Chapter 213: The Seduction Base
“Will that even—” Zhuzi started, but before he could finish, Li Zhuang had already acted. With no time for questions, he just shouted, “All villagers fall back! Quickly!”
“Xiao San, turn on the lights—block them off!”
“On it!”
Outside the walls, another row of lights flicked on, illuminating most of the retreating villagers. Immediately, the row of bulbs across from them was destroyed by something and went dark again.
“That’s Antonio,” Li Zhuang said.
“You saw him?” Xu Sa asked.
“No, I saw his signature throwing knives,” Li Zhuang replied.
As he finished speaking, a few people dropped silently to the ground.
“Who was that?”
“What happened?”
“Who’s doing this?!”
As people around them fell silently, panic erupted. Everyone became suspicious of those next to them. One panicked person unintentionally activated their ability, triggering a chain reaction as others began attacking who they thought was the assailant.
Screams and curses mingled—chaos fully took over.
“Fall back! Fall back!” Zhuzi could only rely on the occasional fireball light to glimpse the situation. He had no idea how the villagers were doing and could only shout blindly. The others used their abilities to get a general sense of who was retreating—the villagers, presumably.
“Split up. You guys handle the vehicles on the perimeter—cut off their escape,” Lu Weiyi said to the people standing on his right.
Li Zhuang and Wu Yue were experts at ambush tactics, and the confusion Antonio had stirred up was still ongoing. Lu Weiyi stood on slightly higher ground, overseeing everything, with Zhuzi beside him constantly scanning the area—though Lu wasn’t sure he could actually see anything.
“Thirty-some vehicles outside, including one truck. All under control,” Xu Sa’s voice came through the radio.
“How many people did you bring with you?” Lu Weiyi asked Zhuzi.
“Around a hundred,” Zhuzi answered after thinking for a moment.
Lu Weiyi glanced at him speechlessly. The enemy down there probably had just over a hundred to begin with, which meant the villagers outnumbered them two-to-one—and still hadn’t won after all this time…
“There must be others attacking elsewhere. Send someone to check.” Thirty vehicles with about four people each—more than the group they were fighting now.
“The village’s other ability users are still on their way here,” Zhuzi said anxiously. “I’ll go warn them. Those bastards!” He took off running mid-sentence, only to trip over a body. At that moment, Lu Weiyi was convinced Zhuzi probably couldn’t see clearly.
“Turn on the headlights—give us some light,” Lu Weiyi told Xu Sa. “Everyone else—end this quickly. There are likely more attackers in other areas.”
The vehicles near the wall turned on their headlights one by one, lighting up both sides of the road. The light brought a sense of safety—but also hastened some people’s deaths.
“Leave one alive. We need to ask—” Lu Weiyi started, but before he could finish, the last two were instantly taken down by two of Antonio’s throwing knives from afar.
“Uh… if I say I didn’t do it on purpose, would you believe me?” Antonio shrugged toward Lu Weiyi’s direction.
Lu Weiyi ignored him and turned to the villagers. “Other parts of the village were probably attacked too. Split into teams of two and go check with them.”
The village’s ability users, aside from the injured, immediately divided into several groups. A dozen people stayed behind; the rest ran off in different directions.
“Gather all these bodies and count them. Check if any attackers escaped,” Lu Weiyi said while scanning the more distant areas. When he turned around, he saw that Antonio was still there, actually organizing the villagers to handle the fallen ability users.
In the chaos of the battle, it wasn’t just the enemy who died—some villagers were killed too. The remaining ability users wanted to vent their anger on the enemy corpses, but once Antonio spoke up, no one deliberately desecrated them.
Several people stood outside on guard, while others worked to repair the damaged wall. In a corner, the injured sat together. At some point, Juan’er had arrived and was checking and bandaging their wounds. Groans of pain could be heard from time to time.
At five in the morning, the old village chief arrived with a large group of people trailing behind him. Everyone held a torch, forming what looked like a fiery dragon from a distance. At the front were captured enemies, while the back pushed carts filled with corpses.
The old village chief nodded at Lu Weiyi and asked the guards, “You haven’t dealt with the bodies yet, have you?”
“No.”
The chief nodded and lined up the captured ability users to begin interrogation. Since the old chief hadn’t asked them to avoid listening, Lu Weiyi openly stood aside to hear.
As it turned out, they were indeed the group robbing people along the road from Anjiang Base. They had set up a temporary base called the “Pleasure Hunt Base”—the name alone sounded shady, and sure enough, they were up to no good. The base was run by just over twenty ability users, but it housed over a hundred women and attractive young men, all kidnapped from passing travelers, used to curry favor with certain administrators from Anjiang Base.
They came this time because a squad of ability users from Anjiang Base had been sent to scavenge medicines from several hospitals in the county. Upon hearing the news, the Pleasure Hunt leader, Jiang He, wanted to cozy up to them. He casually mentioned that Li Family Village still had live livestock, which immediately piqued their interest.
In the dead of winter, mutated animals were rare, and frozen meat had long since been consumed. Even a hint of fresh meat drew attention—let alone live animals.
One group wanted livestock, the other wanted supplies—so they plotted a night raid together.
Unfortunately for them, they ran into Lu Weiyi’s group…
Attacking bases to steal supplies was a common occurrence—sometimes done by ability-user squads from major bases, sometimes by self-important administrators.
Lu Weiyi didn’t find it unusual, but the villagers were furious.
“You old bastards better let me go now! My brother is the deputy captain of Anjiang Base’s Dragon Tiger Combat Team. If you touch me, he’ll wipe your entire village off the map!” shouted a young man among the captives, around twenty years old. Even while restrained, he spoke arrogantly and defiantly.
“Watch your mouth!” shouted Zhuzi, who had a short temper. He swung his club and hit the young man hard. The man screamed and curled up on the ground clutching his stomach, but still spat out venomous threats: “Just wait, I’ll have my brother flay you alive, toss your women into brothels, beat the men to death, and boil the children alive…”
Zhuzi raised his club again, but was stopped by the old village chief.
“Chief, even if we let him go, they won’t let us off,” Zhuzi protested, thinking the chief was going to compromise.
“I know,” the old chief frowned deeply. Letting them go or not made no difference—they were already marked.
“Then we might as well kill them all. If they retaliate, we’ll fight to the end!” Zhuzi’s eyes were bloodshot with rage.
“And when we fight to the end, what happens to the women and children left behind?” the old chief asked quietly. He looked around at the grieving women beside fallen ability users, and the children staring around blankly—too young to even understand what death meant.
The villagers fell into a heavy silence.
“Relocate,” Lu Weiyi said from a distance. “Your village isn’t strong enough to resist a combat team. If you can’t win, then hide. Everyone’s just trying to survive—unless there’s a deep grudge, no one will chase you to the ends of the earth.”
“But… we’ve lived here for generations…” said Dajun, whose arm was wrapped in bandages and stained with blood. His voice was confused and hesitant.
“What’s more important—this place or your lives? You heard what he said. If the ability users die, what will the women and children face? Think carefully. Finding a hidden spot to lay low isn’t that difficult. Or you could go to a big base for protection, but then you’ll have to compete for everything—supplies, power—and not everyone can handle that,” Xu Sa added, then looked at the remaining captives. “Do you still want to ask them anything? We have some questions.”
The old village chief looked like he’d aged years overnight. Trembling, he nodded. “You’re right. Take whoever you need for questioning.”
“Do we have to return them?” Antonio asked, rubbing his hands eagerly.
“…” The village chief replied, “Deal with them however you like.”
With that, he led the villagers off for a meeting.
There were only nine captives in total. During the interrogation, two of them had cried and begged on their knees, while the others were either tough or arrogantly defiant. The two who confessed were even threatened with looks by the rest.
Antonio wasn’t one to play by the rules of “humane treatment of prisoners.” His eyes scanned the nine and settled on one especially ruthless-looking man who hadn’t said a word.
“I don’t like your eyes,” Antonio said flatly, then flung a throwing knife.
A blood-curdling scream followed.
“My eyes! Ahhh…” the man fell to the ground, his hands hovering over his face, too afraid to touch.
The others, finally realizing their situation, began to panic.
Lu Weiyi disliked this kind of scene. He turned to leave, brushing the mind of the arrogant young man who had shouted about his brother earlier. Raising an eyebrow, he said, “Let me know when you’re done.”
Antonio grinned, “OK.”
An hour later, Antonio returned with information about the Pleasure Hunt Base and Anjiang Base. Behind him was a man—timid and fearful, with a metal collar around his neck. At a thought from Antonio, it could kill him instantly.
“All dealt with?” Li Zhuang asked.
“Yeah. Burned and buried the bodies,” Antonio replied. “He was once robbed by the Pleasure Hunt Base. His wife was killed. He’s willing to help us take the place down for good.”
“Are we going to take down that place?” Xu Sa asked—this wasn’t part of the original plan.
“They commit murder and arson, force men and women into prostitution, and even cater to people with sick fetishes. The youngest is only eight years old. They’ve even boiled babies alive and eaten them.” Most of the team carried a strong sense of justice, and Antonio knew exactly how to ignite their anger.
The key point: Antonio also extracted from the interrogation that the base had a large stockpile of supplies.
