Chapter 139: The Captive’s Testimony [Please Subscribe!]
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Li Bing sat in a chair, a table laden with delicacies before him, even boasting a bottle of rather fine-looking red wine.
People were born into different ranks. If class distinctions existed even in peacetime, what more could one expect from the apocalypse, where no laws remained to restrain anyone?
As the leader of this stronghold, Li Bing naturally enjoyed the highest level of treatment. The women, food, and drink were all the best available.
Even before the world fell apart, he had possessed considerable wealth. More than a decade of struggling in the business world had allowed him to establish his own enterprises in the county town. As it happened, he also owned a share in this residential complex. He had been inspecting the site with a group of men when disaster descended upon him without warning.
Some people survived, and thanks to his eloquence and experience, Li Bing quickly distinguished himself and was pushed into the position of leader.
As a businessman, Li Bing had never lacked beautiful women for company. Yet as a law-abiding citizen living within an ordered society, even his darkest thoughts had been restrained by the threat of bullets. His methods had been limited to the artillery of wealth, using money to strip away one veil after another.
But in the apocalypse, he no longer needed to suppress his evil impulses. Like the kings of old, he possessed absolute control over those beneath him. It was an unprecedented experience. The hypocrisy of the past gradually peeled away under the growth of his wickedness, leaving him a true tyrant.
This transformation had taken less than two months. It was enough to make anyone sigh in disbelief. Just how fragile was human nature, after all?
Several dozen zombies had suddenly appeared around Jingmen Huafu, but they had scarcely affected Li Bing at all.
The residential complex had not yet been incorporated into the city, so no access-control system had been installed. At the entrance stood only an iron gate meant to keep vehicles and people from coming and going. Fortunately, once closed, it had become Jingmen Huafu’s first line of defense.
Perhaps because the area was sparsely populated, the complex had never been developed. Normally, only a few wandering zombies passed through, giving Li Bing the opportunity to develop. Little by little, he had expanded his faction to its present strength.
Of course, there were quite a few zombies. If this had happened several days earlier, when large numbers of them still occupied the area, Li Bing might have panicked.
But yesterday, his subordinates had broken open the police station’s warehouse and discovered a cache of firearms. Using those weapons against slow-moving zombies presented no difficulty whatsoever.
Naturally, his men claimed to have found only six guns and a little over three hundred rounds of ammunition. But how could a police-station warehouse have such a pitifully small stockpile?
Li Bing thought of the honest, kindly face of his trusted subordinate, and suspicion had long since taken root in his heart.
No one was a fool. Even the teams sent out to explore knew to eat their fill and hide some food before returning to report their findings. As for firearms, such terrifying weapons of destruction—how could anyone possibly hand every last one of them over?
Still, Li Bing understood that perfectly clear water could not sustain fish. Besides, these were extraordinary times. As a businessman, he had countless ways to make his subordinates utterly loyal to him. To that end, he had even bestowed several young women from his own entourage upon them.
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He understood that for a business to endure, its leader needed not only a certain degree of strength, but also the ability to let employees receive their fair share. As long as everyone remained in a mutually beneficial arrangement, who would abandon the company or rebel for no reason?
Therefore, even knowing that zombies surrounded the place, Li Bing remained as calm as a fisherman waiting for his catch, quietly awaiting good news.
“Boss...”
A burst of hurried footsteps came from outside. A man with a bald patch in the middle of his head, leaving him with a distinctly receding hairline, came hurrying in.
“What is it? Is it over?” Li Bing leisurely lifted his wineglass and took a sip.
His orders had been simple: if the zombies did not attack the complex, remain where they were and observe. If they attacked, open fire and kill them in order to defend the stronghold.
From the elevated position, with firearms at their disposal, there was no possibility of the zombies breaking in.
The man shook his head. “Boss, it’s not over yet.”
Li Bing furrowed his brow. “Have the zombies begun their attack?”
“No.”
“Have they dispersed?”
“No, either.”
Li Bing’s expression darkened, and his voice became slightly hoarse. “Then what exactly is going on?”
The man wiped away a layer of sweat before saying, “After those zombies came over, they didn’t approach us. They’re just standing scattered around the perimeter, as if they intend to seal off our escape routes. More than that... it’s almost as though they’re observing us!”
Zombies observing a human stronghold? It was absurd!
“Take me there and let me see for myself!”
If Li Bing had still been composed before, irritation now enveloped him completely. He simply could not believe that the usually frenzied zombies would obediently stand to one side without coming within a step of the complex.
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Li Jinyan stood where he was. Even after an entire night had passed, his mind remained hazy, unable to believe that what he had experienced was reality rather than a dream.
A stronghold of more than a hundred people consumed an astonishing amount of supplies each day. Although everyone received a small ration of food, it was no more than the portion one might have eaten for breakfast in peacetime—and even that was far from enough.
To fill their stomachs, people had no choice but to summon their courage and search for supplies outside. Apart from obtaining enough food to survive temporarily, they would also receive twenty percent of whatever they brought back.
When it had happened, Li Jinyan and his longtime partner, Fang Zhou, had been outside searching for food. Then, without warning, they were attacked by zombies. He had watched helplessly as Fang Zhou was torn apart and devoured. Within only a few minutes, he had been reduced to a scattered mass of limbs.
Just as Li Jinyan found himself with nowhere left to flee and believed he was about to die, the bloodthirsty zombies suddenly stopped chasing and biting him. As though frozen in place, they stood rigidly where they were.
After that, Li Jinyan witnessed a scene that nearly shattered his mind. A young man arrived before him, surrounded by a throng of zombies.
The young man asked him several questions: where he had come from, how many people lived in the stronghold, and whether its leader had committed any acts so heinous that they offended both heaven and humanity.
In that state of extreme confusion, Li Jinyan naturally told him everything without reservation. Among other things, he revealed all that Li Bing had done during that period.
“Has he come out?”
A cold question came from behind him.
Li Jinyan suddenly shuddered. He stopped drifting in thought and strained to look ahead, stammering, “Not yet... He hasn’t... Wait! There he is!”
At that moment, Li Jinyan suddenly spotted the target. He pointed desperately at the familiar face that had just appeared above the wall and said, “Li Bing! That’s Li Bing!”
“That’s him?”
Fan Li stood in the center, flanked on either side by two monsters unlike ordinary zombies: Button and Whistle.
After hearing the captive’s testimony, Fan Li had confirmed that the so-called leader had fallen into darkness and committed crimes for which death was too lenient a punishment. He patted Button on the shoulder and barked, “Time to get to work!”
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