The Invasion Day – Chapter 82

Table of Contents | Character Guide

Chapter 82

“Cough cough cough!” Tang Xuhai choked as the water entered his trachea and coughed wryly as soon as he came up to the lake surface.

“Are you okay?” Fu Shiwu swam over.

“Cough cough… I’m okay.” Tang Xuhai stepped on the water, raised his arms and shook them.

Fu Shiwu wasn’t very worried. Even when one knew how to swim, he would still easily choke if he got a little careless, so Fu Shiwu only assumed that Tang Xuhai was out of it for a second.

Tang Xuhai lifted his eyes and cast a complicated look at Fu Shiwu, who seemed to be back to ‘normal’ again.

How could he say that Fu Shiwu’s appearance just now was particularly mesmerising and dreamy, which gave him a far-fetched feeling that he couldn’t quite describe?

Even if he was never charmed by art, he still had some aesthetic sense of a common man. The atmosphere just now felt absolutely like an illusion and made Fu Shiwu look rather… beautiful.

Now that he thought of such a damned word, he didn’t want to say it to this timid guy who usually couldn’t take jokes. If he gets angry, what should I do?

Tang Xuhai watched Fu Shiwu casually flick aside the wet hair strands that were drooping and sticking to his forehead. The water on his glasses slid down, leaving traces of water hanging on the lenses. That cold expression was all over his face once again.

What beautiful… It’s definitely an illusion, okay?!

“Let’s find someone to row a boat over and pull the fish up.” Fu Shiwu’s mind was very simple. He was just thinking about the fruits of their labour, because Tang Xuhai said he wanted to make this fish into three courses.

“Uhm.” Tang Xuhai nodded and took the initiative to turn around and swim back.

Fu Shiwu followed closely. Tang Xuhai’s strokes were very rapid, so with a few “swish swish”, he already moved far away.

Fu Shiwu’s strokes weren’t fast, but both of his arms were stretching a large distance, so his swimming wasn’t too slow.

One after another, the two of them walked into the shallow water zone.

“Fu ge! Hai ge! Did you beat up that fish?” Miao Jia asked impatiently as he stood on the shore.

Behind him was a crowd of people, all of whom were waiting for good news.

No one believed that this mutated fish, although huge in size, would pose any difficulty to the two special ability users.

“Uhm, we did. You go find someone to row a boat over, then ask a few men who can swim to find a rope or fishing net, hang it behind the boat and pull it up.” From the shallow water zone, Tang Xuhai walked to the shore with water heavily dripping down his body. “The fish is very  big, it won’t be easy to drag it up the boat.”

Tang Xuhai grabbed the hem of his singlet with both hands and decisively began to squeeze out the water.

At this point, Fu Shiwu also walked ashore, and someone trotted towards him with a towel in his hand.

“For you. Quickly wipe yourself, the temperature is quite low today, you might get a cold.” Hollande handed the towel to Fu Shiwu.

Fu Shiwu paused, then he stretched out his hand to take the towel and held it for a moment. He couldn’t think of anything and only blurted out a bland sentence: “Thank you.”

Hollande smiled, and his grey eyes reflected the sunlight, shimmering brightly like two jewels. That, and coupled with his handsome face, immediately attracted the attention of the ladies at the scene.

Needless to say, most of them were allured by the beauty of the opposite sex, but a particular individual was thinking of something else.

Zhen Zi’s eyes lit up.

Tang Xuhai’s motion of twisting his clothes stopped. He blinked and watched Fu Shiwu start to wipe his hair with the towel, while the water on his body was still trickling down.

Am I just so unpopular?

Forget it, I’m tougher than Shiwu anyway. Hollande must think so too, that’s why he ignores me and gives Fu Shiwu the towel instead.

At this time, Hollande was reaching out to Fu Shiwu’s hand.

“Yeah?” Unfamiliar with his touch, Fu Shiwu twitched slightly to duck away.

Hollande said with a gentle but firm voice: “Your wound has gotten soaked, let me take a look.”

He took off the bandage, revealing Fu Shiwu’s palm that had suffered a cut by the glass shard. By now, the wound had begun to heal and wasn’t bleeding due to his movements earlier, but its edges had started to turn white.

“Let’s re-sterilise it and apply some ointment.” Hollande suggested.

“I understand.” Fu Shiwu withdrew his hand from Hollande.

He wasn’t seeing very clearly, and the water marks on the lenses were making his glasses blurry. Fu Shiwu raised his hand to take off the glasses, wanting to wipe them.

At this moment, Tang Xuhai suddenly walked to them, grabbed Fu Shiwu’s arm and dragged him over, then he said to Hollande: “I’ll help him to apply the ointment, you don’t have to worry.”

Before Fu Shiwu could get what was happening, Tang Xuhai had pulled him away.

It happened so fast that Hollande didn’t even fully catch it. He could only watch Fu Shiwu speed up to follow with Tang Xuhai’s force.

“…Oh.” Hollande said dumbfoundedly, feeling a tad dizzy from the shock.

Zhen Zi’s eyes became even brighter now, and she mumbled softly: “Aiya! Cold, poker-face shou x gentle, considerate gong CP is good, but an aggressive, overpowered gong is also not bad. This is a headache, which one should I choose?” 

In this apocalypse, there was no webnovel and no JJWXC1晋江文学城 [Jinjiang Wenxue Cheng], lit. translated as ‘Jinjiang Literature City’, is a major Chinese-language website for webnovels of various genres. It’s home to China’s biggest Danmei webnovel collection. In fact, this novel that you’re reading right now also comes from JJWXC.. Zhen Zi, in a bid to save her spiritual fulfilment that had dropped extremely low, had developed a special skill for self-entertainment by observing the scene and taking her imagination to the sky. 

“With so much information, how about we create two separate shipdoms for these two CPs?” Zhen Zi said to herself.

She could only entertain herself. It’s really sad that no one can share my joy.

“Zhenzhen jie, what are you whispering?” Miao Jia stood beside her and heard a few words, but he couldn’t comprehend them at all.

“Nothing~~~” Zhen Zi giggled, then she said calmly: “I just think that Fu ge and Hai ge have a very good relationship.”

She was the second-youngest in the team, so naturally, she followed Miao Jia and called everyone else ‘ge’ and ‘jie’.

Out of her expectation, Miao Jia answered: “Huh? Do you also feel the same way? I tell you, earlier, when we were at a mountain top, Hai ge even held Fu ge in his arms for a long time.”

The moment Zhen Zi heard that there was such a thing, she couldn’t help but ask with immense interest: “Really, tell me more, what was going on at that time?”

“Well… Probably Fu ge exhausted his power to use his ability, so Hai ge rendered some support by letting Fu ge lean on his chest. But, there was clearly a car next to them, and they even stayed like that for a long while.” Miao Jia said with a mysterious tone: “So, their relationship is indeed very good…”

Huh? What does he mean? Zhen Zi thought secretly. Could it be that Miao Jia was also a fan of JJWXC?

After Zhen Zi gossiped for a while more, she was disappointed to realise that although Miao Jia also wondered about the oddness of those two’s relationship, he wasn’t letting his imagination fly high like her. It was more of a realistic speculation, and he wasn’t a fanboy of JJWXC either.

Zhen Zi, who thought that she had found a partner-in-crime but apparently failed, was broken-hearted. But then, it had to be said that she was shocked by Miao Jia’s words.

Although she had been daydreaming in both the 2D- and 3D-world, Zhen Zi had never really come into contact with a real CP. This made her terribly excited.

Zhen Zi was a ‘veteran’ who knew the benefits of daydreaming, but she knew where she got to put a stop. It was enough to imagine in her head; she shouldn’t interfere with the real life of both persons in the CP.

If people who harboured no particular thoughts heard Miao Jia’s words, they would likely only echo “Yes, their relationship is indeed very good”. However, those who already had that seedling in them would feel like their radar had picked up a signal.

Zhen Zi also didn’t express too much excitement and eagerness. Miao Jia and she weren’t the same gang, so she omitted some of the more specific insights. She simply discussed several topics that headed in that ‘ambiguous’ direction with Miao Jia, and eventually, both of them found a common language and started chit-chatting enthusiastically.

“…Zhenzhen jie, are you saying that Fu ge and Hai ge are really an item?” Miao Jia asked Zhen Zi. After all, he was young and had little experience in this aspect, so he shot the question at Zhen Zi, the old-timer that was leading this conversation.

“Hm…” Zhen Zi thought about it level-headedly and seriously: “I don’t think there are such signs. Although they engage in some acts that seem to suggest so, from their eye language and expressions, they don’t seem like a couple.”

“Oh…” Miao Jia was disheartened. Is it that I lack experience and misunderstand them?

“But, it’s not necessarily the case in the future.” Zhen Zi swiftly continued: “Hai ge is overly concerned about Fu ge. If there’s no specific reason, this kind of care doesn’t look like that between normal friends… What if his action just now was out of jealousy? Maybe he didn’t notice it, but just subconsciously acted that way. One day, will he suddenly wake up and realise that Fu ge means something different to him?… When the time comes, naturally…”

Zhen Zi thought along a usual novel plot and smoothly daydreamed.

Miao Jia was enlightened: “Maybe that is the case!”

Zhen Zi snapped out of it, realising that she might have talked a bit too much. The second stroke of the character 八 hadn’t even flung downward yet2The original idiom used here is ‘八字还没一撇’, which means that things are not even starting to take shape yet.. Before she could talk about whether the second stroke would fling downward, she wasn’t even sure if it would have the chance to be drawn, at all.

Miao Jia said: “Then let’s just wait and see the changes. Let them move along the flow. If it really becomes true one day, we’ll give them our blessings.”

Zhen Zi was surprised, for she didn’t expect Miao Jia to be so receptive. Perhaps they could become good friends in the future.

Zhen Zi’s observations were, in fact, pretty sharp. Earlier, when Tang Xuhai suddenly took Fu Shiwu away, his expression was indeed overwhelming, but it wasn’t because of jealousy — Though he admitted that he was a tiny bit concerned about that towel, his action was because Fu Shiwu suddenly took off his glasses!

Tang Xuhai’s responsibility was to protect and maintain Fu Shiwu’s cold and serious image. He never even showed Wen Zhaoming that side of Fu Shiwu, let alone those miscellaneous personnel!

Accidentally… Miao Jia, Zhen Zi and the teammates who were travelling with them were grouped together as ‘miscellaneous personnel”.

“Why are you so hasty all of a sudden?” Fu Shiwu said in puzzlement.

Tang Xuhai was walking in a hurry, so Fu Shiwu had no choice but to put his glasses on quickly.

Tang Xuhai said with a stern face: “I suddenly thought that the water in Shuijing Lake likely has dangerous components. Maybe there are pathogenic bacteria or something, so we should quickly treat your wound!”

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The translator has something to say: Admit it folks, we all see a bit of ourselves in Zhen Zi! (*≧▽≦)ﾉｼ))