Ning Zhe looked at the teary-eyed chubby young man and asked, "So he's your brother?"
"Yeah, he's my brother. I'm Li Dongfa!" The chubby young man nodded.
"Your brother..." Ning Zhe, looking at Li Dongfa still reeling from heartbreak, hesitated for a moment, unsure how to break the news of Li Dongbao's death.
"What happened to my brother?" Li Dongfa sniffled, his expression turning tense.
"Your brother got press-ganged, sent off to work as labor at a mining site out in the far reaches." Lin Xun jumped in before Ning Zhe could answer. Being sent to labor in that frozen wasteland was no different from being sent to die, but at least it softened the blow.
"What?!" Li Dongfa's eyes went wide at the words. "When did this happen?"
"Two or three days ago now. We were your brother's closest friends, but I'm sorry to say, we couldn't save him." Ning Zhe had been ready to tell the truth, but since Lin Xun had already offered a kind lie, all he could do was follow along with it.
"Why is my luck this bad!" At this, Li Dongfa sank to the ground, sobbing loudly. "I just barely saved up enough money to bring my brother in for the winter! And now he's been taken away!"
The two of them spent a long while trying to comfort him, and eventually the chubby Li Dongfa had no choice but to accept it. People vanished without a trace all the time in the refugee zone, and at least half of them ended up dragged off to labor in some distant corner of the wasteland. For refugees, this was a fate there was no fighting.
Once he'd resigned himself to this double blow, the chubby young man turned to Ning Zhe. "Brother Zhe, did my brother leave any word for me before he went?"
"Your brother was worried about you, worried you couldn't manage on your own, so he asked me to look after you. Where are you living right now?" Ning Zhe didn't know much about this young man, but at first glance he carried the unmistakable air of someone who got pushed around, clearly the type people picked on. No wonder Li Dongbao had been so worried about him with his dying breath.
The chubby young man sniffled. "I don't have anywhere to live. Someone in our old village caught the plague, so all the shacks got burned down. I built myself a little lean-to on the edge of the settlement."
"Come with me. I've got a place in the settlement on the east side of the city. Winter's coming soon, and if you keep living like this, you'll freeze to death. As for your stall, you can run it just as well over there." Ning Zhe extended the invitation.
"But is that all right?" The chubby young man looked tempted. The local thugs out here bullied him constantly, and living alone out on the wasteland was genuinely terrifying.
"I was good friends with your brother, and I promised him I'd look after you. My place is roomy enough, plenty of space for the three of us." Ning Zhe glanced up at the sun. "We should get moving, it's about that time. Come with me."
"Wonderful! Brother Zhe, could you watch the stall for me? I'll go pack up my things right now! If anyone comes to buy rats or lizards, it's two yuan a stick!" As he spoke, the chubby young man untied his apron and took off running, his soft belly jiggling as he went.
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"This fat guy's got a real different personality from Dongbao!" Lin Xun watched him go, at a loss for words for a moment. "Feels like they weren't even born from the same mother."
"Yeah. A bit of a simpleton." Ning Zhe nodded along. A personality like that clearly wasn't built for the wasteland.
Li Dongfa's roasted rats and lizards went for two yuan a skewer, a decent price by most standards, but for refugees earning only five yuan a day, still trying to save up for winter clothes, it wasn't exactly cheap either. So business at the stall was slow.
Ning Zhe, being a hunter by trade, handled the roasting with practiced ease, working the fire skillfully. But the charcoal Li Dongfa had made himself was poor quality, and it threw off thick smoke as it burned.
After about five minutes, a customer finally showed up.
Five young men in outlandish clothes walked up to the stall. One of them, sporting an explosive shock of hair, looked at Ning Zhe. "Hey! Protect your lungs!"
"Thanks!" Ning Zhe nodded. Sounded like a decent guy, warning him about the thick smoke and telling him to look after his lungs.
"I said, protect your lungs! You understand what that means?!" The young man with the wild hair sounded irritated now.
"Got it. I'll try to wear a mask next time." Ning Zhe was a little baffled. The guy's intentions seemed decent enough, but he clearly didn't know how to have a normal conversation.
The young man: "???"
"What the hell mask are you talking about? You playing dumb with us?! Hurry up and pay!" A bald guy standing next to him was starting to lose his patience.
Lin Xun: "???"
"Friends, you came here to buy something. Why are you asking me for money?" Ning Zhe looked at the group, genuinely confused. "Protection money" was a term from the old-world gangs, and somehow it had recently been dredged back up by someone, though it hadn't spread widely yet. This was the first time Ning Zhe had ever heard it.
"I'll show you your money! Where's that fat bastard gone?" The wild-haired young man, realizing Ning Zhe truly had no idea what he was talking about, explained with growing impatience. "Protection money means you set up your stall here, and we make sure you stay safe, keep the trouble off your back. And in exchange, you pay us. Get it now?"
"Got it." Understanding dawned on Ning Zhe. So these punks weren't some kind of environmental crusaders after all, just robbers.
The wild-haired young man rolled his eyes and stuck out his hand. "Ten yuan, hand it over."
"Starting today, this stall's under my protection. We don't need you. If any trouble comes up, I'll handle it myself." Ning Zhe kept flipping the skewered rats, not even bothering to look up.
"Damn it! You trying to steal our business? Let me tell you something, if you don't pay up, I'm going to be the biggest trouble you've got here!" The wild-haired young man glared at him, furious.
"Heh." Ning Zhe grinned. "In that case, I'd suggest that trouble not go looking for trouble of his own."
The wild-haired young man froze for a second, then flung his arm out. "Brothers! Smash his stall!"
"..."
The other thugs standing nearby didn't move an inch.
The stall in question was nothing but a raised platform of packed clay, with a sunken pit in the middle where a few red-hot coals sat, along with some rats roasting away, dripping fat. There was nothing there worth smashing.
"Beat them down!" The wild-haired young man caught on to this too, and flung his arm out again.
"Whoosh!"
At his words, the others swarmed the two of them all at once.
"Thud!"
Seeing them come at him, Ning Zhe moved fast, sliding forward and driving an elbow straight into one man's face, then in a flash grabbed another by the shoulder and drove a knee into his gut.
Having dropped two men in quick succession, Ning Zhe dodged the wild-haired young man's punch, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and in an instant had a blade pressed against his throat.
As a man who could keep more than a hundred households in check on the east side of the city, Ning Zhe's, and Lin Xun's, reputation for fighting was well earned, not just talk.
"Everybody freeze!" The wild-haired young man, feeling the cold edge against his throat, shouted the order to stop, but out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of his other two companions, already dropped flat by Lin Xun.