However, even though his internal organs were burning with anxiety, Wei Qian only shook slightly, so slightly that no one noticed except Wei Zhiyuan.

Wei Zhiyuan grabbed his hand and felt it was burning hot. He was shocked: "Brother, you..."

Wei Qian turned a deaf ear to him, shook off his hand, and strode into the crowd.

Even if what was waiting for him on the ground was really a battered corpse, he had to see it with his own eyes.

Wei Zhiyuan was about to catch up when he suddenly heard someone calling him from a distance: "Qian'er! Xiaoyuan!"

Wei Zhiyuan looked back and saw that Lao Xiong's car was parked not far away. There were too many people and they could not get through. The car door was open. Mrs. Xiong was standing there holding an umbrella, jumping and shouting for help, and next to her was Song Xiaobao, who didn't even dare to raise his head.

That’s right - Wei Zhiyuan breathed a sigh of relief, he found that he had actually forgotten about this - which folk expert could tell at first sight that Song Xiaobao’s real age was actually sixteen?

Wei Zhiyuan took two quick steps and grabbed Wei Qian's arm, forcibly pulling him out of the crowd. He turned his shoulder and said, "Brother, don't worry. Xiaobao has been found. He's over there."

Wei Qian looked in the direction his finger was pointing, and after a moment, his body, which had been as tense as a bow, suddenly relaxed. Wei Qian couldn't help but stagger half a step to the side.

Then he stood firm, his face expressionless, neither happy nor angry. He only realized belatedly that his whole body was soaked with cold sweat and snow.

He shuddered violently.

Mrs. Xiong was a warm-hearted person. As soon as she heard about the incident, she mobilized many of her friends to help keep an eye out. Coincidentally, one of her close friends happened to be a choir tutor at the Youth Activity Center in her spare time. Xiaobao's clothes were very bright, and the teacher happened to see him and had an impression of him. So Mr. and Mrs. Xiong drove over to try their luck.

In fact, Song Xiaobao has been a coward since childhood, and he is a potential traitor at heart. It is rare that he gets too excited and can do such a feat.

However, the mighty and majestic things in her life were always like a flash in the pan. When the cold wind blew, her blood ran cold and she immediately regretted it. Xiaobao's first reaction was to sneak back home at night and pretend that this incident had never happened. But when he felt his pocket, he found that he had gone out in a hurry and forgot to bring his keys.

This playful little thing, the key, was born to jinx her.

It is conceivable that if she went home and knocked on the door at this time, waking everyone up, her intention to run away from home would certainly be exposed. Then her eldest brother would definitely skin her alive, and even her grandmother would probably not be able to save her life.

Song Xiaobao's heart trembled at the thought of such a bloody and violent scene. In the end, she had no choice but to make up her mind and continue her plan of running away from home as if she was forced to do so.

She ran to a small hotel near the Youth Activity Center to stay for the night, but next door was a pair of wild mandarin ducks who were determined to brave the cold to book a room. The harsh natural environment did not affect their determination to fight for the reproduction of mankind for thousands of generations. The bed creaked all night. The soundproofing of the small hotel was not good, and Xiaobao did not sleep all night.

In such a harsh environment, Song Xiaobao's nature of remembering food but not beatings emerged. Her grievances, as heavy as the snow in June and as grievances as those of Dou E, disappeared in the moaning sounds from next door, and she began to become frightened.

When Lao Xiong and the others found her, Xiaobao was walking around the stadium behind the children's activity center in circles, looking helpless.

The old bear pointed at her proudly and said to his wife, "See, I told you it won't get lost, right?"

When Wei Qian went over, Sister Xiong, who had already understood the whole story, was scolding Xiao Bao: "Little girl, how can you be so brave? You ran out for such a small matter. What if you meet a bad guy? What if you don't have enough money? What if something unexpected happens? Are you going to kill your brother?"

Xiao Bao was picking at his fingers, and when he saw Wei Qian coming over, he looked up at him nervously, then quickly lowered his head in a confessional gesture, his ten fingers tangled together like plasticine.

Old Bear pulled out a towel from somewhere and gave it to the two embarrassed brothers: "Hey, you two are soaked, wipe them off quickly."

When Mrs. Xiong saw Wei Qian, she followed the principle of "giving each of them fifty lashes" and did not get around to him: "You, are you a brother like this? Why didn't you just scratch her face with a knife when you cut her hair? What's wrong with us dancers? Are dancers inferior? The beauty of the world is presented by people like us who are not doing the right job. You are so narrow-minded. You are like this at a young age. When you are old, you may become a disgusting stubborn old man."

The old bear couldn't stand it anymore and pulled her aside: "Stop it, you're everywhere, why are you so eager to speak? Save your words, and when I become successful, I'll let you speak at the United Nations General Assembly, okay?"

Wei Qian didn't know whether he had nothing to say or couldn't say anything, so he didn't respond. He just raised the corners of his mouth a little stiffly, smiled at Sister Xiong, and said softly: "Thank you, sister-in-law."

Mrs. Xiong, who originally wanted to suppress Old Bear for three hundred rounds over the issue of speaking rights, was inexplicably rendered speechless by his smile and had to shut up awkwardly.

Along the way, Wei Qian didn't say a word. Xiaobao looked at his ugly face and became more and more uneasy.

Lao Xiong notified Sanpang and others and drove them home before leaving.

As a result, as soon as Xiaobao pushed the door open, he was attacked by Old Lady Song.

The night before, Old Lady Song was afraid that Wei Qian would beat her, so she was using all kinds of tricks to protect her. But today, she rolled up her sleeves and did it herself.

When the old lady received the notification that "the person has been found", her heart was relieved and she quickly chanted a few words of blessing from Buddha.

After thanking the Bodhisattva, she stood at the door with a broom, ready for a women's singles match. After Xiaobao called "Grandma" for the first time, Old Lady Song swung the broom handle and hit her on the head like hitting a fly.

Whenever Old Lady Song wants to do something, there must be a lot of fanfare and enough space for her to do it.

Wei Zhiyuan and Wei Qian consciously moved away from the battle circle and stood against the wall.

Wei Zhiyuan was wondering why his elder brother didn't stop him, when suddenly, he felt a weight on his shoulder, and Wei Qian placed one hand on it.

"Help me up." Wei Qian's voice was so soft that it was almost inaudible. His eyelids seemed to be glued together. He struggled to open them a little, but could hardly see anything. The cold sweat on his forehead kept flowing down his nose, and he couldn't even breathe.

Before Wei Zhiyuan could reach out his hand, Wei Qian's knees went weak, and he staggered and fell headfirst.

Wei Zhiyuan scooped him up with one hand, and through his thick winter clothes he could feel the heat from his body, as if it were burning charcoal.

Old Mrs. Song was startled. She quickly dropped her broom and ran over, shouting, "What happened? What happened?"

Wei Zhiyuan stretched out his hand and tested Wei Qian's forehead. It was good enough to boil an egg. He immediately bent down and carried the unconscious Wei Qian on his back: "He has a fever, grandma, please find the thermometer and the regular medicine."

Old Lady Song responded, then turned around and saw Xiaobao still standing there at a loss. She immediately became furious: "What are you looking at? It's all your fault! You're the one who made me angry."

Wei Zhiyuan shushed her, "Stop making noise."

Old Mrs. Song inexplicably obeyed his instructions. She didn't know since when, but she had begun to trust this little boy just like she trusted Wei Qian in the past.

Wei Zhiyuan carried Wei Qian to his bedroom, made Xiaobao and grandma run around, stripped off Wei Qian's damp coat, poured hot water and fed him medicine.

At this time, Wei Qian had already woken up from his brief coma.

He pushed Wei Zhiyuan first: "It might be a cold, stay away from me, or I'll infect you."

Wei Zhiyuan was pushed away, and then came back intact.

The boy didn't argue with him. He just watched him finish the medicine, then added another layer of quilt on him, carefully pressing down the corners of the quilt.

At this time, someone knocked on the door cautiously outside. I knew it was Xiaobao as soon as I heard it - Old Mrs. Song couldn't learn to knock on the door, she usually just smashed it.

Wei Zhiyuan looked at Wei Qian for instructions, and Wei Qian turned his face away without saying a word and closed his eyes, as if he fell asleep at the speed of light. Wei Zhiyuan smiled and understood what he meant.

Xiao Bao stood at the door and looked at Wei Zhiyuan who came to answer the door. At this time, the height difference between the two was so great that it made people's hair stand on end. If they stood very close, Xiao Bao would have to crane her neck to see Wei Zhiyuan's face. She was like a sunflower wilted by the sun, looking up at Wei Zhiyuan, still sobbing.

Wei Zhiyuan put his index finger to his lips and said, "Take the medicine and go to sleep. We'll talk tomorrow."

Xiaobao felt through her tearful eyes that there was something mysterious in his eyes. With her intelligence and experience, she couldn't tell what it was and she was helpless. She could only nod obediently and walked away, looking back every few steps.

Wei Zhiyuan sent her away, closed the door, moved a chair, took a book, and sat beside the bed to watch over Wei Qian.

After a while, the sleeping pills in the medicine took effect and Wei Qian really fell asleep.

Wei Zhiyuan didn't read a page of the book in his hand. He simply threw the book aside, put his ten fingers together, and stared at Wei Qian unscrupulously.

In such unusual quiet and serenity, he suddenly found himself understanding his elder brother's silence at home.

By nature, Wei Qian is definitely not the type of person who is particularly quiet and introverted, otherwise he would have been annoyed to death by the chatterbox Sanpang and would never have been able to hang out with him. Wei Qian actually talks a lot and can be quite vicious when he gets angry, but he is a little particularly stingy with words towards his family.

He never talks at home, and doesn't even communicate much. It seems that even someone talking in his ear is annoying to him.

why?

Wei Zhiyuan looked at Wei Qian's face which was gradually covered with sweat due to the heavy quilt, and couldn't help but reach out to push away a strand of sweaty hair on his forehead - the boy understood, because that was his elder brother's unique way of escaping and being weak.

Wei Zhiyuan traced Wei Qian's outline with his eyes, thinking to himself, when this man was younger, weaker, and more helpless, he had to carry a family with him. Although he didn't say a word, would he really have no resentment in his heart?

Can he really remain calm and have no regrets?

How is that possible? He is not a stone.

This man, everything he had longed for in his life, hurt him deeply.

And everything he hated in his life haunted him.

He was just like a small bunch of tree buds that had been squeezed out of the cracks in the rocks over billions of years. They were shaky, twisted, but lush and green.

Wei Zhiyuan knew that he was not very healthy in personality and lacked the ability to sympathize. This lack was not due to adult-like coldness caused by tempering, but rather that he did not know how to sympathize most of the time.

Whenever Xiaobao and Old Lady Song cried their hearts out while watching a sad drama, he found it incomprehensible.

This has nothing to do with age or intelligence - very young children are affected by the emotions of the adults around them, and even puppies will use their animal way to express comfort to a crying stranger.

Wei Zhiyuan found it difficult to empathize with other people's emotions, and even more difficult to establish emotional connections with others. Most of the time, he adopted a certain degree of sociable disguise in order to fit in with the environment.

Only the eldest brother is different.

Wei Zhiyuan tried to guess what Wei Qian was feeling, like a child prying open the roof of a temple and peeking, feeling that precious emotional connection.

About...all the true joys, sorrows, anger, and happiness, strength and cowardice of a person he worshipped as a god when he was young.

Like a transparent soul lying in front of him, Wei Zhiyuan even felt that his heart was about to melt.

When Wei Qian woke up the next day, he found himself lying in Wei Zhiyuan's arms.

Perhaps he unconsciously tried to kick the quilt in his sleep, so Wei Zhiyuan simply hugged him and the quilt together.

This was nothing, as they had lived together since childhood, but the moment he opened his eyes, Wei Qian still felt a little awkward for some reason.

Wei Zhiyuan’s presence is too strong.

He took up half of the bed, instantly making the spacious space cramped, with his hands and feet tangled around himself. Wei Qian felt that he was being too suspicious, but he just had an animal-like sense of crisis... that his territory was being invaded.

When Wei Qian took his temperature again early in the morning, his high fever had turned into a low one.

Old Lady Song pushed Xiaobao in to apologize. Xiaobao probably didn't sleep well the night before. His eyes were as red as a rabbit. He looked at Wei Qian eagerly and expressed incoherently how serious his sins were.

Wei Qian no longer mentioned cutting his hair or quitting the dance team, and the matter was just blurred together.

In front of loved ones, all the principles and bottom lines are made of paper and will rot into pieces when the wind blows. In the end, it seems that all that is left is confusion and living from day to day.

At noon, Sister Xiong came for no reason. She was impressed by Xiaobao's qualifications and wanted to take him back to teach him herself.

Wei Qian did not stop her. He cheered himself up and said a few words to Mrs. Xiong, thanked her, and completely turned a blind eye to Song Xiaobao.

Wei Zhiyuan watched coldly and couldn't help thinking: Will there come a day when you will tolerate me like this without any bottom line?

In the afternoon, Wei Qian told Wei Zhiyuan to go to class, but the boy just bowed his head and said "yes" to him every time. He was so capable of pretending to obey his orders and secretly disobeying his opinions.

Wei Qian coughed twice: "Did you hear that?"

"Yeah, got it. Hey, brother, let me show you this." Wei Zhiyuan was like a mentally retarded child who didn't understand what people were saying. He heard it but ignored it. Then he took out his own notebook computer and opened a small game inside. "This is an assignment I handed in recently. It's not completely original. I borrowed a little bit from the game 'Push the Box' to improve it. I'll let you play it to entertain yourself."

Wei Qian said unhappily, “Push your head.”

Half an hour later, he was lying on the bed playing this stupid little game of "Pushing the Head".

Wei Zhiyuan was doing his homework diligently in his bedroom, and would occasionally come over to bother him, such as forcing him to drink the water or forcing him to put back the second layer of quilt that he had taken off.

Wei Qian felt it for the first time ever, "this kid has grown so big without me noticing", and felt a little uncomfortable, but this discomfort was soon absorbed by Wei Zhiyuan's little game.

The game is very well designed. The beginning is very step-by-step, which allows people to accumulate a sense of accomplishment bit by bit. At the beginning, each level has only one button, which can be passed by unlocking it. In the middle and late stages, each level has seven or eight buttons. The accumulation of a sense of challenge and accomplishment makes people addicted step by step.

In the later stage, Wei Qian found that his little man was basically trapped in the middle of a dazzling formation like a spider web.

Wei Qian was stuck at the last level and couldn't get through it no matter how hard he tried. After failing countless times, he began to suspect that there was something wrong with the program and he couldn't get out at all.

The two brothers argued like two kids, wondering whether a player was just too stupid or if there was something wrong with the game design.

Finally, Wei Zhiyuan squeezed in next to him and showed him step by step how to do the 18-link chain in this crazy level. Then he looked at Wei Qian with a bit of pride, showing off like a little peacock and said, "Am I smart?"

"Tsk, it's just a toy for kids." Wei Qian said as he pushed the computer away to distance himself from it... as if the person he was holding onto just now was not him.

Wei Qian lit a cigarette on the bed. His fever had subsided and he felt a little weak, but he felt much better. The workaholic heart that had been dormant for the time being began to stir again.

Although he was tough on the outside, he was actually inspired by Wei Zhiyuan's little game and had a vague idea of ​​how to get the project approved.

Wei Qian was so absorbed in his thoughts that he nearly burned his bed sheet. Fortunately, Wei Zhiyuan quickly snatched it away.

Wei Zhiyuan stood by like a medical authority and said dignifiedly, "Brother, you should rest."

Wei Qian was dumbfounded and thought: "Am I being controlled by this kid? I'm rebelling against him!"

Wei Zhiyuan was indeed ready to start an uprising. He forcibly turned off his bedside lamp, then used his weight and brute force to push his sickly brother back into the quilt. He sat there like an overseer, waiting to supervise him to rest.

Wei Qian was so shocked that he didn't even think of resisting.

After an unknown amount of time, Wei Zhiyuan heard Wei Qian suddenly ask, "How did you know where Xiaobao was going the night before?"

Wei Zhiyuan was debugging a program, and he looked up without even looking up and said, "I'm just guessing - whoever really wants to run away from home would wear something bright like her? He must be afraid of being caught and brought back, and he would want to smear two pounds of mud on his face."

It was not until then that Wei Qian suddenly remembered that this big boy, who seemed to be attending class and doing homework like an ordinary teenager, had an experience like that of Tom Sawyer when he was young. He suddenly felt a little distressed.

However, Wei Qian didn't know how to express it. He hesitated for a long time before asking Wei Zhiyuan in a tone of "How about I buy you a popsicle?" "Hey, kid, you're such a good student. Do you want to go abroad in the future? I can save money for you first..."

Before he finished his sentence, Wei Zhiyuan suddenly looked up. His face, which was reflected by the screen and turned blue, looked extremely ugly, as if he had heard something terrible.

After a long while, Wei Zhiyuan realized that he had overreacted, so he lowered his eyes and whispered as if to hide something: "I don't want to, you should go to bed early and stop talking."

Wei Qian only rested for one day. The next day, he got up as usual, booked a train ticket to the project location, and went to work like crazy.

Lao Xiong asked San Pang to follow him. Lao Xiong believed that San Pang was a man as mellow inside as he looked outside, and more stable than Wei Qian.

Wei Qian wore a mask like a tuberculosis patient and coughed bitterly in the car. Sanpang had no choice but to take care of him without complaint, and grumbled a few words: "I, your third brother, am a military supervisor. It's really pathetic. I'm just a little eunuch serving the master."

Wei Qian: "Well, it's quite appropriate. There are many eunuchs who supervise the army."

"Your mother!" Sanpang hit Wei Qian dejectedly. Thinking of the 30 million yuan he was carrying, he wanted to jump into the Songhua River. He hummed helplessly, "The north wind is blowing, the snowflakes are floating..."

Wei Qian gave him a cold look.

Sanpang asked worriedly, "Dad, this really won't work. Are you planning to sell Xier to pay off my debt?"

"No." Wei Qian said.

The fat man was very relieved.

Wei Qian added: "My girl, you are too ugly. I'm afraid Huang Shiren will pee his pants when he sees you."

San Pang sighed: "Are you sick, little comrade? You have a house and a career now, and your university diploma is about to be in your hands. You are so proud of yourself! What the hell are you doing? Seriously, let's get off at the next stop and buy return tickets. It's not too late to go home now."

Wei Qian flipped through the project materials, as if he wanted to imprint every punctuation mark in his mind: "I can get it."

Sanpang shook his head and sighed: "You are just a stone in the toilet, smelly and hard!"

He rubbed his knees nervously with his fat hands like a palm leaf fan. After a while, he slapped his thighs as if he had burned his boats and said, "Okay, your third brother owed you this in his previous life. Tell me what to do."