I stared behind him and asked, “Is anyone else following you?”
Baldy replied simply, “Who could?”
He had a point, not many people could follow, just Zhao Zichen and a few other people under Shi Sheng, they would never be able to.
I narrowed my eyes and stared at Baldy, who had his hands raised above his head.
“What exactly does Zhao Zichen mean now?” I asked.
Baldy said, still without changing his face, “Whether you can’t trust us or you can’t trust yourself. The man in charge is just doing what he agreed to do with you.”
I clenched my fists, not sure whether Zhao Zichen was doing what he was doing now because I had hinted that he was going to be my enemy or whether he had really betrayed me.
Baldy said, “You don’t doubt your comrades on the battlefield.”
“I’m not sure if you are my comrades in arms yet.”
If I thought wrong, then the moment I put down my gun, it could be my death; with Baldy’s speed, it could definitely kill me in a flash.
Suddenly, Baldy let out a long sigh, took off his jacket and then his outer trousers, leaving him in just a pair of trousers, and raised his hands to me once more.
The corners of my mouth twitched, now that Baldy didn’t have a single weapon on his body, it was impossible for him to sneak up on me by surprise.
“Well, Zhao Zichen is so realistic.” I sighed as I lowered my gun.
“Shi Sheng wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t realistic.” Baldy said.
I had a cautious stare at him for a moment; Baldy indeed had no intention of making a move, so I dropped my heart.
Seriously, it was only at this time that I realized that Baldy’s body was littered with scars, no less than those on those of us who were soldiers.
Some of our scars were knife wounds and some were bullet wounds, but all of Baldy’s were, without exception, whip wounds, some of which were new wounds added on top of old ones, one on top of another.
I reckoned that this might involve his past, and it was not convenient to ask more questions. Baldy had no intention of chatting with me, so he put his jacket back on and bent down to drink from the stream.
“Wait, you can’t drink this water, it’s very full of parasites, have some fruit.”
I held him down, turned around and went to the woods to find two wild fruits, rubbed them on my body and handed them to him.
The bald man looked confused and, probably thirsty, took the fruit and sat down to nibble on it.
“Why did you go around across the creek?” I asked.
Even if Baldy wanted to drink water, he would have appeared on the same side as me, and he had made quite a detour to go across the stream.
Surprisingly, Baldy fiddled nervously with his duck-tongue cap and said with a blush, “I got lost.”
I was dumbfounded. To an ordinary person, this deep forest is like a maze, isn’t it? It was no wonder that Baldy had taken the fruit just now, he was probably thirsty and hungry.
“Let’s stay here for the night. The predators and snakes are starting to come out at night, so it’s dangerous to rush, so I’ll go and collect some firewood.”
Baldy was so dumbfounded that he could only watch me and occasionally help me gather a few sticks of firewood to pile up.
I looked at the wet firewood Baldy had collected and was almost laughing: “You’ve never been in the mountains?”
“I came on a spring trip in kindergarten and primary school.”
“Holy sh*t, you Yunya Sect still go to kindergarten and primary school, don’t you martial artists all apprentice from a young age?”
Baldy said, “I graduated from Tsinghua before I entered the Yunya Sect as a formal apprentice.”
“Crap.” I couldn’t help but curse out loud, “I’d believe it if you said you were a special student who was specially recruited to enter Tsinghua, you look like you’re only in your twenties.”
You must be twenty-three years old to graduate from Tsinghua, and a few more years of apprenticeship would be a big deal.
Baldy said, “I’m a special student, I got into university when I was 14.”
“Shut up, you don’t have to crush people like that. I want to bury you in a pit in the mountains if you keep talking.”
Baldy was unimpressed and helped me light the fire together.
I said, “If we light the fire at night, the beasts won’t dare to come near, or we’ll have to use it as food for the animals preparing for hibernation. Zhao Zichen is bold enough to let you chase me into the woods alone, not afraid that you won’t get out?”
Getting lost in the deep forest is very scary, don’t look at the food everywhere, but not everything can be eaten, if you eat something poisonous, lightly diarrhea, serious, or warped.
Baldy has no special physical training and although he is good at kung fu, he does not have the stamina and by this time he is as hungry as two hundred and fifty.
I plucked some more fruits for him and after he had nibbled on three he asked me, “Don’t you want to eat?”
“We’re not far from the edge of the forest now, I don’t need to eat. You get some rest, we’ll take turns on sentry duty tonight, me the first half of the night, you the second, and we’ll leave at first light tomorrow.”
Baldy ate the last of the apple and suddenly asked, “What if the Dangan really betrayed you?”
My heart thumped; Baldy would never ask this question out of the blue. In fact, this was what I was most worried about; what Zhao Zichen had done was different from what we had agreed at the beginning. Originally we had arranged for him to find a chance to find someone to beat me up and put on a show for those people in Tongcheng.
But Zhao Zichen didn’t. He asked Baldy to come after me directly.
It would be a lie to say that I didn’t panic in my heart. Zhao Zichen is a man of many tricks and fickle minds, and I was fooled by him many times when I first came into contact with him.
I let out a long sigh: “Let’s take a gamble. Only if Zhao Zichen gains Shi Sheng’s trust and has access to the core members of the gun smuggling case, can we dig out the top and bottom lines. But this will also inevitably intensify the conflict between the Green Dragon Gang and the Red Lantern Society. Will Zhao Zichen betray me?”
Baldy didn’t say anything, looking at the leaping fire, before saying after a long time, “The head of the family is by no means disloyal or unbelieving.”
With this attitude of his, I already expected what was going on. I was afraid that what Zhao Zichen had done had puzzled him too, and he wasn’t sure whether Zhao Zichen wanted him to kill me, or to act with me.
I couldn’t blame Baldy for this, Zhao Zichen was a movie star.
There was no point in us both dwelling here on what Zhao Zichen really meant.
I changed the subject and said, “Baldy, don’t beat me up if I ask you a question. Why are you called Baldy?”
He snapped out of his musing and patted his hat on his head.
It was a duck-tongue hat he hadn’t taken off since, so he guessed there was some secret hidden under his head.
I had just finished thinking this when, to his surprise, he took off the hat himself.
I was dumbfounded, not so much because I saw a big bald head, but because he had taken off his hat, and I thought he would never take off that dodgy hat.
He had never even slept in it, and it was a bit hairy around the edges.
“You, you …… have a pretty cool haircut.”
Baldy took the hat in his hands and straightened it out, surprisingly showing a very gentle smile.
I thought I was blind, never seen him smile like that, as if he was secretly thinking about some pretty girl in his mind.
Baldy said, “I shaved it myself, to make my little sister happy.”
This little sister Jiang Ming had mentioned, and whenever Baldy mentioned this little sister, he showed that smile, which made my goose bumps rise.
“So your master doesn’t have a problem with you following Zhao Zichen out of the Yunya Sect? Don’t you martial artists pay a lot of attention to that.”
Baldy’s eyelids lowered as he looked at his hat and said, “I was expelled from the sect by my master.”
I had a feeling that this was not a simple matter. What had Zhao Zichen done to make such a good young man give up his master and sister and come out to work with him in a triad society?
The bald man was in a very low mood again when he mentioned this.
I had to say, “Then Zhao Zichen is really awesome.”
“The one in charge will always be my big brother, I won’t betray him.” Baldy suddenly said, “Zhang Chao, if the head of the family really wants me to deal with you one day, I’ll just have to be offended. However, I can let you run for ten seconds first.”
