“Don’t worry. Since Uncle Chong already agreed, he won’t go back on it. The hunting party won’t head out until tomorrow. When the ti cos, Axue and I will go over there with you and take a look.”
Chong Fengshuang was obviously more lively and cheerful than his sister.
When he saw Wen Yuzhi co out of Uncle Chong’s room with his head lowered and not saying a word, he hurried over and took the initiative to comfort him.
Wen Yuzhi thought about how the twins had been the ones looking after him while he was unconscious, and how after he woke up, it had also been Chong Fengshuang who kept showing him around and explaining things.
So after thinking for a mont, Wen Yuzhi looked seriously at the boy in front of him and said, “Thank you.”
Chong Fengshuang froze for a second, and then his face abruptly flushed red.
“N-no need to be so polite...”
He got so nervous that he started stumbling over his words, and his gaze shifted off Wen Yuzhi’s face as hurriedly as if it had been burned.
But even though his eyes moved away, little bubbles still couldn’t help popping up in the boy’s heart.
Chong Fengshuang found himself thinking how could there possibly be soone that good-looking in this world—soone who could make even the simple words “thank you” sound that nice.
His tone was soft.
Just like the little kitten Chong Fengshuang had once seen.
It was just a pity that that beautiful, delicate kitten had died in the end. Blackrock Star’s brutal environnt simply could not keep such fragile little creatures alive.
Thinking of that, Chong Fengshuang couldn’t help sneaking another glance at Wen Yuzhi.
The silver-haired, golden-eyed boy was slender, and the exposed skin outside his clothes was white as snow. In the candlelight, that snowy skin looked so pale it almost seed to glow.
There was no question about it—this was soone even more delicate and beautiful than the kitten he had seen before.
And that also ant that in a place with an environnt as terrible as Blackrock Star’s, this person would only have an even harder ti surviving.
At that mont, an intense urge to protect him suddenly rose in Chong Fengshuang’s heart.
He softened his voice and asked, a little shyly, “W-what’s your na?”
Wen Yuzhi had no idea that in Chong Fengshuang’s mind, he had already beco a little young master who needed to be carefully protected.
Hearing him ask for his na, Wen Yuzhi did not hide it. “Wen Yuzhi.”
Wen. Yuzhi.
Chong Fengshuang silently repeated it in his heart. “That sounds so nice. Did your dad give you that na?”
Just now, he had heard Wen Yuzhi ntion his dad, and from his tone, it was easy to tell that he trusted him too.
“You could say that... and you could also say not really...”
Wen Yuzhi nodded, then shook his head. He didn’t know how to explain to Chong Fengshuang that he not only had a dad and a mom, but also a [N O V E L I G H T] separate dad.
Wen Yuzhi didn’t want to explain, and Chong Fengshuang didn’t mind. He could keep the conversation going all by himself.
“My sister’s na and mine were both given to us by Uncle Chong.”
“He said if one of us was Xue and the other was Shuang, then anyone could tell at a glance that we were real siblings.”
Wen Yuzhi noticed that every ti Chong Fengshuang ntioned Uncle Chong, his tone would turn a little more respectful, so he asked curiously, “Uncle Chong... is he the leader here?”
“The leader...” Chong Fengshuang scratched his head. “Well, if you put it that way, I guess that’s not wrong. In this base, everybody listens to Uncle Chong. He’s amazing. We survived because Uncle Chong led us.”
“Has Uncle Chong always been here? What did he do before?”
Uncle Chong had imdiately and precisely noticed where his ntal power was, and that made Wen Yuzhi a little curious about the old man’s identity.
“As far back as I can rember, Uncle Chong has always been here. He’s led everyone all these years, but before that...”
Chong Fengshuang had just been about to say it, but halfway through, he seed to rember sothing and hurriedly clamped his mouth shut.
“...I don’t really know much about Uncle Chong’s past either. Sorry...”
“It’s fine.”
Wen Yuzhi was only a little curious. It wasn’t as if he absolutely had to get to the bottom of it.
After all, here, he was a guest.
These people had been willing to bring in soone of unknown background from outside, take him in, give him shelter, and even agree to let him go out with the hunting party tomorrow. Wen Yuzhi was already very grateful for that.
In his view, it was perfectly normal for Chong Fengshuang to have his reservations and stay guarded.
Chong Fengshuang, on the other hand, felt a little embarrassed. He wasn’t the kind of person who was good at lying, and even his attempt to change the subject felt especially stiff.
So to cover up the awkwardness, he simply led Wen Yuzhi to a sowhat larger room.
“This is our base cafeteria.”
When Wen Yuzhi had observed the place earlier through the butterflies, he had already noticed that although this underground base was not large, it was clean and orderly everywhere.
The cafeteria Chong Fengshuang brought him to was also bright and spotless.
There were two or three serving windows inside, all clean as well.
It wasn’t alti right now, so there weren’t many people sitting around.
When they saw Chong Fengshuang, they greeted him warmly.
“Little Shuang, you’re here to eat too?”
“Did your sister co with you?”
Apparently, Chong Fengshuang was well liked. Almost everyone smiled and said a few words to him.
Chong Fengshuang answered them one by one.
But when their eyes landed on Wen Yuzhi, a bit more scrutiny appeared in their gazes.
It was obvious that they were sowhat wary of this unfamiliar face that had suddenly appeared here.
Chong Fengshuang noticed the strange atmosphere too.
With a smile, he explained, “We just ca from Uncle Chong’s place. We wanted to get sothing to eat first.”
Wen Yuzhi noticed that the mont they heard they had co from Uncle Chong’s place, much of the wariness in their eyes faded.
A few of them even took the initiative to nod at him in greeting.
That made him realize even more clearly that Uncle Chong’s status here truly was very high.
Everyone in the base respected him.
Chong Fengshuang led Wen Yuzhi to an empty seat, then went to one of the windows and got two trays of food.
“You haven’t eaten anything since waking up. You must be hungry by now, right?”
There had been tea and pastries in Uncle Chong’s room earlier too, but Wen Yuzhi had been on guard then and hadn’t touched them.
Chong Fengshuang had carefully noticed that too, which was why he had brought Wen Yuzhi straight toward the cafeteria after they ca out.
And now, before anything else, he even took a bite first to prove there was nothing wrong with the food.
Before passing out, Wen Yuzhi had eaten only two crackers. Watching Chong Fengshuang swallow in big bites now, Wen Yuzhi truly did feel a little hungry.
The two trays Chong Fengshuang had gotten each held a bowl of at soup and two pieces of bread.
What he had just eaten was the bread. He had left both bowls of at soup for Wen Yuzhi.
Wen Yuzhi stirred one bowl with a spoon. There wasn’t much at in the soup, and the two pieces of bread felt a little hard too.
He took a bite. The bread was very dry and very hard. Wen Yuzhi had to eat it with the soup to get it down.
But Chong Fengshuang was clearly already used to it. He practically wolfed down his portion of bread in no ti.
Two pieces of bread were obviously not enough for a growing teenage boy.
But Chong Fengshuang did not go back to the window for more food.
Wen Yuzhi glanced around and saw that everyone else’s portions were about the sa.
In fact, the soup on their table seed to be extra treatnt.
Because everyone else only had dry bread.
“Is food short here?”
Wen Yuzhi asked aloud.
Chong Fengshuang pressed his lips together and sighed. “It used to be enough. But later, there were more and more stray beasts, and the space we could survive in kept shrinking. Every ti the hunting party goes out, they have to risk their lives to find food.”
“Even so, food is getting harder and harder to find. Even with the hunting party going out every other day, what they bring back still isn’t enough to feed everyone.”
So the situation at the base was not optimistic at all. They weren’t just facing food shortages. As for dical resources, the only things they had were the herbs at Uncle Chong’s place.
That was also why when Wen Yuzhi said he could heal injuries, Chong Fengshuang and Chong Fengxue had reacted so strongly.
Before this, when mbers of the hunting party got hurt, they could only rely on their own constitutions and grit their way through it.
And yet, in order to find food, they had no choice but to keep going out and taking risks.
It was said that when this base was first established, there had been more than a thousand people here. Later, little by little, that number had dwindled until only this hundred or so remained.
That casualty rate was terrifying.
Many people they had once known well went out once and never ca back.
But they had no way around it.
The brutal climate, the scarcity of survival resources, and the stray beasts everywhere were all threats to their survival.
Blackrock Star was not so comfortable vacation paradise. On the contrary, it was an extrely cruel place.
Here, many people could not even secure the most basic survival.
“There are a lot of planets like ours. Just about every country has places like this on the margins. No one sees them, and none of those powerful people care about them. For people lucky enough to be born on rich planets, they might go their whole lives without ever hearing of a place like Blackrock Star.”
When Chong Fengshuang said this, he sounded very calm. There wasn’t much expression on his face. They had long since grown used to things like this.
Wen Yuzhi, however, had not expected that even with interstellar technology so advanced, there could still be places as bad as Blackrock Star.
He thought of the Saint Clan.
Clearly, he was one of the lucky ones Chong Fengshuang ant.
Not long after coming into this world, he had been taken in by the Saint Clan. Along the way, he had never really suffered.
Compared to what Chong Fengshuang and the others had to face, the few days he had spent surviving on Kanirila could hardly be called difficult.
After all, the ruins were nearby, and it had still been possible to find plenty of supplies inside.
If not for the rain, Wen Yuzhi would have nearly finished building that shelter.
Thinking of it that way, when he looked again at the two bowls of at soup in front of him, Wen Yuzhi suddenly felt a little heavy inside.
He pushed the untouched bowl of soup back in front of Chong Fengshuang.
“One bowl is enough for .”
“No...”
Chong Fengshuang had just started to refuse when, as if Wen Yuzhi had expected that, he shook his head and said, “I can’t eat that much.”
Then, afraid Chong Fengshuang wouldn’t believe him, Wen Yuzhi added, “I’m not used to the food here.”
In a single sentence, Wen Yuzhi perfectly embodied the image of a spoiled, finicky little young master.
That kind of lofty behavior should have been irritating.
But on Wen Yuzhi, all of it sohow felt completely natural.
He was not like the people here. Whether from Wen Yuzhi’s appearance or the way he spoke and carried himself, anyone could tell he had grown up privileged, as though he had been pampered in people’s palms from childhood.
Chong Fengshuang understood that very clearly, so when faced with the little young master’s sudden pickiness, not only did he not find it irritating, he even willingly indulged him.
“Then when we go out tomorrow, I’ll catch you a rabbit. The rabbit I roast is really good.”
Chong Fengshuang’s eyes were bright.
Even though he had spent all this ti saying how terrible Blackrock Star’s environnt was, his attitude toward life was not negative at all.
To him, no matter how bad Blackrock Star was, this was still his ho.
His family was here. His friends were here. So no matter how hard or miserable life was, he always wore a smile on his face.
...
After they finished eating, Chong Fengshuang took Wen Yuzhi on a brief walk around the base before finally bringing him back to the room where Wen Yuzhi had first woken up.
“This is Brother Yan’s room. There aren’t any other empty rooms in the base, so we can only arrange for you to stay here.”
As he said it, apparently afraid Wen Yuzhi might mind, Chong Fengshuang emphasized, “Don’t worry. I cleaned the room. I changed the sheets and everything. I promise it’s very clean.”
Wen Yuzhi wasn’t actually that delicate. At his worst, he had even slept on the ground. Compared to the shelter he had thrown together on Kanirila, the conditions here were already far better.
But what he was really worried about was...
“Won’t your Brother Yan mind? If I sleep in his room, then when he cos back...”
Chong Fengshuang smiled. “He’s been gone for years. Leaving the room empty would just be a waste, so you can stay here for now.”
Chong Fengshuang had said gone, but Wen Yuzhi took it to an that kind of gone.
He even felt annoyed with himself for seeming to have said the wrong thing, and after that he did not bring it up again.
Chong Fengshuang, anwhile, thought he had already explained everything clearly. Seeing the tiredness on Wen Yuzhi’s face, he thoughtfully withdrew.
“Get so rest. I’ll co get you tomorrow.”
Wen Yuzhi nodded.
Only after Chong Fengshuang left did he finally have the ti to take a proper look around the room in front of him.
When he had first woken up, all his attention had been on the siblings, Chong Fengxue and Chong Fengshuang, so he had not properly examined the place.
Only now did Wen Yuzhi realize that the room’s style was very simple. At a glance, it seed to have only black, white, and gray tones.
The whole room contained only a bed. In one corner stood a wardrobe. Facing the bed was a desk, and beside it was a row of bookshelves.
Wen Yuzhi glanced at them. The books on the shelves were all related to ch operation.
But he did not touch any of them. Instead, his gaze fell on the frad photo resting in one corner of the desk.
It was perhaps the only thing in the room that visibly looked like a personal belonging.
Inside the fra was a family portrait.
A handso man had his arm around his wife. Standing beside the man was a woman who looked similar to him, so she was probably his sister.
Standing beside the wife was a kind-looking elderly man. He looked very much like her, and judging by his age, he was probably her father.
The four of them stood in a row in the back.
In the very front, centered in the position of honor, was a little boy with a solemn face.
He had black hair and blue eyes. In his features, one could vaguely see a blend of both the husband and the wife. The way he faced the cara with his lips pressed together made him look like a little grown-up.
And below the photograph, there was a line of handwritten words: For my dearest little nephew — from your aunt.
Aunt...
She should be one of the little boy’s relatives, right?
For so reason, Wen Yuzhi found the little boy strangely familiar.
...It seed as though he had seen him sowhere before.
But before Wen Yuzhi could think it through, he suddenly felt a violent tremor under his feet.
Fortunately, the shaking did not last long.
But the mont it steadied, Wen Yuzhi heard all kinds of noisy commotion breaking out outside.
And among it was the sound of hurried footsteps rushing this way.
The door was abruptly shoved open.
—it was Chong Fengshuang, who had just left monts ago.
His expression was now incomparably serious, and there was obvious urgency in his voice.
“Stay in the room and keep the door shut. Don’t co out during this ti!”
Wen Yuzhi quickly asked, “What happened?”
“The stray beasts are here!”
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