They had already been pushing their departure to the last possible moment, and now, after wasting even more time, the sky was nearly dark. There was no point setting out again.
Once inside the space, Lan Jin said, "Let's just sleep here tonight. We can study the route, then head out tomorrow."
No one disagreed. They had their own rules, and traveling at night was something they absolutely would not do.
Ling Jiang, who had been crying earlier, suddenly seemed full of energy, as if nothing had happened. She threw herself into studying the map with sharp focus, her earlier exhaustion gone. Lao Gao could barely get a word in before the route to their next base was finalized.
Still, Lao Gao didn't mind. Seeing Ling Jiang bounce back was good enough. Whether he could speak up or not didn't matter much.
As for whether they actually needed to go to that next base, they would decide after seeing what the road ahead was like.
…
They were enjoying themselves in the space, completely unaware that someone had already been lying in wait for them outside.
The map Brother Luo had given them was real, but so was the fact that their group's well-stocked supplies had drawn unwanted attention.
Brother Luo knew they were leaving today. There was no way he would just let them walk away. He had even found out they traveled by ice sled, which was far easier to ambush than a car. Yet when his men rushed to set up, they waited and waited, and still didn't see a single shadow of them.
"This isn't right. Where are they?" Brother Luo frowned hard. "They said they were leaving today. Following the route that guy mentioned, they should have come this way."
The "guy" was Lao Gao, who had casually hinted that their next destination was the base in the neighboring city. On the map, the obvious route to get there would pass right through here.
One of his men said, "I saw them leave the base. They definitely left, but…"
The man hesitated, and Brother Luo barked, "But what? Spit it out."
"They looked like they knew Captain Shi."
"Captain Shi?"
"You know, the leader of the First Squad of the supply search team."
"Yeah, that's him. I saw them talking in the dorm lobby for a long time. They seemed pretty close."
But close or not, they had left. The problem was where they'd gone.
The man insisted, "I'm sure it was them. Four people, all on ice skates pulling an ice sled. No one around here has that kind of gear, so I couldn't have mistaken them. I followed them out, and they should have passed this way before me."
"Then where are they?"
Brother Luo smacked the heads of two other men. "You're asking me? Who am I supposed to ask? I was following behind too. I told you to guard this spot in advance. Did you wander off and let them slip by?"
The two men tensed. "No, Brother Luo, really. We stayed right here. No wandering. We've been here since morning. Apart from Captain Shi's vehicle returning once, we haven't seen a single soul."
Brother Luo still wasn't willing to give up. They waited from dusk until the sky was fully black and their fingers numb with cold, but the group never appeared. He spat on the ground. "Damn it. Where the hell did they go?"
It was useless to wait any longer.
Reluctantly, Brother Luo led his men back to the base. At the gate, they ran into Old Shi on patrol. Brother Luo's brow furrowed with irritation, but there was no way he could ask what was going on. Without a word, he walked off.
As soon as Brother Luo was gone, the young woman they had met earlier came running up to Old Shi, hooking her arm through his. Her voice was bright with cheer. "Brother Shi, let's go eat."
Old Shi's stern expression softened instantly. He nodded, and the two of them headed for the canteen. Before stepping inside, he glanced back toward the base gates one last time.
Maybe this really was goodbye. Maybe they would never cross paths again.
…
Ling Jiang's mood had recovered fast. As she sorted the supplies they'd taken from the supermarket, Lan Jin couldn't help but lower her voice. "Honestly, your state right now is amazing. If I hadn't seen what happened earlier with my own eyes, I'd think nothing happened at all."
Ling Jiang rolled her eyes. "Little sister, I'm three years older than you. Even if I weren't, I'm long past the age of wailing over heartbreak. I'm thirty-six. You think I'd fall apart over a breakup? I cried because I got cheated on. That's never happened before. It's humiliating."
"Oh. I thought you couldn't let go of the relationship." Lan Jin was genuinely surprised. "So it's just because you got… well, betrayed? I can't relate. When it happened to me… hmm, all I remember thinking about was getting the money."
That was true. Back then, Lan Jin had been focused entirely on protecting her assets. Her main goal was to recover her financial losses, and her secondary goal was to keep tugging on Ren Xing's sympathy until he gave up his share of the property. If it hadn't been for that, mere cheating would never have left him with nothing.
In her past life, she had been hurt, but in this life, she felt nothing except the urge to get rid of these people.
"Your situation was different," Ling Jiang said. "You were thinking about your kid, and a big part of that money was yours to begin with." She paused. "I'm not like that. We grew up together, and things between us had always been good, but there was never that romantic spark. We only got together because we were both getting older and still single. We had a long talk and figured, why not? But before we made it official, I told him that if he ever met someone he truly loved, he should just say so and we'd break up. I could not tolerate being cheated on. But here we are."
She gave a small shrug. "I always knew it probably wouldn't last anyway. Our backgrounds are too different."
That was when Ling Jiang revealed her real history. Lan Jin had assumed the boxing gym and coach title were literal, but in truth, Ling Jiang had been an underground fighter. The gym was just an empty place she and Lao Gao borrowed because it was spacious. Before that, the two of them had done plenty of things that weren't exactly… legal. Old Shi, on the other hand, was a proper police officer.
They might have been able to be together for a while, but lasting forever? That was another matter entirely.
Lan Jin finally understood just how complicated Ling Jiang's past really was.