Hearing the conversation between Jack and Chad, Ethan Foster smiled helplessly. He had been hearing the name "Sixth Sister-in-law" for over ten years now. It seemed that Jack and Chad had grown up sneaking peeks at Sixth Sister-in-law taking a bath during their childhood, and every time they went up the mountain, they would brag about it to Ethan Foster for ages.

"It's just getting a girlfriend, what's with all the showing off? Did you get our approval before dating her?" Chad was quite dissatisfied with Jack's words. They had all been single before, but now that Jack had a girlfriend, it meant he was leaving the group, so he had to be properly criticized.

"I need your approval to get a girlfriend?" Jack glared at Chad and said, "So if I get married, are you going to help me consummate the marriage too?"

"If you don't mind, I certainly don't mind..." Chad's face was grinning like a blooming chrysanthemum, and he even put on a shy expression, which made Ethan Foster, watching from the side, almost want to throw up.

"Damn it, you fat bastard, I'm going to fight you..." By now, the three of them had already entered the yard. On his own turf, Jack naturally had the advantage. He grabbed a stick by the door and smacked Chad on the butt.

"Hey, you're playing for real?" Chad was caught off guard by Jack's hit and immediately got angry. He rushed forward, grabbed Jack around the waist, and tried to throw him down. Of course, neither of them used much strength, so to Ethan Foster, it just looked like horseplay.

"Having these two rascals as friends is really great..."

Watching the two of them fooling around, a faint smile appeared on Ethan Foster's face. Because, although he called them rascals, after Ethan Foster, these two childhood friends were his best brothers—the kind of brothers you could entrust your life to.

Chapter 8 Brothers (Part 2)

As the saying goes, "rely on the mountains to live off the mountains." In the resource-poor 1970s, almost everyone living in Weijia Village would go up the mountain to gather wild goods to supplement their families. Since there weren't many wild animals in Fang Mountain, many people would bring their half-grown children along. The old Taoist's temple was often the place where they would rest.

When Ethan Foster was little, there were almost seven or eight kids on the mountain every day. But the reason he was closest to Chad and Jack had its own story.

In the winter when Ethan Foster was eight or nine years old, the adults in the family went into the woods to pick winter mushrooms. The six or seven kids, bored at home, also ran off to play near a patch of woods about two li below the temple, pretending their sticks were swords and laughing as they played.

After a while, Jack dug a stiff, frozen dead snake out of a tree hole and used it to scare a little girl who was playing with them. But what no one expected was that the snake wasn't actually dead—it had just gone into hibernation.

In Jack's hand, the snake gradually revived and, very suddenly and without warning, bit Jack on the forearm. The venom that had built up for months immediately numbed Jack's nerves, and within just a few minutes, Jack was already losing consciousness.

The oldest of the kids playing together was only about ten. Seeing this, almost all of them were scared stiff and ran home crying. The only ones who stayed by Jack's side were Chad and Ethan Foster.

Although Ethan Foster was very young, he had grown up with the old Taoist and didn't panic. He immediately took off the shoelace from Jack's white sneakers and tightly tied off his forearm. Then he picked up a sharp-edged stone from the ground and cut a cross on Jack's swollen wound.

Ethan Foster had heard from his master that if someone is bitten by a snake, you must suck out the venom as soon as possible. So after cutting open the wound, Ethan Foster put his mouth to it and sucked out the venom, only stopping when the blood flowing from the wound changed from black to red.

But at this point, Jack was still unconscious. After sucking out the venom, Ethan Foster's lips were swollen high, and he was so weak all over that he didn't have the strength to carry Jack back to the temple. Fortunately, James Walker, nicknamed Jinhua, was still there at the time. He carried Jack over a li of mountain road, and halfway there, they met the old Taoist and others who had rushed over after hearing the news.

Because Ethan Foster treated him in time, and the snake's venom wasn't particularly strong, after the old Taoist gave Jack some snake medicine, Jack gradually recovered and was lively again the next day. On the contrary, it was Ethan Foster, who had sucked out the venom, whose lips stayed swollen for three or four days before the swelling went down.

After this incident, the three children who had gone through hardship together—Ethan Foster, Brian Cooper, and James Walker—became even closer, and almost every time they went up the mountain, they would play together inseparably.

And Brian Cooper, who didn't talk much but understood everything, would always call Ethan Foster names like "stinky Taoist" or "little shaman," but deep down, he had always regarded the slightly younger Ethan Foster as his big brother since childhood. Every year, he would have relatives from the city bring books up the mountain for Ethan Foster.

Ethan Foster had no parents, and aside from the old Taoist, Brian Cooper and James Walker in front of him were the people he was closest to. The life-and-death bond between the three brothers since childhood hadn't changed in the slightest with the passage of time.

"Chad, stop bullying Jack all the time, or I'll have to stand up for him..." After watching for a while, Ethan Foster joined the fray as well. But rather than fighting, it was more like Ethan Foster was pulling the two who were rolling around on the ground apart.