The Ger's Contract Marriage [BL]
Chapter 464: Momo to the Rescue

Chapter 464: Momo to the Rescue

Feeling my way through the darkness

Led by a beating heart

I can’t tell where the story will end

But I know where to start...

They tell me I’m too young to understand

They say I’m caught up in a dream

Well life will pass me by if I don’t open up my eyes

Well that’s fine by me...

So wake me up when it’s just over

When I’m kinder and I’m older

All this time I was finding myself, and I

Didn’t know I was lost...

(Lyrics have been slightly modified)

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The noisy voices in the background seemed to fade away. The faces of the villagers seem to blur. These were the people he’d grown up around; the ones who would occasionally give him a scrap of food, and the ones who would purposefully shove him around "accidentally."

There were even those who would speak too loudly about him and his dad, not "intending" for him to hear. Five years of "accidents" and "intents." It all felt like some distant dream.

The music in the background seemed out of place, but Xu Zeng held onto the words. At the time when he’d heard the song, it seemed like a jumble of words and sounds. It was yet another mystical thing the people of the other world had come up with.

In a plain filled with the walking dead, and even greedier living people, he had more important things to worry about than local music. But now, that one song played in the background, drowning out the unpleasant scene around him.

Xu Zeng could almost see his brother, dancing around like the man who’d played the song. The man was clearly not alright in the head, playing loud music as they incapacitated the zombies around them.

For some reason, he’d stayed that day and helped the man clean up the zombies. All the while, the strange music played attracting all the walking dead in the area to them. He’d been so tired, but Xu Zeng had stayed till the end.

It was a little glimpse of maybe what Xu Feng’s life had been like. He had many of his brother’s memories, but it didn’t grant him the feelings the others had lived with and felt. It only now clicked for Xu Zeng why he stayed, and why the music played at this moment.

He was able to cross over to a strange world, and learn their "technology" rather easily, it was very interesting, and it drew him closer to his brother, but it wasn’t a strong interest of Xu Feng. Almost everything else he did in the other world was to tie himself to his brother or return to him.

He was trying to find himself like the song. His home wasn’t in Sun Village— although his dad rested here, this was never his home, there was only one person who gave him pleasant memories of this place.

Throughout his life, he had always hoped to meet his brother again. It gave him hope in his darkness. The stories his dad shared about their interactions as eggs, even dormant, they would always find a way to be together. And then finally, in the end, Xu Feng’s sacrifice for him.

Xu Zeng was always searching for this brother of his, who was his light in a never-ending darkness.

In the past, the villager’s words meant nothing— the yells of his stepmother, the two boys tugging at her as she held onto his body and the man staring at him with greed and a little bit of pity, meant nothing.

All that ever mattered to him outside of his dad was his brother. But they were both gone now. What would he do in the future? How would he live?

He was always lost, but now there was no end in sight. The light that was guiding him in this deep darkness was now gone.

The village dogs barked in the background. The entire village seemed to be surrounding him now, a sliver of his past back to haunt him. Xu Zeng wanted to silence them all. He would just let out his aura, and show them he was above them. He wasn’t like them.

He wasn’t a creature meant to be confined to this continent, or even to this world. He didn’t know what he was meant to do or be, not without his brother and his dad, but this wasn’t it. Right? This shouldn’t be it.

His body shivered on its own, and Xu Zeng felt a wetness in his eyes. It was a stranger feeling than the scene currently unfolding before him. The last time he’d cried was...

"Ahem! Ahem!!" The sound of someone clearing their throat was loud enough to break through the chaos of Xu Zeng’s mind. He should have looked toward the noise, but he didn’t care.

Who was it now? What were they trying to achieve? All important questions Xu Zeng didn’t care to know the answers to. His borrowed mask wasn’t doing its job. He didn’t feel safe.

Whether he was focused or not, the voice had an agenda and continued on regardless of whether the silver-haired ger paid him any mind at all. The silver-haired ger should have some silver, that’s all anyone seemed to care about.

The voice cleared their throat once more, and the chaos seemed to quiet slightly before they began. "During harvest season you come to do harm to us? What a shameless ger!"

The voice wasn’t foreign to Xu Zeng. Without turning, he knew who it was. It was a voice he heard rather frequently when his dad was alive, but one that was absent in the last five years he lived in Sun Village.

It was the village chief. He was very caring and sympathetic to his dad who donated a small amount of silver— a very helpful amount— to the remote village. But as soon as his dad was gone, the cheerful old man seemed to see Xu Zeng as a ghost.

Xu Zeng once called the man grandpa, but starting six years ago, he became invisible. Neither speaking ill of him or aiding him in any way. If there was no silver involved the "grandpa" wanted nothing to do with him.

It only made sense he came out when it seemed some silver could be had.

"Yeah!" "Yes!"

"Disrupting the harvest..."

"Shameless is always shameless..."

The resounding echoes of agreement were nearly instantaneous. The villagers now had a leader to follow. The woman attached to Xu Zeng’s body might get some silver for herself and her own family, but the village chief would get benefits for them all.

"That. Is. Enough."

With one string of words, the crowd seemed to falter and fall silent. The music was still playing in Xu Zeng’s mind, but it had faded to the background. It wasn’t just a string of words, there was a bit of aura behind it.

The energy was fleeting, but it was energy with a strong but calming vitality behind it. It felt chaotic as it moved toward him, but when it made contact, it was gentle and soft. A feeling of the softest fur brushing against his body overcame the silver-haired ger.

Xu Zeng couldn’t help but look up. The voice, the touch, the warmth pulled him back from whatever maze he’d found himself in. It was like a lifeline that was barely hooked, keeping him afloat.

The slightly above average height ger stood out from the crowd for more reasons than one. He was taller than all the other gers, but nothing quite as eye-catching as Xu Zeng. Even so, his red hair and the two fox ears couldn’t be ignored.

For Xu Zeng, Bai Mo was someone he was used to seeing, but for the onlookers, even in his "travel clothes," Bai Mo looked like wealth. This was a young master in every sense. AND he wasn’t wearing an earring— a young master who was possibly the head of a household AND looking for potential brides.

The silence lasted for a moment as the villagers took in the newcomer with wide eyes and appraising looks.

After silencing the crowd, Bai Mo began to move toward Xu Zeng once again, and he moved toward the other unconsciously, taking the woman and her two children with him.

"You!" The woman broke the silence in shock. She hadn’t expected Xu Zeng could move with her attached to him. The feeling was unnerving, but she still had no intention of letting go.

Her sons were too young, and she wouldn’t marry them into a ger’s household. Even if he was wealthy, that wasn’t a life for a respectable man. The newcomer brought no gains for her, her cash cow was the silver-haired ger she clung onto.

"How indecent." Bai Mo sneered at the leech shamelessly attached to Xu Zeng’s shins and thighs.

The pompous lilt to his voice made Xu Zeng pause. This wasn’t a tone he had ever heard from Bai Mo. It made something within him feel horrible, crushed even. It was the same disdainful feeling he got from the villagers but on a whole new level.