Chapter 0020: Don't Thank Me — Thank Brother Chuan

Huizi had gotten hold of a car from somewhere.

When Ning Fan saw it, he realized that the vehicle they'd ridden in before had actually been quite luxurious by comparison.

This car's body couldn't even be called scrap metal — random pieces of metal had been haphazardly welded together, with a few grimy plastic panels nailed on top.

When it started moving, it let out a series of creaking groans, as though it might fall apart at any moment.

"Where'd you find this thing?" Qiao Fei asked, clearly unimpressed.

"Picked it up at the Black Market," Huizi said, pursing his lips. "After we split the money, we had just over four thousand Sola left. This one only cost three thousand."

"Fine," Qiao Fei sighed, then turned to Ning Fan. "You left your share with your family?"

Earlier, Ning Fan had taken the Sola she gave him and slipped away on his own. He came back not long after.

"Yeah," he said with a bitter smile. "I stuffed it through the door crack. Didn't dare go in."

Qiao Fei didn't say anything more. "Get in."

This time, Ning Fan drove.

Qiao Fei and Huizi were too well known around here — it wouldn't be easy for them to blend through a checkpoint. So it had to be Ning Fan, an unfamiliar face, who dealt with the Zone Wall guards.

He pulled the car up to the Zone Wall gate. Two guards were leaning against the wall, chatting idly.

Ning Fan recognized one of them — the same man who had taken a thousand Sola from Lin Chuan the last time they'd left.

"Heading out to the wild? Which outfit?" the guard asked lazily as he sauntered over, going through the motions.

"Wind-Slayer Squad. On a mission."

That was the cover story they'd agreed on beforehand.

"Wind-Slayer Squad?" The guard stepped closer to the window.

Ning Fan tensed up.

In the back seat, Qiao Fei and Huizi both moved their hands to their weapons.

The news of Yang Beihai's death had already been made public within the zone. The entire district was hunting for them.

If they were found out, they'd have no choice but to fight their way through.

"Didn't their captain just head out a little while ago?"

The guard's expression shifted.

Ning Fan's heart sank. Of all the bad luck — they'd used the Wind-Slayer Squad as cover, and the real captain had just left.

They'd walked right into it.

Then the guard peered through the window — and spotted Qiao Fei and Huizi in the back.

All three of them froze.

"Lin Chuan... died out there?" the guard asked, his voice heavy with emotion, just as the two in the back were about to make a move.

No one in the car answered.

The guard bit his lip and looked toward the inner district. "The person you killed — was it connected to Brother Chuan's death?"

He had received the notice — that the people from the Hound Shelter had killed Yang Beihai.

And seeing that only Qiao Fei and Huizi were in the car, without Lin Chuan, he seemed to understand.

"Open the door," he said, turning to Ning Fan. "I'll get you out."

Ning Fan startled, glancing back at the other two for their input.

The guard, seeing their wariness, unstrapped his weapon and tossed it over to his partner.

"I'm stepping out for a bit. Keep watch for me."

"Sure thing, Brother Zhao. Stay safe out there."

His partner gave a casual wave.

Qiao Fei pulled the rear door open. Without hesitation, the guard climbed in.

With a guard riding along, his partner opened the gate without question, letting them pass without a word.

"Why are you helping us?" Qiao Fei finally spoke. "The three of us only have about a thousand Sola left between us. If you're looking to—"

Without a word, the guard reached into his jacket, pulled out a folded bundle of Sola notes, and set them on the seat.

"Running from everything with your life on the line is hard. I don't have much, but whatever I can do..."

He then pulled out a pack of cigarettes. When he opened it, only two were left.

He offered one to Huizi and the other to Qiao Fei. "Got these from the Path of Grace. Genuine article — I watched the Sorters pull them out of the cargo pile myself. These two are worth a hundred Sola. This is the brand the Upper City gentlemen love most. I never had the heart to smoke them myself. Go ahead — give them a try."

Neither of them reached for the cigarettes.

"Why?" Huizi asked again.

The guard smiled, a trace of loneliness in his eyes.

"Every time Lin Chuan took you all out, he gave me a thousand Sola."

Huizi and Qiao Fei both knew it. Ning Fan had seen it himself.

"The first few times, I took the money," the guard said with a sigh. "But after a while, I started thinking it wasn't necessary. Lin Chuan was just too damn generous. Eventually, I felt almost embarrassed taking it, so I asked him — why do you keep paying every single time? You got too much money to spend?"

Truthfully, everyone in the Hound Shelter had wondered the same thing. The money they earned was bought with their lives — handing over a thousand Sola to a guard every time wasn't a small amount.

But whenever anyone brought it up, Lin Chuan would just grin and say, "It's just pocket change. Too lazy to deal with the hassle."

"You know what Lin Chuan told me?" The guard looked at the two of them steadily.

"He said the money wasn't charity, and it wasn't that he had cash to burn. He just hoped that if one day his strays got into trouble out there — but still managed to crawl back — that I would open the gate for them, and not cut off the road home for that pack of strays."

The guard exhaled. "He said — in this line of work, dying out there is just part of it. But he didn't want his people, after dragging themselves all the way back to the doorstep, to be stopped by a cold wall and blocked from coming home."

Huizi broke down again, crying without shame.

Even Qiao Fei's eyes had turned red.

Ning Fan kept his eyes on the road, a heaviness pressing down on his chest.

He remembered seeing the grim scene outside the zone on that first trip out. Lin Chuan had looked utterly indifferent, almost cold-blooded in how he dismissed it all.

Other people's lives — he couldn't do anything about that.

But this pack of strays under his care — those, he watched over with everything he had.

"I've seen a lot of Walker teams," the guard said. He lit one of the cigarettes himself and blew a ring of smoke out the window. "Not many leaders look out for their people like that. I respected him."

"Thank you," Qiao Fei said, her voice formal and sincere.

The guard smiled. "Don't thank me. Thank your Brother Chuan."

With that, he pulled the door open and jumped out of the moving car, giving a wave as he stepped away.

"If you can stay alive, do it. In this godforsaken world, it's rare to have someone who truly looks out for you. Don't waste that."

The road ahead was starting to blur for Ning Fan.

He thought to himself — it would've been nice to have joined the Hound Shelter sooner.

He and Lin Chuan had known each other for such a short time.

Qiao Fei had turned her face away, but in the rearview mirror Ning Fan caught the glint of a single tear sliding down her cheek.

"Back then, when Brother Chuan used to pay that guard... I actually argued with him about it," she murmured to herself. "I told him — if you want to give your own money away, fine. But I'm not splitting our earnings with someone who has nothing to do with us."

As she spoke, Qiao Fei — this woman who always seemed as cold and detached as stone — buried her face in her hands and wept.

"Brother Chuan made me captain of this team... but he never got to teach me how."

"Sister Fei. Brother Hui." Ning Fan rolled up his sleeve and wiped his eyes — eyes that had grown steadier even as they swelled. "If you haven't decided where to go next, I have a suggestion."

The two of them looked at him through tear-blurred eyes, at Ning Fan whose own eyes were a little puffy.

Ning Fan set his jaw, forcing the words out through gritted teeth.

"I want to go to F27."

The two of them understood immediately.

The War Bears weren't all dead yet.