."

"In those days, I could count as someone who'd seen the world."

"It was also that year my family arranged a marriage for me. That Miss was very pretty, and we soon became husband and wife."

"Not long after, I went back out to sea, and that one trip lasted seven months."

"When I came back, I found the villagers in the village pointing fingers at me."

"From my family I learned that my wife, married less than a year, had cheated on me."

"Do you know what I did back then?"

At this point, the man flicked the ash off his cigarette.

Then he brought the cigarette, about to burn down to the filter, to his mouth and took another drag.

After putting the butt into the ashtray and snuffing it out, he turned to look at the fatty beside him, only to find a dark gun barrel pointed right at him.

"Go on." Yu Dazhang pointed the gun at his chest, his face stern:

"What did you do back then?"

"I…" the man opened his mouth:

"I forgave her."

(End of chapter)