The burly man fell silent, and there was no telling what he was thinking.
Only after a long while did he respond. "You don't seem like someone your age... what exactly do you want?"
"I just want to stay alive," Wu Youren sighed softly. "Sir, do you know? Instructor Kaili can help me return to my country!"
"I'm very tempted too, but I don't dare trust her, and I certainly don't want to destroy the peace between our two countries."
The man sneered. "If I believed even one word of that, I'd be a fool!"
Since entering this line of work, he had seen far too many people lie through their teeth.
Wu Youren did not respond. He took out two wolf peaches, handed one to the man, and began munching on the other.
The man paused, then bit into his as well. He really did not believe the boy would dare poison him at a time like this.
As he ate, he said, "Our side has very generous operational funding."
I'd be the fool if I actually believed you! Wu Youren smiled and kept eating without answering.
Seeing no response, the man changed the subject outright. "Who else have you told about this?"
"Huh?" This time, Wu Youren was a little surprised. "I can tell other people?"
"Those four, for instance," the burly man replied casually. "Just because you refuse doesn't mean you can block other people's paths, does it?"
"No." Wu Youren shook his head and answered bluntly. "Our statuses are very different. There should be people looking after them."
The man ate his wolf peach in small, rather refined bites and said slowly, "Then don't tell anyone else."
"Hm?" Wu Youren was slightly taken aback. "You're not going to deal with her?"
The man gave him a sidelong glance. "So curious... want to hear what happens next?"
"No." Wu Youren shook his head decisively. "Some things are better left unknown."
"You really are wary," the man said with a faint, ambiguous smile. "Then aren't you afraid she'll come back and deal with you?"
"It doesn't matter who deals with me," Wu Youren replied lightly. "I'm just a nobody drifting with the current."
After a pause, he added another sentence to show that he was not without resentment. "I want to live too, but do I have a choice?"
"You can choose us," the man answered.
This time, he truly had no intention of persuading him and merely said it in passing. "You won't be able to escape it forever anyway."
Wu Youren gave a dry chuckle but said nothing. After finishing his wolf peach, the man rose and disappeared into the rainy night.
He returned to a pitch-dark little room, where someone asked, "Still no results?"
"Results... a little, I suppose," the man replied. "This fellow is slippery as an eel, too mature to seem like a teenager."
"Their circumstances just force them to grow up," the other person replied dismissively. "How are things progressing with those four?"
Several more days passed. Wu Youren still followed a fixed route between the cafeteria, the vegetable plot, and the training grounds, never attending any public lectures.
He did not ask about Instructor Kaili, taking it for granted that the matter was over.
Even if it was not, that did not matter. If she really was bait, could she possibly come back to settle accounts with him?
If she really was a Jin spy, and the Life and Death Knot wanted to cast a long line to catch a big fish, then he would be safe for the time being as well.
There was no need to guess at the other possibilities. The more he thought, the more powerless he felt, and he could not change his situation anyway, so why invite trouble for himself?
Neither of Instructor Kaili's two students came by either.
Cynthia, on the other hand, visited twice more.
The first time, she came to pick vegetables. The vegetables she had taken back that day had earned her friends' praise.
She tried to pay, but Wu Youren refused, telling her to come and take some whenever she wanted.
The second time, she wanted to find out what prices the caretaker sold the vegetables to the cafeteria for.
Wu Youren really had not paid much attention to the prices. Whatever the caretaker said they had sold for, he only took half.
Still, he remembered the approximate prices. On hearing them, Cynthia said they were not even thirty percent of market price, only a little over twenty percent.
When she learned that he still had to give the caretaker half of that money, she found it a little intolerable.
"That's really too much of a rip-off. Supply a different cafeteria. I have some connections too."
By ordinary reasoning, the fact that she would inquire about the cafeteria's purchase prices for a boy from Jin meant she really was putting thought into helping him.
But what concerned Wu Youren was that she had already dragged him into a maelstrom twice.
Even setting aside whether she had ulterior motives, from a mystical perspective alone, their auras did not mesh, did they?
He also did not want to explain to Cynthia exactly what sort of relationship he had with the caretaker.
Did he really think a girl not yet twenty would be willing to accept an explanation of those worldly intricacies?
Wu Youren could only smile. "These vegetables don't sell for much altogether. It's not worth the fuss."
Yet less than two days later, the caretaker came looking for him with a rather unpleasant expression. "You think I'm selling the vegetables too cheaply?"
"Nothing of the sort." Wu Youren looked astonished. "I haven't gone anywhere these past few days. Where did you hear that?"
Lately, he had been a shut-in to an extraordinary degree, and as someone from Jin, he barely even had any friends.
"The cafeteria people told me," the caretaker said, his expression sour. "If you weren't stirring things up, who was?"
"You even pay when you buy liquor from me." Wu Youren slapped his forehead and replied helplessly, "Would I think that way?"
In theory, he really had no motive to do such a thing.
Still, he could guess who had probably done it-was the third maelstrom about to arrive?
Sure enough, the caretaker had come storming over this time fully prepared to flip the table.
You're just a foreigner. I let you farm here, and this is how you repay me, you bastard?
But when the boy mentioned the liquor, he really did find it difficult to turn hostile rashly.
This cheap yet potent liquor had already become a powerful tool in his social dealings.
For most Liang martial artists, a few more or fewer mouthfuls of vegetables did not matter, but good liquor was something they truly could not do without.
The caretaker was getting on in years and had few personal ambitions. Even doing without socializing would not be much of a problem.
But he still had a family to support, so he had to earn more money and build better relationships with his colleagues and superiors!
Even so, he could not simply let this matter go!
He snorted. "I won't help you sell vegetables for a while. Those cafeteria people are talking nonsense. Maybe they're trying to drive down the price."
"Cut off their supply for a while, and they'll learn how good your vegetables are... can you bear to do that?"
"No problem." Wu Youren nodded readily. "I wouldn't mind never selling to them again."
He was not certain whether the man wanted to teach the cafeteria a lesson or teach him one-probably both.
But when he had first chosen to farm, earning money had only been a secondary consideration.
His main aim had been to show that he was harmless and give people the impression that he was neglecting his proper work, reducing the attention on him.
In any case, at a time like this, he had to say all the right things.
"That's not what I meant either." Sure enough, the caretaker's attitude improved further. "It's just to teach them a lesson."
"A few days without sales won't amount to much money anyway. I don't care."
"True." Wu Youren nodded. Of course you don't care. The problem is... I do!