Jiang Xun easily sidestepped him, grabbed the lunch box of rice from the table, snapped the lid shut, and slammed it backhanded onto Zhao Pengfei's head.
The blow stunned Zhao Pengfei. He staggered back two steps, lost his footing, and landed on the back of his head, leaving stars dancing before his eyes and his ears ringing.
His two lackeys froze, not daring to breathe-seriously, if they charged in now, who knew which of them would get beaten next?
Jiang Xun stacked the three stainless steel lunch boxes neatly, secured each lid, then hefted them in his hands.
Braised pork, sweet-and-sour ribs, and white rice. This stack was enough for three people to have a filling meal.
"Y-you fucking put that food down!" Zhao Pengfei scrambled up from the ground. "That's my family's food!"
"Not anymore." Jiang Xun walked out without looking back.
Zhao Pengfei trembled with rage. He wanted to rush over and snatch it back, but his knees went weak.
That fall had really hurt.
He grabbed the sleeve of the lackey beside him and snarled under his breath, "Go! Go get someone from my house!"
The two lackeys took off running.
Jiang Xun left the school gates and headed back along the dirt road.
The three lunch boxes were stacked in his arms, wisps of the braised pork's rich aroma escaping through the gaps in the lids.
By the time Jiang Xun was halfway back, the sun had risen halfway up the mountainside.
The morning mist in the mountains had cleared completely, and the cornfields on either side of the road were dazzlingly green in the sunlight.
The dirt road was full of potholes. The sun had baked the cracked yellow earth rock-hard, making it hurt underfoot.
Jiang Xun strode along, the lunch boxes in his arms clinking softly with each step. Filled to the brim, even their sound was pleasing.
When he reached the Shen family's courtyard and pushed the gate open, the yellow dog bounded toward him, wagging its tail and shoving its nose hard against the stainless steel lunch boxes in his arms.
Grandpa Shen was still dozing in his wheelchair. At the noise, he opened his eyes groggily.
Shen Wangjing was not in the courtyard, and the hoe was no longer leaning against the wall. Clearly, he had gone back to the fields.
Jiang Xun lined the three lunch boxes up on the low table and opened the lids.
The glossy sauce gleamed in the noon sunlight. The yellow dog circled the table like mad, its tail whirling like a windmill as drool pooled all over the ground.
Grandpa Shen's cloudy eyes widened, and his withered fingers trembled as he pointed at the lunch boxes. "W-where did these come from?"
"The village chief's idiot son gave them to me." Jiang Xun's expression did not change. "He said I wasn't getting enough to eat here and insisted on treating me. I couldn't turn him down, so I brought them back."
The old man's lips twitched. Clearly, he did not believe him.
He knew better than anyone what the village chief's boy was like. Ever since he was little, that child had thrown his weight around the village because his father was the village chief, always arrogant and overbearing, using his family's influence to bully others.
His own Yu Xing had been bullied plenty at school. Once, that boy had cornered him in the bathroom and slapped him, leaving his face swollen for three days.
After Shen Wangjing found out, he had gone to the school with a cleaver in hand without saying a word. Only then had Zhao Pengfei behaved himself for a while.
Someone like that would give away food out of kindness? Even if the sun rose in the west, Zhao Pengfei would never become a philanthropist.
But in the end, the old man asked no more questions. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed both his saliva and the words on the tip of his tongue.
Jiang Xun divided the food evenly into three portions.
He pushed one in front of Grandpa and another to Shen Wangjing's place, then picked up the last portion himself, snapped apart a pair of disposable chopsticks, and dug in.
Zhao Pengfei had never suffered such humiliation in his life.
Clutching the back of his head, which was still ringing, he kicked open his courtyard gate.
Li Guizhi was sitting in the main room eating sunflower seeds. A layer of shells already covered the floor.
"Mom!" Zhao Pengfei wailed his heart out. "That bastard from the city hit me!"
Li Guizhi stopped cracking seeds.
"He even stole our braised pork! He didn't leave me a single grain of rice!" The more Zhao Pengfei spoke, the more aggrieved he felt. "He's a fucking bandit! A robber!"
Li Guizhi slapped the seeds in her hand down on the table, shells raining through her fingers.
Yesterday, Jiang Xun had hit her in the back of the head with a jujube. Then Gold Chain, whom she had sent to steal chickens in the middle of the night, had been hauled off to the police station. Now even her son's entire lunch had been taken.
With fresh grievances piled on top of old grudges, Li Guizhi's face grew darker than the bottom of a pot.
"That little bastard," she forced out through clenched teeth. "Does he really think he can run wild in Shiban Village?"
Zhao Pengfei embellished his account of what had happened in the cafeteria, focusing on how Jiang Xun had hit him in the face with a cornmeal bun, slammed a lunch box onto his head, and then swaggered away carrying their family's lunch boxes.
Naturally, he left out the part where he had insulted Shen Wangjing first.
After hearing him out, Li Guizhi threw all the remaining seeds in her hand into the trash.
She stood up and brushed the seed shells off the front of her clothes. Instead, her expression grew calm-so calm that even Zhao Pengfei felt a little frightened.
"All right. Go do whatever you need to do."
"Mom?"
"I know what I'm doing."
After eating, Jiang Xun lay around contentedly for a good long while. The food he had saved was almost completely cold, but Shen Wangjing still had not returned.
He craned his neck to look at the empty dirt road outside the courtyard gate, then hopped off the bed, picked up the bowl, and headed out.
The sun was directly overhead now, baking the dirt road until heat rose from its cracks. The corn leaves along the roadside drooped in the heat.
Holding the bowl in one hand and shielding its rim from the sun with the other, Jiang Xun followed the dirt road toward the mountainside.
After about ten minutes, his steps suddenly slowed.
Six men stood in the middle of the road ahead.
The one in front was bald, his scalp gleaming in the sun. He wore an undershirt and had a crooked dragon tattooed on his arm.
The five men behind him each held a wooden club. They stood loosely, their ill-intentioned gazes all landing on Jiang Xun.
The show's cameraman crouched on a dirt slope a dozen or so meters away with the camera on his shoulder, aiming this way through a gap in the bushes.
The director lay beside him, a walkie-talkie clutched in her sweat-soaked hand.
"Director," the assistant director whispered, "should we go stop them? If a fight really breaks out and something happens-"
"Wait a little longer," the director said through gritted teeth.
She was taking a gamble.
She was betting that a boy who had dared to kick out his stepbrother's front teeth right at the start and grab a cleaver to catch a chicken thief in the middle of the night could not possibly be all talk and no substance.
But her grip on the walkie-talkie still tightened involuntarily.
After all, on the monitor, Jiang Xun stood before six thugs, considerably shorter than every one of them.
The six men blocked the way, their gazes greedy and clinging, making him look like a cat that had wandered into a pack of wolves.
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