The Max-Level Boss Just Wants to Be a Slacker [Apocalypse] – CH4

Chapter 4: Training the Workhorses

Hearing Mo Xiu’s words, Xi Wenlin choked for a moment.

Asking whether Mo Xiu was hungry had only been an excuse Xi Wenlin blurted out in his nervousness. Who could have expected that the man would actually demand food?

Where would they have any food to give? Even Xi Wenlin himself only had a single box of biscuits left. The reason he hadn’t eaten it yet was purely as a precaution.

If he took that box out now, he would have nothing left to eat.

What no one present had expected was that Mo Xiu had managed to upgrade his ability in such a short time.

Now that he was this powerful, none of them were his match.

Since he couldn’t take back what he had said, Xi Wenlin didn’t want to be the only sucker paying the price. So he shifted the attention onto the others.

Since they had pushed him out when trouble came, they couldn’t blame him for dragging them down with him.

Xi Wenlin was someone who knew how to read the situation. Seeing that Mo Xiu was no longer someone he could offend, he might as well take the chance to curry favor.

With that thought, he smiled at Mo Xiu and said, “Look at this mess. We rushed over to check on you and forgot to bring the food with us.

Wait here a moment. Everyone has some food prepared—we’ll bring it right away.

Here’s mine. It’s just a box of biscuits, but you know how hard it is to find food in the apocalypse. Mo Xiu, I hope you won’t mind.”

Xi Wenlin put on a generous appearance. Seeing this, the others—no matter how unwilling they felt—had no choice but to take out their food as well.

“I see,” Mo Xiu said.

Without the slightest burden, he accepted the biscuits and glanced at the crowd, each wearing a different expression.

Even though he didn’t say anything else, after that earlier display, who wouldn’t feel a trace of fear?

Admiring the strong and following the crowd were common human tendencies. With Xi Wenlin taking the lead, the rest forced smiles and reluctantly brought out the food they had saved.

Some people didn’t have it on them and had to go back to their rooms to fetch it. At a moment like this, no one wanted to provoke Mo Xiu.

Before long, a small pile of food had formed in front of him.

These past few days he had been eating without much restraint, and the food in his backpack had been disappearing quickly. Now it was perfect—he could refill about half of it again.

Mo Xiu didn’t stand on ceremony. He sat on the sofa in the living room, picked a few things he liked from the pile, opened them, and began eating, completely ignoring the sounds of people around him swallowing their saliva.

Watching Mo Xiu eat and drink so comfortably, everyone’s feelings were complicated.

During the past few days when he hadn’t been providing supplies, they had simply been living off their dwindling reserves.

Now they had been forced to hand over their food again. With even less left, how were they supposed to survive?

The old man who had previously loved lecturing Mo Xiu seemed to have been scared straight by the lightning strike. This time, when he spoke to Mo Xiu, his earlier condescending attitude was gone.

He snatched the only braised egg from his sallow-faced wife’s hand and glared at her before awkwardly handing it to Mo Xiu.

With a flattering smile he said, “Xiao Mo, you see, that braised egg is the last bit of food my wife and I saved. Everyone else is about the same. If this keeps going…”

Mo Xiu knew exactly what he meant—if things continued like this, they would starve.

“So?” Mo Xiu asked deliberately, sounding puzzled. “Why don’t you go out and look for supplies?”

Seeing the constipated expressions on everyone’s faces, the young man smiled in great amusement.

After eating his fill, Mo Xiu noticed that everyone was still standing there and hadn’t left.

Curling his lips, he said, “Why are you still here? Don’t tell me that without me, none of you dare go out to find supplies yourselves?”

At this point their expressions were becoming hard to maintain. But faced with absolute strength, they lacked both the courage and the ability to protest.

Only then did Mo Xiu clap his hands, stand up, and say, “If you want food, follow me out and look for supplies. If you don’t go out, you’ll starve.”

His words surprised them.

Although they were unwilling, going with Mo Xiu to search for supplies was still far better than him abandoning them entirely and forcing them to fend for themselves.

Still, because of their previous interactions, the impression of Mo Xiu as a soft-hearted do-gooder was deeply ingrained.

Some people still clung to the illusion that his current attitude was only temporary venting of dissatisfaction.

Even the most obedient work ox would occasionally throw a small tantrum after being worked too hard. If they humored him a little now, perhaps after a day or two things would return to normal.

So after hearing him, seven or eight people in the group chose to follow Mo Xiu out.

The rest stayed behind in the villa. Some were afraid of the outside world, while others still had food left and planned to wait and see.

Xi Wenlin and the talkative old man were among the first to follow Mo Xiu.

Mo Xiu didn’t take a car. Not too far away there was already a place where supplies could be searched. Gasoline also needed to be conserved, so he planned to walk there.

Rather than leading them to gather supplies, it would be more accurate to say he intended to train a group of workhorses.

Fortunes had changed. It was time for them to repay the favor.

After everything in his previous life, Mo Xiu’s heart had grown much colder. He felt no guilt whatsoever about using others to benefit himself.

Still, with their current condition, if he simply threw them out to survive on their own, they might all be wiped out.

For the sake of making his own life easier for the coming days, he chose to accompany them personally.

At this stage of the apocalypse, compared to the later period when zombies’ levels skyrocketed and their abilities became increasingly varied, Mo Xiu felt things were already quite easy.

He possessed extremely rich combat experience. Even if his abilities failed, keeping himself alive wouldn’t be difficult. Naturally, his mood was relaxed.

They were currently living in a relatively open villa district with few residents, so there weren’t many zombies. After walking for a while, they hadn’t encountered any danger.

Seeing Mo Xiu strolling along so casually, the others gradually relaxed as well, thinking that perhaps the apocalypse wasn’t that terrifying after all.

But their relief didn’t last long before they encountered zombies.

There were only three or four of them scattered about, but once the zombies smelled the scent of living humans, they immediately started moving toward them.

In the early stage of the apocalypse, zombies hadn’t fully developed yet. Their movements were relatively slow and not too difficult to deal with.

Unfortunately, thanks to Mo Xiu’s protection, these people had rarely faced zombies directly.

Most of the time they had stayed inside the safe bus or inside residences already cleared by Mo Xiu.

So when they saw the zombies coming straight toward them, panic immediately spread among them.

Xi Wenlin and the talkative old man were both cunning. Along the way they had stuck tightly behind Mo Xiu, believing that doing so guaranteed their safety.

But just as the zombies were about to reach them, Mo Xiu lazily stepped to the side and moved away.

Seeing Mo Xiu move, Xi Wenlin reacted quickly and immediately dashed to the back of the group.

That left only the slower-reacting old man directly facing the zombies’ hideous faces.

He was so frightened that his courage nearly shattered.

His first instinct was to reach out and grab his wife standing nearby, intending to shove her forward to block the zombies.

Mo Xiu’s gaze turned cold at the sight. With a burst of wind ability, he swept the old woman aside.

Without her as a shield, the old man once again became the closest person to the zombies.

Terrified, he frantically waved the wooden stick in his hand, but in his panic he failed to hit anything.

In the end he even tripped over himself and fell to the ground.

Seeing the zombie about to pounce on him, the old man screamed in terror.

Only then did Mo Xiu act.

A bolt of lightning shot down and instantly blew the zombie’s head apart.

The headless corpse collapsed directly onto the old man.

He cried and screamed in terror as the foul-smelling, rotting flesh pressed against him, making him gag repeatedly with tears and snot streaming down his face.

The others were even more frightened by the sight.

They finally realized that Mo Xiu would indeed act when they were in danger—but not in the way they had imagined.

Watching him calmly stand to the side again, smiling at them, they even had the eerie feeling of looking at a devil.

What surprised Mo Xiu was that the first person to recover and actively attack a zombie was actually the seemingly weakest one—Lu Pingwan.

Lu Pingwan was a freshman from their university, technically his junior.

She usually had almost no presence, the kind of person who was nearly forgotten even when he recalled his previous life.

Mo Xiu only remembered that she had a water-type ability, and not a strong one.

Yet at this crucial moment, while several grown men panicked and ran around, a small girl was the one who stepped forward to fight.

Lu Pingwan gripped the iron shovel in her hands nervously and swung it at the zombie.

Unfortunately, the girl was too thin and weak. Although the shovel hit the zombie, it didn’t cause much damage.

The zombie staggered back a step but soon continued walking toward her.

Lu Pingwan’s face turned pale with fear, yet she still kept striking the zombie’s head again and again with all her strength.

The zombie’s skull dented deeply under the blows, making it look even more grotesque, but it still didn’t lose its mobility.

With its fingerless claws, it struggled to grab the girl in front of it.

Realizing she truly couldn’t crush its skull, Lu Pingwan began backing away and looked toward Mo Xiu for help.

Seeing this, a hint of approval flashed through Mo Xiu’s eyes.

He raised his hand and sent out a bolt of lightning, instantly scorching the zombie’s skull black.

Only after the zombie collapsed did the girl finally breathe out heavily in relief.

She glanced gratefully at Mo Xiu.

When she came back to her senses, she realized that at some point her entire back had already been soaked with cold sweat.

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