Chapter 192 — The Dilapidated Shantytown

"Qing Bo has already gotten my driver's license sorted out for me" — he had handed it to Wei Zhao the day before yesterday, so now Wei Zhao was no longer afraid of being pulled over by the cops on the road.

The two young misses were at home today watching the Blu-ray of Xu Shilan's concert — the complete edition that Wei Zhao had gone to the bookstore to buy — so they would not be going out shopping.

On his way out, Wei Zhao gave Kang Xiaofeng a call. These days the cheapest knockoff phones cost only one or two hundred yuan, and it was perfectly normal for a high schooler to have a mobile; probably only someone like Tang Zhi went without one...

"Xiaobo, where are you?" Wei Zhao asked.

"I'm at home, haven't set out yet, Boss. You're heading over now?" Kang Xiaofeng had been looking forward to this day for a whole week. Dinner at the home of the school beauty was a rare honor, so he had gotten up early and been waiting for Wei Zhao's call.

"Where's your place? I'll come pick you up," Wei Zhao said.

"You'll come pick me up?" Kang Xiaofeng was slightly taken aback, unsure what Wei Zhao meant, but he said anyway: "My home's on Ningshi Road, Boss. Which direction is your place? If it's out of the way, let's just meet up in the shantytown?"

"Ningshi Road... then you just wait for me."

Wei Zhao hung up right after saying that.

Shen Yushu's car was equipped with a GPS navigation system. Wei Zhao entered Ningshi Road and then drove along following the navigation's directions.

The Ningshi Road stop was actually on the route Wei Zhao took to school every day, so it was fairly easy to find. Soon enough, Wei Zhao parked the car near the Ningshi Road bus stop.

Wei Zhao called Kang Xiaofeng and told him he was waiting at the stop. Before long, Wei Zhao spotted Kang Xiaofeng, dressed very sharply, trotting over toward the platform, glancing left and right as he ran — clearly looking for him.

"Xiaobo, over here!" Wei Zhao opened the passenger-side door and waved Kang Xiaofeng over.

"Huh? Boss?" Kang Xiaofeng looked at Wei Zhao and his car in some surprise and hurried over: "This is your car?"

"Heh." Wei Zhao smiled, neither confirming nor denying. With something like this, the more you explained, the harder it was to explain; better not to explain at all.

Sure enough, Kang Xiaofeng took Wei Zhao's silence as an admission and got in: "Boss, I never knew your family was so well off. I figured you'd crawled out of some poor mountain valley..." "Just about average," Wei Zhao said honestly. If those missions really did pay only a few hundred or a few thousand yuan the way his old man claimed, then his family could only be called average; but if you went by market rates, his family would long since have become multimillionaires or billionaires... Of course, Wei Zhao had no interest in settling accounts with the old man that precisely. Let him be a miser if he wanted to be a miser; it wasn't as though Wei Zhao lacked food or clothing, so he might as well treat it as earning a little money to support the old man in his old age.

"But Boss, why'd you buy a car like this? It's a bit like something a girl would drive... and these seat cushions, this interior decor..." Kang Xiaofeng said, looking around inside the car.

"Heh." Wei Zhao smiled. The car was Shen Yushu's to begin with, so of course it was feminine... "Huh?" Suddenly Kang Xiaofeng's gaze fixed on a hanging ornament on the rearview mirror: "The photo on this — is that Shen Yushu? Boss, no way? You've got a crush on Shen Yushu?"

Kang Xiaofeng's eyes went wide as he stared at the ornament, an expression of utter disbelief on his face. It was a small picture frame, and the photo inside was actually Shen Yushu.

"Huh?" Wei Zhao hadn't noticed before; only after Kang Xiaofeng mentioned it did he look at the ornament, and several black lines promptly appeared on his forehead: "This ornament belongs to the car's owner..." "Boss, I get it!" Kang Xiaofeng wore the look of a man who knew everything and chuckled: "Boss, I'm a man too, I know how it is. It's fine, I won't tell Tang Zhi!"

"..." Wei Zhao plucked the ornament off and tossed it into the passenger-side glove compartment.

"Yeah, hide it quick, or it'll be bad if Tang Zhi sees it." Kang Xiaofeng nodded in deep agreement.

Hearing that, Wei Zhao broke out in a cold sweat and nearly crashed the car.

The shantytown actually refers to areas within a city's built-up zone that have a high density of single-story houses, have been in use for many years, suffer from poor housing quality, have a small per-capita floor area, lack complete supporting infrastructure, are inconvenient for transportation, carry major security and fire-safety hazards, and are filthy, chaotic, and dilapidated in terms of environmental hygiene.

Many developing cities have shantytowns like this. Of course, not everything in a shantytown is a single-story house — there are some multi-story buildings too, but those are three-story red-brick buildings, hardly any better than the single-story houses: no gas lines, no network infrastructure, and so on... some don't even have kitchen exhaust flues.

Wei Zhao's hometown was full of run-down houses just like these, so the sight stirred nothing in him. Kang Xiaofeng, though, had only ever passed by the shantytown from the road and had never set foot inside. Today, seeing it up close, he was thoroughly shaken. He had never imagined that Tang Zhi could live in such a wretched place. Reeking piles of coal and firewood, heaps of garbage and open sewers... it was a wholly foul environment.

And yet it was out of this foul environment that Tang Zhi had emerged — the commoner beauty of No. 1 High School.

"Boss, this place..." Kang Xiaofeng could not help rolling up the car window. The smell was getting to him.

"Where I used to live was about the same as this." Wei Zhao smiled, entirely unbothered. There was more he did not say: on the battlefield he had endured far worse — lying low for days on end in sewers and swamps...

Wei Zhao found Green Grass Alley and turned the car into it. Once inside, however, driving any further was hopeless; every doorway was heaped with all manner of junk.

Wei Zhao had no choice but to park at the mouth of the alley, in a spot clear of the debris. The residents within stared at the little car with its vivid color and its plainly not-so-cheap price tag.

As a rule, few cars came into the shantytown. Apart from taxis, practically no one who lived here could afford a car — and anyone who could afford one would not have gone on living here; they would long since have bought a house somewhere better.

Wei Zhao and Kang Xiaofeng got out, locked the car, and followed the house numbers in search of Tang Zhi's home.

The gate to Tang Zhi's courtyard was visibly more dilapidated than any of the others, clearly unrepaired for a very long time. Whether from lack of time or lack of money, Wei Zhao could not tell — and the sight of it made his heart ache...

To say nothing of Kang Xiaofeng beside him.