In the mountains, shades of green provided a canopy, with lush trees swaying in the wind, rustling softly. Warm sunlight pierced through the layered leaves, casting a dappled pattern of light and shadow over the two below.
Unconsciously, Hei Mazi had shifted from leaning against the tree to lying on his side on the ground.
Amid the desolate wilderness, the ground was strewn with fallen leaves mixed with dry soil. Hei Mazi did not seem to mind the dirt, treating it as if it was his own bed at home.
Skinny Wang sat on a tree branch, still holding his binoculars, constantly murmuring to himself.
The signal was poor on the mountain, and the video on the phone kept stuttering—unable to load the next clip. Annoyed as he was, Hei Mazi grew even angrier at Skinny Wang’s incessant mumbling.
He turned off his phone abruptly and yelled, "What the hell are you muttering about?!"
"Strange, why haven’t I seen those two drive out yet?" Skinny Wang, unfazed by Hei Mazi’s irritable mood, peered through the binoculars intently.
The direction he was pointing his binoculars in was where Jiang Ning had just driven off. Although the bulging side of the mountain blocked Skinny Wang’s view, he could still see a small stretch of cement road extending from the mountains, which was the path Jiang Ning had taken.
"It must have been twenty minutes by now. How come I haven’t seen anything?" Skinny Wang commented.
He was very dedicated to his current job.
As long as he stayed in one spot to keep watch each day, he could earn a sizable income.
Skinny Wang cherished this job deeply.
Though Hei Mazi preferred to be lazy, whenever Skinny Wang needed to rest, he had to take over Skinny Wang’s position and was naturally aware of what Skinny Wang meant.
Hei Mazi seemed unconcerned: "No way. Such a short distance, how could they have gone so far? They must’ve passed by when you weren’t looking."
But Skinny Wang frowned and kept looking through his binoculars at that spot.
He was certain that since the other party’s car disappeared around the bend, he had been watching that side and had not seen the car.
Unbeknownst to them, not far away, Jiang Ning and Qi Xingzhou had quietly approached and had been crouching behind the dense underbrush for a while now.
Hearing the conversation between the two men, Jiang Ning thought to herself that the one in the tree looked timid and easy to bully but was far more meticulous and perceptive than the one below the tree.
She pulled at Qi Xingzhou beside her and whispered in his ear, "Do you have any little helpers nearby, preferably something like snakes, to scare them off?"
To avoid alerting their presence, she moved very close, lowering her voice to the faintest whisper. The distance between her lips and Qi Xingzhou’s earlobe was a mere fraction of an inch.
As she spoke, her warm breath grazed Qi Xingzhou’s earlobe, causing his sensitive body to stiffen instantly. His thick eyelashes fluttered violently, like the wings of a butterfly.
In just a few seconds, the ear Jiang Ning was leaning close to turned a deep blushing color as if it had been dabbed with rouge.
Jiang Ning, focusing intently on the man sitting in the tree, did not notice Qi Xingzhou’s unusual reaction.
Seeing that Qi Xingzhou did not respond, she thought he hadn’t heard her due to her voice being too soft, so she leaned in and asked again, "Are there any snakes nearby?"
In a flash, not only did Qi Xingzhou’s ears turn red, but his entire face and neck did as well.
Qi Xingzhou felt his face burning and his heart in turmoil.
The naive Qi Xingzhou couldn’t quite discern the restless emotions stirring within him, only instinctively wanting to restrain and shy away. But after turning his head slightly to create a 0.01-inch gap between himself and Jiang Ning, he stopped, reluctant to increase the distance, and his heart fluttered with a desire to get even closer to Jiang Ning, to embrace or cuddle with her.
These overwhelming feelings caught him off guard.