They had thought they were just casually keeping the situation under control; they hadn't expected the outcome to be so exaggerated—setting an eleven-year record.
"No wonder Boss Dao hasn't uttered a peep since the fight ended. Turns out he was so emotional he's been holding it in all the way back!" He Tangtang muttered under his breath.
Tears from a grown man were rarely seen, let alone in a world like this, from someone who walked between life and death every single day.
"Or maybe he's trying to figure out what to say to us," Wen Jifei whispered in speculation.
Outside the house, Han Qingyu and the others exchanged glances. Calculating back, if not for them, roughly five to seven people would have died in that battle.
If that was the normal baseline, then the current result really was a bit absurd. Still, since they were already there, even if only as temporary teammates, they couldn't just stand by and watch people die, could they?
Having spent so long in an Azure squad, some instincts were simply indelible from their subconscious.
The corner of Han Qingyu's mouth twitched into a bitter smile. Quite a few newcomers had joined the freelance band this time, but the most concentrated cluster among them was the five of them.
Now that such a massive contrast lay right before his eyes, if Boss Dao still couldn't realize that their combat strength was terrifying, it would truly be crazy.
Just as he was thinking this, Boss Dao turned his head inside the room, sniffled, and looked toward them. He stood up...
He Tangtang: "Here he comes."
Han Qingyu: "Mm."
Wen Jifei: "He's not gonna just come over and hug our thighs, is he?"
Zhu Jiaming: "If he's sane... he definitely will."
Hearing this, Wu Xu silently took a step back.
*Smack!* Boss Dao raised his hand and slapped Zhu Jiaming hard on the shoulder, followed in turn by He Tangtang, Wen Jifei, Han Qingyu, and finally, he didn't spare even Wu Xu, who had already retreated.
"No matter how you guys actually performed, starting today, I'm treating you bunch as my lucky charms!" Boss Dao said, his eyes rimmed in red.
Han Qingyu: "..." If Boss Dao wasn't putting on an act, then the world had truly gone mad.
"Follow me closely from now on, got it? You guys have a massive future ahead of you!"
Boss Dao looked outside the doorway, spreading his arms wide. "Our band is awesome now, you know that? As long as the reputation from today's fight gets spread around, and we fight another brilliant battle in a few days, we'll be riding high from now on!"
Wen Jifei: "That amazing?"
"Of course," Boss Dao said. "Alright, off you go. Remember to come over for dinner the night after tomorrow; we're gonna drink a few good rounds."
The five of them left.
Boss Dao stood in the doorway, sniffling as he watched their retreating figures.
Actually, at several points earlier, he had wondered whether today's miracle happened because they were secretly very strong. But after checking the tally sheet from the strike recorder, their performance was just average, completely unremarkable. In fact, two of them had likely disengaged from combat for a stretch of time.
"So it must be that I've gotten stronger myself—whether in combat power or tactics. And even if it's luck, it means my dumb luck has finally kicked in."
Subjectively, Boss Dao was simply more willing and eager to believe that he had transformed. He had waited eleven whole years for this day.
...
When the five returned home, it was around three in the morning.
Qian Daofeng and Ao Yong had also just returned a short while earlier. Standing in the first-floor main hall and seeing them return safe and sound, the tension visibly drained from their faces.
*Clang!* With a heavy thud, fifty kilograms of dead iron were set on the floor.
Han Qingyu turned and handed the four source energy blocks over to Rusty Sister for safekeeping.
"That much?! So strong!" Ao Yong and Qian Daofeng exchanged envious glances. "So, once they sell the dead iron, will they pay us back?"
"Why would they pay us back? It was just meals, not a cash loan. How could you have the nerve to ask them for it back? Though, it'd be great if they were willing to give us a few scraps of dead iron."
"Yeah. Actually, maybe they'll move out before long."
"Yeah, we'll probably drift apart over time."
The shift in their mindset at this moment was something neither Ao Yong nor Qian Daofeng could control. They had encountered this kind of situation more than once.
When the gap in combat capability grew too wide, and the class divide—strictly measured by source energy and dead iron—was drawn wide open, those fellow countrymen whom they had personally received or who had once lived here would, whether deliberately or unintentionally, gradually grow distant.
Among those people, some could still be seen on occasion, but they already stood in a different class; others had vanished without a trace afterward. Meanwhile, the two of them remained unchanged, and most likely would remain this way forever—cleaners in the City of Iniquity. Their days wouldn't change, until the day they died.
"Are you hungry? We bought some midnight snacks. Sit down and eat with us." Han Qingyu placed a large stack of food on the table, traded for with two dead iron fragments.
"Sure... wait, no. We're not hungry. We need to take a bath and sleep; we have work early tomorrow morning."
Qian Daofeng suddenly corrected himself. He couldn't tell if his pride was just too sensitive; perhaps he hoped they would insist a bit more, offer a warmer invitation.
When helping people, they would pinch their pennies, but feelings like this never arose. Instead, when the other party did better than them, they grew sensitive.
"We cleared out the sewers today, so we stink," Ao Yong added, giving an awkward laugh. Seeing the food on the table being unwrapped, he instinctively took a step back.
"Aiyo, so the legendary Underground Kings of the City of Iniquity were you two all along?" Zhu Jiaming teased with a grin, a cigarette in his left hand, a chicken leg in his right, and a glass of beer before him.
They joked around like this all the time, so everyone laughed.
Ao Yong and Qian Daofeng laughed along too. After laughing, they simply said, "Well, take your time eating then. We're heading upstairs to wash up."
Since they said so, Han Qingyu and the others didn't press them to stay.
The next day at work, Ao Yong brought this up with Qian Daofeng. "Brother Daofeng, do you think maybe the two of us are just being overly sensitive?"
"Maybe," Qian Daofeng mused, a bitter edge to his voice. "I just keep remembering that time with Liu Lang. We went to him asking for help bringing down a shuttle, and after placating us, he turned right around and told his men, 'Don't give them a discount, charge them high—I barely know them.'"
Overhearing that cold reality by chance had left a deep mark on Qian Daofeng.
In truth, that man named Liu Lang had once lived here with them too.
"But I think A-Jing and the others are different," Ao Yong muttered, picking up his dustpan and walking off into the distance.
...
On the third day, around the same time, Qian Daofeng and Ao Yong gritted their teeth after work and used their newly received wages to buy three bottles of beer and some assorted food to bring back.
During the day, they had heard the great news on the streets that Boss Dao's freelance band had pulled off a "full survival" battle. That was no small feat. The two of them figured A-Jing and the others were about to take off, so they should come back and celebrate for them.
They wanted to be real friends with them.
Yet when they got home, A-Jing and the others weren't around. Only Zhe Qiuhong sat alone by the table, writing in her notebook.
Before her on the tabletop lay various desert plants they had gathered, along with dissected animals.
"Where are A-Jing and the others? Asleep?" Ao Yong asked, pretending not to know, intending to offer to wake them for drinks if Zhe Qiuhong said yes.
"Mm." Zhe Qiuhong looked up, brushed aside some plant leaves on the table, and said, "Tonight that Boss Dao invited them out to eat at some place called the Dome Restaurant. Three of them got drunk and went to sleep as soon as they got back."
Already drunk, huh... Disappointment flickered in Qian Daofeng's eyes. "Oh."
"Then what about you, Doctor Zhe? Would you like to have some midnight snacks together?" Ao Yong plucked up the courage to ask.
"No, I'm busy here." Zhe Qiuhong didn't look up this time, continuing to write as she spoke. "By the way, do you want me to clear the table for you?"
"No, no need."
Ao Yong and Qian Daofeng carried the beer up to the third floor and put it away without drinking it.
Over the next month or so, the time Ao Yong and Qian Daofeng saw A-Jing and the others dwindled noticeably. Between working their shifts, handling jobs for Boss Dao's band, and attending their gatherings, the five had grown very busy.
Even with Iron Chick and Doctor Zhe, encounters grew fewer; the two women were constantly venturing into the wasteland for plants and animals, or accompanying A-Jing and the others to work.
It felt as if they had already begun to drift apart, even though they hadn't moved out yet.
During this period, Boss Dao's freelance band took on three missions and suffered only five deaths in total.
And even those five had died only because they panicked and ran around blindly, dragging a swarm of teammates into danger, until it was too late to save them.
In the City of Iniquity, this was already the absolute top-tier performance for any freelance band.
...
One morning, before six o'clock, Ao Yong and Qian Daofeng sat in the main hall.
They waited for more than an hour until Han Qingyu and the four others finally got back from work, and then waited until they had changed into fresh clothes.
"A-Jing," Qian Daofeng called out before they could go to sleep.
"Yeah? What's up?" Seeing that he had something on his mind, Han Qingyu walked over and asked.
"We were hoping you guys could help us with a favor."
Han Qingyu nodded. "Go ahead."
Ao Yong and Qian Daofeng exchanged glances. "Could you put in a word with Boss Dao for us? Our benefits for this year were just temporarily allocated down—it's three nights from now..."
Ao Yong laid a notice on the table. "We want Boss Dao to lead his band to help us take it down."
"Oh." Han Qingyu picked up the notice and looked it over.
"Wait, aren't you two pretty close with Boss Dao yourselves? You were the ones who introduced us to him last time," He Tangtang asked from the side.
Qian Daofeng looked over at him, hesitated for a moment, and shook his head helplessly.
"Not really. We only know him in passing, the same as with any other Huaxian on the street—the kind where you nod when crossing paths. Last time, his band happened to be short on hands, and we just happened to ask."
"Yeah, but mostly it's because Boss Dao has gotten so big lately," Ao Yong muttered sullenly. "His fame is through the roof now. Everywhere he goes, people fawn over him, and he walks around with his nose in the air. We're busy with work too, and the two times we managed to go find him, we couldn't even get a word in."
"Holy crap! Has Boss Dao gotten that big-headed?" Wen Jifei quipped.
The room broke into laughter.
This time, Qian Daofeng and Ao Yong weren't in the mood to laugh.
In truth, they had already contacted Boss Dao's freelance band themselves, only to be told by the person handling external coordination that because they had a job scheduled for the night before, they wouldn't take a run three nights from now.
For the past few years, their allocations had always been handled by Boss Dao's band. With time so tight now, finding another band outside would be tough—surely they couldn't go back to Liu Lang, could they? Besides, any band they hired for the first time would definitely quote a higher price.
This involved source energy blocks, their harvest for an entire year. Qian Daofeng and Ao Yong had no other options left.
"A-Jing, do you think..." To be honest, Qian Daofeng didn't know if A-Jing could pull strings regarding the freelance band's affairs. After all, the band really did have a job the night before, and asking them to run two nights in a row was very unrealistic.
"No problem," Han Qingyu said with a smile, standing up and clapping them on the shoulders as he tucked the slip of paper away.
Chapter 439