Chapter 260: The Trap
“Selling fish? I want to buy some. How much?” he asked casually, then looked up at Xu Sa with an exaggerated expression of surprise—so much so that it looked fake.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Xu Sa. You’re out of prison, huh?” He turned and saw Zhang Bijuan kneeling beside him, and chuckled. “What’s this? A touching reunion? Mother and son reunited in the apocalypse? Heartwarming! Regret and redemption? Ha…”
This man was none other than Qin Zhifei, Zhang Bijuan’s stepson—the one who was the true perpetrator behind Xu Sa’s imprisonment.
After speaking, he sauntered forward and “accidentally” kicked a six-year-old boy. The child fell hard onto the gravel, skin scraped and bleeding.
The boy began to wail. Zhang Bijuan scrambled over, crawling to him on her knees and scooping him up, whispering nervously, “Xiao Fei, he’s your little brother.”
“I don’t have a bastard brother. My mom’s long dead.”
He pointed at Xu Sa. “That’s his real brother, right?”
Xu Sa had no interest in this family drama and just wanted to pack up and leave.
Seeing Xu Sa ignore him, Qin Zhifei suddenly kicked Zhang Bijuan. She fell to the ground with a thud and before she could even cry out in pain, he began punching and kicking her. Her cries turned into frantic pleas for mercy.
The sound of the child’s wailing and the woman’s screams filled the air.
Xu Sa acted as if he didn’t hear, quietly helping with the packing. Some onlookers, unable to bear it, tried to intervene.
But Qin Zhifei sneered, “She’s my concubine. What’s it to you if I beat her? Meddle again and I’ll beat you too.” As he spoke, a small flame danced at his fingertips.
Realizing he was an ability user, the crowd backed off, not wanting trouble. They looked to Xu Sa.
More people began whispering…
“You’re not going to save your mother? She doesn’t look like she’s doing too well.”
“Yeah, she looks pretty miserable. Sure, she was wrong, and maybe she did hurt you, but she’s still your mother. In times like these, just having a living family member is already a blessing. Why not let bygones be bygones?”
“Look at how she’s living in the Qin family—it doesn’t seem like she’s had a good life. Maybe she’s already paid the price. Why not just let it go?”
“Exactly. She carried you for ten months and gave birth to you. You can’t just stand by and watch her get beaten to death, can you?”
That’s how bystanders are—they always seem to have an endless amount of sympathy for whoever looks pitiful, as if urging others to be magnanimous somehow makes them look nobler.
But Xu Sa just looked on, expressionless—perhaps his years in prison had been too harsh.
Or maybe the long-buried disappointment, pain, and hatred were hidden too deep, and now that this scene had stirred them up again, all those suppressed emotions were surging to the surface.
Watching Zhang Bijuan struggle and cry out in pain, he even felt a faint sense of satisfaction—the kind that comes from being unable to retaliate himself, yet seeing someone else do it for him.
He figured he really was a bad person at heart, a rogue by nature.
The woman’s pleas, the children’s cries rang out all around, but with Qin Zhifei’s earlier display, no one dared intervene. Not even to speak up, as he was clearly an ability-user.
Instead, they kept pestering Xu Sa, perhaps because he just looked like a regular person.
A little further away, Lu Weiyi, who had just completed a base mapping assignment, was heading back with Li Zhuang. When he saw the crowded scene blocking traffic, he instructed, “Let’s take another route.”
Li Zhuang lifted his eyes, looked ahead, and estimated the crowd’s center. “That looks like where Xu Sa sets up his stall. Let’s go check it out—make sure nothing’s happened.”
Lu Weiyi nodded immediately.
Li Zhuang carefully navigated through the crowd, and they parked the car by the roadside.
“I’ll go take a look. Stay here,” Lu Weiyi said, already opening the door after hearing the cries of a woman and children.
Li Zhuang also heard the commotion and, worried about Lu Weiyi, scooped up Zhuang Ai Yi and got out too. He joked to lighten the mood, “Hold on tight, Ai Yi, or someone might snatch you away.”
“Mhm! Ai Yi’s holding on tight,” the little boy responded, his arms wrapped tightly around his neck, his curious eyes darting around.
Inside the crowd, Qin Zhifei had not been stopped by Xu Sa and, after a while, simply stopped hitting. He turned to Xu Sa with a surprised look. “You’re not going to save her?”
Xu Sa looked like a bystander. He even chuckled and asked, “Do you want me to save her?”
Qin Zhifei was momentarily stunned. “She’s your biological mother, isn’t she?”
Xu Sa shrugged. “When she begged me to take the fall for you, she said I owed her for giving birth to me. I’ve already repaid that debt.”
Seeing the change in Qin Zhifei’s face, Xu Sa continued, “Actually, I should thank you. After all, I’m not allowed to lay a hand on her myself.”
At those words, Zhang Bijuan—curled up on the ground, holding the two crying children—looked up at Xu Sa in disbelief. “Sa Sa?”
“You didn’t really think I’d feel soft-hearted, did you?” Xu Sa let out a short laugh. “That version of Xu Sa died in prison seven years ago. You think someone who made it out of that place alive would still be soft?”
“Don’t kid yourself.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and bent slightly to look at her. “To be honest, seeing you like this…”
He paused briefly. When Zhang Bijuan looked at him, he gave a broad smile and finished, “I feel at ease.”
“Seems like there is justice in this world after all. You really can’t go around doing evil.” He smiled. “All that effort you put into marrying into a rich family… and this is all you got, huh?”
“Our Qin family’s affairs are none of your business,” Qin Zhifei interrupted suddenly. It sounded casual, but something about his tone felt off.
Xu Sa narrowed his eyes, quickly recalling every detail since Zhang Bijuan first showed up. He realized: this guy might be baiting him on purpose.
Xu Sa gave Qin Zhifei a guarded look, then swept his gaze around the crowd, choosing not to respond. Instead, he motioned for Liu Rui and the others to hurry up and pack.
He had a bad feeling—like someone was setting a trap. He just didn’t know the purpose yet.
But in a place as big as the Capital Base, they couldn’t find anyone even after using all their connections. And yet these two just happened to show up right after one another?
It was too much of a coincidence.
Qin Zhifei, seemingly upset by Xu Sa’s insult to the Qin family, crossed his arms and sneered at Xu Sa’s androgynously attractive face. “Did that pretty face of yours survive well in prison?”
“You probably didn’t know… I actually came to see you once,” he said, stroking his chin in mock thought. “You’d just been beaten up. Your face was swollen like a pig’s, limping as you walked. I even took pictures.”
“Oh, and I showed them to your dear mother too. She said…” Qin Zhifei grinned with malice, “You committed a crime, so it was a deserved punishment.”
“Remember that infamous guy in prison? The tall, buff one with dark skin? He took good care of you, didn’t he?” Qin Zhifei laughed wickedly. “Wanna guess who sent him your way?”
The smile slowly faded from Xu Sa’s face. When he stared someone down without the usual sunshine in his expression, there was a chill to him.
Of course he remembered “Black Skin.” That guy was as notorious as Li Jinen—a gang leader in prison, and the source of Xu Sa’s nightmares when he had just been locked up.
That man was infamous for his predatory behavior. Any good-looking young man who came in didn’t stand a chance.
At first, he hadn’t paid much attention to Xu Sa. Back then, Xu Sa had just been sold out by his own mother, hollowed out and lifeless, sullen and withdrawn.
Most of the people around him bullied him in secret—snatching his things, making him run errands, or just beating him up.
But one day, out of the blue, that man cornered him in the bathroom.
Xu Sa still vividly remembered the fear of having his head shoved into the toilet and his clothes torn.
Later, when he struggled with all his might, he injured the man’s eye and barely escaped that time.
After that, whenever the man got a chance, he would try to attack him again.
Xu Sa had always thought it was his face that brought him trouble. He had even once held a tool in the sewing room, wondering whether he should destroy his own face. He never imagined that Qin Zhifei had a hand in all of it.
“That guy has some twisted preferences. Guess what? When he pinned you down, do you think I took a video? Do you think your dear mother saw that video?”
Xu Sa stared at him expressionlessly, his teeth clenched so tightly that the muscles in his jaw bulged. His fists were tightly balled, and he had to keep reminding himself not to cause trouble for the team—only that kept him from frying Qin Zhifei with a bolt of lightning.
Liu Rui, standing nearby, couldn’t listen anymore. He remembered that guy too—he had tried something on him as well. Xu Sa had saved him and beaten the guy up hard afterward.
“F*** you!” Liu Rui cursed word by word, eyes bloodshot, not even stuttering once. As the words left his mouth, he was about to throw a punch.
Lu Weiyi, who had just come closer, also heard the conversation. He didn’t know exactly what happened, but his chest burned with rage.
He’d known about Xu Sa’s suffering in prison but always thought it was just the general darkness of that place. It had never occurred to him to investigate whether someone was orchestrating it behind the scenes.
Seeing Xu Sa frozen and unmoving, he thought it was because Xu Sa was hesitating for the sake of his mother. He cursed Xu Sa in his heart for being too soft—but that didn’t stop his own reaction.
Though he’d been conserving his energy all day, the little green vine on his wrist lashed out toward the arrogant Qin Zhifei.
Li Zhuang, arriving just in time, sensed something bad was about to happen. He quickly grabbed Lu Weiyi’s wrist.
Enraged, Lu Weiyi became surprisingly agile. His usually calm eyes shimmered with fury, glaring like a cat about to pounce.
Relying on his abilities rather than physical strength, Lu Weiyi wasn’t a match for the well-trained Li Zhuang. He struggled, but couldn’t break free.
Before he could lash out, Li Zhuang pointed ahead and said, “Don’t do anything—the base soldiers are coming.”
