Qiaomai sized up the slave traders standing at the entrance.
They looked no different from ordinary traveling merchants. Every one of them appeared well-fed and healthy—far better off than Qiaomai himself.
But he was no longer the Qiaomai whom nobody in Lingfeng Town cared about.
Now that so few people remained in Lingfeng Town, he could even be considered someone whose words carried considerable weight.
Soon, several other people who had chosen to stay also gathered nearby. They looked at Qiaomai, who had been standing there from the beginning, and very obviously regarded him as the central figure.
Qiaomai secretly felt delighted.
It took considerable effort for him to keep the grin from spreading across his face.
He looked at the merchants in front of him. Behind them stood several malnourished slaves, some of whom had visible disabilities. Every one of them wore a numb, vacant expression.
Whenever the slaves looked at the slave traders, their bodies would instinctively tremble.
That was perfectly normal.
What slave wasn’t afraid of a slave trader?
Qiaomai was still cautious. Lingfeng Town currently had no need to buy slaves, so he had no intention of letting these people enter.
“I’m sorry, everyone, but we have no need to buy slaves at the moment. Winter is coming, and we’d have to feed them for the entire winter for nothing.”
“What about other things?” one of the slave traders asked. “We have guns, ammunition, and salt.”
“Yeah, are you really going to chase us away without even taking a look?” someone behind him added. “To be honest, we’re probably the last batch of merchants to come through here. In a little while, it’ll probably be the rainy season. Once the rainy season is over and the temperature drops, even the gods themselves would have trouble traveling these roads.”
“If you don’t buy now, it’ll be difficult to buy anything later.”
Their words moved Qiaomai.
That was true.
The group that had gone to the shelter yesterday had already left. He didn’t know whether anyone would come today, and if they didn’t, they still needed to replenish their salt and other supplies.
There was also another major factor that reassured Qiaomai.
He could see only two men.
Two slave traders and four or five slaves.
Their own side actually had more people.
There was nothing to be afraid of.
“Then come in.”
Qiaomai looked at the position of the sun.
“We don’t have anything to offer you, though. You’ll have to leave before noon.”
…
It worked.
Bear Hunter possessed a level of caution that didn’t match his appearance at all, and his clansmen had inherited that trait as well.
They had left four people outside and sent only two men inside disguised as merchants.
They had actually managed to fool their way in.
Of course, they didn’t have the word Raider written across their faces.
Even if they did, given the wasteland’s general level of literacy, no one would have recognized it anyway.
There was an old man wearing coarse cloth. He didn’t know whether the man was actually old, but he certainly looked dirt-poor.
What a joke.
The man probably thought he was clever, but he was actually naïve and stupid.
Behind the shadow of his hat, the Raider smiled at the people before him. Whenever someone looked in his direction, however, his expression immediately changed into one of extreme friendliness.
He and another teammate had entered the town.
They were inspecting this supposedly very suitable little settlement.
Calling it a town was already generous. It was actually tiny—just a few chaotic streets lined with clusters of corrugated-metal houses.
Only one building was particularly eye-catching.
The decorations on its exterior had inevitably deteriorated over the years, but the main structure remained perfectly intact.
It looked exactly like the kind of place their boss would like.
The Raider probed indirectly.
“What is that place over there? Someone important must live inside. Would it be possible for you to introduce us?”
“Oh, that…”
Qiaomai paused before finally saying, “The mayor isn’t here at the moment. We don’t know when she’ll be back.”
Not here.
The Raider smiled in satisfaction.
If the mayor wasn’t here, then the town’s strongest fighters were probably gone as well.
This really was a good place.
With only these few people here, they could take over the town right now without even needing their boss to show up.
They would probably receive quite a substantial reward when they returned.
That was what he thought.
Still, they needed to learn more about the situation first.
The Raider found a place to sit and ordered the slaves to unload the things they were carrying.
“We’re here to trade,” he said. “Bring out anything you have.”
After all, once the trading was over, they would simply take everything back from these people anyway.
It made no difference.
The people who had remained in Lingfeng Town began looking through their goods.
For them, this was an extremely novel experience.
In the past, they had always handed their goods over to the mayor, after which the mayor’s subordinates would bring out merchandise and make centralized purchases for them.
They had never had the opportunity to deal directly with merchants.
The Raider didn’t know that.
But he found out soon enough.
Someone picked up half a bag of salt and asked, “Can this be bought for one animal hide?”
“No.”
The Raider snatched the salt back.
The other person had already begun stuffing the salt into his clothes, looking entirely prepared to toss the animal hide onto the ground and turn around to run.
The Raider looked to the other side.
A sniffling child had placed several glass marbles in front of him and pointed at his dagger.
The meaning was obvious.
The child hoped to trade a few marbles for his dagger.
The Raider didn’t even want to touch the marbles.
Then there was another person who had taken a fancy to the cloth laid out on the ground. A pair of filthy hands reached directly toward it, intending to pick it up and hold it against their body to try it on.
The Raider finally understood why no merchant would deal directly with these people.
There was simply no profit to be made from them.
It was far better to deal with the leaders of each settlement, where every transaction was large, convenient, and efficient.
The Raider, who was not truly a merchant to begin with, quickly became impatient.
The Raider said, “We’ve rested enough. We’re leaving now.”
They couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a more respectable excuse. They simply pulled long faces and walked away.
“What? Are we making a move?” his teammate asked.
“Let’s just attack in a moment. A settlement at this level doesn’t even need the boss to come personally.” The Raider nodded. “We’ll go outside and call the others. Then we’ll attack from both inside and outside and finish this place off together. When we get back, it’ll be a huge contribution.”
The two chatted as they walked out of Lingfeng Town, calling for the other Raiders they had hidden nearby.
“Trash! Wrench!” he called quietly. “Are you there?”
No one answered.
He assumed those two idiots had finally found themselves a good place to hide.
The group wandered around with the slaves for another two rounds, but there was still no sign of anyone. The captain finally realized that something was wrong.
Could they have rushed in on their own?
Unable to make sense of it, they decided to return to Lingfeng Town and take another look.
Then, right at the entrance—
They saw a woman with an extremely cheerful smile.
She was carrying two people, one in each hand, while another person lay on the ground nearby.
All three looked extremely familiar.
“Aren’t those Trash, Wrench, and Chick?” the man beside the captain muttered quietly. “What happened to them?”
The woman smiled brightly at them.
“Oh my! You see, on my way here, my stomach suddenly hurt and I needed to use the bathroom. Then I found these in the bushes!”
She lifted the two pale-faced men in her hands and openly displayed them to everyone around her.
“There were actually several Raiders hiding around here!”
Qiaomai’s face turned pale.
“How could that be…?” he muttered. “How could Raiders show up in a place like this?”
“What are you here for?” he asked them, still clinging to a faint hope. “Are you just passing through?”
In response, one of them spat a mouthful of bloody saliva at him.
“Pah!”
Wrench sat on the ground with his hands bound behind his back, but he showed absolutely no awareness that he was a prisoner.
He had the kind of face that would give children nightmares. Nearly half of his facial skin had regrown, and as he glared upward at them from below, there was something vicious and terrifying about him.
“Who the hell do you think would have that much free time, you old bastard?” Wrench burst into laughter. “Bloodfang has set its sights on this place! We’re just the vanguard! They’ll come sooner or later!”
“Raiders don’t just appear out of nowhere,” Li Qingshan said.
She had encountered Raiders before. Her father had told her that if she ever saw even one Raider appear in an area, it was best to stay away from that place for a while.
Unless they were a nomadic group of Raiders, their presence meant that they had already occupied territory nearby.
Qiaomai staggered back several steps, his face deathly pale.
The life he had imagined hadn’t even begun before the appearance of these Raiders shattered it completely.
“Hm?”
At that moment, Li Qingshan noticed the people still standing nearby.
She turned her head and caught several Raiders who were quietly trying to slip away.
The two men were leading the slaves behind them. They exchanged a glance and were about to claim that they were merely passing through when the old man beat them to it.
“They’re slave traders.”
“Yes, yes, that’s right,” the two men said, nodding repeatedly.
They exchanged another look.
There weren’t many people with this woman either. To avoid unnecessary complications, should they simply attack now?
Having made up their minds, they immediately reached for their waists, intending to draw their pistols and empty their magazines, taking down everyone in front of them.
“What are you blocking the entrance for?”
Something stepped out from the gate of the town.
…Or perhaps it couldn’t really be called a person.
A silver-white shell.
A streamlined body.
A mechanical mask glowing with red light.
It stood at least two meters tall, not much smaller than Bear Hunter.
But flesh and blood were still different from machinery.
The Raiders immediately lost their nerve.
The three Raiders with their backs to Sentinel had no idea what had appeared behind them. The people on the ground desperately signaled with their eyes, and one of them was practically about to get a cramp.
“Um, we were just looking around. If we disturbed you, we’ll leave now. We’ll leave right now…”
The moment Wrench heard that, he became anxious.
“If you dare leave now, I won’t let you get away with it!”
“I checked this town! There are hardly any people here! As long as we wait until that machine isn’t around and grab someone as a hostage, we can escape!”
Sentinel I looked down at him.
Li Qingshan looked down at him.
The Raiders looked down at him.
Then they turned around and ran.
“Boss, Raiders encountered,” Sentinel I reported. “Requesting permission for immediate engagement.”
Author’s Note:
Dropping to 1.4k after coming off the rankings is completely normal for me. I’m not going to abandon the story. This kind of thing doesn’t even count as a disastrous start for me.
My previous novel dropped to 1.3k after coming off the rankings, and I still pushed through with around 200 new readers at the end of each day and basically updated it daily until completion.
Life has repeatedly beaten me up, and now I’ve become tender and juicy.
One update at 12 noon and one at 11 p.m. from now on. Those will be the fixed posting times.
Because I write the chapters on the spot every day, this novel doesn’t have even a single word of outline. I only have maps and an event timeline.