SES Chapter 142 Part 1

Chapter 142

By noon the next day, Luo Ren’s car finally rolled into Chongqing.

He had been driving nonstop for over ten hours. His head throbbed, his vision was hazy. Once he entered the city, he found a small restaurant, grabbed a quick meal, and then began calling people one by one.

Mudai, Yiwansan, and Cao Yanhua—none of their phones connected.

Only Hongsha picked up. Her tone was heavy with exhaustion. When he asked what she was doing, she hesitated for a long time before saying quietly, “Writing IOUs.”

There was no hiding the deaths of her uncle and grandfather. Now that their reputations could no longer protect her, all the creditors were showing up at her door—blunt, unapologetic.

“Before, it was because of your grandfather’s face…”
“If your grandfather were still alive, we could talk. But now…”

Clearly, they had decided she was beyond saving.

The family house was sold, the furniture gone, yet the debts still outweighed what was left. Some creditors, moved by pity for the lonely young girl, were willing to let one or two thousand go. But others refused to back down, slapping the table and shouting:

“You’re pitiful, huh? So what? Being pitiful doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay! You think that’s fair?”

Yan Hongsha’s eyes filled with tears, but she gritted her teeth and refused to let them fall. Cornered, she slammed the table right back and stood up.

“Either I write an IOU, or you drag me off to jail! Two choices—pick one!”

The room went silent. Forcing a young girl into jail wasn’t exactly a proud thing to do—and besides, if she went to prison, they’d never see their money anyway.

So she wrote the IOUs. She’d never done it before—searched for a template online, copied the format, signed her name, wrote her ID number, pressed her fingerprint, set a repayment date, and ended with: “This note serves as proof.”

Luo Ren asked, “How much do you owe? I can lend you the money first if you want.”

Yan Hongsha went quiet for a moment, then said, “No.”

She didn’t want to turn a friend into a creditor. Seeing him often afterward would only remind her of the debt hanging over her head.

Luo Ren didn’t push. “Alright. Think about it. If you really need help, just say so.”

He paused. “Mudai and the others might be in trouble. All three of them—no word at all.”

He told Hongsha what had happened. She grew worried but tried to stay optimistic. “Maybe Mudai just forgot. Or got caught up with something urgent?”

That was unlikely. Luo Ren had made it very clear before:

“Caojiatun has no signal, so daily check-ins are critical. If I don’t get a call, I have to assume something’s gone wrong.”

Even if Mudai missed last night’s call, there’d been half a day today to make up for it. Yet no one had reached out.

After hearing that, Hongsha’s nerves finally snapped. “Then—then I’ll head there as soon as I finish these IOUs! How do we stay in touch?”

“Same way. I’ll try to call you at our usual time every day.”

When the sun set, Luo Ren entered the mountains. The car couldn’t go any farther on the narrow path. He parked it, grabbed a small tactical pack with weapons and medicine, and buried the car key under a tree for safekeeping.

His phone still had a signal, so he sent his coordinates to Hongsha. If she arrived later and needed supplies, she could open the trunk—he kept half his gear stored there.

He waited by the road, hoping for a passing motorcycle, but no one came. Then, a drizzle began to fall.

He had no choice but to walk. Luckily, he traveled light and didn’t feel tired. By dinnertime, he reached the front outpost near Caojiatun—a small grocery shack.

He bought a bottle of water and two chocolate bars. By then, the rain had grown heavier.

The chocolate tasted cheap; he ate one bar and slipped the other into his pocket.

The shopkeeper was kind enough to rummage out an old black umbrella. “A few ribs are broken,” he said. “You don’t have to return it—just use it as long as it lasts.”

Then he asked, “You here for the wedding too?”

“Something like that,” Luo Ren answered vaguely.

The man glanced outside. Rain poured in sheets off the eaves. “Bad timing. In these mountains, when it rains, it rains for a week. Guess the wedding’s going to be underwater.”

He shook his head. “Not good. Not good at all.”

Indeed, “underwater” was a bad omen for a marriage.

The last stretch was about six or seven miles.

The dirt road was slick, the ground soft. Each step left a half-inch print in the mud. The umbrella was stubborn too—it kept flipping upward instead of downward, catching water instead of blocking it.

Luo Ren muttered under his breath, “What are you, a flower?”

He tilted it sideways now and then to dump the collected rainwater like a tiny waterfall. It ran down the path in rivulets of reddish-brown mud.

These mountains were clearly prone to landslides and flash floods.

By 9 p.m., after trudging through mud and darkness, Luo Ren finally reached Caojiatun. He asked for directions to Qingshan’s house, then set his umbrella aside against a tree—no point showing up looking that ridiculous—and walked the rest of the way in the rain.

Inside, Qingshan was hunched over a table, drawing circles and notes—planning tomorrow’s wedding seating. Occasionally, he glanced outside, frowning at the unending downpour. Everyone hoped for a sunny wedding day.

When he looked up again, he froze.

A man was striding through the rain toward the door—tall, straight-backed, black military boots splashing through puddles with each step.

Qingshan instinctively felt that he was coming for him.

Sure enough, Luo Ren stepped in and asked, “You’re Qingshan?”

Qingshan nodded.

“I’m looking for my friends. They arrived yesterday—a man and a woman.”

Qingshan stammered, “You mean those guests from Beijing? They said they were friends of my cousin Dazun.”

“Yes.”

“They left.”

“Left?”