Chapter 70: I Have a Sugar Daddy, Who Am I Afraid Of?
“Ah, my old man! My poor old man! Which heartless bastard with no eyes dared to hit someone in broad daylight? Is there still any justice left?”
“Dad, are you alright? Dad, you’re eighty years old, how can your body withstand being hit? Where are you hurt? You must be okay!”
“Grandpa, where does it hurt? Waaah, my grandpa!”
An old woman, accompanied by a man, a woman, and a child, ran out from nowhere and started wailing over the old man lying on the ground. Their voices immediately attracted a crowd of onlookers.
“We didn’t touch him,” Xi Shi explained helplessly to the two in the back seat.
Their car hadn’t even started, so naturally they couldn’t have hit anyone. Gu Qingyue’s face was grim. “They’re faking it.”
“Then… then what do we do?” Xi Shi hadn’t experienced anything like this before the apocalypse, and he didn’t know how to handle it even more so after. For a moment, he only regretted mentioning giving food to those children. After all, the two cars in front had no trouble at all. “Big Bear…”
“It’s okay, it’s not your fault,” Xiong Jie comforted him.
The entrance to the base looked like there was a long queue, but in fact, many were people who didn’t have enough supplies or didn’t have any at all, pleading with the inspection personnel in various ways.
Lu Weiyi even saw someone kneeling on the ground, crying and begging the inspection personnel at the gate, asking them to let the children in even if the adults couldn’t enter.
But what could a group of children do inside? The future of the base? Don’t be ridiculous. In this precarious apocalypse, they couldn’t even live well in the present, who would care about the future?
Lu Weiyi turned his head back expressionlessly, touched Zhuang Mingxu’s forehead again, and urged Li Zhuang, “Have we reached the front of the line? If not, just give them some things to cut in.”
“We’re here,” Li Zhuang said, getting out of the car and looking back to call Xiong Jie to hand over the supplies, only to find that Xiong Jie’s car hadn’t followed at all.
“Where are they?” Li Zhuang asked Ning Yuan, who was in the middle car.
Ning Yuan shook his head inexplicably. “I don’t know, I just followed you.”
The few who got out of the car looked back and immediately saw that a car was missing. The back was already surrounded by a crowd, making it impossible to see what was happening. Li Zhuang said to Lin Yimu, “I’ll go take a look, you keep an eye on things.”
“I’ll go too,” Ning Yuan said, turning his head to instruct Antonio to be careful before following.
Lu Weiyi opened the car door and glanced back, immediately guessing what had happened.
These refugees at the gate had long experienced countless comings and goings. They would never dare to stop people who looked like they were not to be trifled with for supplies. It could only be that they had given things, making people think they were kind or easy to bully. Thinking of the four people in that car, Lu Weiyi felt a burst of anger in his heart.
Usually, he wouldn’t have cared. They were all people who hadn’t experienced the apocalypse, and the darkness of human nature needed to be explored little by little. Only by facing it again and again and suffering losses could they adapt better. But at this time, Zhuang Mingxu’s breathing had become scalding hot, and he really didn’t have the mood or time to give them time to slowly adapt.
He directly took a handgun, opened the car door, and left a sentence as he slammed it shut, “Keep an eye on him.”
Before Lin Yimu could say anything to stop him, Lu Weiyi had already squeezed into the crowd in a few steps.
The sound of the car door slamming shut didn’t even wake Zhuang Mingxu in the back seat. Lin Yimu sighed and just held Zhuang Ai Yi in his arms tighter.
At the entrance of the base, there were two people specifically checking the surrendered supplies, two people specifically checking if there were any injured people in the car, and one person registering if there were any ability users. Outside, there were also four burly men who looked like thugs, specifically there to deal with various unreasonable people without supplies and the sudden situations of these refugees.
At this time, the commotion caused by the family near Xiong Jie attracted more and more people, obstructing traffic, and naturally drawing the attention of the base personnel. Two sturdy men walked over.
Seeing it was that family again, they were instantly speechless. The two men pushed each other, unwilling to go over. Li Zhuang and Ning Yuan, who had rushed over, didn’t go directly but instead tried to get friendly with the two guards.
“Hey, brothers, what’s the deal with this family?” Ning Yuan offered the two men cigarettes.
Both were heavy smokers, and cigarettes were a scarce commodity now. The two guards immediately took them. Ning Yuan proactively lit them up for them. One took a puff, a look of ecstasy on his face, then smiled at Ning Yuan a bit embarrassedly and introduced, “That’s the Old Lai family, a bunch of freeloaders living in the refugee area. They try to scam everyone they see, every car, they won’t let you go without squeezing something out of you.”
“Doesn’t anyone manage this?” Ning Yuan had actually seen through it at a glance, but he was probing the base people’s attitude towards it.
“How can we manage it? Go up and beat them to death? The world’s already like this, why not leave people a way to survive? Besides, they must have let some wealth slip, that’s why they got targeted. Otherwise, you don’t see them trying to extort other beggars,” the other man said, “Just give them some things, consider it a lesson learned.”
“Do they always manage to extort people? What if they get beaten up?”
“We’re not the ones beating them up,” the first man said, looking at Xiong Jie sitting in the car, a hint of expectation on his face.
And Lu Weiyi arrived at this moment. He squeezed in from the outer edge of the crowd, hearing people around him murmur about this family’s “glorious history.” He felt increasingly annoyed with Xiong Jie and the others, and his face couldn’t help but darken.
Li Zhuang had just seen Lu Weiyi and hadn’t had time to greet him when he saw the little young master with a dark face directly take out his handgun and fire a shot at the feet of the crying family.
The wails that had reached the family’s throats suddenly seemed to be choked off. The old man lying on the ground immediately got up, his movements agile and not at all like someone injured.
Li Zhuang helplessly covered his face. Ning Yuan looked surprised, as if he didn’t recognize Lu Weiyi. A person beside him watched with a look of amusement, laughing, “Look, they’ve run into a tough one.”
Another person slapped him, his expression solemn. “He has a gun, quickly go back and tell the boss.”
Over there, Lu Weiyi didn’t know that he had already attracted the attention of the people inside before even entering the base. He stood not too close and not too far, pointing the gun at the old man, and asked coldly, “Want to die? Shall I send you on your way?”
The old man didn’t pretend anymore, the old woman stopped wailing, and the man stopped trying to extort them. They all took a step back at the same time, tacitly raising their hands with forced smiles. Lu Weiyi glanced at the car, said nothing, and turned to leave.
The onlookers behind him quickly cleared a path. Taking this opportunity, Xiong Jie hurriedly started the car and followed.
“Looks like trying to keep a low profile is impossible now,” Li Zhuang shook his head and said to Ning Yuan beside him, following behind.
With Lu Weiyi’s shot, they entered the base exceptionally smoothly. Even Zhuang Ai Yi only had to pay half a person’s worth of supplies to get in.
As soon as they entered, they were immediately greeted by another group of people, all trying to earn some food by introducing the base’s situation. Li Zhuang picked out one who looked smart.
“My surname is Liu, you can just call me Little Liu. I’m very familiar with the situation here. Whether you want to find someone, find a place to live, or inquire about anything, you can ask me. I guarantee I’ll tell you everything I know and satisfy you,” Little Liu was a lively and slick young man in his twenties.
“We want to find a place to live first. How much does a small villa that can accommodate more than a dozen people cost?” Li Zhuang felt that if they didn’t find a place to settle down soon, the little young master would probably throw a tantrum.
“Villas are more expensive. To buy one, it costs two thousand catties of food. To rent, it’s two hundred catties a month,” Little Liu saw the cigarette in Li Zhuang’s mouth and added, “If you use cigarettes or water, it will be cheaper.”
Li Zhuang nodded without asking how much. “Can we pay by the day?” They were only staying temporarily, paying for a month would be too wasteful and a bit conspicuous.
Little Liu was taken aback for a moment, then said, “You can, but it’s not very cost-effective, ten catties a day.”
“Okay, let’s go now,” Li Zhuang said, telling Ning Yuan, Xiong Jie, and Gu Qingyue behind him to follow Little Liu with the supplies to the place where they handled accommodation.
Having witnessed Lu Weiyi’s outburst, the three of them clearly worked much faster this time. Before long, they returned with a simple check-in certificate and a set of keys. Little Liu led the way, and after more than ten minutes, the group stopped in front of a small three-story villa.
Gu Qingyue opened the door, and the three cars immediately drove into the yard. In the yard, Gu Qingyue was talking to Little Liu about the base’s situation. Li Zhuang and Antonio went inside first to check around. After confirming it was safe, Li Zhuang told Lu Weiyi to take everyone inside first.
The villa had a total of three floors. On the first floor, besides the kitchen, there were three bedrooms, only one of which had a bathroom. The second floor had two bedrooms and a study, and the third floor had a small sunroom besides a gym. Inside, besides a bed in each bedroom, there was only accumulated dust, with only the footprints left by Li Zhuang and Antonio.
“No one has lived here, so it’s all like this,” Little Liu explained with a smile. “There’s a trading area in the base, specializing in the exchange of various supplies. They also sell daily necessities, bedding, and toiletries, everything you could want. If you don’t want to make a trip, you can tell me, and I’ll have someone deliver them directly.”
“We’ll take a look first, clean up a bit, and contact you immediately if we need anything,” Gu Qingyue gave the person a pack of instant noodles, very politely seeing him off.
Lu Weiyi carried Zhuang Mingxu and led the way into the villa. After looking around, he chose a room on the first floor with a bathroom and walked in, placing Zhuang Mingxu on the bare bed board. He walked out of the room and threw out more than a dozen buckets of purified water. “I want to take a shower, I need hot water.”
Li Zhuang, who was connecting the generator circuit with Antonio, was once again shocked by his extravagance. “Little Young Master, shouldn’t we be saving a bit? We don’t even have drinking water now.”
“You still can’t make water?” Lu Weiyi turned to look at Ning Yuan, who was preparing for a big clean-up, his eyes full of disbelief.
Ning Yuan felt flattered, although very happy, he was also a bit innocent. After all, this was only the second day since he discovered his ability. He reached out and concentrated with all his might, finally producing a stream of water. Under everyone’s eager gaze, the water flowed towards the rag in his hand, and the result… the rag didn’t even get wet, the water was gone.
“Tch…” After everyone’s disdainful sound, they went back to their own tasks.
Li Zhuang first took out a few electric pots and asked Xi Shi to help boil some water for Lu Weiyi first.
“Okay,” Xi Shi nodded, just about to apologize to Lu Weiyi for what happened at the base gate earlier, but Lu Weiyi had already turned and entered the bedroom door.
