Chapter 78: Two Mad Men
Moon Song walked into Xia Fei’s room with unwarranted familiarity, turned on the TV, took off her shoes, and reclined on the couch. Her two legs dangled about restlessly.
“You two can continue; I don’t mind skins.h.i.+p between men,” said Moon Song very casually as she pulled out that half-eaten cuc.u.mber from her pocket and proceeded to watch TV while munching on that fruit.
Chen Dong was irked, moving his b.u.t.t almost a full meter away from Moon Song, sitting on the other end of the couch.
Xia Fei closed the door. He pulled out a big ashtray from his spatial ring and placed it on the table in the living room, flicking his cigar’s ash into it.
This ashtray was made from a disused sh.e.l.l of a spitfire light missile, a fairly rugged-looking one that was rather heavy metal in taste.
Xia Fei might not be old, but he was a bonafide heavy smoker. Cigarettes were never far from his fingers since the age of fourteen.
When he smoked, he had the habit of wedging the stick between his interdigital folds, letting the slowly burning cigarette become one with his palm, so it looked like he was holding his chin in reverie to others. He looked completely at ease and relaxed while doing this with his eyes narrowed. The wrinkles on his forehead would pulse, adopting quite a pensive posture.
When he needed to flick the ash off his cigarette, he would use his thumb, brus.h.i.+ng it lightly against the cigarette filter, and the grey ash would fall into the ashtray like snow.
Moon Song’s eyes suddenly glistened as they focused on Xia Fei. It was apparent that the unique ashtray and his smoking posture had deeply fascinated the girl.
“Dude, you really give off the vibe of a mature man; what are you smoking? Mind if I try one?” excitedly asked Moon Song, like a playful kitten that had discovered a ball of yarn.
Xia Fei sighed. He was only seventeen, so being described as mature could not be considered a compliment.
Standing up and walking over to the girl, he shook his cigarette pack lightly.
Four cigarettes poked out from the pack, and each one extended to a different length. The longest of which happened to expose its cigarette filter entirely.
This was a trick that he had learned from an old fortune-teller on the streets; it was called ‘all are brothers within the four seas’. It was rumored that this was how the comrades of the Green Gang offered their cigarettes.
Moon Song gingerly took a stick of Hongtaishan out from the pack and placed it in her palm for inspection as if she had been given something precious.
Chen Dong was doing his best to suppress his laughter and looked forward to what would happen next. He had already learned from Xia Fei just how that smoking gimmick of his tasted, so with a heart full of schadenfreude, he awaited the tragedy to unfold.
Xia Fei’s zippo lighter twirled around his hand several times like a b.u.t.terfly before he lightly flicked his thumb to produce a crisp sound, and a small orange flame lit up in the next instant.
Moon Song almost jumped off from the couch in her excitement, her eyes widening. “Cool! Dude, how did you practice that thing you did with your hand? You gotta teach me that next time.”
Xia Fei smiled and nodded, not saying another word.
Moon Song placed that cigarette in her mouth as she drew close to the flame and took a few light puffs.
Xia Fei was actually very repulsed by women smoking, but because Miss Moon Song was not affiliated to him, he was not really inclined to stop her, so he was happy to oblige her mischief.
Finally, that scene which Chen Dong and Xia Fei had been waiting for happened just as they expected. Miss Moon Song covered her mouth and coughed several times, one louder than the other, as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“What sort of vile thing is this?!?! It almost choked yours truly!” Moon Song coughed as she furiously tossed that cigarette she had just lit into the ashtray.
Xia Fei flashed a slight smile. “It’s not even anything good. You can buy a whole mountain of them with one star coin. What did you think it was?”
Chen Dong was forcefully stopping himself from laughing, and that bronze face of his had turned red from all his effort.
Moon Song picked up that half-eaten cuc.u.mber she had placed on the table and took a vicious bite out of it while glaring at Xia Fei as if she were biting him instead of the fruit in her hand. Alas, due to the unique shape of that vegetable, Xia Fei could not help but conjure so many bad a.s.sociations about it.
“Aren’t you guys doing gay stuff? Quick carry on. Yours truly is feeling very bored right now, so I wanna watch something interesting.” Moon Song was sitting cross-legged on the couch when she said this.
Xia Fei shook his head. “We’re not gay.”
Moon Song blinked. “Then, what are you going to do when you have needs?”
Xia Fei was left speechless dealing with Miss Moon Song and her penchant for mischief, so he posed a question back at her. “Let’s not talk about us. What do YOU do when you have needs?”
Moon Song waved the half-eaten cuc.u.mber in her hand and happily answered, “I have this. What, do you wanna have a taste? It’s really good~”
Xia Fei smirked, then raised his two hands in the air, moving it in a way that any man would be familiar with. “You’ve got your cuc.u.mber, and we’ve got our hardworking left and right hands.”
This time, it was Moon Song who was left speechless, throwing away that half-eaten cuc.u.mber toward the ashtray, muttering to herself, “You boys are all such rogues and thugs. Not one of you is decent.”
Xia Fei noticed Moon Song’s cheeks were slightly flushed when she said that, but she recovered soon enough. No one would have noticed the change if they were not observing her closely.
“Pfft!”
Chen Dong finally could not hold in his laughter anymore and gave a rather raucous guffaw, falling back onto the couch as he shook from laughing.
“Big oaf, what are you laughing at? Careful I don’t chop off your family jewels and feed it to the dogs!” snapped Moon Song fiercely at Chen Dong.
Though Chen Dong looked rather manly, he was actually completely inept at dealing with women. Once more holding back his laughter, he schooled his countenance into a serious look.
Moon Song could tell that she would be unable to take advantage of Xia Fei in any way, so she immediately switched targets.
“Big oaf, did you have trouble squeezing your head through the door?” Moon Song pointed to Chen Dong’s head as she flashed him an ill-natured grin.
Chen Dong puffed his chest out, full of energy. “I went to challenge the internal division last night, and I ended up losing. Injuries are the pride of a warrior. Wait till I recover; I’ll definitely head back and issue another challenge to them.”
Chen Dong said that with great determination, looking like he did not intend to give up the idea. His strongest virtue was that he was not one to hold grudges, treating challenges as mere challenges, a proper and upright clash. Even if he was beaten to half an inch of his life, he would not utter a word of complaint.
A close look at Chen Dong’s battle history was enough to know that he was always either challenging experts or carving out a path for him to do so. Actually, he might not even be challenging the strong but himself, instead.
Xia Fei thought about this before he inquisitively asked, “Who did you challenge from the internal division?”
“Everyone!” answered Chen Dong in all seriousness.
Xia Fei and Moon Song simply could not believe their ears. Challenged everyone in the internal division? Such a crazy action had to be born from someone who had lost all their marbles. Xia Fei could even imagine a scene where Chen Dong got mobbed by the entire internal division and received a sound beating.
The two burst into uproarious laughter disrespectfully, barely saving themselves from pa.s.sing out after they forgot to breathe.
“Chen Dong! You actually went to challenge everyone in the internal division all by yourself? Have you gone insane?” Moon Song had one hand clutching her stomach. “This is the funniest joke I’ve heard my entire life!”
Xia Fei flashed a big thumbs-up at Chen Dong. “I’m impressed. You’re truly dauntless. There’s no way I’d do something like that.”
“You?” Moon Song stared at Xia Fei incredulously. “Do you think you’re any better than Chen Dong? Do you know what everyone in the training camp calls the two of you after the news of your crazy twenty-one-day fight spread?”
Xia Fei and Chen Dong shook their heads.
“You guys got the nickname of Crazy Chen and Crazy Xia. You’re both mad.” Moon Song was slapping the couch even as she was cramping all over from laughter. When the girl got this hysterical, it was a real wonder who was actually crazy here.
Xia Fei thought about it and asked, “Is the internal division so strong? After all, I couldn’t even penetrate your ice armor with my Chasing Light, so how did those guys succeed in getting past your defense?”
Moon Song folded her leg up to make a figure ‘4’ as she continued to laugh. “There are over fifty thousand people in Heaven Execution Training Camp; do you know how many there are in the internal division?”
Xia Fei and Chen Dong shook their heads again.
“There are only five hundred in that division! It essentially means that any cadet from the other division who wants to get in only has a one-percent chance of succeeding. The people who get in are all the atypical freaks.”
“Only the elite of the elites are able to enter Heaven Execution Training Camp, and to make it into the internal division, you have to be a genius among geniuses!”
Xia Fei mulled on this, then wondered, “So what’s the difference between the internal division and the rest?”
“Difference?” Moon Song had magically pulled out another large cuc.u.mber from her pocket, crunching on it as she spoke. “It’s not a difference; it’s heaven and earth distinction.”
“Do you guys feel that the conditions of the general camp itself are very good as they are?”
Xia Fei nodded repeatedly. There was no need to dispute that; just his living situation alone was already at the standards of a presidential suite, so he was sure that the facilities in the camp would not be too far off.
Even Chen Dong, born from a major clan, could hardly find anything to complain about when it came to the training camp’s accommodations. All here were specially prepared for elite warriors, and everything and anything was provided.
“If you two have a chance to step into the internal division, then you will understand. Compared to the internal division, this is no different from a slum. Not just the training equipment they have access to, even their living conditions are many times better than the general population here in Heaven Execution Training Camp. More importantly, the internal division has a secret technique that can improve a warrior’s cultivation by leaps and bounds in a short time.”
“Almost all cadets that made it into the internal division saw their ranks surge in a short time. It’s basically too miraculous!”
Moon Song seemed to know quite a lot, sharing several rumors concerning the internal division. Xia Fei and Chen Dong could not help but be intrigued by the wonders the internal division held after hearing her words.
“So, does either one of you wish to join the internal division?” asked Moon Song very mysteriously.
Chen Dong was somber when he answered gruffly, “Do you have a way? As long as I can become even stronger, I’ll be willing to do anything even if I end up dying!”
Though Xia Fei did not outwardly express his interest, becoming an expert was indeed his biggest pursuit, so he p.r.i.c.ked his ears up and eagerly listened.