boyutpedia Chapter 407 Foodie
Chapter 407 Foodie
The barbed wire on the wall had rusted and broken, hanging like dead snakes on the top. Abandoned factories and warehouses stood side by side, most of their roofs collapsed, revealing the rusted steel frames inside. Sunlight poured down through the holes, casting beams of light on the ground, within which tiny dust particles danced, like stirred gold dust.
The rusted steel frame cast distorted shadows in the sunlight, the shadows slowly changing shape as the sun moved, like an ever-shifting abstract painting. The ground was littered with broken concrete blocks and twisted steel bars, some of which protruded sharply from the concrete like spears stuck upside down. Weeds grew tenaciously from the cracks, some already as tall as a person, swaying gently in the wind, adding to the desolate atmosphere of the ruins.
The air was filled with an indescribable smell—a metallic, musty odor, and a…sour, musty smell, like clothes that hadn’t been washed in ages. The smell wasn’t strong, but it lingered, as if it were seeping from every brick, every tile, every inch of soil.
"This place truly lives up to its name as a paradise; the taste alone is enough to make you feel 'happy'."
Zhang Chulan pinched his nose and walked in the middle of the group with a look of disgust. His brows were furrowed, and his lips were pursed, as if he dared not open his mouth to breathe. As he walked, his feet crunched on broken glass and scraps of plastic, the sound particularly jarring in the empty street.
"I feel like if I stay here for a day, I'll have to throw all my clothes away when I get back."
"You don't have to wear it," Feng Baobao blurted out out of the blue.
Her tone was calm, as if she were talking about something perfectly normal. Following behind Zhang Chulan, she held another cucumber in her hand, crunching away as she ate it, a little juice spilling from the corner of her mouth, which she licked away with her tongue.
"Sister Bao'er! You suddenly blurted out something really scary! And that's not what I meant!" Zhang Chulan almost choked on his own saliva, staggered, and had to grab onto a steel bar sticking out at an angle to steady himself.
"So what do you mean?"
"What I mean is... never mind, never mind."
Zhang Chulan decisively abandoned his plan to discuss this topic with Feng Baobao, because he knew that trying to reason with her would only lead him astray. She had proven this countless times—you think you're reasoning with her, but she's not actually reasoning with you at all; she's just saying what she wants to say, and then you'll be led in a completely unexpected direction.
Wang Zhenqiu laughed gleefully from the side: "Hahaha, Chu Lan, trying to reason with Bao'er is just asking for trouble, isn't it?"
His shoulders swayed, and his eyes narrowed into slits as he laughed. A steel pipe he'd somehow acquired from the roadside appeared in his hand, which he twirled between his fingers like a juggler.
"Brother Qiu, please stop making fun of me!" Zhang Chulan said with a look of grief and indignation. He turned around and glared at him before continuing to walk forward. "One of the things I regret most in my life is that I agreed to bring Sister Bao'er along on this mission."
"That's not what you regret most," Feng Baobao said, tossing the cucumber tail to the side of the road. Her tone remained calm. "What you regret most is stealing my snacks last time."
"Pfft—" Wang Zhenqiu laughed even louder.
Lu Linglong followed behind Nie Lingfeng, curiously looking around.
Having just defeated Mendes, her confidence soared, and she radiated confidence, even her walk seemed to have a breeze. Her eyes sparkled, like two newly polished black gems, everything seemed new and exciting to her. As she passed a wall, she stopped and touched the graffiti on it—an abstract face painted with spray paint, the eyes rendered as two black circles. She lightly pressed her finger along the edge of the circles, feeling that the paint had been dry for a long time, with a fine layer of dust on the surface.
"Master, where are we going next?" She caught up with Nie Lingfeng, her ponytail swaying behind her, her voice filled with an irrepressible curiosity.
"Just taking a stroll," Nie Lingfeng said casually. His pace was neither fast nor slow, each step covering almost the same distance. His gaze swept across the surrounding ruins like a scanner, each possible hiding place and passageway lingering in his sight for less than a second. "The amusement park is huge. We've just arrived, so let's familiarize ourselves with the surroundings first."
"Oh, okay." Lu Linglong nodded, then asked, "So, what does Ruan Feng, the one we're looking for, look like?"
"A fat man," Nie Lingfeng replied curtly. His voice was flat, as if he were reading an entry from a document.
"Fatty?" Lu Linglong was taken aback, blinking twice. "How fat?"
"Very fat."
"...Master, your description seems a bit too vague." Lu Linglong was speechless, her lips twitching. She had imagined many times what the owner of the legendary Thirty-Six Thieves, the "Six Treasuries Immortal Thief," would be like—perhaps an old man with an air of otherworldly grace, perhaps a hermit-like master, perhaps a lone wolf with elusive movements. Various images floated through her mind, but the words "very fat" shattered those images.
"You'll see when you get there." Nie Lingfeng didn't offer any further explanation.
In fact, his understanding of Ruan Feng was limited to the description in the intelligence reports—one of the Thirty-Six Thieves, the owner of the Eight Extraordinary Techniques "Six Treasures Immortal Thief," obese, addicted to alcohol, and elusive. As for what he actually looked like, he had never seen him. The photo in the company file was black and white, blurry, and only showed a side profile, revealing a round body and a bald head.
The group walked for a while longer. The ground beneath their feet changed from cracked concrete to compacted soil, the buildings on either side changed from large factories to small warehouses, and the graffiti on the walls increased, layer upon layer, new paintings covering old ones, the old ones being painted over, and then covered by new ones. It was like a diary that had been repeatedly rewritten, each layer with different handwriting, different colors, and different emotions.
A relatively intact abandoned warehouse came into view ahead.
The warehouse's outer walls were made of red brick, mostly intact, with only a few cracks and gaps. The corrugated iron roof, though rusted, hadn't collapsed, but some parts were dented, as if something had struck it. The warehouse's main door was a pair of double iron doors; one hinge was rusted shut, and the other was half-open, revealing a narrow gap behind it. Faint sounds could be heard from inside—not voices, but more like something being dragged or bumping against something, and occasionally a low, muffled thud, like someone rolling over on the ground.
"There's movement." Daoist Wang Ye stopped and listened intently. His head was slightly tilted towards the warehouse, one ear pressed against the crack in the door, the hair on the other ear fluttering in the wind. His eyes were slightly narrowed, as if trying to pinpoint the source of the sounds. "It sounds like... someone's inside? Not just one, at least two. One's talking, his voice is scattered, like he's drunk. The other's breathing is steady, he's a trained martial artist."
"Let's go take a look." Nie Lingfeng took the lead and walked towards the warehouse.
His footsteps were light, but each step was firm. Reaching the tin door, he didn't push the half-closed door, but instead pinched the edge of the crack with two fingers and gently pulled. "Crunch—" The tin door groaned shrilly, sliding to the side a dozen centimeters, enough for a person to squeeze through. A stronger smell of dust and alcohol filled the air, the dust making Zhang Chulan sneeze.
The group followed, carefully pushing open the half-closed door and going inside.
The warehouse was spacious, roughly the size of half a football field. It was dimly lit, with only a few rays of sunlight filtering through the cracks in the broken roof, casting dappled shadows on the floor. These shadows fell on the ground, on the abandoned machinery, and on the dusty goods, like a torn map, each fragment with its own shape and boundaries.
The air was thick with the smell of dust, a sweet and sour tang, and some unidentifiable, homemade aromas, carrying a fruity fragrance and the distinctive sourness of fermentation. These various scents mingled together, creating an intense, almost intoxicating aroma.
"Is anyone there?" Zhang Chulan called out tentatively.
No one answered.
But the smell of alcohol grew stronger and stronger. It was as if someone had spilled a whole case of liquor inside, the liquid seeping into every brick and every inch of the ground, slowly evaporating.
The group continued walking in, passing a pile of abandoned shipping containers—the containers were orange, with peeling paint revealing whitish metal underneath. Some of the containers had their doors half-open, and were empty except for some scattered scraps of paper and empty cans.
Suddenly, everything became clear—
In the corner of the warehouse, there was a pile of more than a dozen empty bottles, including beer, liquor, red wine, and even a few bottles that looked like homemade cheap liquor—a motley collection. The bottles lay crookedly on the ground, some with a bit of the bottom left, others completely empty, the labels on the bottle necks crumpled and illegible.
Amidst this pile of bottles, a chubby figure sat cross-legged on the ground.
He was a middle-aged monk who appeared to be in his forties, wearing a dirty gray robe. The robe was made of coarse cloth, with frayed edges at the collar and cuffs, and a large dark stain on the hem, indistinguishable as either wine or oil. He was bare-chested, revealing a round belly covered with fine, light-colored down that rose and fell with his breath. His head was completely bald, without a single hair, reflecting a glossy sheen in the sunlight filtering through the cracks in the roof, like a polished, smooth stone. His face was full of flesh, the cheeks drooping down to cover the corners of his mouth. His small eyes were narrowed to slits, like two thin lines embedded in his flesh, giving him a drunken look; his eyelids drooped, as if he might fall asleep at any moment.
He was holding a half-empty bottle of baijiu (Chinese liquor) with a red label on it bearing the three large characters "Erguotou" (a type of Chinese liquor). He was chugging it down, his Adam's apple bobbing repeatedly. Some liquor spilled from the corner of his mouth, running down the wrinkles of his chin and dripping onto the front of his monk's robe, leaving a small, dark, damp stain.
Opposite the fat monk sat another person.