– Fanchang Base
Along the street to the left after entering the base, large numbers of people were setting up stalls, selling everything from clothes and food to gold jewelry.
“Don’t miss it if you’re passing by! One five-jin bag of flour for one second-order crystal stone! Once they’re gone, they’re gone!”
“Gold jewelry on cheap sale! We’ll take any kind of food! Pick first, pay later! Beautiful jewelry can be yours, so don’t hesitate!”
The shouts of vendors rose and fell one after another.
Ordinary people and ability users mingled together on the streets and got along harmoniously. Although many of them looked slightly malnourished, overall, they seemed to be in good spirits and reasonably healthy.
“Brother Yu, look. Isn’t this medium-sized base better than Hua’an Base? So many ordinary people in Hua’an Base couldn’t even afford food and starved to death, yet it still claims to be one of the two major bases of the apocalypse!”
Song Qing linked her arm through Jiang Chenyu’s as they walked down the lively street. She muttered disdainfully about Hua’an Base,
“The management definitely doesn’t know how to treat people properly. Otherwise, how could the treatment of ability users and ordinary people be so different?”
“Mm. They don’t know how to treat people properly.”
Jiang Chenyu looked at the people coming and going along the street and replied in agreement.
“See?”
Song Qing looked up at him, her eyes practically sparkling.
“If the management had even a little sense, they wouldn’t have let a treasure like you be abused. If I were the administrator, I’d put you on a pedestal. Then all your research results could be used to promote the base. Wouldn’t that be great?”
Jiang Chenyu was amused by her words and reached out to ruffle her hair.
He sighed inwardly.
As expected, she was just a little girl who had never experienced the harshness of the world. That was why her thoughts could be so naïve.
Most people did not have lofty ideals or ambitions. They only cared about their own little patch of land. When their own interests were involved, some could even kill their wives and abandon their children.
Liu Qiwei, the administrator of Hua’an Base, had initially gained everyone’s support by claiming that he wanted to build a safe place for everyone. But later, when his own interests became involved and he realized that ordinary people were useless and incapable of resisting him, he began acting without restraint.
Many ability users abused ordinary people, and he simply turned a blind eye as long as he received benefits in return.
Later, a strict hierarchy was established. Ordinary people had to work hard all day just to barely have enough to eat. Children and the elderly had no ability to work, and many of them eventually starved to death.
Those who wanted to leave the base and seek another way out were stopped by the zombies outside.
Liu Qiwei promoted Hua’an Base as the place where ability users received the best treatment, along with the No. 1 Medicine he had produced. This attracted countless ability users, which was the reason Hua’an Base had become the largest base in the south.
Compared with waiting for Jiang Chenyu to develop a substitute for his own blood at some unknown point in the future, they would naturally prefer to imprison him directly.
He had a healing ability, meaning they could continuously draw his blood and produce large quantities of medicine. Of course, they would never let him go.
Thinking about all of this put Jiang Chenyu in a bad mood.
Back then, he had quietly left the base because he did not want them to die too easily.
But now, it seemed he would have to find an opportunity to go back and torture them.
When they reached the end of the street, Song Qing looked at the three large characters on the office building and at the ability users entering and leaving. She exclaimed excitedly,
“Is that the place that big brother just mentioned? The place where they post missions?”
At the entrance of the base, Song Qing had asked several people about the map, but none of them knew anything. Finally, a scruffy-looking man had told her that if she wanted a map, she should go to the office where ability users accepted missions.
Ability users often formed groups to go out and kill zombies while collecting supplies, so they would usually have updated maps. There were also some ability users from the north staying at the base, so there was a good chance they would have the map she was looking for.
“Should be, right?”
Wang Haiting, who had been walking behind them, hurried forward and entered the hall. When he saw the large screen displaying various missions inside, he immediately turned around and said to Song Qing and Jiang Chenyu at the entrance,
“This must be the place.”
Song Qing released Jiang Chenyu’s arm and walked inside.
From the outside, the place looked no bigger than an ordinary shop, but once they entered, it was completely different. The interior was as large as a soccer field.
Various messages continuously scrolled across the large screen at the front desk. Some were recruiting ability users to form groups and search for people, while others involved killing zombies to obtain crystal stones. There were all kinds of strange and varied missions.
Just as she was about to find the front desk to register and ask about trading for a map, someone slammed into her.
She covered her aching arm and turned around.
A teenage boy around sixteen or seventeen years old rushed into the office with an anxious expression and headed straight toward the area where the ability users were sitting and waiting.
“Hurry up and come with me! Zhou Kaifan and the others have betrayed us! They’re fighting Uncle Lin and the others right now. Hurry! If we’re any later, it’ll be too late!”
Chen Jun’an shouted at them.
After shouting, he immediately turned and ran outside. But after running several steps, he realized there was no movement behind him.
He stopped and turned around in a daze.
There were more than a hundred ability users in the hall. Apart from a few first-order ability users who looked somewhat surprised, everyone else remained completely calm.
Far too calm.
It was absurd.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
Chen Jun’an shouted angrily at them, his voice hoarse and sharp.
“Zhou Kaifan and the others have betrayed us! Betrayed us! Uncle Lin’s family is in danger!”
“We know. Stop shouting.”
A blond-haired man replied nonchalantly.
“What do you mean, you know?”
Chen Jun’an suddenly rushed over, grabbed him by the collar, and questioned him in disbelief, his eyes bloodshot.
“You all knew Zhou Kaifan and the others were going to attack Uncle Lin’s family today, yet you just sat here and did nothing?”
The blond man, Chen Zhijie, suddenly shoved his hand away and took a step back.
“What can I do? Zhou Kaifan has reached the fourth order, while I’ve only just reached the third order. Going there would just be sending myself to my death. I can’t beat him.”
“Your life was saved by Lin Xuan’yi!”
Chen Jun’an gritted his teeth as he stared at him.
“I never asked him to save me. Just because he saved my life, does that mean I have to throw my life away for his family?”
Chen Zhijie sat down, straightened the collar that had been wrinkled from being grabbed, and curled his lips.
Chen Jun’an’s chest heaved violently with anger at his ingratitude.
He turned toward another third-order ability user in the office.
“Uncle Zhou, what about you? Back then, when your wife had a dangerously high fever that wouldn’t go down and was on the verge of death, Uncle Lin risked his life to go to the pharmacy and find medicine to save her. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”
Zhou Songde lowered his head guiltily, not daring to look at him.
“I want to help, but I have elderly parents to care for and children to support. It wouldn’t matter much if I died, but what would happen to my family?”
Chen Jun’an was so angry at his excuses that he almost laughed.
Back then, hadn’t Uncle Lin also had elderly parents and children to care for?
Had he ever said he wouldn’t help?
He swept his gaze across everyone present, pointing at them one by one. He pointed at more than a dozen people in succession.
“If I remember correctly, all of you have received great kindness from Uncle Lin’s family. You haven’t forgotten, have you? None of you are going to save Uncle Lin’s family?”
Everyone he pointed at avoided his gaze.
Some looked guilty, some were completely indifferent, and some even muttered complaints under their breath.
They perfectly demonstrated the diversity of human nature.
“Fine. If none of you are going to save them, I’ll go myself.”
Chen Jun’an was so angry that he did not want to say another word.
Every additional word wasted on this group of ingrates was a waste of time.
He turned and ran toward the entrance.
After he left, two ability users gritted their teeth and followed him.
So be it if they died. At least they would not have to live with the guilt for the rest of their lives.
Song Qing really wanted to follow them and see what was happening. But when she remembered the fourth-order ability user the boy had mentioned, she hesitated.
What if she meddled in their business and could not beat them?
She herself did not matter.
But if Jiang Chenyu got dragged into it, that would be a problem.
Wang Haiting had no such concerns. Holding onto his principle of helping when he could and keeping himself safe when he could not, he ran outside after them.
“Go.”
Seeing the conflicted expression on her face, Jiang Chenyu simply made the decision for her.
“Okay. I’ll go and come right back. Brother Yu, wait here. Don’t wander off.”
Song Qing hurriedly said this before running outside.
Once she came out, she did not see the boy. Instead, she saw Wang Haiting running ahead, so she quickly followed the same route.
Jiang Chenyu did not need to run. He could use his mental powers to observe what was happening at the scene.
He leisurely followed after them.
When Song Qing arrived in front of a villa, the boy from earlier and two other ability users had already been struck so hard that they spat blood and were sent flying into the air.
She quickly rushed forward and caught the two men, setting them down on the ground.
Wang Haiting caught the boy.
The man surrounded by several third-order ability users looked at them and grinned.
“What? You want to come and die too?”
Only then did Song Qing notice that several lifeless bodies were already lying in the courtyard.
Two were middle-aged people who looked like a married couple, while the other was a young man. All of them were covered in blood and lying motionless on the ground.
Meeting the man’s gaze, Song Qing pressed her lips together and said nothing.
Zhou Kaifan noticed that all of them were third-order ability users and unfamiliar faces. Since he did not know who they were, he did not act rashly.
He ignored them and turned to look at the young woman lying on the ground.
“Qiao’er, have you thought it over? Do you want to be my woman alone, or do you want to be a woman shared by all of us brothers?”
His refined face wore an expression of great difficulty.
“If I didn’t like you a little, I wouldn’t even give you this opportunity. My brothers have been lusting after you for a long time. I’m the one who’s been under pressure from them because I wanted to take you as my woman.”
The men beside him immediately burst into laughter at the right moment.
“Little Sister Qiao’er, why don’t you become our brothers’ woman instead? We’ll all treat you well.”
“Yeah, yeah. What’s so interesting about being the boss’s woman alone?”
The young woman sat beside the bodies of the middle-aged couple.
She had delicate features, fair skin, red lips, and was exceptionally beautiful.
At this moment, her eyes were swollen from crying, and they were filled with a deep, bone-chilling hatred.
Lin Qiao’er glared furiously at Zhou Kaifan and his lackeys, spitting out,
“You ungrateful bastards. You’ll get what you deserve.”
After saying that, she fiercely bit down on her tongue.
She would rather die than let herself be humiliated by these beasts!
Zhou Kaifan quickly rushed forward and dislocated her jaw.
Seeing that she had only slightly bitten her tongue, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
The woman he had been coveting for so long could not just die like this.
Lin Qiao’er could not even kill herself.
She closed her eyes in despair.
Watching this scene, Song Qing suddenly felt a vague fragment of memory surface in her mind.
In this apocalypse novel, there seemed to be a poison-type ability user named Lin Qiao’er who, later in the story, wiped out all the high-level ability users in an entire base.
She left behind only some low-order ability users and ordinary people. Without any high-order ability users to stop the zombies, they were all forced to leave and seek protection from other bases.
That base seemed to be called Fanchang Base?
Later, Lin Qiao’er became famous among the various bases.
It was not only because she had killed the ability users of Fanchang Base. There were also the stories of how she would poison to death anyone she encountered who abused women or betrayed those who had shown them kindness.
According to rumors, those she poisoned would bleed from all seven orifices and turn black in the face. Their deaths were extremely horrific.
Remembering this, Song Qing looked at Lin Qiao’er on the ground, her expression struggling intensely.
Lin Qiao’er would not die now.
But from the disgusting conversation she had just heard from these men, it was easy to imagine what kind of life Lin Qiao’er would have afterward.
Should she save her or not?
Song Qing had absolutely no confidence that she could defeat this group of men.
If they were all third-order ability users, that would still be manageable.
But there was a fourth-order ability user among them, along with several third-order ability users watching them with ill intentions.
Even if she could hold off the fourth-order ability user, Wang Haiting might not be able to hold off several third-order ability users and a group of lower-order ability users.
They simply did not have the numbers on their side.