Chapter 50 Rebuke

After finally calming Yang Jie down, Zhan Ting ordered two more bottles of Blue Shield beer, which was Yang Jie's absolute favorite without exception.

Despite Yang Jie's rugged and burly appearance, he disliked high-malt beers and had a strong preference for crisp, refreshing ones.

Drinking his beer, Yang Jie wore an impatient expression.

"Spit it out if you have something to say!"

Hesitating for a moment, Zhan Ting gritted her teeth and said, "Actually, my younger brother has never wanted me to fund his education. He wants to pass the university entrance exams as soon as possible and start working, but I want him to read more."

"Oh? Trying to whitewash him?"

Zhan Ting shook her head like a rattle-drum. "You've met my brother too; he's not that kind of person."

"It's been several years! You can know a person's face but not their heart—who knows what you've turned him into!"

"What will it take for you to tell me? Every time you say you have a plan, it's either when we're coasting to victory or when there's a lucrative opportunity to make money!"

With the iced beer sliding down his throat, Yang Jie let out a look of utter satisfaction. He pulled out his phone, made a call, and handed the device directly to Zhan Ting.

The call was connected shortly after, and upon hearing the voice on the other end, Zhan Ting recognized it as Li Siyao.

For a full half-hour, Li Siyao patiently explained everything to Zhan Ting until she finally understood.

After hanging up, Zhan Ting was dumbfounded, staring blankly at Yang Jie. Before she even realized it, her hands began to tremble slightly.

Perhaps noticing her own abnormality, she immediately pulled a bottle of liquor from her bag and took several large gulps. In just a few seconds, her hands miraculously steadied back to normal.

Yang Jie's mouth twitched violently. *Holy shit, this hardcore drinker is truly ruthless, completely incapable of quitting!*

"Are you guys playing for real?"

Crossing his arms, Yang Jie looked at her with a deadpan, serious expression.

"I don't have much patience with you. Believe it or not, it doesn't matter. Anyway, my team has one more or one less person—it makes no difference."

If she hadn't shown up, it wouldn't have mattered, but since she came, Yang Jie naturally wanted to pull Zhan Ting into his team.

Zhan Ting was someone he had trained with his own hands. Despite her tall stature, rounded legs, and arms with skin as smooth as mutton-fat jade, no one knew that her four limbs were essentially killing machines.

This was the deliberate result of Yang Jie's training. While many people could be sent to the battlefield, talents capable of special operations, target assassination, and hostage rescue were far too scarce.

The only thing that dissatisfied Yang Jie was Zhan Ting's height; if she were around 1.68 meters tall, it would have been even more perfect.

Zhan Ting fell into silence, recalling every little detail from the days she had worked alongside Yang Jie.

Anyone who had spent a long time teamed up with Yang Jie knew that he always carried a massive amount of ammunition, sometimes even lugging around a rocket launcher.

When clearing a battlefield, he could always precisely locate the placement of rigged traps and landmines. Most incredibly, Yang Jie could accurately identify the enemy's encircle-and-annihilate tactics every single time; the moment something felt off, he would run away without the slightest hesitation.

Thinking about what Li Siyao had said—that someone so sensitive to danger and so fond of money would actually mortgage all his assets just to return to the country—unless the apocalypse was coming, this guy would definitely never bear to part with his properties.

"I believe you, Captain!"

The corners of Yang Jie's mouth curved upward. He was quite satisfied with Zhan Ting's response, but he couldn't help unleashing his sharp tongue anyway.

"Making such a pitiful amount of peanuts a month, yet shouldering a loan of nearly ten million—I honestly have no idea what's going on in your head."

"Your brother is essentially a parasite living off his sister's success. Based on your actions, my impression of your brother has dropped significantly, hasn't it?"

Zhan Ting wanted to argue, but she kept silent. She knew that the things she had done in the past used to drive Yang Jie into a furious rage. If Li Siyao hadn't stopped him, she might have been executed on the battlefield by the enraged Yang Jie long ago.

Just as Yang Jie was lecturing Zhan Ting, five or six men and women walked into the restaurant.

One of the chubby men glanced at Zhan Ting, paused abruptly, and then smiled at the slender man beside him.

"Look, your goddess!"

The slender man immediately looked over and was instantly met with a scene completely unacceptable to his worldview.

A giant black-bear-like brute was talking animatedly at the goddess, while the goddess looked as obedient as an elementary school student.

*What the actual fuck?* He was practically coughing up blood.

When he had pursued the goddess, her cold and aloof demeanor had pierced right into his heart, making him feel inadequate and self-deprecating every time he stood before her.

In a place like Shanghai, crouching tigers and hidden dragons were everywhere, but his own family possessed hundreds of millions in net worth. Wasn't pursuing a girl with no particular financial background as easy as shooting fish in a barrel?

Yet for some reason, the goddess simply ignored him, and he was still racking his brains for a way to win her over.

Seeing this scene right before his eyes instantly shattered the goddess filter, filling the slender man with uncontrollable rage.

The thought that the goddess he had groveled before might just be a worn-out bicycle ridden by someone else drove his proud self completely out of his mind!

He strode over, stared at the slightly puzzled goddess, took a deep breath, and pressed his lips together.

"I've chased you for so long, and it turns out this is your type?"

With that, he looked Yang Jie up and down, let out a scoff, and dismissed him. From the perspective of domestic aesthetics, the slender man looked quite delicate, somewhat resembling a pretty boy, and usually had a foolproof touch when chasing women.

"Luo Zhiming, what nonsense are you spouting? What kind of type I like—what does that have to do with you?"

Yang Jie raised an eyebrow, crossed his arms, and put on a spectator's expression ready for a good show.

As soon as Luo Zhiming walked over, his friends rushed over as well.

One of the men's female companions seemed to know Zhan Ting and immediately piped up.

"Zhan Ting, if you don't like the guy, you should just say it directly. What's the point of stringing Luo Zhiming along all this time? Trying to act like a gold-digger?"

Zhan Ting frowned. This woman was a trainer at a nearby fitness studio. They had never crossed paths socially, but every time they met, the woman always carried an air of hostility.

Yang Jie tilted his head and grasped the situation with a single glance. The woman was decent-looking with a good figure, but compared to Zhan Ting—well, actually, there was no comparison; they simply weren't in the same league.

Meanwhile, her boyfriend's eyes were glued firmly to the long, rounded legs Zhan Ting had exposed beneath the table due to the warm weather.

Zhan Ting's mind was a mess right now. The news of the apocalypse had shaken her inner world, leaving her utterly dazed. Even with the guidance of Li Siyao and Yang Jie, she still found it hard to believe.

Yet, once the calmness settled in, anxiety for the future took over. This was the psychological state of ordinary people in this country—maintaining vigilance in times of peace, commonly known as internal involution.

To put it bluntly, if ordinary people didn't buy houses, their lives would be ridiculously carefree.

Why was renting houses popular abroad? What did the public intellectuals say? They claimed it was because those people loved freedom.

*Love your grandmother's corpse.* Which ordinary foreigner could actually afford to buy a house? Furthermore, numerous middle-aged people lost their jobs, finding themselves unable to pay off their mortgages, while also failing to afford the hefty annual property taxes, ultimately resulting in bankruptcy and homelessness.