At that time, Chen Yang was eating melon seeds and rice immersed in his heart, and Chao Jian was staring at him quietly, with a sea of shining stars in her eyes, as if she was waiting for him to look back, waiting for him to pick a few stars, or even all of them.
Chen Yang sat on the table in front of Chao Jian, facing him, taking his gaze into his eyes. Chen Yang thought blankly, I like him, right... It should be, it must be.
He looked at himself at that time again, carefree and unconcerned, enjoying the service of his partner's younger brother calmly, and only cared about eating.
no the same.
So different.
I liked Chao Jian first. He had already quietly planted the seeds of love in me before I even fell in love with him. I'm looking forward to the day when it sprouts and grows.
"Hey." Chen Yang looked at Chao Jian who was peeling melon seeds again, wanting to cry and laugh at the same time, "It's not like I don't have hands, why are you so..."
Thinking about how he would later enjoy eating the melon seeds peeled by Chao Jian, Chen Yang stopped talking.
However, I have also torn a lot of milk tablet packaging bags for him. Chen Yang's brows relaxed.
Chao Jian quickly peeled a handful of melon seeds and handed them over: "Brother Yang, this is the last handful. Eating too much will cause internal heat."
“I can’t eat it more than a few times a year.”
Chao Jian filled up his cup with tea: "Why?"
“No one peeled it for me.”
"I'll be there for you from now on." Chao Jian scratched the back of his neck and said softly.
Chen Yang's ears felt hot, but he didn't appreciate it, nor was he embarrassed. He just knocked on the table with a serious face and snorted: "You are getting better and better at talking, but I am a principled person. I will be very strict as a teacher. I will never go easy on you just because you are good at peeling melon seeds. Do you hear me?"
Chen Yang knew that it was his first time to be a teacher seriously. He must be feeling fresh and nervous, and wanted to show off his power.
Student Jian looked very obedient: "I heard you, Brother Yang, you can do whatever you want to me, no need to show mercy, peeling melon seeds is a side job, it's irrelevant."
"Tsk, you must be trying to coax a little girl out of this. I don't want to eat anymore. I need to save some space. The food hasn't been served yet."
While Chen Yang glared at himself, he looked at Chao Jian with heartache as he lowered his eyes. He must have been hurt.
"No." Chao Jian was silent for a long time and uttered two words.
"What?"
Chao Jian raised his hand and rubbed his forehead twice, curled his lips, and muttered: "I have never coaxed a little girl."
"You are amazing, you are self-taught... Wait, what did you just say? You... Xiao Chao, are you a virgin?"
"… yes."
"Well, our team is full of bachelors, the bachelor team." Chen Yang shook his head and sighed, it was hard to describe, "I even made a bet with Zimu, she said your first love is gone, I said you have at least dated two."
The smile on Chao Jian's lips faded a lot. He didn't look very happy, and he looked disappointed as if he had done poorly on the test. Chen Yang wanted to give him full marks and give him a little red flower.
"Brother, what kind do you like? I'll keep an eye out for you."
When Chen Yang heard himself say this, he felt an electric current sweeping through his body, and strands of numbness gathered towards his heart.
The wheel of fortune keeps spinning, how magical.
Chao Jian's voice, word by word, rang in Chen Yang's ears. He said, "The one with a soft waist has beautiful legs."
Then Chen Yang saw himself sitting across from him with a curious and teasing look on his face like an old father: "Only these two conditions? How about looks? Or are there so many good-looking people around you that you're tired of them and don't care about looks?"
Chao Jian's eyes flashed with the persistence of a young man, and his ears also turned red: "It doesn't matter if there are requirements. I like what I like."
"The kind that looks like your wife? Is that what you understand?"
"Looks like my wife..." Chao Jian repeated, with a sunny and blazing smile on his face. He seemed to have seen a century painting, and was completely mesmerized. "Yes, looks like my wife."
"Ah, it sounds wonderful. I'm afraid I won't be able to experience it in my lifetime. Xiao Chao, your criteria for choosing a partner are amazing. They are specific and vague. They are higher than Xiao Wen's. You completely rely on God..."
"Brother Yang is right. I'm waiting for God to bless me once. I hope I can wait for that." He smiled at Jian.
Chen Yang was stunned, and moved closer to Chao Jian, wanting to hug him, but he couldn't touch him.
"Let me hug you." Chen Yang opened his arms and placed his fingers lightly on Chao Jian's shoulders. He lowered his eyes and whispered softly.
The fingertips suddenly felt a touch, cold and real.
Got it!
Chen Yang raised his head with red eyes, and the scene in front of him was not a high-end restaurant, but a dark, damp, and moldy old house.
It was like being in a lair of spiders and snakes, with an uncomfortable sticky feeling floating in the air.
Chen Yang found that his two hands were placed in Chao Jian's arms, with his five fingers slightly clasped together. Chao Jian, who was very close to him, had changed from his casual clothes to a black windbreaker. His hair had obviously grown longer, with messy hair on his forehead and a Band-Aid on his nose.
Chao Jian's expression didn't change, but it did change.
Grow up.
Chen Yang shook his head in his heart. No, he had grown up. My Chao Jian had gone through countless missions and experienced several life-and-death situations. He stood in front of him as an experienced old tasker, looking at him anxiously and worriedly, his two dry lips constantly opening and closing, and the wrinkles between his brows were very deep.
Chen Yang was in a trance, and it took him a long time to hear what Qing Chaojian asked, "How are you? Where does it hurt? Do you want to vomit?"
"Can I take off your clothes so I can check you?" Chao Jian was like a soldier who was reporting. He was obviously very anxious, but still afraid that his general would be angry.
Chen Yang's eyes gradually became clear, and he fell down the hillside.
"Brother Yang!" Chao Jian couldn't wait for a response. He bent his waist and tightened his jawline, with some blood rushing out of his throat.
"Calm down, I'm fine." Chen Yang had just finished speaking when he felt a burning pain in his left shoulder blade. He hissed, causing Chao Jian to gasp in bewilderment.
Chao Jian had a stern face and without saying a word, he boldly took off his shirt and then didn't move.
His breathing became heavier as he tried to suppress his anger.
Chen Yang judged the severity of his injuries based on the pain. The area should be bruised and bleeding, and swollen quite badly, covering a large area. It looked shocking, but actually it was okay, and his bones were not seriously injured.
As for why he fell off the hillside...
Chen Yang let out an inaudible sound from his nose. That was because he saved a teammate. That teammate had paranoid delusions and suddenly had an attack and pushed him from behind.
The teammate was one of my later friends and acquaintances, Li Zheng, the knight of Miss Xiao Qiao.
I didn't expect he reset it too.
Chen Yang turned his head to look at Chao Jian behind him: "Is Li Zheng okay?"
"He pushed you off the mountain, and you still care about him?" Chao Jian gritted his teeth and said.
Chen looked up into the void: "Patients with mental illness like him cannot control themselves when they are ill. They don't even know what they are doing."
Chao Jian paused while searching his backpack for medicine. He walked around from the back to the front and stared at Chen Yang: "Do you know a lot about it?"
Chen Yang's control over his body seemed to be taken away at this moment. He heard himself utter a very heavy sentence: "I have done too many missions to count. Along the way, I have seen too many taskers who returned from completing missions with great difficulty and fell ill. Their medical treatment and medication were ineffective. The mental trauma of the taskers cannot be cured by ordinary psychiatric drugs. There is no solution. I can only let myself go crazy."
Finally, he added: "Xiao Chao, mental trauma is fatal. You must be careful."
Chao Jian fished out a cigarette box from his jacket pocket, bit a cigarette between his teeth, and smiled, "I won't go crazy."
Chen Yang came back to his senses. He looked at Chao Jian's smile. His internal organs seemed to be out of place. He was in so much pain that he didn't know where the wound was. You will, you are very crazy. Chen Yang closed his eyes in the suffocating pain.
"Brother Yang, are you sick now too?"
Chen Yang listened to Chao Jian's uneasy voice, paused, and said vaguely: "No matter how strong your mental power is, there will be a limit."
Chao Jian took a puff of the cigarette, removed it from his slender fingers, and bit it again after a while. He promised, "I will try to find a drug for the mental trauma of the tasker."
Chen Yang's world was silent for a moment. He slowly raised his eyelids and said, "Give me a puff."
Chao Jian suddenly looked at Chen Yang.
"Cigarette." Goose bumps appeared on the bare part of Chen Yang's shoulder.
“Oh…” Chao Jian did not pass the cigarette between his teeth to him. Instead, he took out another cigarette, put it into Chen Yang’s mouth, and lit it for him.
Chen Yang glanced at Chao Jian's red neck. In the past, he was very casual when getting along with teammates of the same sex. There were no such things to pay attention to. They were all grown men and it didn't matter. But Chao Jian was different.
Chao Jian would feel shy and embarrassed.
Soon Chen Yang began to doubt his own idea, because Chao Jian was treating his wounds in an orderly manner, and his breath was moving on his back intentionally or unintentionally.
Too close.
This doesn't look like an innocent little boy who knows nothing.
Chen Yang remembered when he was in the small town, his back was scratched by a crazy woman. When Chao Jian was wrapping gauze around him, she was so close to him and her breath was so hot, and he felt itchy too.
"Brother, my back is very sensitive, please stay away from me." Chen Yang said helplessly.
Chao Jian said sternly: "It's not careful enough from a distance."
Chen Yang: “…” My shoulder blade isn’t bleeding, what are you hesitating about
Chen Yang felt that there was a reason why he became the frog in the pot later on, because he was also very stupid before.
Chao Jian didn't take off Chen Yang's shirt directly, he only took off a small half of it.
So Chen Yang's shirt was loosely draped over his shoulders, looking unsightly. He raised his legs and leaned against the chair, smoking one cigarette after another.
A refreshing touch covered the wound, and Chen Yang hummed comfortably.
Then, a cool breeze blew up.
Chen Yang wanted to turn around, but Jian stopped him and said, "Brother Yang, don't move. I'll fan you so the potion can dry faster."
"Sit still." Chao Jian seemed to be afraid that he would not listen to her advice and would look back, so he added, "It won't take long. If the medicine doesn't dry, it will stick to your clothes."
Chen Yang was at a loss for words. What the hell? Don’t think I don’t know you’re blowing with your mouth.
The next second, Chen Yang's heart was immersed in the sour and sweet water.
When Chen Yang was almost finishing his cigarette, Chao Jian said that the medicine had dried up. He did not pull up Chen Yang's clothes. At this time, he was quite sensible and talked about the distance between teachers and students.
Chen Yang pulled his clothes up and said as he buttoned them, "Take me to see Li Zheng."
Chao Jian packed his backpack: "He is next door, I don't know if he is awake or not."
"Fainted?" Chen Yang frowned.
"After he pushed you down the hillside, he fell to the ground." Chao Jian's face darkened as he spoke, his voice muffled, mixed with clear self-blame and regret, "If only I had run faster."
"You run fast enough. Most people's explosive power can't match yours." Chen Yang pursed his lips hard and said in his heart, it's just that you didn't dare to run later.
Li was lying in the next room. A girl was sitting beside the bed, looking at him infatuatedly.
She was also a tasker, Li Zheng's old teammate. Her feelings for him were written all over her face, but it was a pity that it was a one-man show, she was immersed in herself and moved by herself.
When the girl saw Chen Yang and Chao Jian coming in, she stood up quickly, her face full of fear and panic as if she had been caught red-handed.
Chen Yang looked past her and towards the bed: "You haven't woken up yet?"
"No." There was a slight cry in the girl's voice, "Mr. Chen, I apologize to you on behalf of my senior, please don't be angry, my senior..." The girl bit her lip, "He must have heard the voice and thought you were going to hurt him, so he acted prematurely out of extreme fear."
"I know." Chen Yang looked at the person on the bed with a complicated expression. In his impression, Li Zheng was young, strong, masculine and upright. He would turn into a big dog when he was next to Qiao Qiao. But now he was eroded by the disease, with sunken eye sockets, prominent cheekbones, a depressed and gray body, and very thin.
"Li Zheng?" Chen Yang called out.
“Hmm…” Li Zheng didn’t wake up. He was dreaming. In the dream, he seemed to be in danger. His sick face was distorted by fear. “Someone wants to kill me. Help, don’t come over here… don’t come over here! Ahhh!!!”
"Senior!" The girl rushed to the bed, half-knelt and cried softly, "Senior, please get up and take the medicine. You will be fine after taking the medicine."
Li Zheng's fingers dug into the bed board, his nails split and blood dripped.
Before Chen Yang stepped forward, Li Zheng suddenly opened his eyes, with a terrifying look of despair and fear in his eyes.
No matter what the girl said, Li Zheng remained dazed and expressionless.
Chen Yang took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Chao Jian was a patient, Ding Huichun was a patient, the painter was a patient, and there was also the unknown old worker at the rest stop, Lin Shuwei, Wu Lingling...
After the reset, because of Chao Jian, he had to complete more tasks intensively but not in large quantities. Therefore, he only had interactions with a small number of patients, and he didn't know most of them.
Considering the amount of tasks he had before the reset, he should know a lot of them, too many to count.
Chen Yang turned around to look at Chao Jian and found that he was facing Li Zheng, frowning and with a confused look in his eyes. It was obvious that he had not really understood the world of mental illness and would never have thought that one day he would have a bottle of medicine in his pocket.
It's great, it's great now. Chen Yang called Chao Jian out: "Where are Xiao Wen and Zi Mu?"
"They all went out to gather information." Chao Jian said.
Chen Yang stepped on a tree stump to wipe off the mud on his feet. He walked around the village and saw a small black jar in every house he passed.
The jar was hung under the door, suspended in the air by several white ropes.
What's inside is not pickles, but ashes.
When the wind blew, the jar swayed as if a corpse was hanging on it.
Chen Yang walked to the door of a house and looked up at the jar within reach. He quickly sorted out the progress of this task when he came in.
There was an orphan and a widow in the village, with no one to rely on, and the woman was isolated. Because she was good-looking and chaste, the men wanted to take advantage of her but couldn't, and the women were afraid that she would seduce their husbands and didn't like her.
Children don’t understand the world of adults. The woman’s son wanted to play with his friends, so he ran around all day and often came back covered in mud and with bruises on his face.
One day at dinner time, the woman's son didn't come home.
She ran from house to house, and no one opened the door for her, so she kept calling her son's name in the village.
That night the woman screamed for a long time, and the villagers thought she was noisy, so several people came out and dragged her away.
His clothes were tattered when he died.
Not long after, strange things began to happen in the village. Every night everyone could hear the woman's voice, calling her son to come home for dinner.
Gradually, some people died mysteriously, and some wanted to leave the village but couldn't.
Later, the village began to hang up jars one after another. They hung jars to tell the female ghost that someone in my family had died at your hands, and we had suffered retribution, so you should not come in again.
When the taskers came, jars were hung in every household in the village, which meant that someone in every family had been killed by the female ghost, but the deaths did not stop.
It gets dark in the village at six o'clock every day. The female ghost will come out at that moment, and all the villagers must open the doors of their homes and cannot close them.
Whenever the female ghost walked to the door of a house, someone in that house would sing a nursery rhyme in the yard - "Only Mother is Good in the World".
That was the song the female ghost taught her son to sing when she was alive.
Singing the song does not necessarily mean you will be safe, the female ghost may still come in.
Chen Yang pinched his brows. These were the clues that everyone had found out over two days, at the cost of sacrificing a dozen teammates. The progress bar was approaching the end, and now all that was missing was the ghost girl's son. If they found him, they would complete the mission.
"Where would that child be?" Chen Yang said incoherently, "It's dark..."
He shuddered: "It's getting dark!"
Chao Jian grabbed Chen Yang and motioned him to look outside the village: "Everyone is back, let's go inside quickly."
Chen Yang saw Sun Wenjun, Xiang Zimu, and two taskers running towards the village from four directions. They exchanged glances quickly and ran into the house together.
As night fell, the village became deathly silent.
The wind was very strong tonight, and the small jars in front of every house were blown against the wall, making a clanging sound.
That sound can make one's heart beat to the throat and one dare not breathe.
There was also a jar hanging outside the house where Chen Yang and his team lived. They quickly burned their teammates' bodies before they disappeared and put the ashes in it.
The situation has improved as a result.
Chen Yang knew that he was doing his own mission in a previous mission, and he couldn't tell whether it was an illusion or not, but he would still be moved and would take seriously every plot that the rules pushed to him.
Sun Wenjun, Xiang Zimu and other four people who were out were communicating with each other. Chen Yang occasionally said a word or two about his own opinions, which were all to the point.
Chao Jian would also analyze and interject, his level of participation was 100%.
"There's nothing found outside. I think the child's body is still in the village. We should..." Sun Wenjun said halfway when a gust of cold wind blew in from the open door.
The female ghost is coming!
There was an anxious and helpless cry in the wind.
"Haohao, go home for dinner..."
"Haohao... where are you... come home quickly for dinner... come home for dinner..."
"Haohao..."
"Haohao—go home for dinner—Haohao! Haohao!!!"
The shouts gradually became shrill and resentful.
Chen Yang stood at the door and looked out. There was a woman in tattered clothes walking unsteadily with her head down. She was shoeless and her left leg was twisted and deformed.
"Is my Haohao here with you?" The woman stopped in front of a door. She stretched her head slightly and spoke in a very soft voice.
The singing in that courtyard continued, and it was obvious that this was not the first time they had faced this horrific scene.
“There is only one good mother in the world… Children with mothers are like treasures…”
The woman was stunned: "A child with a mother is like a treasure..." She murmured, turned around and hummed.
“Snap—”
The crisp sound of something breaking exploded on the ground in front of the house.
The jar was blown away by the wind!
As soon as the singing in the yard stopped, the next second the singing girl's tongue was pulled out, and blood kept flowing down her chin, staining the clothes in front of her red.
“Ooooo… Ooooo…” The little girl was shaking in pain. She couldn’t utter a complete syllable and her tongue was bleeding.
The ashes on the ground in front of the door that were about to be blown away belonged to her father. She, her brother, and her mother were left at home.
Now my brother ran into the house with his eyes rolled back, and my mother couldn't stop him. She could only watch him bleeding from all seven orifices, and she dug out a shroud from somewhere and put it on him.
"Don't take my son away!"
My mother knelt down facing the door and kowtowed vigorously, making a "dong dong dong" sound. Soon there was a small stain of blood on the ground in front of her.
"If you want to take me, please take me away, I beg you..."
"Please be kind, Haohao's mother, please be kind!"
The little girl sat on the ground with a pale face, covering her bloody mouth and crying breathlessly. Suddenly, her eyes widened with tears.
The shroud on my brother appeared on my mother!
A pair of white and rotten arms stretched out from behind her mother, grabbed her mother's hands, and buttoned the shroud one by one.
It's like a mother dressing her child.
The middle-aged woman from that family followed the female ghost in her funeral clothes, her neck twisted 180 degrees and her face blue-gray.
She looked at the front door of her house and walked backwards step by step.
Her home and her two children became increasingly blurred and smaller in her dilated pupils.
The woman took a "child" away and was safe for the night.
After daybreak, some villagers came to bring breakfast to Chen Yang and his companions. They were quite polite when they met each other, and then left after delivering the breakfast, returning home in a hurry.
Chen Yang drank a mouthful of porridge. The villagers didn’t know where the woman’s son was, or rather, those who knew were already dead.
"Brother Yang, is the injury on your back feeling better?" Xiang Zimu came over.
"Nothing." Chen Yang glanced at the pickled radish in her bowl, "Is it delicious?"
"So salty." Xiang Zimu stuck out her tongue and made a retching sound, not looking like a lady at all.
Chen Yang heard some noise behind him. He turned around and found Li Zheng standing in the main room. The girl next to him was holding a bowl and saying something with a forced smile.
Li Zheng looked around the yard nervously, as if someone among his teammates wanted to harm him.
Chen Yang drank the last two mouthfuls of porridge in the bowl. He handed the empty bowl to Chao Jian beside him, stood up and walked to Li Zheng.
Li Zheng sat in a corner where the sun couldn't reach.
Chen Yang waited until the girl left before talking to him: "You didn't bring medicine?"
Li Zheng seemed to have not heard Chen Yang's voice at all.