Chapter 469 - 304: If You Won’t Work, You’ll Be Replaced

Chapter 469: Chapter 304: If You Won’t Work, You’ll Be Replaced

"What, haven’t you eaten? Louder!" Lin Chen urged, dissatisfied.

"I! AM! NOT! DIRTY!!!"

"Louder!" He gave Erica’s bottom a swat.

"I!!!! AM!!!!! NOT!!!!! DIRTY!!!!!"

"I’m not dirty!!"

"I’m not dirty!!!"

...

Erica’s sharp, near-screaming shouts echoed through the forest.

After shouting ten times in a row, she felt dizzy. The world was spinning, making it impossible to stand. She took a subconscious half-step back before her legs gave out and she started to collapse.

Lin Chen was ready and reached out to catch her in his arms.

Erica’s cheeks were slightly flushed, and her eyes were a little dazed. She clearly hadn’t recovered from the aftereffects of oxygen deprivation.

Taking advantage of her rare moment of quiet, Lin Chen spoke earnestly, "Do you know why I had you shout that?"

Erica could barely think right now and shook her head instinctively.

"Because there’s a problem with how you think and see yourself. So what if you’ve dated a lot of people? Are people supposed to live and die alone? What percentage of people actually marry their first love?"

"That’s not how you use the word ’dirty.’ For example, in the red-light districts, there are many young women who have to sell their bodies for their siblings or even their parents and elders. Would you call them dirty? They just want to live peacefully with their families. What’s dirty about that?"

"Or take another example. In the United States, nearly forty percent of people don’t have four hundred US dollars in savings. If someone from this group has a daughter, and she or her younger siblings want to go to school but the family can’t afford tuition, and she gets the money through certain ’transactions’ to make that dream happen, would you call her dirty?"

"You have to understand, it’s not the body that’s dirty, but the mind, the soul."

"If a person’s heart is dirty, if their thoughts are dirty, then even if their body is spotless, they are still dirty. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Mhm!"

Erica lay in the crook of his arm, looking up at him with sparkling eyes. She hummed in agreement before smiling and saying, "Why are you just like my dad, always lecturing with all these grand principles? Are you sure you’re not fifty-two instead of twenty-five?"

"Take a good look at this face," Lin Chen said, pointing to himself. "Do I look fifty-two?"

Erica studied him seriously for a moment, then nodded emphatically. "You do!"

"Doesn’t your conscience hurt?"

"It does, it hurts so much. Do you want to rub it for me?"

"...Looks like you’re back to normal. Get up, you’re heavy."

"Oh dear, I’m suddenly so dizzy. I can’t get up. I need a prince’s kiss to break the witch’s spell~"

Lin Chen looked down in amusement at Erica, who was feigning weakness by holding her forehead and had already closed her eyes. The left hand supporting her back suddenly let go.

THUD!

With her support gone, she plopped right onto the soft grass with a dull thud.

"Well then, you can wait here for your prince. I’m a fifty-two-year-old man, and old men can’t be out in the rain. I should go back, shower, and sleep. Bye~"

Erica’s eyes snapped open. A light drizzle fell on her face, blurring her vision.

The grass was cool and damp. She could clearly feel her back was completely soaked, and a faint chill was seeping through her clothes.

She knew she would probably catch a cold like this, but she still lay there comfortably on the ground in a star shape, unwilling to get up.

Only like this could she feel a sense of belonging, like being back in her mother’s embrace.

Lin Chen, who had already walked a dozen meters away, heard no movement from behind him. He turned, looked back, and walked back with a sigh of resignation, holding out his hand.

"Are you a puppy? Why do you like lying on the ground so much? Let’s go."

Erica beamed, taking his hand to stand up, then jumped straight onto his back.

"Go, go! Let’s move out!~"

Although she was just over five-foot-seven, she only weighed around 130 pounds. To Lin Chen, who was toned from years of heavy lifting in a kitchen, she felt as light as a feather.

Lin Chen hooked his arms under her long legs, hoisting her up higher, then strode back the way they came.

He had expected Erica to be like those female leads in TV dramas, resting her head obediently on his shoulder with her slender arms wrapped around his neck from the front.

But after a few steps, something felt off. He turned his head in confusion, only to find her with her arms spread wide like in *Titanic*, joyfully embracing the oncoming drizzle and breeze.

You couldn’t even do that pose without some core strength.

Fortunately, Erica also knew that this posture would increase Lin Chen’s burden, so after enjoying it for a moment, she returned to a normal position.

Lying on his broad back, feeling his radiating warmth, she was filled with an unprecedented sense of security. It was as if she had returned to her childhood, to the feeling of sitting on her dad’s shoulders while walking through the forest.

Slowly, images began to surface in her mind of him over the past three days, moving between her and Marcia, and everything he had done.

He had explained Marcia’s difficulties to her, deliberately exaggerated her own actions in front of Marcia, helped bridge the gap between them, and softened the conflict between them, and so on.

"Lin."

She suddenly leaned in and whispered beside Lin Chen’s ear.

"What is it?"

"Thank you."

"Hmm?"

"I thought I would never be able to face her nicely again in this lifetime. You’re the one who gave me hope."

"I didn’t do anything. This is the result of your own efforts. If you hadn’t cooperated, nothing I did would have worked. So, you should be thanking yourself."

"...You’re so cool!"

"I’ll admit to that."

"Whoa, and who was it that said he was average-looking? Showing your true colors so quickly!"

"That ’cool’ was about my actions, not my looks, okay!"

Hearing Lin Chen’s noticeably heavier breathing, feeling his slightly trembling hands, and the increasing frequency of him hoisting her up, yet not uttering a single word about being tired, a wave of sweetness washed over Erica’s heart. She blew a gentle breath against the shell of his ear.

"I’ll tell you a secret."

"What?"

"I want to sleep with you right now."

Lin Chen’s stride faltered for a moment. He swallowed hard, then continued walking.

"Hold it in."

...

After returning to the rented house, neither of them mentioned work. They each took a hot shower, made a simple bowl of instant noodles to fill their stomachs, and then fell straight into bed.

「The next day.」

Erica stayed in the house to review the footage, while Lin Chen first took a stroll over to the wet market to greet the neighbors, then went to check on the progress of the road paving.

A team that was supposed to have five people only had two on-site.

This wasn’t the first time this had happened. In fact, aside from the day the entire construction team was brought over for their initial meeting, he had never seen all five of them at the same time again.

Every time, it was someone having a cold or not feeling well. In any case, it was always an ache here or a pain there.

He had often experienced this back in his school days. Foreigners would frequently use a cold or feeling unwell as an excuse to take time off, and the teachers would almost always approve it without question.

After all, whether you studied or not was your own business, and whether you graduated or not was also your own business. The teachers couldn’t be bothered to care.

However, colds were different from back home. The environment abroad was better, with less pollution, and due to genetic factors, foreigners were very prone to allergies, with the flu being one of the most common ailments.

Once they caught a cold, it was often a major illness. And because of the healthcare system, they mostly had to just tough it out on their own without much medicine.

It was completely unlike the minor symptoms of coughing and a runny nose that were typical back home.

So when these workers said they had a cold and couldn’t come, he couldn’t tell if it was a real cold or a fake one.

Seeing that after nearly a week, they had barely even excavated the dirt road, he couldn’t sit still any longer. He pulled out his phone and made a call to Zhao Pengfei.

"Hello?"

The phone rang a few times before it was picked up. Zhao Pengfei’s familiar voice came from the other end.

"Looks like it’s over. How did the first fan experience event go?"

"Not bad. If you’re interested, you should come over and hang out sometime. There are plenty of resources in the mountains and the sea here."

"Yeah, definitely. I actually have plans to go fishing with a friend this weekend, and I was thinking of stopping by your place anyway. Oh, right, what did you need? I almost forgot."

"Do you know any Great Xia construction teams? The work efficiency of these foreigners is just too low. They collect their wages every day but don’t show up for work. What am I, their personal money tree?"

"Hahahaha!"

Zhao Pengfei laughed heartily. "That’s just how it is. There’s a reason why foreign countries develop slowly or even regress. The easygoing freedom they worship has made them useless. All they think about all day is slacking off and enjoying themselves. A construction team, right? I’ll ask around for you."

About ten minutes later, Zhao Pengfei sent a WeChat message. It was for a construction company in Victoria, one that had been established by people from back home.

Lin Chen didn’t hesitate. He called the number directly, first mentioning Zhao Pengfei’s name to establish the connection, then introduced himself and gave a rough description of the scope of work on his end.

The whole process went even more smoothly than imagined. As soon as the other party heard he was Lin Chen from *Wild Survival*, they immediately said they would send someone over to check the site.

It was only a little over a three-hour drive from Victoria. Just after lunchtime, a black jeep came speeding from the distance and stopped steadily on the dirt patch cleared by the side of the road.

A man who looked to be in his thirties got out of the car, took off his sunglasses, and walked over with a smile, extending his hand.

"Hello, hello! You must be Mr. Lin. You’re much more handsome in person than on the show! I’m Wang Jun, the one you spoke with on the phone."

"Hello, I’m Lin Chen. Let’s skip the pleasantries and save some time. We can get straight to business."

"Haha, alright. I like a straightforward person. I’m no good at all that formal talk anyway."

Under the curious gazes of the two foreign workers, Lin Chen showed him around the vicinity. Then they drove into the forest, where he used a map and his phone to briefly describe the general area, the terrain features, and his construction requirements.

"So, what you’re saying is you want to build the road first, then the parking lot, and then the manor, restaurant, and the orchard and farmland—basically, your own residential area and a farmhouse resort area, correct?"

"For a full-service farmhouse resort, is there a water source nearby?"