Chapter 38
Jian Chu vented the anger in his heart, and his breathing became smoother. It turned out that one cannot hold back anger. Between hurting others and hurting oneself, he would definitely choose the former.
The old man of the Zhang family was furious. Being bullied by a brat who hadn't even grown all his hair yet, he ignored Jian Chu's previous harsh words and said fiercely that he would call the police. He also pointed at Xu Ming, Qin Huai and the others and said, "You all saw it. This bastard is a hooligan. I can't sleep peacefully at night with such a person living here! I'm calling the police, and you have to testify for me that he was the first to start!"
Xu Ming was already very tired, both exhausted and hot. Seeing that they had stopped fighting, he was too lazy to join in. He had shed a lot of saliva just from shouting twice, so he turned around and walked towards his home with the bucket.
The old man of the Zhang family glared angrily when he saw this. At this time, Mu Nan carried Jian Chu's bucket and said, "Here."
Jian Chu walked over, picked up the bucket and thanked them. The Zhang family members had never expected that all the people on their floor were actually in the same group!
Grandma Zhang seemed to recognize Mu Nan and looked at him with a look of disappointment: "Nan Nan? You are Nan Nan, right? Oh, how come you are hanging out with this kind of people!"
Qin Huai asked Mu Nan to go directly into the house, but Grandma Zhang suddenly ran over and seemed to want to grab Mu Nan and have a good talk, but was stopped by Qin Huai: "Sorry, we don't seem to know each other."
Grandma Zhang frowned and looked at Qin Huai, her eyes revealing a bit of disdain: "You are the kid from the Qin family, you have grown up so fast, I am your grandma Zhang."
Qin Huai seemed to smile and said bluntly: "I'm sorry, Nan Nan's grandmother and I are living well in heaven." After that, he closed the iron door with a snap.
Probably they didn't expect them to have such an attitude, which made the two old people in the Zhang family very angry. They couldn't even understand why they seemed to be targeted by several residents on this floor at the same time. They had just moved back and hadn't done anything. It was simply too puzzling!
Jian Chu rubbed the corners of his mouth when he returned to the house. Yu Zibai frowned and stepped forward to help him check, but he couldn't help but said, "You are too impulsive."
Jian Chu pushed his hand away: "My temper is natural and I can't suppress it."
Yu Zibai sighed: "The world is in chaos now, you never know how others will retaliate against you."
Jian Chu looked at him and said, "Are you afraid of being retaliated against, so you just swallow your anger and listen to others scolding you?"
Yu Zibai: "I just don't want you to get hurt. In this situation, safety is more important than anything else."
Jian Chu didn't say anything. Yu Zibai knew that he had such a temper. He sighed and carried the bucket into the kitchen. Jian Chu went to the bathroom. He was quite experienced in fighting and knew how to protect himself, but he was still hit in the face. The corners of his mouth were blue. He won the fight, but at this moment he felt a little uncomfortable.
He really didn't expect that today's outing would end with watching a fight. The main reason was that the people fighting were so unexpected. He thought Jian Chu was a weakling like him. When he saw Jian Chu in his last life, Jian Chu looked very bad, sickly and even weaker than him. How come he was like a completely different person in this life? Just from the decisive and quick move he made just now, Mu Nan knew that he was a veteran fighter, which didn't match Jian Chu's thin appearance at all.
Seeing that Qin Huai was not surprised at all, Mu Nan asked, "Brother, have you noticed that Jian Chu is quite good at fighting?"
Qin Huai shook his head: "That's not the case, what's wrong?"
Mu Nan: "You don't look surprised at all. Wow, is he a King Kong little white rabbit? Did you see that? The three men of the Zhang family can't beat Jian Chu."
Qin Huai smiled and said, "Looking at the way Jian Chu fights, it's all unconventional, but you can learn from him some dirty tricks for self-defense." He has learned Sanda for many years and has formed a system, but he is strong and has a fast reaction speed, so if he encounters some inferior opponents, he can solve them with his own skills.
But Mu Nan was different. He had just started training. First, he had not formed muscle memory yet and could not react instinctively to fight back. Second, he was weak. If he really faced some reckless men, he would be defeated. Jian Chu, on the other hand, knew how to use his strengths. Although those experiences seemed to be accumulated from fighting with others, they were very suitable for Mu Nan.
Mu Nan sighed, "I never thought that there would be a day when I would make a mistake."
Qin Huai said: "He is indeed a little unexpected."
Mu Nan waved his hand: "It's not this that I misjudged, it's him and Yu Zibai. I always thought that between the two of them, Yu Zibai was the protector and Jian Chu was the protected. Now that I see it this way, I'm afraid that both their superiors and subordinates will be overthrown."
Qin Huai didn't understand: "What do you mean by up and down?"
Mu Nan chuckled: "Don't you know they are a couple? How come you didn't see it? I saw it all!"
He is a web comic artist, and he has seen pigs run even if he has not eaten pork. There was a time when BL novels were extremely popular, and people invited him to serialize comics. He has no idea how many romance, yuri, and comics he has drawn. Although they seem a little different in this life, based on their brief encounter in the last life, the atmosphere between them was definitely not that of ordinary friends.
Qin Huai's eyes suddenly became ambiguous: "You understand it very well?"
Mu Nan didn't notice the change in Qin Huai's eyes, and even shared with him: "This is also the normal culture of our comic circle. Brother, you are not still feudal and think that the combination of yin and yang is the kingly way, right?"
Qin Huai: "That's not the case. What others do won't disturb my life. But how did you tell that?"
Mu Nan couldn't say that he saw it from their previous life, so he could only say, "The atmosphere between them is particularly close. This intimacy exceeds that of ordinary roommates."
Qin Huai took off his shirt and took the cold drink handed over by Mu Nan. He held it in his hand but did not drink it. Instead, he looked at Mu Nan and asked, "Don't you think we are closer than them?"
Mu Nan looked at me with a look of "What nonsense are you talking about?" "We have known each other for so many years, and they have known each other for so many years, how can it be the same? We have slept together since childhood, eaten from the same pot, and called each other brother for so long. If you hadn't been gone for all these years, we would have been even closer!"
Qin Huai smiled helplessly. Seeing that he was about to turn on the small electric fan, he urged him, "Go take a shower first. You will feel cool after taking a shower."
Mu Nan had no choice but to get up from the bed and take a look at Qin Huai's exposed six-pack abs. He lifted up his clothes and saw that because of running and practicing Sanda every day, he now had abdominal muscles, but he had to work hard to tense them up to see a little shape. Unlike Qin Huai, his abs were like growing on his body and were always there. So Mu Nan couldn't help but leave an envious look, sighed softly, and walked to the bathroom.
Qin Huai, who felt inexplicably hot after being looked at by Mu Nan, turned on a small fan and drank cold drinks to try to cool down.
After taking a shower and using the fan for a while, Mu Nan finally felt cooler. Seeing Qin Huai sprinkle water on the vegetable basins inside and outside, he asked, "Can the chickens we raise survive this high temperature? If not, why not kill them and cook them? Otherwise, they will die of heat and cannot be eaten."
Qin Huai: "It's OK at the moment."
The air conditioner over there is not very good, it is a bit old, so it is only turned on every night, and the chickens are let out there to exercise every night. During the day, they are kept in their kitchen, because the air conditioner bought by Mu Nan can fully withstand the current high temperature, so it is turned on even during the day. A crack is opened in the kitchen door to let the cold air in, and a piece of ice is put in. A few chickens are kept in cages, and urine pads are laid on the floor. There is no need to wash the floor. When the urine pads are very dirty, they are replaced with new ones, which also saves water. The chickens look energetic, and it feels like I can try to continue raising them.
It's probably too hot now. The chickens don't know why they won't sit on the nest. After a few eggs died, Qin Huai penned the roosters separately. Although they laid fewer eggs later, several hens could still lay at least one or two eggs every day. But it's better not to sit on the nest now, otherwise the hatched chicks may have a hard time surviving.
Mu Nan said "oh", Qin Huai said it was okay, so let's continue raising them. Anyway, he didn't have any hope of raising the chickens in the beginning, after all, it was too hot later. If they could survive, that would be a good thing, but if they couldn't, then it wouldn't be a loss to eat them.
Seeing Qin Huai finished his work and was about to take a shower, Mu Nan asked, "What are we having today? Do you want to see the menu?"
Qin Huai laughed: "You also made a menu?"
Mu Nan: "I'm just sitting around doing nothing. I haven't painted for a long time, and I can't help but want to paint."
A few days ago, Qin Huai saw Mu Nan holding his sketchbook and writing and drawing there, but he didn't go over to look. Although they didn't have much privacy living like this, sometimes they still had to give each other some private space. Unexpectedly, Mu Nan was drawing a menu: "Let me see."
Mu Nan quickly handed him the menu. Qin Huai took it and flipped through it. The painting was pretty good. It was in cartoon style, with several dishes on one page, and they were all colored. It was pleasing to the eye and aroused appetite: "Snail noodles, fried eel noodles, spicy tofu, spicy shredded chicken, boiled fish fillet, Kung Pao chicken." There was a cute pepper next to each dish, one for mild spicy and five for very spicy. Qin Huai smiled and said, "Did you draw all the dishes stored in your space?"
Mu Nan took his own recipe book and said, "Not yet. I've only drawn one-fifth of it. There are so many, it's impossible to finish them all so quickly. Just take your time. Once this one is finished, it will be almost done. Brother, what are we going to eat later?"
Qin Huai said, "I'll go cook a pot of rice. I haven't had proper rice for several days. Bring out a plate of spicy tofu, a steamed sea bass, and stir-fried Chinese cabbage. What else do you want to eat? I'll go wash the rice and cook it before I take a shower."
Qin Huai took a quick shower and came out a few minutes later smelling like toilet water. Mu Nan let him cool down for a while. When he heard the prompt sound of the rice cooker in the kitchen, he took out the ready-made dishes from the space and also took out a plate of braised pork. Although the weather was very hot and people had no appetite, Mu Nan suddenly wanted to eat braised pork.
A bite of braised pork, fat with some lean meat, full of gravy, paired with rice, makes you feel that your life has been sublimated.
Qin Huai looked at him and smiled: "You didn't like this when you were a child."
Mu Nan: "That was because I didn't understand the delicious food when I was a kid."
Thinking about what happened just now, Mu Nan was a little worried: "Brother, will the Zhang family call the police?"
Qin Huai said, "No, although the old man of the Zhang family will definitely not swallow this breath, his family will stop him." The grandson who was finally begged for was raised to this age, and he was like a treasure. Unless Jian Chu was arrested and never released, otherwise if the police were called, the feud would really become a knot. So Zhang Zicong's grandmother and mother would not let his grandfather call the police.
Mu Nan: "That's good, otherwise this matter would be really hard to unravel. What a pity for that bucket of water." The bucket of water that was kicked over by Jian Chu cooled down the corridor, what a pity.
Mu Nan was scrolling through his phone and exclaimed, "Look, when we were picking up our things just now, the man who was fighting with the soldier was there."
Qin Huai took a look and asked, "What's wrong?"
Mu Nan said, "The group is talking about his story. Someone smelled a strange odor at the door of his house, the odor of a corpse, and told the community. Because he had a fight with the people distributing supplies, he had been temporarily detained and couldn't come back. The community found someone to open the door, and then saw a body in one of his rooms. It was his father's. It seemed that he went out to get supplies last time and died not long after returning. It was probably also due to the heat. The man didn't let anyone drag his father away. He thought of keeping him for two days and using his father's ID card to get supplies again. Wow, what a beast, to bury his father in peace is not as good as a few bottles of water and a bag of noodles."
If this happened after the earthquake, it probably wouldn't have caused such a big reaction from the public. After all, at that time, people would do anything for a little food. But now it's not that time yet, and the country is still distributing supplies and water, so this man's actions are really chilling.
Some people even asked in the group whether this behavior constituted a legal crime and whether he could be arrested. Of course, he couldn't be arrested. It depends on what kind of punishment he will receive for this kind of behavior. But in the end, I heard that the man was detained for 15 days. Of course, he was not detained in a detention center and had to eat on time. Instead, he was taken to a construction site to move bricks. The construction site was the summer resort that the government was going to build.
After that, they didn't run into anyone from the Zhang family for a while. They probably were avoiding them on purpose.
When Xu Ming went to collect supplies again, he was also laid off. "Now pets have become food for many people. You can hardly see a few stray dogs on the road. The price of a kilogram of rice has risen to several hundred yuan. Who has the money to take care of pets? Moreover, many medicines cannot withstand high temperatures. Naturally, the clinic cannot continue to operate. We will close it temporarily. We will see what happens next."
Xu Ming said, looking at Jian Chu and Qin Huai and the others: "The clinic still has some medicine in stock, do you want to go get some? It's free anyway. If the clinic closes, the power will be cut off, and those medicines will probably be useless in the future."
Jian Chu had never raised a pet before, so he didn't know much about this. He immediately asked curiously, "What kind of medicine is that? Can medicine for pets also be used by humans?"
Xu Ming: "Of course not all of them can be used, but some of them are actually interchangeable, such as some anti-inflammatory products, insect repellent sprays that can be used by both humans and pets, and by the way, there are also cat and dog food. Do you want to move some back? When there is no food left, these can also be eaten, but they have no taste and are not very delicious."
Xu Ming said this half-jokingly, of course he could eat it, but he couldn't have imagined that in the future there would be a food shortage to the extent that he would have to eat cat food and dog food.
Mu Nan asked: "Is there a pee pad?"
Xu Ming nodded: "Yes, but what do you need a pee pad for?"
Mu Nan: "I raise a few chickens, and use urine pads to collect chicken poop to avoid having to clean it up with water." He also has some urine pads in his space, but he hadn't thought of what use this thing would be for them. A urine pad is not very big, and it can't be used as a bed sheet, nor can it be used as a cushion or a cover. At least they won't pee on the urine pad and then roll it up and throw it away. Anyway, he also prepared cat litter. Those few packs of urine pads were given as gifts by the manufacturer because he bought a lot of cat litter. He didn't expect that they would be just right for chickens.
Xu Ming and his friends knew that they raised chickens. In the past, the big roosters would crow every morning, and sometimes they could hear the crowing while waiting for the elevator. They just didn't expect to raise chickens with urine pads. However, in today's water shortage, it is feasible to maintain a clean environment.
Xu Ming said, "Then we can go and have a look after we get our things. If there is anything we need, we can move it back home as soon as possible. The clinic just lost power yesterday, so it should be fine today, but in two days, I'm afraid the food inside will get stale."
If there is something that doesn't cost money, of course you should take it, so we decided to go together and see if there is anything worth taking.
Xu Ming walked forward along the queue while educating them about pet supplies. When it was their turn, they realized they had no choice of supplies. There was only water and instant noodles. There was no rice. Other than that, there was also a flyer.
Mu Nan remembered this when he saw the flyer. The government directly requisitioned large shopping malls in various places and changed the layout of the entire shopping mall. After installing solar energy, they will be opened one by one. At that time, the entire shopping mall will be cooled 24 hours a day and provided free of charge to people with special circumstances, such as some elderly people without houses, elderly people who have lost their only child, and people with particularly difficult families.
For example, there is an old man with mental abnormalities on the roof of the building where Mu Nan lives. He was taken away during the epidemic because of a group buying dispute. Later, he was released. However, the temperature was too high not long after he came back. He had no air conditioner in the building, and there was not even a place to use electricity. The high temperature could kill him in minutes.
Later, the community placed the single elderly person in a community service center, which now houses several lonely elderly people. If the government’s cold storage placement site opens, these people will be the first to be sent there.
For a shopping mall as big as this, the country's investment in reconstruction and solar energy alone is not small. Naturally, they have to find ways to recover some of the costs. After all, many families now dare not turn on the air conditioner during the day, and the air conditioners at home simply cannot work after the temperature exceeds 50 degrees. So if there can be such a cooling point, it will solve the problem of many people using air conditioning during the day. At that time, the cooling point will charge per person and by the hour.
Qin Huai looked at the flyer carefully. He could pay the fee directly, or he could use the existing materials to exchange for the usage time of the cooling point according to the current market price. This seemed quite humane. If he had no money, he could use things to compensate. However, the government's undisguised behavior of recycling materials was enough to show that the situation would really get worse in the future.
However, this is the best solution for now, because many people hoarded goods crazily in the early stage, but individuals are unable to preserve the hoarded things. In such a hot day, even some things that can be stored for a long time with the addition of preservatives may no longer be able to be kept. Instead of letting people hoard at home and waste it, it is better to recycle some of them in this way and let the state preserve them.
Mu Nan heard someone next to him looking at the flyer and saying:
"Three hundred dollars is enough to keep you cool for a day. This summer vacation fee is not cheaper than food."
"Compared to money, life is more important. This temperature is unbearable during the day."
"At this time, the government still wants to collect money. Isn't this pushing the people to death?"
"Three hundred yuan. My family doesn't have the money. I'd better continue to endure it at home. I'll be relieved when I die."
After Yu Zibai and the others had received the supplies, Qin Huai and the others walked back together. Jian Chu asked Mu Nan, "Are you going?"
Mu Nan shook his head: "It shouldn't be. My air conditioner was just replaced this year, and it was installed in the patio to avoid direct sunlight. It also has a shade, so it looks like it should be able to withstand the heat for a while."
Jian Chu said, "Fortunately, I saw that the situation was not right this year, so I replaced it with a larger air conditioner early. If the cooling point is open, those who are not at home during the day will not need electricity, and then there should be no more periodic power outages."
Mu Nan fanned himself with the flyer: "Who knows? Let's just hope."
Seeing Jian Chu walking side by side with him, and obviously trying to find a topic to talk about with him, Mu Nan glanced at him sensitively and asked in a low voice: "Did you have a fight with Yu Zibai?"
Jian Chu looked at Mu Nan with some surprise: "Why do you ask that?" He didn't show it very obviously.
Mu Nan smiled and said, "It's just a feeling." Although she would chat with him when they were getting supplies and water together before, her obvious unwillingness to walk with Yu Zibai was indeed a little too obvious.
Jian Chu said: "No, there are just some things that I need to think about carefully."
Mu Nan said: "Sometimes it's not good to think too much about some things. Who knows if there will be a tomorrow in our current life? It's so tiring to waste time worrying and thinking. It's better to live one day at a time."
Jian Chu smiled and said, "That makes sense."
Thinking of what Qin Huai said last time, Mu Nan said to Jian Chu: "My brother said that you are very good at fighting. When you have time in the future, teach me a few moves. I will trade you with the braised chicken wings made by my brother."
Jian Chu was a little embarrassed: "What's so great about it? They are just some fake moves. They can only deal with those shameless old men. If you change to someone with some skills, he will only get beaten. But if you want to learn, I can teach you. You don't need to use braised chicken wings. They are so expensive now. You can keep them for yourself. But I see that your brother seems to have learned some kung fu. Why don't you learn from him?"
Sometimes you can tell whether a person is just a show-off or has real talent from his temperament, and Qin Huai's physique looks like he has been trained.
Mu Nan said: "My brother also taught me, but my brother said that your fighting style is more suitable for me, so he asked me to learn more skills so that I won't suffer losses in the future."
This is true. Jian Chu feels that if life becomes increasingly difficult in the future, it would always be good to learn more skills. At least when being bullied, he will not be powerless to fight back.
Speaking of this, Jian Chu glanced at Yu Zibai in front of him and smiled: "Come to think of it, some of my moves were taught by him."
This time Mu Nan was even more stunned: "Ah? He also knows Kung Fu?"
Jian Chu nodded: "I have practiced Taekwondo."
Mu Nan suddenly thought that maybe even Xu Ming was a hidden master. Could it be that he was the only one who was a loser at this level? However, after being surprised, a light bulb suddenly flashed in his mind. Although he didn't know whether he was right about the reason for their quarrel, if it happened to him, he felt that he would also be very angry or sad.
That day, Jian Chu had a fight with the Zhang family, and Yu Zibai only tried to stop them from fighting, but did not help. Although Yu Zibai was right rationally, humans are essentially emotional animals.
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