Chapter 191: Chapter 191 Murder! Murder! (Request for votes and follows)

Sun Jingtao turned his head, embarrassedly saying, “Little brother, wait a moment, it’ll be ready soon!”

Eventually, following Jiang Yan’s wishes, they rented a small, villa-like, two-story courtyard house. The building had an area of just over a hundred square meters, featuring three bedrooms and two living rooms, along with a small garden of the same size.

Although it wasn’t as spacious as a villa, it was more than enough for them and being alone meant fewer covetous people, which was much safer.

The rental period they agreed on was half a month.

When Jiang Yan heard that the rent was only a 500g bag of fried rice, plus three sprouting shriveled potatoes and two semi-dried water snakes, she was secretly shocked for a second.

Nowadays, resources were so precious.

Fortunately, Jiang Yan let the more experienced Su Dai and Sun Jingtao handle the rent negotiation.

They were skilled at bargaining.

According to her own style, she would most likely overpay a lot by offering an abundance of items.

“That young fellow said the valuable item was the sprouted shriveled potatoes because he could exchange them for several kilos of rice,” Su Dai said.

Jiang Yan: “…”

After the young man confirmed the house, he took out a chain of keys labeled with numbers and room numbers from his backpack and handed them over to Sun Jingtao and the others, then immediately reverted back to his previous polite demeanor, saying,

“Gentlemen and ladies, someone will soon come to take you into the base, and he can help carry some supplies for you and then explain the details of the base to you. Just give him some food as a tip or something.”

After finishing, he turned and waved to the shore, not far away, shouting “Uncle San!” A man in his forties of medium stature got up and walked towards them.

He had a bright red work badge hanging on his chest, which was very conspicuous in the gloomy, oppressive world.

Su Dai glanced at the young man. “Little brother, aren’t you taking us there? What if he doesn’t know the way and leads us astray??” How irresponsible could it be.

“Hehe, miss, I’m just pulling in customers, physically weak and can’t do heavy work. Don’t worry, my Uncle San will lead you to your room. We’re all family here and have files prepared at the base, we won’t swindle you.”

The young man offered a sheepish smile and explanation, then turned with the A4 paper and hurriedly walked towards another hovercraft that had just docked behind them.

“Hello, I’m Old Xue, I’m responsible for leading you into the base residential area.” Just as the group finished putting on their backpacks, the man had already come up, reaching out to take a luggage bag from Jiang Yan’s hand.

He didn’t wear a mask but used a wool scarf around his face for warmth and covered his mouth and face.

Despite only his eyes being visible, he seemed to be rather honest and simple.

Everyone nodded, each picking up their luggage, and followed him ashore.

From the shore to the base’s entrance registration, it was another fifty plus meters.

In that small area, it was crowded, noisy, and messy.

Bargaining, arguing, the cries of children, the scolding of men… it was even more chaotic than a market.

Moreover, there were intermittent sneezes and coughs.

Many had no masks or scarves or even the awareness to cover their mouths.

Visibly, specks of black sooty droplets flew everywhere.

Jiang Yan suddenly understood why those armed warriors needed full gear.

“We need to walk faster,” she murmured in a low voice.

Without agreeing beforehand, they all quickened their pace.

Just as they were less than ten meters from the base entrance, a disheveled little girl about five or six years old stopped her gaze on Su Dai, then suddenly, as if crazed, ran towards her.

Before Su Dai could react, the girl had hugged her legs: “Auntie, please, give me some food.”

Everyone: “…”

“Auntie has no food, Auntie is still hungry too,” Su Dai tried to lift her leg, but saw the kid skillfully sit down on her foot.

“You’re lying, you all can afford to rent villas, how can you have no food. Please, just one piece of candy…,” the little girl pleaded pitifully, even giving Old Xue a glance.

The group exchanged glances.

Then they noticed, like Old Xue, those leading people into the base all had badges.

Only the colors were different.

It seemed that these different badges corresponded to different residential areas.

These newcomers to Xiangcheng had already been sorted into different classes.

This was akin to exposing their resource situation openly…

Su Dai was a bit exasperated, “Kid, Auntie really doesn’t have anything, please get up.”

It wasn’t that she was unwilling to give, but she had already seen other children eyeing her direction hungrily.

In this environment, giving something to one child would definitely cause the rest to swarm her.

The little girl stubbornly hummed, “If Auntie won’t give me candy, I won’t get up!”

Su Dai: “…”

“Ah? Uncle, what are you doing?!” The girl suddenly screamed in agony, turning to look at Sun Jingtao who had picked her up by the collar of her clothes.

Sun Jingtao frowned and remained silent.

Just as he put the girl aside, twenty to thirty men and women, who had been sitting on the ground, suddenly stood up with a fierce look in their eyes and armed with sizable black rocks.

Their clothes were filled with dirt and dried blood, emitting a strong sour stench as if they’d marinated in a trash heap for days.

Seeing this, the little girl acted as if suddenly poisoned, lying on the ground in agony, flailing her arms and legs, pointing at Sun Jingtao and screaming, “Ow! Murder! Murder!!”

Jiang Yan glanced at the armed warriors by the gate of the base but saw that they remained indifferent to the commotion.

She looked at Old Xue, “Old Xue, don’t the warriors care about the security outside?”

“Well—” Old Xue looked troubled, hesitated for a second, then hesitantly said in a lower voice:

“They are responsible for ensuring the base’s safety from invasion, the rest is not within their purview. Those people there are desperadoes, targeting refugees randomly every day. Be careful, maybe give them some supplies to keep the peace.”

Hearing this, Jiang Yan raised an eyebrow: well, they had encountered extortionists.

Sun Jingtao turned around and exchanged a glance with Jiang Yan and the others.

They had firearms and were capable of handling these extortionists easily with force.

But they obviously couldn’t handle it so crudely given the crowded surroundings.

They had to first intimidate them a bit.

With that thought, Jiang Yan took out a blood-stained, nicked pig-killing knife from her backpack, actually from Space.

Ye Qing and Sun Jingtao were about to reach for small hammers when from the base entrance, a magenta Mercedes-Benz G-class sped out, kicking up a cloud of black dust as it zoomed away.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated on Novlove.com