When Qi Ling Shan was dragged away by two burly men, he could only shout, hoping for a rescue. However, no one stepped forward. Finally, he was taken to the foot of a distant city wall. This section of the wall was not being repaired, so there was no one around to see.
At this moment, Qi Ling Shan was filled with extreme regret. Why had he caused trouble? If he had known he would be treated so unreasonably, he would not have stepped out. Who could have imagined that these people would not reason at all? He was a returnee, an outstanding high school student from a country with a high welfare system. How could they treat him like this?
"Brother, I was wrong, I was wrong, spare me!" Qi Ling Shan no longer cared about human rights or dignity and began to beg for mercy.
Unfortunately, Qi Ling Shan's pleas were clearly useless. He was soon tied to a roadside tree. One of the soldiers smiled and said, "This kid is too arrogant, daring to incite trouble. I say, for people like this, there's only one simple method: execute him!"
"Execute him, and let others see that disobedience has such an end!" another soldier chimed in with a smile.
Qi Ling Shan was filled with despair. He didn't understand. His education had always promoted freedom and equality, but why was this principle no longer effective? Was the education he received abroad actually deceiving him?
"Bang," a gunshot rang out. Qi Ling Shan closed his eyes and knelt on the ground. He suddenly felt a warmth between his legs. He thought it must be blood flowing out. However, there was no pain as he imagined.
"This kid wet himself from fear!" a soldier pointed at Qi Ling Shan and said.
Qi Ling Shan opened his eyes and realized that he was not dead. The bullet had not hit him. Looking down at his crotch, he saw it was wet. It turned out that what was flowing out was not blood, but he had actually urinated out of fear due to the tension.
"You're lucky, kid. Our City Lord doesn't like killing people. Although you were a bit arrogant, you weren't rebelling, so we've decided to give you a chance to reform. Come with us!" the soldier said with a smile.
Qi Ling Shan dared not retort. He could only let his ropes be untied and was then taken to a school dormitory. There were several young people armed and guarding the place.
"He's here to clean. Let him clean the environment for the prisoners in the jail. Don't be too polite, and don't reason with him. If he doesn't listen, beat him," the soldier said with a smile.
Through this statement, Qi Ling Shan finally confirmed where he was. It turned out that the dormitory building had been converted into a prison, and he would now have to clean here. This was truly too humiliating.
The two soldiers immediately returned to their patrol. Qi Ling Shan's eyes darted around, and he quickly said, "Brothers, I have money. I'll give you money, and you let me go, okay? I also have the latest mobile phone, and I'm wearing tens of thousands of yuan worth of sneakers!"
At this moment, Qi Ling Shan wanted to leave and hatched a devious plan. If he could bribe the prison guards, wouldn't he be able to leave? In the future, in Luzhou, as long as he was healthy, he wouldn't starve. As long as he didn't stay, everything would be fine.
"Pah, go clean!" The prison management staff ignored what Qi Ling Shan said. They grabbed his arm and pushed him into the dormitory building, saying, "If you don't work, you don't eat. Hurry up and get in there and work."
Qi Ling Shan reluctantly picked up a broom and shovel and began to clean. As he walked, he overheard people behind him talking:
"Is this guy an idiot? The banks have collapsed, what use is money now? Food is the most important thing. Without food, nothing counts."
"That's right. Now, transactions in the black market are all bartering. Who would be stupid enough to use money to buy things? Sneakers and the like, only an idiot would want them."
"If you buy with money, is it still called a black market?"
"Isn't the black market called a black market because there's no regulation? Your definition is wrong."
"I heard the black market also has special services. After work, shall we go have some fun?"
...
Among the people who came from Yuzhou, there were over two hundred orphans. They were all sent to the orphanage, children under fourteen years old. The management staff were a few middle-aged women, the youngest being Xu Xing. She was responsible for taking care of children of all ages. The work was not tiring, but it was easy to get angry. It wasn't that she didn't like taking care of children, but she couldn't stand hearing a bunch of children calling her "Auntie" every day. She was a young woman not yet twenty, how could she have become an auntie?
So, Xu Xing asked a few children, and she learned that in their eyes, as long as it was someone who took care of them, a man was an uncle, and a woman was an auntie. Although Xu Xing was only seventeen, not much older than some of the older children, being called an auntie was acceptable.
Xu Xing was particularly helpless about this. Auntie it was, anyway. These children were very obedient, but the reason they were so obedient was mostly because their parents had accidentally died. These children lacked a sense of security, so they were so obedient, fearing abandonment.
Speaking of which, children are not born lawless. Most mischievous children observe their parents' expressions. Now that they had no parents, the mischievous children dared not be mischievous and were as obedient as could be.
After the orphans from Yuzhou were sent to the orphanage, it quickly became noisy. Some children fought over toys, some shouted loudly, and some, relying on their strength, bullied other children. These things made Xu Xing extremely annoyed.
When she had free time, Xu Xing liked to lean on the wall and look at the stadium in the distance. Faintly, she could still hear gunshots. She had already heard that girls could also join the army, and they were under the command of the Deputy City Lord, Chang Jianyi, who would directly command them and also participate in combat when necessary. It was a pity that this matter had nothing to do with Xu Xing.
To get a better view of the distance, Xu Xing found a pile of wooden crates and stacked them by the wall. She was currently leaning by the wall, gazing into space.
Just then, two girls in their teens also ran onto the crates, looking at the boring scenery in the distance together. They were very attached to Xu Xing, as for them, she was their peer, and communication would not be particularly difficult.
"Auntie, what are you looking at? There's nothing over there!" a little girl asked curiously.
Xu Xing heard the question and shrugged helplessly, saying, "I'm looking at a dream, a dream that is difficult for me to achieve."
Another little girl also saw the samurai sword that Xu Xing was holding and asked, "Can I see this sword?"
"No!" Xu Xing held the samurai sword tightly and said, "This is something the City Lord gave me, you can't see it. When you grow up, you'll have whatever weapon you want. Why are you looking at my sword?"
"We don't want to grow up!" Hearing this, the two little girls couldn't help but sigh. For them, their biggest worry at the moment was growing up, because when they grew up, they would have to work, otherwise, they wouldn't have food. Sometimes, they would have to fight zombies, ferocious zombies, the thought of which made them extremely scared.
Just then, a child in the yard started crying. A little girl sat on the ground and cried loudly, forcing Xu Xing to get down from the crates and go to the little girl, gently asking, "Why are you crying? Do you miss your mother?"
The little girl was only six or seven years old. While crying, she pointed at a boy next to her holding a toy car and said, "He snatched my toy car and pushed me."
Xu Xing heard this and immediately glanced at the little boy. The little boy immediately ran away with the toy car, completely ignoring the crying little girl.
Seeing this, Xu Xing could only shake her head helplessly and say, "Don't cry, don't cry. These bad kids don't have homes. In a month, they will be sent back. Think about it, aren't they very pitiful? Just let them play with your toys. In a month, they'll be gone!"
It turned out that the little boy who had snatched the toy was one of the orphans sent from Yuzhou. Because he coveted the toy car in the little girl's hand, he snatched it to play with. Xu Xing did not want to mediate, because if she snatched the toy car back, the boy might start crying again.
The little girl heard Xu Xing say this, then raised her head and asked, "Auntie, we don't have homes either."
"Who said that? Luzhou is your home. You can grow up here with peace of mind. Those children will all be sent back to Yuzhou, let them suffer outside, and in the future, they will definitely have no good end!" Xu Xing quickly comforted the little girl.
Hearing these words, the little girl immediately became happy. She hopped and skipped to the boy who had snatched the toy car and said boastfully, "You are all pitiful, you have no homes. I'll let you play with my toys for now, anyway, you'll be leaving in a month!"
After saying this, the little girl left. But the little boy heard these words and burst into tears. He was touched by a sore spot. In fact, what he feared most was being helpless. Now, hearing the little girl say that he would be sent away, he couldn't help but cry.
"Why are you crying again?" Xu Xing thought helplessly, rubbing her head.
Afterward, Xu Xing went to comfort the little boy again, assuring him that he would not be sent away. Only then did the little boy stop crying.
Wang Xi Qiang was running around the yard with a group of little boys. Following behind him were the children rescued from the repair shop near the fishing village. After experiencing the terrifying events, they had united, seemingly feeling like brothers after going through hardships. Thus, this group of people was the most mischievous.
The most important point was that Wang Xi Qiang had stayed in the logistics group of the Self-Help Association for a few days. He really wanted to join the City Lord's Mansion, but Shen Feng thought he was too young and told him to wait two years. Therefore, Wang Xi Qiang was determined that when he grew up, he would definitely enter the City Lord's Mansion. This was what the City Lord himself had said!
His sister, Wang Xi Ran, was not in the orphanage because she had become a little follower of Yu Ren Shu and followed her everywhere. Occasionally, Yu Ren Shu would teach her to recognize characters or do arithmetic. There were no schools at the moment, so to learn knowledge, one could only ask private tutors. Of course, Wang Xi Ran was still sent back to the orphanage by Yu Ren Shu to sleep at night.
Wang Xi Qiang pointed at someone on the other side of the yard and said, "You brats, it's best to be honest. No more snatching our toys from now on, or I'll bring my people to beat you!"
At this moment, Wang Xi Qiang had become the king of the orphanage. He considered himself the boss of everyone, and now that his brothers and sisters were in trouble, he naturally had to step forward to resolve it.
Wang Xi Qiang's words immediately caused resentment among the children from Yuzhou. Originally, only a few children were interested in these toys, and only a few children would snatch the opposite side's toys. Now, Wang Xi Qiang was threatening them with force, which immediately angered these children. A boy stood up and shouted, "Who's afraid of you?"
Wang Xi Qiang did not indulge him and beckoned to the people behind him, "Brothers, let's go!"
The children from Yuzhou were already fearful, and now seeing the other side ganging up to exclude them, they also began to fight back. Immediately, the children started fighting. The teenagers who were over ten years old did not participate at first, but some of them, seeing their younger brothers and sisters fighting, and fearing that their younger siblings would suffer, also joined the fight.
When the older children from Yuzhou joined the fight, the older children from Luzhou could not stand by and watch, so they also shouted and joined the battle. Within a few minutes, the orphanage was in chaos. Xu Xing was stunned by this scene. She didn't expect these children to have such vigorous energy that a single sentence could trigger a dispute. She immediately took out a whistle from her pocket and blew it loudly, trying to stop the fight between the two sides.
The final result was that both sides were punished equally. The children who participated in the fight were not allowed to eat dinner that night, and the events of the day were reported to the City Lord's Mansion.
Shen Feng, who was handling documents in the City Lord's Mansion, casually put aside such a report. The children fighting in the orphanage was a minor issue, but the brawls occurring within the city could not be ignored. The local people of Luzhou felt that the people from Yuzhou were here to snatch resources and disliked them. The people from Yuzhou believed that they were already working and had not offended the locals of Luzhou, so the two sides disliked each other and often arranged fights.
For this matter, the City Lord's Mansion could only mediate constantly. The conflict between locals and outsiders had existed long before the zombie outbreak, and it was not something that had only appeared now. It could be said that xenophobia existed everywhere, and the more urban the place, the more serious it was. Some would even say that outsiders were here to beg for food, treating themselves as benevolent benefactors.
"They're too full, that's why they're causing trouble!" Shen Feng said helplessly.