bodyguard against fate

Chapter 2 Golden Agent

"What's the most important thing in a person's life? It's who you follow. If you're a pig butcher, and you follow Liu Bang, you'll be Fan Kuai. If you're a fishmonger, and you follow Zhao Lidong, you'll be Qiang Ge. And vice versa. If you're Han Xin, and you follow Xiang Yu, you'll just be a lowly soldier on guard duty. If you're Jia Hua, do you know who Jia Hua is?" Old Zheng asked with a solemn expression.

Feng Weida shook his head.

Old Zheng continued his rambling, "They were the axemen Sun Quan ambushed at Ganlu Temple, and Sun Quan just chopped them all down with one stroke! You're Jia Hua, following Sun Quan, so you'll never leave Ganlu Temple. Saying 'my fate is in my own hands' is nonsense. You can't even decide who your teammates are in a game, how can you defy fate? So, what you do in this life, how well you do, depends on who you meet. Luckily, you met me!"

"I'll be discharged tomorrow." Feng Weida seemed to have completely ignored what Master Zheng said. "We might never see each other again."

"That's the problem!" Old Zheng took a bite of the chicken leg in his hand. "Today is your last window of opportunity to change your fate! I can help you, but not for free."

"I have no money; my ex-wife took it all."

There were many people in the cafeteria, mostly patients. Feng Weida and Lao Zheng sat at the same table. Lao Zheng didn't touch his rice, but he chewed his chicken leg until the bones were reduced to crumbs.

"I know, and I don't want much, just a token. As the old saying goes, 'The Dharma is not sold cheaply, and the Tao is not easily passed on.' Even Tang Sanzang had to give away his golden alms bowl when he went to the Western Paradise. Take whatever you have!"

Feng Weida looked at the chicken leg in his hand and silently handed it over.

Old Zheng beckoned, and he and Feng Weida's heads came together.

"Do you know why they won't let me out?"

Feng Weida shook his head.

"Actually, my real identity is a high-ranking agent, codenamed Shark, a fish in the desert. They've been watching me, and they've been trying to get me to reveal a secret that I can't tell them. If I do, the gold will be theirs."

Gold? Secret agents? Sharks?

Feng Weida was completely confused.

As he spoke, Old Zheng kept a close eye on the caregiver not far away, as if he were afraid of being discovered.

"I have a batch of gold hidden in a secret place, but I can't get out. Go and retrieve it for me, but remember not to take it all. Leave some behind. I'll give them the address so they can find it and let me out. After I get out, we'll split the profits 30/70... no, 50/50!"

Feng Weida asked skeptically, "Are you kidding me?"

Old Zheng ignored him and quietly slipped a note into Feng Weida's hand: "I'm not saying anything more, they're here!"

Feng Weida turned his head and saw the caregiver striding towards Old Zheng.

"Number 2, you're making up stories to lie to people again, aren't you? You act like this every time you eat a chicken leg, and you're giving it back to Number 356—"

Old Zheng grabbed a chicken leg and ran off, glancing back at Feng Weida as he ran, with the caregiver chasing after him.

Feng Weida remembered that he still had a piece of paper in his hand. He opened it and saw that it was a small square cut out of a newspaper with "No. 16, Group 4, Committee 8, Renmin Road" written on it.

"Yours is fake, mine is real!" a fellow patient said to Feng Weida.

Feng Weida noticed that the other patient was also holding a note, but the address on it was different.

In this life, it really depends on who you hang out with. If you hang out with mentally ill people, you'll feel much more energetic!

After several rounds of evaluation and nearly a month of observation, Feng Weida was finally classified as level 0 and was discharged from the hospital. On the day of his discharge, several familiar caregivers and patients saw him off and welcomed him to come home often. Old Zheng, unusually, didn't even play on his phone. After all, in the past twenty years, he had never seen anyone come and go as they pleased.

"How much money did you bribe the dean?" Old Zheng didn't believe that there were economic laws in the world that the Talmud couldn't explain.

"If you stand by the river, you're bound to get your shoes wet. Old Zheng, you said that if you hang out with mentally ill people, you'll become mentally ill too; if you hang out with the director—"

"You're the dean!"

Old Zheng got it!

Before coming in, Feng Weida had already gone through divorce proceedings and given all his property to his wife. Chen Ergou said he was stupid. Liu Yan had cheated on him first and had taken a lot of money from the top-ranking guy. If Feng Weida had persisted, he could have at least gotten half of the property from Liu Yan, so he wouldn't have been left without a place to live and would have to mooch off Chen Ergou.

Chen Ergou, dressed in a floor-length bathrobe, dragged a bucket of instant noodles in one hand and pointed at the tall building across the street with the other, exuding an air of smugness. He said that when his father was at his peak, at least half of the building belonged to his family. Back then, he didn't know what poverty was. Beautiful women all threw themselves at him, and his life was just like Jia Baoyu's. Unfortunately, the latter half of the story was also like Jia Baoyu's. His father was not blessed enough to bear the immense wealth and passed away first. All the assets were liquidated to pay off debts, and now Chen Ergou can only afford to rent a semi-basement apartment, and he can't even bear to cook two packs of instant noodles at once.

A person's most glorious period in this life is only a dozen or so years. Some people encounter it at birth, while others encounter it in their old age. Encountering it early is not necessarily a good thing, but encountering it too late is even less of a good thing. Think about it, when you're seventy or eighty years old, deaf, blind, and toothless, you'll have no desire to spend money. No amount of money can buy back the impulsive joy of your youth, right, my friend?

So, while you're young, you must make more money. If you don't go out and find a job, I won't even be able to afford the rent.

Feng Weida used to work in the wedding planning industry, barely making ends meet in this remote, out-of-the-way town. The entire county has a population of less than 200,000, and their town has an even smaller population. After the previous wedding planning company went bankrupt, the only remaining one managed to turn its main business into a side business, and they never kept idle employees. People like Feng Weida, who are middle-aged and still don't have a skill, would be considered for layoffs anywhere, and are entering a mid-life crisis prematurely.

According to Chen Ergou's summary, the term "midlife crisis" originated in capitalist society and is basically exclusive to the working class. As long as you work for someone else, it's like fate, you can't escape it, and it lasts from age 40 to 60.

"And what about after 60?" Feng Weida asked casually, taking a sip of the leftover instant noodle soup from Chen Ergou's meal.

"After 60, you're no longer middle-aged; you directly apply for the Five Guarantees (a government-provided social welfare program for the elderly, disabled, and orphans). You might think the midlife crisis is over, but it hasn't; it's just changed its name. This thing is like an unkillable cockroach; it'll stay with you until you die, passing down from one generation to three. Why can't it reach the fourth generation?"

Feng Weida shook his head, not caring, and picked up the instant noodle cup and drank it all in one gulp.

"Because poverty doesn't last three generations; by the third generation, the family is basically wiped out!" Chen Ergou snatched back the instant noodle container. "Leave me some soup; I need to soak steamed buns for dinner tonight!"