For a moment, Ning Zhe didn't have an answer either. He gave a slight shake of his head. "I don't know what this man's after, but murdering a city person, that's the kind of thing that gets you hunted down for life. We stay with him, we stay alert. Until he shows us any sign of ill intent, let's just earn what we're owed."
Lunch was a generous spread: two bean cakes mixed with ground bone meal each, a bowl of water, and half a pickled cucumber.
As usual, Ning Zhe and Lin Xun ate whatever food was left over from the meal before, saving this fresh batch to carry with them instead. Having food on your person was, for a refugee, the greatest sense of security there was.
Just as the three of them were eating, Zhuo Mingyuan glanced out toward the door, his expression suddenly turning uneasy. He leaned toward Ning Zhe, a little tense. "Brother Ning, I see that group that was watching me yesterday. They're right outside!"
"It's fine. Keep eating." Ning Zhe kept on with his meal, not even looking up.
Ning Zhe had already noticed on the way in that a few men had their eyes on them, but none of them had stepped inside the restaurant, which meant they still had some reservations. After all, anyone who could run a shop in the settlement usually had something backing them up.
"By your own account, you've been living out on the wasteland for years now. How did these people find out you have money? Don't you know the basic rule of survival, never flaunt your wealth?" Lin Xun scanned the four or five burly men outside from the corner of his eye and frowned at Zhuo Mingyuan.
"Yesterday, while I was out looking for people in the settlement, I ran into a little girl begging for food. Looking at her face, it suddenly reminded me of my sister, so I found a quiet spot and gave her ten yuan. It wasn't long after that these men started watching me." Zhuo Mingyuan looked genuinely frustrated. "Thinking back on it now, that girl must have been working with them all along! I was so good to her, and she went and set me up!"
"There's plenty of danger in a time like this, but nothing's more dangerous than people." Ning Zhe's expression stayed indifferent. "The poorer the place, the truer that gets. Maybe none of the people we've met are truly evil in any deep sense, but out here, more often than not, staying alive means climbing over someone else to do it."
Hearing this, Lin Xun suddenly recalled how Ning Zhe had stopped him from giving that little beggar girl food the day before, and quietly reflected on how far the world had fallen.
Yesterday, he hadn't fully understood why Ning Zhe had done that, thinking he was being overly cautious. Lin Xun was a simple, straightforward man at heart, but he wasn't a fool, either. Out here on this land, aside from Ning Zhe, there was truly no one he trusted.
Out on the wasteland, evil never wore a fixed face. Men, women, the old, children, anyone might bare their fangs when survival demanded it.
"Mr. Zhuo, if you don't mind my asking, if you can't find your sister here, what do you plan to do next?" Ning Zhe held his water bowl steady, careful not to spill a drop, and tested the man with the question.
"Can't find her?" Zhuo Mingyuan froze for a moment, clearly caught off guard by the question. After a long pause, he shook his head, his gaze firm. "If I can't find her, then I'll just keep looking."
Watching his expression, Ning Zhe felt fairly certain the man wasn't spinning a false story. He glanced sideways. "Don't you have any relatives or friends around here who might have news?"
"What relatives?" Zhuo Mingyuan let out a bitter laugh. "Ten years ago, I caught a bad cold, and passed it on to my parents. To keep them from spreading it to the other workers, the factory cut off their jobs. My mother ended up dying from it, and after that, my father, my sister, and I had nothing left to eat.
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We were starving, truly out of options, so my father took my sister out one day and traded her for some medicine and half a side of mutton. Once I'd recovered, my father took it upon himself to send me off to work at a mining site out in the frozen wastes, and told me never to come back for the rest of my life. It wasn't until he died of illness two months ago that I finally made my way back to Stronghold 87 on my own, hoping to find my sister again."
"Brother, what's a sheep?" Lin Xun asked, blinking in genuine ignorance, turning to Ning Zhe.
"It's an animal, though not much good at defending itself, which is why wild ones are so rare these days. I've heard the stronghold raises them in captivity." Ning Zhe answered offhand, then turned back to Zhuo Mingyuan. "You just said your father traded your sister for a sheep. Doesn't that mean she was sold into the stronghold? Otherwise, who in the refugee zone would ever have mutton to spare?"
"That's right! How did I forget about that!" At Ning Zhe's words, Zhuo Mingyuan's eyes lit up at once, and he slapped his thigh in excitement. "That's it! My sister must have gone into the city! No wonder I couldn't find any trace of her out here! You're right, she must be inside! Once we finish eating, I need to find a way into the city to look for her! No matter how much it costs, I have to get in!"
Seeing Zhuo Mingyuan's sudden burst of excitement, Lin Xun looked at Ning Zhe, bewildered. "Brother, feels like that one sentence just talked us right out of a job."
Ning Zhe froze for a second, then answered a little awkwardly. "This is the work we signed up for. A man's got to have some decency about him. We can't go earning money with a dirty conscience. If we've got no principles left, how are we any different from those thugs?"
"You two, do either of you happen to know any way into the city? I'll pay whatever it costs, money's no object to me." Zhuo Mingyuan hadn't caught what the other two had said between them, his face full of hope.
"Let's ask the fat guy in a bit. He worked inside the stronghold before, so he might know something." Ning Zhe gave a slight shake of his head. He'd grown up learning to hunt and had never once worked in one of the stronghold's factories, so he knew very little about what Zhuo Mingyuan was asking.
"Brother, what about the tails outside the door?" Lin Xun untied the waterskin at his belt, made from wild boar hide, and poured the leftover half bowl of water he hadn't finished into it.
"As long as they don't make a move, we don't need to bother with them." Ning Zhe was only protecting Zhuo Mingyuan to earn enough to get by for now. If those men had the sense to hold back, he had no interest in stirring up trouble and bringing more headaches on himself.
After the meal, the three of them left the restaurant and found the chubby young man at a spot along the street in the settlement. His haul for the day wasn't much, just one rat and a few unidentified beetles slightly longer than a middle finger, sitting in his freshly-dug coal pit.
"Brother Zhe! I bought this bedding for you and Brother Xun with my savings, it's used, but I hope you don't mind!" Seeing the group, the chubby young man reached over and patted a bundle beside him, then asked eagerly, "Did you find who you were looking for?"
"Not yet. Here's some bean cake for you." Ning Zhe handed over the cloth-wrapped cake, then continued, "Fatty, do you know of any way for refugees around here to get into the city?"
"Working, that's it! There's no way for a refugee to get through the gates except working." The chubby young man rolled the bean cake into a long strip and took a big bite, chewing away. Eating it that way filled his mouth up nicely, which gave him a real sense of satisfaction.
"I don't mean the outer city. I mean the inner city." Ning Zhe raised a hand, pointing toward the taller inner wall that rose up behind the first barrier. "Getting into the city proper."
"Brother Zhe, don't joke with me like that! When I worked in the outer city, I was nothing but the lowest kind of sewage worker! How would I have any idea how to get into the inner city? Besides, how could a refugee ever have the right to get in? I've heard the people inside think refugees are contaminated with some kind of germ, that we're too filthy to have around!"
The chubby young man gave a simple, sheepish laugh, then noticing the disappointment on Zhuo Mingyuan's face, thought it over for a moment. "You might try asking that warden, Su Fei. Among refugees, it's the wardens like him who get the most contact with people from inside the stronghold."
"Hm, that's worth a try." Ning Zhe thought back to the newly appointed warden on their street.
The chubby young man finished off the bean cake and sucked at his fingers. "But don't get your hopes up too high about this. Over all these years, I've seen countless people break their backs trying to get into the city, but I've never once seen anyone actually pull it off."