Chapter 209: Background
The lunatic Guo Fei was long gone. Staring into the pitch dark, Zhang Xiao Qiang decided to stop chasing. He felt that it was extremely dangerous chasing after a group of enemies holding ARs in the dark.
Zhang Xiao Qiang was not willing to lose any more members. He got Three to command the team members to sort out the aftermath and turned back to the bonfire. The faint sound of metals colliding came out from the darkness. Zhang Xiao Qiang stopped and listened carefully, the sound kept coming from a distance of 10m away from where two men were fighting with cold weapons.
Zhang Xiao Qiang hesitated for a bit, being unable to see in the darkness, he was unable to make a decision. Guo Fei’s couple disobedience made Zhang Xiao Qiang annoyed. Originally, he would not have minded to let him die outside, but for Guo Fei to be able to catch up with the mysterious man with insane speed?
The man-made Zhang Xiao Qiang feel uneasy, Zhang Xiao Qiang was not afraid of having a direct confrontation with him, but he did not want to forever be cautious of the assassin that could sneak behind him and assassinate him at any moment. Now that Guo Fei has him locked down, isn’t it the best time for me to kill him?
Three led a few men and picked up a few rifles that were abandoned by their owners and unclipped their magazines to check on them. “Brother Cockroach, all the rifles are empty, these grandsons don’t even have enough ammunition!”
Three’s revelation put Zhang Xiao Qiang at ease. He swapped for a new magazine and after pulling on the safety, he spoke to Three: “Leave half of the men to watch the captives, the rest will follow me with torches…”
Before he could finish his sentence, Shangguan Qiao Yun took her rifle and stood behind him. Seeing her tired eyes, Zhang Xiao Qiang spoke to her: “It is pitch dark, why are you, a lady, trying to join in? Go stand by one side.”
Shangguan Qiao Yun remained well-behaved, she could see the concern in Zhang Xiao Qiang’s eyes, which made her heart feel warm. Looking at him, she turned and headed two other men who were resting…..
10 torchlights moved around the forest behind the hill, revealing the numerous branches and twigs. Zhang Xiao Qiang and his men walked into the quiet forest, one of the members shone his torch into a shrub, revealing a pair of athletic shoes that had toes coming out of it.
“There’s someone here…..get out of there, or I’ll fire at you….” The member shouted and pointed his gun at the shrub. 10 Torchlights turned and shone on the shrub, brightening up the spot.
A man with disheveled hair and shabby clothes raised his Type-81 AR and stood up. Two members rushed forward and pinned him back down to the ground. The man did not speak or struggle and quietly allowed them to tie his hands up.
One of the member took his rifle, pulled the lever and revealed the empty barrel. Zhang Xiao Qiang looked at the man and asked: “How many bullets did each of you receive and hold?”
“Our leader gave each of us 30 bullets and we have spent it all just now, if I still had bullets, I wouldn’t have been caught by you guys…”
Having the captive confirm his guess, Zhang Xiao Qiang became completely at ease. Every single member of his team had a torch each and were easy targets inside the darkness, but the enemies no longer had any bullets and their rifles were as useful as wooden sticks. He looked at the captive and spoke: “None of us can look after you, you can either follow us or die.” With that, he turned and led his men to continue looking.
Although the captive was tied up, he moved quickly. While walking with them, he shouted for his….companions. As he shouted, all of the enemies hiding in the darkness would either walk out with their rifles up in the air or appear with empty hands. Upon seeing that, Zhang Xiao Qiang became happy.
He got someone to untie the knot on his hand. Seeing that he was honest, he asked: “What’s your name and what did you use to do?”
The man nodded his head and replied: “I’m Li Zhu, I used to run an internet cafe in the city, the illegal kinds. Now, we follow Liu Tou to get food. Since I learned how to fire a gun back in school, I became one of his main force.”
Li Zhu walked with his surrendered companions in the middle of the group and continued to shout and call out his hidden companions while narrating their history and background.
Li Zhu opened an internet cafe in the city and was meddling with the internet when the outbreak happened. Hearing the news, he immediately returned home to hide and waited for everything to be over. He wanted to continue opening his business with the thought that the apocalypse would end. Who would have known that when the virus spread, he became the 10% unaffected? He passed his days in the outskirts of the city scavenging for food and miraculously survived. Upon one scavenger hunt, he encountered their current leader, Liu Tou.
Liu Tou was not a good person, or more accurately speaking, he was a completely crazy and ridiculous man. He led his 7 to 8 men who carried rifles and won over all the survivors, then proclaimed himself as the tyrant, whoever disobeyed him were killed.
He separated the survivors into 3 categories, one was the brothers that came along with him, the second was strong men that could scavenge and hunt, the third were women. All the weak men were killed by him.
Everyone feared him and no one dared to go against him. There was once a person caught him killing a woman and shouted profanities at him to stop. In the end, the man was chopped into pieces in front of everyone else.
It was done in a flash, Liu Tou traversed over 10m and cut the man in half, then slowly chopped him into pieces. Everyone vomited from the scene, while only Liu Tou stood over the corpse with a smile on his face. The fear of Liu Tou embedded deeply into the people’s hearts.
Li Zhu was a well-behaved man, and a well-behaved man had their sense of intellect. Although he could not see eye to eye with Liu Tou’s methods and was afraid of him, he kept everything buried deep within his heart. In front of Liu Tou, he behaved extremely obediently and slowly got accepted by Liu Tou, and even gained the qualifications to wield a rifle.
Their camp was not far away and someone saw Zhang Xiao Qiang’s fleet and reported to Liu Tou. Originally, they thought that they were not prepared to stop Zhang Xiao Qiang and his team, but who would have known that Zhang Xiao Qiang had decided to stop the fleet at the entrance of their camp.
As to what Zhang Xiao Qiang saw, a few men wielded bows and arrows and attacked Zhang Xiao Qiang from the front to attract his attention while a few men wielding rifles sneaked behind him in an ambush attempt. Who would have known that their movements would be discovered by Three who was behind? Although around a dozen of them had rifles, they had limited bullets. They never thought that Zhang Xiao Qiang’s firepower would be so powerful that they could not retaliate.
Their initial plan was to wait for Zhang Xiao Qiang and his team to deplete their bullets until the artillery shell that exploded in front of them did they realize they had attacked a hornet nest. In the end, their empty rifles and fear caused them to turn and run. But due to the darkness, no one knew where they were running, so all of them decided to hide it out until daylight. That was how they were caught by Zhang Xiao Qiang and his men.
The further they walked, the more captives they found. Out of them, four or five of them tried to resist, which resulted in bullet holes in their body and leaving them to die.
“That is Liu Tou’s old mate, we heard that they were in prison together…”
Listening to Li Zhu’s explanation, Zhang Xiao Qiang finally understood the background of Liu Tou and the few others, they had escaped the prison together with Brother Long, He Wen Bin had said that there were a total of around 10 of them but they only saw 7 or 8 of them, either engaged in a firefight or zombie horde, but Zhang Xiao Qiang could not be bothered to think about it. He led his men and captives with Li Zhu taking the lead to their camp.
Even after they reached the foot of the hill, Zhang Xiao Qiang and the team never encountered Guo Fei. Lazy to send people to look for him, Zhang Xiao Qiang turned to Li Zhu: “How many people do you have in the camp?”