Chapter 172
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The non-mainstream young people invited Lou Yan to go to the bar for drinks at 7:30 in the evening. As soon as they left the room, Fu Xuezhou sneaked in quietly.
Lou Yan patiently waited for Fu Xuezhou to come back to his room, ordering dinner and eating slowly. When he was halfway through his meal, Fu Xuezhou returned.
Lou Yan leisurely swallowed the meat in his mouth, elegantly wiping the corners of his mouth with a napkin, and asked Fu Xuezhou, who was covering half of his face with a hood, “How was it? Did you get it?”
Fu Xuezhou took something out of his pocket and threw it to Lou Yan. Lou Yan raised his hand to catch it, and upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a palm-sized blue glass bottle.
The bottle was ice-cold to the touch, as if it were an ancient block of ice, emitting a faint chill. Lou Yan’s expression became serious as he carefully examined the drift bottle. The blue color on the bottle had some sediment, indicating that it had been soaking in the sea for some time. There was a piece of decayed advertising packaging on the bottle, but it was mostly rotten, with only the word “Victory” faintly visible.
Fu Xuezhou pulled a chair next to Lou Yan and sat down, lazily leaning against the back of the chair, with his long legs casually curled up under the table. “The newspaper is inside.”
Lou Yan opened the bottle’s stopper, and indeed found a rolled-up newspaper inside. He used chopsticks to take out the old newspaper from the glass bottle, eager to unravel it.
What caught his eye was an article titled “The Only Safe Paradise in the World”. Lou Yan quickly read through it, his gaze finally fixed on the last sentence of the article.
“Seven sharp mountain peaks form a line, pointing to the coldest and most rugged snow mountain at the North Pole. The Paradise is buried at the summit of this snow mountain.”
Lou Yan read the sentence again, then turned to Fu Xuezhou and said thoughtfully, “Do you have any ideas?”
Fu Xuezhou said indifferently, “The Big Dipper can be used to find the North Star, which matches the meaning of this sentence. If these seven sharp mountain peaks are distributed in a way similar to the positions of the stars in the Big Dipper, connecting them will lead to the final snow mountain at the position of the ‘North Star’, and then we can find the Paradise.”
“Just as I thought,” Lou Yan raised an eyebrow.
This sentence is not difficult to understand. When it comes to the North Pole, people will think of the North Star. With the obvious vocabulary of “seven mountain peaks” and “forming a line”, combined with the North Star, it’s easy to think of the Big Dipper. Although the North Pole is vast and there are many snow mountains, there aren’t many sharp snow mountains that are distributed in the same order as the positions of the stars in the Big Dipper, making it a prominent geographical feature.
Lou Yan skimmed through the rest of the newspaper, but unfortunately, this newspaper had been cut, and apart from this article, there was no other useful information. He tapped his fingers rhythmically on the tabletop, his expression meaningful. “It seems that the Paradise is quite welcoming to humans looking for it, but it also seems picky, only wanting humans who are a bit smart and physically fit, especially good.”
If you’re not smart enough, you won’t find the Paradise. And even if you find the Paradise, it’s no use if you can’t rely on excellent physical strength to climb
This gave Lou Yan a feeling as if they were all like livestock waiting to be slaughtered, and the journey to the Paradise was a process of eliminating inferior meat, leaving only the high-quality ones in the end.
Lou Yan glanced at Fu Xuezhou, who was drinking water, with a mischievous smile. “Don’t you think so, baby?”
“…” Fu Xuezhou’s hand trembled, spilling water on his chin. He was choked, feeling itchy in his throat. After coughing softly twice, he turned his head expressionlessly to stare at Lou Yan. “Stop calling that.”
Supporting his chin with one hand, Lou Yan smiled beautifully and provocatively at Fu Xuezhou. “Baby, baby, baby… Didn’t baby like this nickname? Why won’t baby let me call you that? Is baby shy? Fu Xuezhou baby? Ah Zhou baby? Xuezhou baby? Speak up, baby.”
Fu Xuezhou almost forgot what “baby” meant. He really felt like a fool for allowing himself to be called “baby” by Lou Yan before. With a cold and handsome face, Fu Xuezhou decided that he would chop up and throw away that book, The Handbook for Making Your Lover Completely Devoted to You.
But the problem now was how to eliminate Lou Yan’s sudden mischievousness. Fu Xuezhou knew that if he didn’t solve this problem in time, Lou Yan might deliberately call him “baby” to tease him later.
Thoughtfully, Fu Xuezhou realized that the more he resisted Lou Yan calling him “baby,” the more Lou Yan wanted to say it. Just like when he teased Lou Yan, the angrier and more irritable Lou Yan became, the more enthusiastic Fu Xuezhou got.
After understanding this, Fu Xuezhou calmly lifted his eyelids and responded as if he wasn’t the one being called “baby.” “Hmm, you’re right.”
Lou Yan looked at Fu Xuezhou suspiciously, dissatisfied with not seeing the reaction he wanted. So, he incredulously asked again, “Does Ah Zhou baby really think I’m right?”
“You’re right,” Fu Xuezhou patiently repeated in a calm tone.
Lou Yan immediately lost the mood to tease him, clicking his tongue lightly. “Boring.”
Fu Xuezhou glanced at him, subtly curling his lips.
That night, when the non-mainstream people who returned from the bar found out about the missing drift bottle, they made a commotion overnight. However, no matter how they searched, they couldn’t find the drift bottle. In the end, they even suspected Lou Yan, but since they didn’t know Lou Yan’s real name, and the crew wouldn’t make a big deal out of a small thing lost by a few of them, the matter eventually faded away.
In the following days, Lou Yan and Fu Xuezhou didn’t go out much. Instead, they spent their time crazily making love in their room day and night. Their room had a window and a balcony, from where they could see the undulating sea. Lou Yan leaned against the window several times, watching the sea outside. He felt like he was swaying with the waves, the feeling of weightlessness making him think he had turned into a small boat or a fish swept up by the water flow in the sea, his consciousness enveloped in rotation and soaring. They indulged freely and recklessly in the ocean of desire.
Several times, Fu Xuezhou softened his heart towards Lou Yan, restraining himself from letting Lou Yan go, but Lou Yan grabbed him back and continued. Fu Xuezhou couldn’t resist Lou Yan’s desire, and in the end, just as Lou Yan wished, the bed creaked even crazier.
On the bed, on the floor, on the balcony in the late night… The increasingly cold sea breeze and the sound of waves accompanied them all the way until the night before reaching the North Pole.
After taking a shower, Lou Yan looked at the ghost marriage contract tattoo on his back in the mirror. After these days of effort, the color of the ghost marriage contract tattoo had faded to a very thin layer. If you didn’t look carefully, you might not even see it.
Lou Yan touched the tattoo on his back, estimating that it would take one or two more times for him to completely break the curse of the ghost marriage contract tattoo.
This was good news, and Lou Yan could finally be completely relieved. He put on a thick bathrobe, feeling satisfied, and walked out of the bathroom.
As soon as he came out, he saw Fu Xuezhou sitting lazily at the small table on the balcony.
Fu Xuezhou, with his pale and sturdy upper body bare, his belt hanging loosely around his waist, was slowly sipping a glass of wine. His silver hair stuck to his back, wet with sweat, divided into strands of frost. His appearance was sexy and mature. The most eye-catching thing was the red marks scratched by his nails all over his body, mottled and messy, adding to the ambiguity.
When the cold sea breeze blew, Lou Yan was instantly awakened as if he had taken a strong mint candy. As the cruise ship approached the North Pole, the temperature dropped lower and lower. Lou Yan didn’t feel it when he was in the room, but as soon as he came to the balcony, he felt the cold of winter.
Looking out to the sea, scattered ice of various sizes floated around, some as thick as three hand spans.
Lou Yan’s hair quickly frosted over after being exposed for just a while. He covered it with a towel and calmly walked to the table, taking a glass and pouring himself some wine from the nearby bottle.
The rich red wine had frozen into a slightly slushy texture. Lou Yan was about to take a sip when Fu Xuezhou turned to him, his nostrils twitching. “It smells good.”
“I’m drinking the same wine as you,” Lou Yan thought Fu Xuezhou was referring to the red wine, feeling a mixture of helplessness and speechlessness.
The handsome man with silver hair had a lazy and faint blush on his face after satisfying his desires. His tone, however, remained calm. “It’s the scent from your body.”
Lou Yan was taken aback for a moment, then chuckled, mimicking Fu Xuezhou by sniffing the air slowly until he caught Fu Xuezhou’s scent. He leaned in, brushing his nose against Fu Xuezhou’s neck, a few strands of silver hair slipping from Fu Xuezhou’s shoulder due to his movement. Lou Yan smiled and deliberately whispered in the man’s ear, “No wonder it smells so bad, it’s your scent. Fu Xuezhou, you should take a bath.”
Fu Xuezhou remained unfazed. “No rush.”
Lou Yan chuckled, took a sip of wine, and didn’t press him further. The scent on Fu Xuezhou was actually the aftereffect of lovemaking, not exactly foul but somewhat discomforting to smell.
The sun had already set, painting the edge of the sky red. The color of the sea appeared even deeper, prompting one to involuntarily ponder whether there were monstrous creatures lurking beneath its surface, evoking a sense of fear from the depths of the soul when gazing down upon it from a height.
As the night fell, the temperature dropped, and Lou Yan’s nose turned red from the cold. He casually crossed his feet and placed them on the balcony railing. “Fu Xuezhou, aren’t you cold?”
Fu Xuezhou replied, “I’m fine.”
A fierce gust of sea wind suddenly blew, causing Fu Xuezhou’s silver hair to flutter in the air. Bare-chested, Fu Xuezhou remained calm, continuing to sip his red wine.
Curiously, Lou Yan looked at him. “Don’t you feel cold?”
Fu Xuezhou glanced at him. “I’m still human.”
Perplexed, Lou Yan asked, “Then why aren’t you wearing clothes?”
“I washed them.”
Lou Yan couldn’t help but chuckle. Did Fu Xuezhou only have that one outfit? Lou Yan had prepared thick clothing for Fu Xuezhou to wear in the North Pole, and those clothes were all in the wardrobe. Didn’t Fu Xuezhou see them?
But before he could say anything, Fu Xuezhou, as if knowing what he was about to say, calmly turned his head to look at the glaciers on the sea. “There’s no need to wear those clothes. I don’t feel cold.”
So capable?
Lou Yan became curious about Fu Xuezhou’s physical resilience again. “Extend your hand and let me feel it.”
Fu Xuezhou raised his arm and offered it to him. Lou Yan reached out and felt as if he had touched ice, with no warmth at all.
Frowning, Lou Yan raised his gaze and noticed that frost had already formed on Fu Xuezhou’s eyelashes, and his lips were slightly bluish.
Although Fu Xuezhou’s body could feel the cold, he acted as if he couldn’t sense it at all, his expression so normal that Lou Yan couldn’t detect anything wrong.
With a stern face, Lou Yan stood up and went to the bedroom to fetch a thick down jacket, which he draped over Fu Xuezhou. His tone was not very pleasant. “Fu Xuezhou, can’t you find clothes yourself when you feel cold?”
Fu Xuezhou lowered his gaze to the down jacket draped over him, the warmth of his breath hitting the waterproof fabric on the outside of the down jacket, his expression inexplicably distant.
Lou Yan stood with his arms crossed, watching Fu Xuezhou. His fingers clenched and released in restraint. Seeing Fu Xuezhou lost in thought, not knowing how to put on the down jacket, his frustration grew, and he sneered, “What’s the matter? Don’t like the outfit I bought for you?”
“Lou Yan,” Fu Xuezhou suddenly called out to him.
Lou Yan responded irritably, “What?”
“This outfit feels familiar,” Fu Xuezhou lowered his head, rubbing his cheek against the black down jacket. His pale and handsome face appeared even more devoid of color. He spoke in a plain tone, “My mother once bought me the exact same outfit.”
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