Chapter 61 Do You Want a Reward?

A few sparrows landed on a tree branch, folding their wings and preening each other's feathers. Their bright, golden eyes bobbed from side to side with their heads, full of life and vitality, displaying a touch of playfulness in the dead of winter.

Birds had become scarce since the apocalypse, and seeing sparrows usually felt like a pleasant occurrence, but that definitely did not include Yan Zhuo.

He lowered his eyelids and bared his teeth at them. Animal instinct alerted the sparrows, and the sound of flapping wings rang out. In the blink of an eye, the branch was completely empty.

"Come back often," Lanyin said, leaning against the door with his arms crossed, adopting a posture of seeing guests off.

"I'll tell Yuyang about what happened today."

Qu Yan's tone remained flat, but Lanyin instantly frowned. "Why tell him? Didn't we agree that what happens between us stays between us? Qu Yan, don't you dare go back on your word."

Qu Yan raised an eyebrow. "I never agreed."

He turned his head to look at Yan Zhuo. "Right?"

Yan Zhuo replied, "I didn't hear anything."

"Fine! I kindly bring you inside, and this is how you treat me? Go ahead and tell him, then! What about Yuyang? Do you think I'm afraid of him?" Lanyin spoke as if he didn't care, but his expression grew increasingly irritable.

Qu Yan remained unmoved. "See you around. We're heading out."

Lanyin watched the two of them walk away and tapped the bridge of his nose with one hand. A sparrow huddled in the corner let out a few chirps, and he looked up at it. "Still not leaving? The master you're supposed to follow isn't me."

Turning the corner into the alley, there were slightly more people on the street. The sound of conversation broke the silence, and Yan Zhuo said, "That Lanyin is very strange."

"Strange how?" Qu Yan tilted his head, adopting a listening posture.

"I can't put my finger on it," Yan Zhuo said, a conflicted look on his face. "People all have emotions—whether it's kindness or malice, it's impossible to have nothing at all. But when he looked at me, I didn't feel a single trace of emotion from him."

His facial expressions and demeanor could change, yet the inner emotional landscape remained completely blank, like a desolate wasteland so vast that only echoes remained, with nothing else besides.

Lanyin was one of the older residents of Yueshan. Although his behavior was sometimes inexplicable, his popularity was not bad. The only thing that could be considered strange was that he frequently went missing, disappearing for a month or two at a time. His own explanation for this was a love for freedom, needing to enjoy some time alone every once in a while.

Qu Yan had very little contact with him; the few times they had met were through Yuyang. Recalling something, Qu Yan said, "When Yang Tan fell into a coma, it was Lanyin who suggested having Yuyang treat him."

Because of this matter, Qu Yan's impression of Lanyin was not bad.

At the corner of the street, a few children were playing hopscotch; after the apocalypse, these simple games had made a comeback.

The innocent laughter of the children drifted over on the wind, causing Yan Zhuo's shoulders to relax. "We're here."

The bachelor apartment was not large, and the furnishings inside were extremely simple. Done in warm tones, it contained no excess items beyond the absolute necessities. A soft rug was laid out at the entrance, and the shoe rack had gathered a thin layer of dust.

Having been uninhabited for a long time, the air felt slightly chilling. Qu Yan tilted his head back, allowing Yan Zhuo to unwrap his scarf. "We should probably tidy up."

"Leave it to me." As an adult man who had lived alone for two years, Yan Zhuo was well qualified to make that statement.

The duvet cover was taken off, washed, and hung out to dry. The kitchen utensils were washed and put away in an orderly fashion. A damp towel wiped the dust from every corner, and Yan Zhuo carried all of this out methodically, finally squatting down in front of Qu Yan to wipe the dust off the coffee table.

Qu Yan sat on the sofa, staring at the crown of Yan Zhuo's head, and suddenly asked, "There's one thing I still haven't figured out. How on earth did you know I lived here?"

His hand holding the damp towel paused slightly. In a transparent attempt to cover it up, Yan Zhuo said, "I heard it from someone."

"Heard it from whom?" Qu Yan was not easily fooled.

Yan Zhuo's gaze drifted. "He just mentioned it in passing. I don't even remember who he was."

"No lying." Qu Yan tapped Yan Zhuo on the forehead, like a person reprimanding a puppy.

The damp towel was laid across the edge of the coffee table. Yan Zhuo lowered his head and, with a sense of resigned self-abandonment, blurted out the truth: "I followed you secretly."

In reality, he hadn't gone to see Wu Lang that day at all. After handing everything over to Chen Yuning, he had chased after the direction Qu Yan had left in.

Qu Yan was stunned for a moment, remembering that he had spent the entire afternoon organizing documents in the archives room. "You were waiting outside for me the whole time?"

Yan Zhuo tacitly admitted it.

The sun had been very bright that day, yet it was still bitterly cold. Standing outside, the only thing he could feel was the chill.

After dark, he had followed Qu Yan back to this apartment. When Qu Yan opened the apartment door, he had vaulted in through the window.

This answer was much the same as what Qu Yan had guessed. His fingers slid down, stopping on Yan Zhuo's cheek. "You haven't changed at all."

Breaking the glass to barge into his home when he was a wolf, and sneaking in through the window again after turning into a human.

Thinking Qu Yan was talking about his act of prying and stalking, Yan Zhuo lowered his head in embarrassment. "I won't do it anymore."

He had clearly misunderstood. Qu Yan used the pad of his thumb to stroke the soft flesh of his cheek, softening his tone. "You don't need to do that anymore. You can look at me openly."

His slightly long strands of hair brushed against his eyelids, and Yan Zhuo stared intently at Qu Yan, forgetting how to breathe.

A flash of amusement crossed Qu Yan's eyes. "Second question, what is the deal with the books under the bed?"

Under the bed of the apartment in Twin Cities lay a cardboard box full of books. The covers were either brightly colored or exceptionally explicit; one only had to glance at them to know what kind of books they were.

Unnatural redness crossed Yan Zhuo's face, a blush spreading from his neck all the way to the tips of his ears. He stubbornly defended himself: "I don't know."

Qu Yan kneaded his ear and sighed softly, "You need to be a good boy."

Yan Zhuo closed his eyes for a moment, his voice barely audible. "Chen Yuning gave them to me."

Surprise flickered in the depths of Qu Yan's eyes. "Why would she give you these?"

Yan Zhuo's face grew even redder. "She said you would like them, and told me to study hard."

"Is that so?" Qu Yan drew out his tone, making it overly ambiguous. "Then did you study them?"

Yan Zhuo's eyelashes trembled. "I did."

Qu Yan acted like a teacher checking up on a student's study progress. "How many did you study?"

"Two."

Qu Yan nodded slightly. "Did you learn all of it?"

Yan Zhuo shook his head in shame. "No."

"How could that be? Yan Zhuo, you're very smart. Why couldn't you learn it?"

"I couldn't understand it."

Yan Zhuo was lying like this not because he couldn't understand them, but because he understood them all too well. Clearly the covers were crude and simple, but the contents inside were extremely detailed. Every single posture not only had detailed explanations but also exquisitely clear illustrations, to the point where even the expressions of the two people on the page could be seen distinctly. Yan Zhuo hadn't dared to look closely at all, skimming them with a glance before immediately flipping to the next page. He had sped through two books at that pace and never wanted to look at them again.

Feeling guilty like a thief, he had finally hidden those books under the bed, thinking he had kept it entirely secret, only for them to be discovered anyway.

As if completely oblivious to his distress, Qu Yan continued to ask, "What didn't you understand? Tell me about it, maybe I know."

Stripped of the context and antecedents, this was almost the scenario Yan Zhuo had dreamed of during his high school days—being able to shed his identity as a stalker and discuss problem sets with Qu Yan like an ordinary classmate.

But it was definitely not like this right now. Yan Zhuo promised, "I won't look at them anymore."

"Why not look at them? You've only read two, and there are still so many left." Qu Yan's tone remained teasing.

As he spoke, he slid his hand into the hem of Yan Zhuo's shirt, tracing upward along his abdomen. The skin and flesh beneath his palm were trembling faintly. Beads of sweat quickly formed on the tip of Yan Zhuo's nose; he wanted to pull away, but forcibly stopped himself.

The muscles of his abdomen were tensed, feeling exceptionally good to the touch. Two buttons of Yan Zhuo's collar were undone, revealing a flushed neck, and the blue mark at his Adam's apple grew increasingly vibrant. Qu Yan asked, "Are you still itching?"

Moisture filled Yan Zhuo's eyes. He didn't understand why things had turned out this way. Just a moment ago he had been wiping the coffee table, yet now he was kneeling on the floor with a muddled brain, and one of Qu Yan's hands had even reached inside his shirt.

Everything was completely absurd, yet it also felt entirely reasonable.

The blue fluid that had melted into his body was usually completely harmless, quietly lying dormant in various parts of his body. But once touched, it came back to life like a swarm of ants crawling under his skin and flesh—it didn't hurt, it only itched.

This tormenting itch was rapidly destroying his reason, making him crave for Qu Yan to touch him a little more, a little harder, preferably rubbing his skin raw and squeezing out all of those annoying blue liquids.

He answered intermittently, "Itchy... so itchy..."

The only person who could help him was Qu Yan. That was the only thought left in his mind. He had forgotten that without Qu Yan's touch, he would never have become like this.

He was pleading with the culprit.

Qu Yan leaned in closer and asked him, "Yan Zhuo, do you want a reward?"