By the time the few children all came back to their senses, Zhang XiaoBai and Luo Long had already disappeared without even a trace.
“Zhou Jian, what should we do now?! They seem to have gone straight back.” A young boy asked in fear: “Let’s head back quickly. Even if we get scolded, it’s better than being kicked out!”
The other children all chimed in: “Yeah, Zhou Jian! Let’s go back now!”
Zhou Jian slowly calmed down his emotions, he thought about it and felt that they were just scaring them, how could they just leave them alone? They’ll forgive them as long as they went back and admit their wrongdoings. He was only thirteen and still considered a child so they must be just scaring them. With this thought in mind, Zhou Jian wasn’t afraid and then said to the younger children: “What’s with all the racket! It’s all because of your cowardice, how can you all beat Wu Sen when you’re such cowards? That’s enough! Now it’s you all who want to go back, not me.”
“Fine, okay, stop talking. Let’s hurry back.” Several young boys couldn’t care less about anything at this point and just urged on.
Thus, the few of them returned to the dormitory building.
“What, what did you say? Why won’t you let us in? We live on the third floor!” Zhou Jian asked anxiously.
It turned out that they were stopped by the caretaker when they reached the entrance of the dormitory building and were denied of entries so they were all in a panic.
There were two men in-charge of the dormitory building, just in case of those ordinary survivors tried to break in, and one of the caretakers replied: “Show me your passes.”
Zhou Jian answered: “We came out in a hurry so we didn’t bring it with us. Uncle, just let us in, please! We come in and out of here every day, don’t you recognise us?”
The two caretakers did recognise them but Zhang XiaoBai had already informed them so they naturally wouldn’t let these children in and stated: “We don’t recognise others, only the passes.”
Zhou Jian panicked: “We really do live here. You can go up to the third floor and ask them if you don’t believe us!”
“What’s the point of asking?!”The other caretaker obviously had lost his temper and told them directly: “They’ve specifically informed us that you’re no longer with them anymore! From now on, you’ll go and sleep outside in tents. There’s no more room for you in here.” He continued with another sneering: “I heard that it’s you kids who ran away on your own? You all are so unaware of your blessings. You kids can’t even lift a knife and aren’t even related to any one of them personally. They feed and took care of you all for free yet your kids aren’t satisfied by it. You all should leave now! Go and see if there is anyone out there who will be willing to take you in!” When this caretaker saw that Brother San had brought so many children with them, he thought that they were at least related to each other. However, as he found out that they were all orphans which they had picked up on the way, he couldn’t help but admire Brother San’s doings. Therefore, right now he couldn’t stand the children and outright lashed out at them.
The girl cried immediately in shock: “Wahh —— how now?! We’ve really been kicked out! They really don’t want us anymore!”
“What, what do we do now Zhou Jian.” The other boys panicked all at once.
Zhou Jian’s face was white, his legs went weak and his whole mind was buzzing.
As Hong Jie had proposed was very effective, Zhang XiaoBai and Zhong Xu took the children out for a stroll to look at how the other survivors lived in the tent area. When the children returned, they all seemed to be lost in the shock of the situation of other survivors and behaved exceptionally well.
At the same time, Zhong Xu also expressed concern about the current state of the base.
The vast majority of the survivors in the base, adults, and children were all starving and skinny. The base would provide very watery porridge and each person would only receive a bowl per day which could only keep them alive but not enough to provide any extra energy to do other stuff. When there was nothing to do, they tried not to move as much as possible and only speak when they were required as they feared not having enough drinkable water. Those who were not capable of killing the zombies generally stay in their tents.
Some of the jobs available at the base only require young and strong workers, and the work they do was labour work such as carrying bricks, picking up cement, and so on. They would only receive two to three packs of biscuits or two to three sausages with a slice of bread for the day.
The more daring ones would register at the management office and head out to kill the zombies in teams. If they were lucky enough to be recruited by a team with special abilities users, their chances of survival would increase. If they had a chance to come back and the team had a very good harvest that day, then it would be way more worthy as compared to staying and working at the base for a month of supplies.
Generally, only daring young adults were more likely to gain such opportunities.
In fact, it was no longer a secret that Gu Ning and her team had around ten special abilities users. Some of the abilities users who had arrived at the Zhongnan base before them had formed their own team over time, and they had at least shown a very friendly attitude towards Gu Ning team’s arrival. One by one, they asked the Third Company team if they were willing to form alliances with them. What did a team of ten special abilities users mean in this current situation? It meant that they didn’t need to recruit any outsider’s help every time they went out to hunt the zombies. Moreover, the other teams had noticed that the Third Company team always came back with as many men as they went out with each time. They had arrived at the base for over half a month and there hadn’t even been a single casualty which was truly incredible.
To the rest of the teams in the base, the Third Company team was mysterious.
From the few scraps of information that the other teams had received, they only knew that the Third Company team was of military origin which made it difficult for them to understand why they brought those twenty or so children with them who seemed like twenty big bags of burden instead. Furthermore, they were so well-stocked with supplies and even had a special room to contain all of them. Also, they had a doctor on their team with a full range of medication supplies.
Previously, they accidentally ran into a child while backing the truck, then the female doctor treated the little child while leaving enough supplies to feed that child’s family for three months on a sparing basis. It was worth mentioning that afterward, someone deliberately tried to get hit by the truck from the Third Company team but they were run over on the spot. It was not difficult to have a doctor on the team but it was much more challenging to have adequate medication.
In response to the frequent gestures of goodwill from the other teams, the Third Company team kept maintaining a relationship that was not too close nor too distanced. If they were asked to team up together to go out hunting the zombies, they would put it off with the excuse that they didn’t need it at the moment. Their team members never act alone and usually travelled in groups of three or five while each one of them was exceptionally alert. Therefore, no other teams could fish out more information from them as they knew what should or shouldn’t be said.
Every day at dawn, an adult would run around the base with about twenty or so children and it had become an unusual sight at the base. The survivors in the tent area had gone from shock to amazement to numbness, and some secretly hated the fact that they didn’t even have enough to eat yet this group of people still had the strength to exercise.
In the past few days, a piece of news about the Third Company team spread all over the base as if it had grown wings. Both the special abilities users and ordinary survivors knew about this piece of information which was: the girl with short blonde hair in the Third Company team was a Space ability user.
Everyone knew that by killing a Space ability user, everything that was stored in the space would burst out of it.
The Third Company team was indeed powerful and had ten special abilities users which were definitely intimidating. Yet, equally, the supplies they had were also enough to drive others crazy. Everyone knew that the Space ability users were the team’s mobile warehouse. There was a case where a Space ability user was killed, around three months of supplies for ten people had burst out of the space. Also, the Space ability user was just from a small team of ten people with only one special ability user.
Survivors who were starved went mad and driven by desperation sometimes did things that were completely out of their minds.
Countless pairs of eyes were stalking the team from the shadows.
Before the news had spread throughout the base, the staff member who they had met at the gate, informed them of the news and repeatedly explained that it was not leaked by him.
After sending off the staff who was worried about being misunderstood, the remaining people in the room looked gloomy.
Hong Jie jumped straight to conclusions: “It must have been those little brats who leaked the news out.” She said with a frown: “We still aren’t ruthless enough.” She stared at Brother San when she spoke this sentence.
“F*ck! I’ll go and catch those boys back!” Zhang XiaoBai said as he stood up in a rage.
Hong Jie glanced at him: “What’s the point of capturing them back? To kill them? Are you going to kill them yourself?”
Zhang XiaoBai immediately stopped as if his action was deflated by the question. Although he hated them, he didn’t have the heart to do anything to those children: “So we just let them off the hook?!” Yet, he couldn’t swallow his anger.
A cold glint shone in Hong Jie’s eyes as she instructed: “Xiang Yi. I’ll leave this matter to you. Find them and break one of the hands of the oldest child. Tell him the reason why we have to break them.”
Xiang Yi didn’t immediately respond but looked at Brother San in silence.
Brother San was quiet for a moment, then glanced up at Hong Jie: “Hong Jie, if you break his hand, it means you want him to die.”
Hong Jie held onto his gaze steadily: “It is him, who wants Gu Ning to be dead.”
Brother San went completely silent.
Gu Ning didn’t comment and that was a tacit acceptance of Hong Jie’s suggestion of dealing.
Hong Jie continued: “Fortunately, Gu Ning had Plant psychic power as an alternative. However, to be on the safe side, Gu Ning, you shouldn’t act alone during this period.”
Jia DaoZhang interjected: “You guys don’t need to be overly worried. I’ve already made a clear inquiry, there is no existing special ability user in this base who can threaten Gu Ning. We just need to be a bit more careful so there’s no need to look so gloomily.”
The others couldn’t help but relaxed their tensed nerves when they recalled Gu Ning’s fighting capabilities.
Just as they were discussing, three cars pulled up at the gate of the base.
One by one, a group of people got out of the car. There was a mixture of men and women, all were covered in dust but they were laughing and chatting about the base in front of them.
The leader of the group walked up to the registration window at the entrance and asked the staff: “We want to enter the base. What is the process?”
The staff member glanced up at him and asked lazily: “Any special abilities users?”
The man smiled and replied: “Yes. Thirteen of them.”