"What the hell..." The youth shook his head speechlessly. "Even farming requires buying seed first. Just think about the harvest."
"That's true enough," the New Army commander nodded. "Worst case, it comes out of His Majesty's privy purse."
Then he gave the boy a deep, searching look. "Come with me. The south needs your way with words... and it's close to your Jin as well."
"Not going," Wu Youren refused bluntly with a shake of his head. "You can send me back to Jin first and summon me here afterward. I'm sure no one would dare object."
"Give up on that thought," Jeff sneered. "Anyone can go back, but not you!"
"You truly have poor credit..." The youth sighed deeply and nodded slightly. "The next time you come looking for me, please bring a death-exemption medallion."
*And what if I don't?* Jeff badly wanted to retort, but there was really no need.
What actually mattered was easing the strained relationship with this youth, because... he was truly damn useful.
Just like the proposal provided this time, it was another pleasant surprise.
Had it been an intricate, convoluted answer, Jeff wouldn't have been so astonished. The crucial point was that the answer was shockingly simple.
Just like his answer last time, it was so straightforward that it left one torn between laughter and tears, yet exceptionally easy to execute.
It almost made one regret asking the question in the first place: *How could I have been so stupid?*
Yet even if Li Hu was foolish, was Zhi Hu foolish? Was Jiao Hu foolish? Or was the Army Commander himself foolish?
The answer truly seemed to have been lying right there all along, ripe for the taking. But why had none of them ever thought of it?
The last time the youth provided an answer, Jeff thought it was simply because Wu Youren was looking from an outsider's perspective, whereas those inside the game had fallen into a mental blind spot.
Could this time be explained the same way?
Even if an outsider possessed greater clarity, to see through the heart of the matter so incisively, you had to at least... have witnessed similar situations before, hadn't you?
Jeff's level of education was only average, but he was born into a baronial family after all.
Before this, he had served in the Imperial Guard for years, rising to his current position through sheer grit. His breadth of experience and shrewdness far surpassed ordinary folk.
He was utterly certain that throughout the history he knew of, he had never heard of any comparable precedent!
So what made this boy truly unique was that his way of thinking was fundamentally different from ordinary people.
He had slighted him before, but that was water under the bridge. From now on, he had to make every effort to win him over!
As the New Army commander digested the recent information, he asked offhandedly, "Did you slip away from Red Pine because your prince fell ill?"
He had feigned polite ignorance moments ago, but now he dropped the pretense completely: *I know about this.*
The youth nodded slightly, without uttering a single word.
He would never explain himself to an outsider, much less complain.
Speaking without discretion lacked composure, and badmouthing Jin Manor was just demeaning himself.
"Heh," Jeff chuckled and asked with keen interest, "If they push you away like this, why do you still want to go back?"
The youth remained silent, only giving a soft grunt to signal his displeasure with the topic.
"Let's not dwell on that then," the New Army commander conceded readily. "Aren't you going to invite us in to sit down?"
"This dump..." Wu Youren was amused. He turned and walked toward the half-collapsed building. "Come in as you please."
Though it was night, the expanse of snow reflected enough ambient light to make the surroundings bright as day.
Jeff glanced around, shaking his head and clicking his tongue. "Tsk, tsk. Just how much do you despise... Well, whatever. Isn't this kind of life miserable?"
The conditions here could no longer be described merely as destitute. Even the vagrants on the streets of Tianjing didn't have it any worse than this boy.
The youth turned his head to look at him, his gaze clear as ever. "At least I'm alive."
"If I had to live like this, I'd rather die," the New Army commander said, shaking his head. "Under these conditions... let me give you some supplies."
Wu Youren glanced sidelong at him without a word.
"I'm not interested in pulling the Intelligence Bureau's disgusting tricks," Jeff stated candidly. "If I wanted to harm you, I'd strike directly."
During his last "heart-to-heart" with the Intelligence Bureau's knights, he had learned quite a few past details.
The youth still didn't express an opinion.
Before long, a low rumble echoed across the snow as a tracked armored vehicle drove up, towing an off-road vehicle behind it.
"There are supplies in the back," Jeff waved a hand. "That off-roader is yours too... Want the armored vehicle as well?"
Wu Youren looked at him, thoroughly exasperated, then silently stepped into the corner of the wall. "No photography!"
If he were caught in the same frame as a Liang armored vehicle and that footage "accidentally" ended up on the Guard Captain's wristwatch...
People who played politics were universally dirty. Of that, he was utterly convinced.
"Heh!" Jeff shook his head, caught between laughter and tears. He was courting the youth because he valued his innovative thinking and wanted more of his ideas.
Politics wasn't something he didn't know how to play, but when dealing with this kid... it was unnecessary, and completely uncalled for!
An armored carrier designed for troop transport naturally had plenty of cargo capacity. When all the bundles and crates were unloaded, there was easily at least two thousand jin of goods.
Daily living supplies made up more than half, while the rest turned out to be combat materiel.
There weren't many firearms, and heavy firepower was absent altogether; it consisted primarily of ammunition, with a mere five ghost-destroying mines.
The youth merely watched silently as they unloaded everything, making no move to stop them.
Inwardly, however, he was calculating: *This is worth well over two thousand silver dollars!*
Once a major faction decided to reel someone in, they truly spared no expense. A haul of supplies like this was par for the course.
However, when the New Army commander mentioned there were more supplies in the off-road vehicle and that he could unload them himself, Wu Youren waved his hand.
"I don't want the vehicle. It'd be too hard to explain away."
"It has no tracker," Jeff said straightforwardly. "The New Army insignia isn't large either. It's mainly for convenience of travel."
*Convenience or inconvenience for me?* Wu Youren gave him an exasperated look, then shook his head, subtly yet firmly.
"Never mind then," the New Army commander waved his hand helplessly. "Unload the supplies from the off-roader for him as well."
That was roughly another two thousand jin.
Once the unloading was complete, Jeff and the other knights climbed into the armored vehicle and drove off without another word.
Having decided to win the boy over, he needed to maintain the proper posture. The youth was strongly defensive, so the first step was disarming his vigilance.
*All of this...* Wu Youren looked at the stacked piles of supplies, then back at his crudely assembled one-man shelter.
Comparison truly bred discontent. Seduction and corruption were genuinely difficult to refuse.
The slight shame was that this unloading site was not his chosen long-term hideout.
Still, it hardly mattered. Across the vast Rust Belt, he had no fixed residence anyway. Anywhere could serve as shelter.
There were quite a lot of supplies this time. Did Jeff actually think he planned to spend the entire winter hunkering down in the Rust Belt?
Strictly speaking, these supplies were only enough to sustain a ten-man squad through ten days of high-intensity combat—half a month would be pushing it.
Yet for a single person holing up through the winter in the wild, it was more than plenty.
Dispersing and burying the caches was certainly necessary, but Wu Youren was in no rush. It was already midnight.
Could the supplies be spotted? That was easily handled—draping a white tarp over them was all it took.
Wu Youren pitched a tent between the supply stacks and the corner of the wall, sealing it tight against the cold, and slept soundly through the night.
Throughout the entire following day, aside from cultivating, he inventoried the supplies, categorizing them while checking for any concealed hazards.
Jeff's words sounded fine, but Wu Youren would never take him at face value.
Only when night fell did he begin hauling the supplies away bit by bit, like an ant moving its nest.
He didn't transport too much on each trip; there was no need to wear himself ragged.
It took ten full days to finish dispersing most of the supplies, leaving this spot as his primary dwelling.
During this time, he briefly switched on his wristwatch once each day to receive relevant messages.
On the twelfth day, Jeff arrived in the armored vehicle for a visit. Seeing that the supplies had dwindled considerably, he showed no surprise.
He had come to tell the youth that his proposal had worked well, so he had secured another marching stone for Hong Da.
The treasure was not yet in hand, only placed on the waiting list; once one became available, it would be delivered.
At the end of the day, he was currying favor—*Such a scarce item, yet I went out of my way to secure it for your boss solely on your account.*
In the end, he even asked, "Do you have enough supplies? If not, just say the word."
As for where the missing goods had gone, he didn't inquire in the slightest.
Three days later, Manna and Daiqisi actually showed up as well, bringing him a bit of fresh vegetables.
Similarly, neither asked when he planned to return to Red Pine; they merely said that if he went out hunting guizu, he should remember to contact them.
Evidently, certain rumors must have already spread.
Wu Youren didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So his "seclusion" was in a place that everybody knew about?
Even so, this place was far more convenient than Red Pine. As for danger... was the Martial Academy any safer?
At the very least, there was no constraint from legacy weapons here.
Over the next three or four days, the sun shone brightly. The melting snow froze again at night, forming a hard crust over the surface that made skiing even easier.
However, as the snow melted, the area would lose some of its cover; he ought to venture deeper into the Rust Belt.
It was not so much to guard against the New Army or people from Red Pine, but primarily to keep an eye out for barbarians.
The heavy snowfall had strained the barbarians' supplies, and troublesome incidents had been cropping up with increasing frequency of late.
Because there was no one to plunder in the Rust Belt and no guizu to fight, the barbarians in the area had actually decreased somewhat.
Wu Youren did not lower his guard because of that; anyone who had lived as a hostage could hardly afford to make careless mistakes in such matters.
In the middle of the night, while resting, he suddenly snapped awake.
He pushed open the tent flap and stepped outside. Sure enough, a horned owl was perched in the corner of the room, twice as large as the previous one.
Wu Youren didn't even need to probe, greeting it directly, "Didn't you say you were going to try hibernating?"
"That one was killed by a sand owl," Chen Quanxu replied. "I switched to a bigger one this time."
"Why haven't you been riding the motorcycle I gave you? If the temperature hadn't risen these past couple of days, finding you would have been quite a hassle."
"Brother, look at the weather. Does this look like motorcycling weather to you?"
"Couldn't it be converted into a snowmobile?" the horned owl muttered, though it didn't pursue the point.
"Without your coordination, hunting guizu is dull," Wu Youren said in all honesty. "Besides, it's easy to expose myself. What would I gain?"
"I can go hunting right now. Shall we do it?"
"No problem," Chen Quanxu answered. "I was in a rush to find you because I worried the aura of the orange seed would dissipate... Uh, it still hasn't pooped it out?"
Chapter 209