Oh dear, how low has one's karma sunk?
Just moments ago, while discussing clothes, the atmosphere was perfectly harmonious, so why has it suddenly vanished?
Lu Heng looked at Liu Guodong and Zhang Ting, who wore angry expressions, and gave an awkward smile.
"Don't be angry, it was just a joke to ease the tension. It's the apocalypse, let's not take things too seriously."
"Who wants to ease the tension with you? Besides, you said you took the space suit, where is it?"
Liu Guodong's face was stern. Such a large suit couldn't just disappear into thin air. By the time he was speaking, the suit was still missing.
"Shall we find a place to continue our chat? Or should we talk here?"
Liu Guodong looked at Lu Heng, then said to Zhang Ting, "Handcuff him."
With that, he walked out without looking back.
Zhang Ting, hearing the order, reacted quickly, pulled out the handcuffs clipped to his waist, and swiftly fitted a pair of silver bracelets onto Lu Heng.
"Let's go."
"You can take these off first, I'm afraid you'll waste a pair of handcuffs. These things can't restrain me."
"You keep them on for now. Were you a habitual thief before?" Zhang Ting nudged Lu Heng, signaling him to hurry and follow Liu Guodong out.
The space suits here absolutely could not be lost again.
Lu Heng shrugged, turned around indifferently, and followed Liu Guodong, who was huffing ahead.
He quickly caught up with Liu Guodong, and the three of them moved to another conference room.
Closing the door, Liu Guodong sat down by himself, losing all his initial politeness, not even glancing at Lu Heng.
"You can speak now."
"Alright. If I said I can do magic, would you believe me?"
Zhang Ting looked at Lu Heng with an expression one would give an idiot. However, as his gaze shifted downwards and saw Lu Heng resting his head on the table with one hand while casually tapping the table with the other, he suddenly stood up again.
"You, I clearly put handcuffs on you just now. Where are the handcuffs on your hands?"
"I told you earlier, those things can't restrain me."
As he spoke, a pair of handcuffs suddenly appeared in Lu Heng's hand. The handcuffs were still locked, but the two rings were not on Lu Heng's wrists.
"You really are a repeat offender!" Zhang Ting snatched his own handcuffs and clipped them to his waist. Since they were useless, wearing them again was superfluous.
"My profession before the apocalypse was a surgeon. Although I hadn't performed surgery as the lead doctor, I had been in the operating room with the senior doctors in the department. How did I become the kind of person you're describing?"
"Then you..."
"I already told you, I can do magic."
"So, where's the suit?" Liu Guodong finally couldn't stand it anymore and asked.
"Here."
Lu Heng waved his hand, and a space suit appeared on the table in front of them, precisely the one that had just disappeared. The oxygen tubes connected to the back were all properly assembled.
"It really is the suit from just now."
"I've seen enough. I'll put it away for now, don't want it to get damaged."
With another wave of his hand, before Liu Guodong could react, the suit in his hand vanished again.
"Alright, even if you can do magic, and you've taken the suit, when will you give us the gasoline you promised?" Liu Guodong clenched his fist.
"Actually, I do have gasoline, but it's not very easy to trade. How about we exchange it for something else?"
"You want to break the agreement?"
"No, I said exchange it for something else. Isn't there anything else that would make you excited?"
"What? You can give us crystals?"
"Certainly."
"Tch, I knew it, you want to break the agreement... What? You plan to trade for crystals? Let me tell you, even if they are crystals, you can't just fob us off with a few pieces."
Liu Guodong had just reacted, but even if Lu Heng could do magic, he felt that as long as they kept an eye on him, he wouldn't be able to perform a 'living person vanishing' trick.
"I've also learned that there are too few ability users here. Give me a report on your personnel numbers and ability user ranks, and I'll see how many crystals I can provide you with."
There were quite a few scientific researchers here. Lu Heng felt that since these people had survived the initial period, there was no need for them to suffer any losses in the future. Lu Heng valued these talents greatly, especially since he had now opened a high-tech city, and much of the data within it would likely require these true scientists to research.
"Although you were able to break through so many zombies to get here, you still can't speak too confidently. While our current numbers aren't as large as before, it's still not a small figure."
"Mm, just give me a number, an approximation is fine."
Liu Guodong gave Zhang Ting a look, and Zhang Ting nodded and immediately went out.
A short while later, Zhang Ting came back in, holding a piece of paper.
"The statistics are all on here."
"Efficient."
"Heh, the number of people hasn't really changed, of course, unless people have sacrificed themselves." Zhang Ting said with some helplessness after sitting down again.
Since the zombies appeared, after they cleared the zombies within the base, the final population count had stabilized. Apart from those who went out to search for supplies or seek help from the outside world and perished, the people within the base had almost all remained, with few losses. Therefore, with no population turnover, it was easy to count.
"There are indeed too few ability users, and their ranks are not very high. You supply these people so concentratedly, yet their ranks are still so low?"
Lu Heng shook his head as he looked at the data in his hands. The ability users in a base were less than a third of the total.
"Have you been diligently killing zombies to level up?"
"Killing zombies is not our primary objective. We only kill zombies when we are forced to while going out to search for supplies."
It was the same problem. In the apocalypse, even those with weapons initially only thought about finding food and other supplies. They did not grasp the importance of killing zombies to level up.
"Just because you don't level up doesn't mean the zombies aren't progressing. Their leveling speed has never stopped. In some areas, high-level zombies have appeared, and they have already learned to consume their own kind to upgrade themselves."
"They already have intelligence?" Liu Guodong looked at Lu Heng in astonishment.
"Of course. Your population isn't large either, only a little over twenty thousand including the research personnel."
"Then how many crystals can you produce? What are the ranks of the crystals?"
"I won't mention the quantity. I can help all of you raise your ranks to level six, but I have a condition: I hope to have a long-term cooperation with you."
"How, how much?" Zhang Ting was once again stunned by Lu Heng.
"Brother, calm down. Level six. Except for those too old to become ability users, everyone else will be upgraded to level six."
"What else do you want to get from us?" Liu Guodong was also no longer calm. Setting aside how Lu Heng planned to upgrade everyone, he felt that Lu Heng seemed to have a bigger trap in mind.