Blondie didn't notice. Instead, he snarled, "Li Xingye! Who the hell do you think you're kidding? You've been secretly raising all these 'rations,' and plenty of people have had a problem with you for a while now!
"Even your own brothers aren't on your side. How else do you think I found out where you were?"
A crack finally appeared on Li Xingye's calm face.
The moment he saw Li Xingye's lapse in concentration, Blondie was ecstatic. "Die!"
In an instant, the weapons shot toward Li Xingye's head, throat, and chest!
Li Xingye snapped back to his senses, but his face showed no trace of panic.
He hadn't moved an inch, but the blades were stopped by vines just ten centimeters away from him. They hadn't even pierced the vines' bark before clattering to the ground.
A flicker of despair flashed in Blondie's eyes.
He knew Li Xingye's superpower was formidable, which was why he'd never dared to mess with him.
If he hadn't heard that Li Xingye had taken his people out to find food and wasn't coming back, and if their own rations hadn't run out, he wouldn't have dared to barge in like this even if he had ten times the nerve.
Blondie knew that with Lin Qi dead, any chance of reconciliation was gone. He gritted his teeth and said, "Brother Li, I'm not lying to you. Outside of your base, is there anyone raising 'meat people' for any reason other than to be rations?
"You've been a target for a long time now. I was the one who got impatient this time, and I'll admit defeat. But how long do you think you can keep this up? Either you starve to death, and they get captured and raised as 'meat people,' or you finally give in and become just like everyone else.
"I admire you for holding out this long. But do you really think your brothers are willing to starve while you're raising a bunch of useless 'rations'?"
Seeing Li Xingye remain silent, Blondie stared at him, his voice full of temptation. "Brother Li, the leaders of Frenzy, the biggest base in this area, aren't a match for you even if they combined their strength. As long as you work with me, we... GAH—"
Blondie was mid-sentence when he suddenly felt a slight, sharp pain in his chest.
But soon, a tearing sensation spread throughout his entire body.
He looked down in disbelief at the grayish-black vine that had burst from his chest at some point. It was covered in delicate little flowers, as dazzlingly red as if they had drunk their fill of blood.
"Boss!!"
Seeing that things had gone wrong, a few more men rushed out of the warehouse and shielded Blondie.
One of them, a lean man, said hatefully, "You, Li! Our boss was tricked by someone from your base, too! We haven't touched anyone besides Lin Qi. I'll tell you who betrayed you if you let me and my brothers go."
Qiangzi gritted his teeth. "Brother Ye, don't believe him! They're just trying to sow discord! Only Lin Qi knew we were going out for food this time, because he had to stay behind and guard the gate.
"But they already killed Lao Qi! Everyone else thought we were going out to clear zombies. They must have gotten their information from somewhere else!"
He was about to say more, but Haozi pulled him back.
"You forgot someone," Cheng Peng said, his face a mask of anger and cold indifference. "We should have killed him back then!"
Qiangzi froze. "You mean..."
"Ding Yao," Li Xingye said softly to Blondie's crew. "You got one thing wrong. He stopped being my brother a long time ago."
The instant his words fell, countless flowers bloomed in layers, and the bodies, Blondie's included, turned to dust.
Qiangzi paid no mind to any of that, shouting his sister's name as he rushed inside. "Qianqian!"
Cheng Peng walked over to Li Xingye and said in a low voice, "Brother Ye, I'm afraid that bastard Ding Yao has been watching us for a long time; otherwise, his intel wouldn't be this good. I know Blondie and his men. They're minor leaders from Wildfire Base, over a hundred kilometers away. The fact that he suddenly mentioned Frenzy makes me suspect Ding Yao has some connection to them."
Haozi spat on the ground. "That animal. If Boss hadn't saved him back then, he'd be long dead. How dare he..."
Li Xingye shook his head and walked toward the warehouse. "This is what the apocalypse is like. I was too soft-hearted back then. Leaving him alive with that Invisibility Ability is a menace. I'll deal with him myself."
Cheng Peng whispered, "Those 'meat people' they mentioned..."
Haozi's face was a mixture of pity and faint sarcasm. "If it weren't for the fact that superpower users have mutated properties that make them inedible, do those low-level ones think they're any different from ordinary people? Killing their own kind, acting as lapdogs for others... can you even call those inhuman animals people anymore?"
Li Xingye sighed. "The apocalypse turned people into something that isn't human a long time ago."
'It was hard to say whether his desperate gamble to go out foraging was to prevent himself from doing something against his own principles in a state of extreme hunger.'
A crisp, sweet voice suddenly echoed in his mind: "Don't worry, I'll have your back from now on. As long as I have meat to eat, you'll have soup to drink!"
Li Xingye shook himself out of it, casting aside the chaotic thoughts in his head, and walked into the warehouse.
'In the end, he was different from people like Ding Yao and Blondie.'
'And now, with Chi Wan's help, maybe he could finally do that other thing he'd always wanted to do.'
*
While Li Xingye spent a sleepless night busy rearranging the base's defenses and distributing food, Chi Wan had a dream.
She dreamed that with Li Xingye's help, her fruit tree grew taller and taller, and its oranges grew bigger than a person's head.
They rained down, one by one, knocking Liu Dali and his cronies into a pit.
"BANG, BANG, BANG—"
Chi Wan, eyes still closed, thought to herself: 'That's a crisp sound. A good omen...'
"You people from the Chi Family, get the hell out here!!"
The quiet morning was instantly shattered by that grating voice, startling Chi Wan bolt upright in bed.
She glanced at her phone. It was only six-thirty.
"You heartless family! You get my Dali locked up and then sleep so soundly! Poor me, an old woman who couldn't sleep a wink all night, how can you bear to sleep?!"
By the time Chi Wan, her face dark with anger, had gotten up, washed, and walked to the door, Mr. and Mrs. Chi Yuanshan had already opened it, preparing to negotiate with the group outside.
But the group, led by Liu Dali's mother, clearly hadn't come to communicate with the Chi Family.
She saw Chi Wan behind Chi Yuanshan and his wife, pointed right at her, and started screaming, "Look at you, so young, how dare you do something so shameless! Like mother, like daughter—a bitch gives birth to a bitch!"
This old woman was even more of a fighter than Liu Dali's wife, Xu Cuifen. Counting on the fact that no one would dare lay a hand on her, she leaned on her cane and tried to lead her group into the Chi Family's yard, spewing an endless stream of filth from her mouth.
Mr. and Mrs. Chi Yuanshan's faces were ashen as they blocked the doorway, preventing her from getting to Chi Wan.
Relying on the security cameras and unafraid of any staged falls, Chi Wan spoke with sharp, clear articulation, "Exactly. Scoundrels get what they deserve, right? Isn't that why he's in jail now? So old and useless, all he knows how to do is bully a young girl. He should just be a good boy and accept his reeducation from the nice policemen~"