Chapter 121 - Luo Ning
"Move." Bai Zemin whispered softly and walked forward followed closely by the other two.
"Damn, wasting our time." The militant from before grumbled again before looking the three up and down with a frown, "Where did you three come from? What are you coming to this place to do? This territory belongs to the Four Big Bosses!"
Fu Xuefeng looked at Bai Zemin subtly before he began to explain stammering, "W-We three are survivors from Beijing University. we escaped by fortune a few days ago and went into hiding..."
The reason Bai Zemin made Fu Xuefeng speak was precisely because of the nerves he felt. The militants could tell something was wrong if he or Zhong De spoke too much, after all, neither of them was actors and were too calm by nature.
As Fu Xuefeng answered questions, Bai Zemin scanned the surroundings subtly and was secretly surprised.
The wooden fences were useless for defending the village as a single evolved beast could easily tear them out of the ground. However, for normal low-level zombies that had no strength, these wooden fences were a major obstacle that could buy some time for the survivors.
In the streets, there were occasional people passing by wearing somewhat dirty and tattered clothes. The expressions of almost everyone were dark and their eyes glittered with fear as they cautiously looked around.
Most people were sitting outside their homes, staring at nothing with dead faces. Occasionally someone would squirm on the ground clutching their stomach hungrily, which was a clear sign that all these people had eaten too little or even nothing for quite some time.
"Hey! What are you bringing inside that bag!" The other militant seemed to be bored when he noticed the plastic bag in Bai Zemin\'s hands and immediately inquired loudly.
Bai Zemin looked at the militant and tried to put on a scared expression which failed miserably. In the end, in order not to cause any problems, he simply opened the bag quietly and showed the contents.
"Damn, is this guy mute or something?" The second militant muttered and casually looked inside the bag without much expectation. However, when he and his buddy saw the small bag with rice and the milk carton, their eyes lit up.
The first militant grabbed the small bag of rice and weighed it with his hand casually before exclaiming, "Damn it! It is more than 200 grams of white rice!"
The second militant also looked surprised and snatched the bag of rice from him to check it by himself.
In the camp, supplies were tightly controlled by the strongest of the four bosses, Ye Qigang. Normally, a person who did not work could only eat some rice made into mush diluted with water to form something similar to gruel but consisting mainly of water.
Except for the militants with guns who went out to risk their lives to fetch supplies, everyone inside the village was slowly starving to death. The four bosses obviously had no idea how to lead so many people as they did not even delegate jobs to give the village some brightness and order.
Even for these two militants guarding the entrance 500 grams of rice was small wealth. Working all day standing guard, they could at most earn 40 grams of rice each.
Bai Zemin\'s eyes glittered coldly. Although he already expected something like this, the brazen robbery still upset him. For the past half month, no one had dared to speak to him in such a tone, let alone try to steal from him, so naturally, his patience was wearing thin... But he endured and said nothing.
The militants looked at each other before looking at the three of them. The first militant to speak said in a deep voice: "As we are magnanimous, we will not examine your belongings and you can leave with that milk carton. As a token of kindness, let me tell you that west of town there are a few free houses still, you can use those."
Without waiting for a reply, the other militant waved his hand impatiently, "Hurry up and get out of here, you smell really gross!"
Zhong De looked at them coldly but seeing Bai Zemin subtly shaking his head, he finally looked down. The three of them walked into the village slowly, listening to the gloating laughter of the militants.
"Big brother Bai, why don\'t we just explode their heads and take over their guns?" Zhong De clenched his fists and cursed under his breath, "Damn those two dogs. A single blow from my fists is enough to make their heads explode into meat pulp but they dare to treat us like puppies?"
Bai Zemin laughed coldly and replied as he walked towards the south of the village, "Don\'t worry. When we get control of this whole place I\'ll see to it that they spit out those five hundred grams of rice completely even if I have to make them work as mules!"
Considering the rations they had, five hundred grams of rice could not be considered too much. However, no one would feel good if they were robbed and then acted as if nothing had happened; let alone Bai Zemin, who was slowly getting used to being in a position of power.
* * *
The village was not very large and in the past, only about sixty or seventy families lived there. However, due to the search for supplies carried out periodically by the four bosses, the number of survivors had increased exponentially so that makeshift huts had to be built.
Bai Zemin and the rest saw how a group of young children between eight and fourteen years old ran barefoot everywhere. They were all looking for small bugs that had not yet begun to mutate or tree bark to fill their empty stomachs. As the world changed, these children were also forced to change and leave their innocence behind to adapt to the new rules if they wanted to survive.
After walking for about five minutes, the group of three stopped in front of an ordinary-looking small house. The door was firmly closed but from outside they could hear a sweet voice singing like a happy bird coming from inside, which was a sharp contrast to the scene outside.
When Bai Zemin knocked softly on the wooden door and took a step back, the singing stopped and a sweet childish voice rang out, "One second please!"
A moment later, the door opened and the head of a little girl peeked out who immediately looked at them with her big eyes filled with curiosity.
"This... Hello! My name is Luo Ning, may I know what do you need?"