Zhou Zishu quickened his steps towards the room, as if Wen Kexing’s words were farts that he had to run away from before he choked.

Wen Kexing smiled and stopped talking. He stood there, looking at Zhang Chengling—who had become terribly thin in just a few months. The young boy seemed to have gotten a little taller, his face ashen like that of a corpse, mouth thinned, eyes black and bright, showing bits of stubbornness and restraint. His whole body was seemingly carved from fire, burning away the old crybaby and leaving a young wolf in its stead.

Only now was Wen Kexing starting to believe that this scamp was truly a child of the Zhangs. He laughed softly, speaking at Zhang Chengling’s direction without making a sound, “You better stay alert, brat.”

The next day, good old Wen found out that “Saint Zhou”—who immediately holed up in his room once Zhang Chengling came near—had vanished without a trace since the early morning, his room so tidy it gave almost no indication of someone having lived in it before.

Even Zhou Zishu himself wasn’t sure why he started following Zhang Chengling since morning. Always anticipating the worse, he found another layer of skin-like mask to put over his already carefully crafted one.

He hid in the crowd like an apparition and went past people completely unnoticed; no one paid attention to a forgettable stranger in a plain set of clothes.

Zhou Zishu remained a calculated distance away from Zhang Chengling. Everyone and their mother in this grand pugilist scene proclaimed their furious indignation, and then there was that kid who stayed silent and looked over all of them despite being the person worthy of a proclamation the most.

His eyes were wide open, his face bare and honest. Zhou Zishu was suddenly reminded of someone—the person with thick brows and big eyes under the tree whom he saw in that dark, horrible cave.

Liang Jiuxiao.

He remembered their childhood vaguely. That brat Liang Jiuxiao called him Senior Brother, constantly clinging to him and making his life as inconvenient as possible while rambling to no end. Worse, he was a fool, always slow on the uptake.

Back then Zhou Zishu was still young and impatient, so imagined his discontent and unpleasant expression when his Master threw the rascal at him.

He shouldn’t get angry as a Big Senior Brother, so at times he would took some jabs at the kid. But he seemed to be completely oblivious, and wouldn’t go away no matter what. Zhou Zishu ended up having to accept his situation as was.