Volume One, Chapter 12: Looking for Trouble?
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A day passed, and Villa No. 18 halfway up the mountain had been scrubbed spotless by Ning Jue and the others.
It was the fourth month since the apocalypse, and the temperature had soared to forty-eight degrees Celsius.
Perhaps because he had awakened a supernatural ability, Ning Jue was not particularly sensitive to changes in temperature.
Ning Lin, Qi Zheng, and Xie An, however, had already downed three bottles of herbal heatstroke medicine.
The slightest movement left them drenched in sweat.
Some of the food they had bought from the grocery store had also spoiled in the extreme heat and could no longer be eaten.
“A three-story mansion, and we can only hide out in the basement. What a miserable existence.”
Xie An waved the palm-leaf fan he had picked up from the street, his head hanging dejectedly.
“If the temperature keeps rising… I’m afraid we’ll…” Qi Zheng did not finish.
But the three people in the basement understood perfectly.
They had not awakened any abilities. If the heat continued, death was all that awaited them.
At that moment, Ning Jue was securing wire mesh to the villa walls.
Every few centimeters, the mesh was fitted with iron spikes. Fastening it to the walls would keep looters from climbing inside amid the chaos.
“Emergency announcement! Emergency announcement!”
A booming broadcast echoed from the foot of the mountain, but Ning Jue paid it no attention.
For the past two days, a broadcast had sounded at the foot of the mountain every three or four hours.
The first time he heard it, he had made a special trip down to investigate. It had been an armored military vehicle broadcasting a call for refugees to gather.
The troops stationed in Fengxiu City had a glorious record of military achievements throughout history.
Since the beginning of the apocalypse, they had done everything in their power to maintain order throughout the city.
As a result, Fengxiu City had not descended into the kind of chaotic bloodshed seen elsewhere.
But things were different now.
The Awakened had begun to appear, and people were naturally being divided into clear levels.
Ning Jue admired the troops’ conduct, but he still did not dare take his friends and family into danger at a time like this.
When he finished his work, he looked up at the sun. The intense light stabbed at his eyes, making them difficult to keep open.
Then he thought of Qiao Yuan’s refreshingly cool grocery store and decided to pay her an early visit.
……
……
At six in the morning, Qiao Yuan was roused on schedule by the system notification for the daily mystery box.
With her eyes half closed, she tapped one at random.
Her luck was rather good today.
She drew a green cartoon frog whistle.
[The Honest Child]
[Instructions: Good children must never lie. When you want someone to tell the truth, simply picture what they look like and blow the whistle. For ten minutes, the person targeted will answer every question truthfully.]
[Note: Can only be used once per day.]
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There was already a cord attached to the frog whistle, so Qiao Yuan simply hung it around her neck.
After breakfast, she went to the grocery store and began preparing the medicines and food listed by Ning Jue.
Although the store was small, it stocked everything from rice and flour to cooking oil.
Her grocery store rarely had customers, but that morning, for once, an older woman came in and bought several packets of pickled vegetables and sausages.
By noon, Qiao Yuan was nibbling on a slice of bread while packing antibiotics, painkillers and anti-inflammatory medicine, heatstroke prevention medicine, and hemostatic drugs. She labeled each category and placed everything into a shopping cart.
Just as she straightened up, preparing to rest for a while, a deafening wail erupted outside the grocery store.
“Help! What a crooked shop! Qiao Yuan, you shameless little fraud! My stomach! It hurts so much I’m dying!”
Qiao Yuan opened the main door and saw the older woman from that morning rolling around on the ground in front of the store. By then, the neighbors had already gathered around her.
When Qiao Yuan looked up again, she saw Chen Wei approaching from a distance, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his pace leisurely and unhurried.
Hmph. That rotten old man was trying to extort her?
“What’s going on? Why are you making such a racket in the middle of the day?” Chen Wei asked as he pushed through the crowd.
The older woman on the ground immediately launched into a superb performance the moment she saw him.
“Village Chief! You have to stand up for me! This morning, I bought two packets of pickled vegetables and a sausage from Qiao Yuan’s grocery store. After I ate them, my stomach began to hurt! There must be something wrong with the food she sold!”
Qiao Yuan raised an eyebrow. This woman was notorious in the village for her shrewish behavior. Just last month, she had staged a traffic accident in the city and extorted twenty thousand yuan from a driver.
Before Qiao Yuan could react, Chen Wei turned to her with a stern expression.
“Qiao Yuan, the villagers let you open this grocery store because they thought you were an honest girl. Look at the mess you’ve made now.”
“Your Aunt Wang is already in poor health. What if she ate your expired food and something happened to her?”
Qiao Yuan spread her hands. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
The moment she heard the word ambulance, Aunt Wang sat bolt upright.
“I’m not going to the hospital! They’ll pump my stomach and stick tubes in me. My body couldn’t endure that!”
“Then what do you want?” Qiao Yuan asked.
“Money!”
“You want me to pay you th—”
Chen Wei shot Aunt Wang a meaningful glance, and she immediately understood.
“Fifty thousand! Pay me fifty thousand, and we’ll call it even.”
Qiao Yuan knew this had been Chen Wei’s idea. Today was merely a test. If she handed over fifty thousand yuan, tomorrow it might be one hundred thousand, or even two hundred thousand.
Whatever happened, she had to get through today first.
Under the bewildered gazes of the crowd, she lifted the whistle from her chest and blew into it softly.
“Aunt Wang, why does your stomach hurt?”
Aunt Wang’s mind turned to mush. Her eyes went blank as she stared at Qiao Yuan in confusion.
“My stomach hurts? My stomach doesn’t hurt.”
“Then why did you come here to cause trouble?”
Aunt Wang thought for two seconds, then turned to Chen Wei.
“The village chief paid me one thousand yuan to come here. He told me to buy food from your store, pretend my stomach hurt, and extort money from you.”
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“Bullshit! You foul-mouthed woman, what nonsense are you spouting?” Chen Wei turned pale with shock.
“I’m not spouting nonsense. Your wife called me to your house yesterday. You said Qiao Yuan had recently made a fortune, and you wanted to use the matter of repairing the ancestral hall to get some money from her.”
“You also said she was an ungrateful fool who didn’t know she was supposed to show respect to the village elders when opening a shop, and that she had no respect for you. You said this would teach her a lesson.”
“Stop talking!” Chen Wei roared furiously. He tore off his cap and hurled it into Aunt Wang’s face. “You useless wretch! Who told you to frame me?”
He snatched up the broom lying on the ground and raised it to strike Aunt Wang.
The onlookers grabbed hold of him and tried to reason with him, finally managing to restrain him.
By then, ten minutes had passed.
Aunt Wang suddenly came back to her senses.
What had she just said?
How could she have revealed such a secret?
When she saw the vicious, murderous look on Chen Wei’s face, Aunt Wang was terrified.
Qiao Yuan raised her phone and said with a beaming smile, “I recorded everything~”
“You all heard it too. You’re witnesses.”
Aunt Wang scrambled to her feet in panic. Her stomach no longer hurt.
Chen Wei glared viciously at Qiao Yuan before storming away.
The people at the entrance gradually dispersed, some leaving and others wandering off.
Only then did Qiao Yuan turn around.
She had just pushed open the grocery store’s main door when she collided head-on with someone.
“Huh? You—you’re here?”
Qiao Yuan looked up and found Ning Jue standing before her.
He frowned as he watched the crowd that had just dispersed outside.
“They actually bullied you like that.”
Bullied her? Qiao Yuan thought about it. That was one way to put it.
But judging from what she knew of Chen Wei, the man was sinister and vicious. Since he had failed to gain anything today, there would certainly be another trap waiting for her in the future.
Just as she expected, Chen Wei was smashing cups at home.
“Damn it! That little brat actually turned the tables on me!”
Shen Xiu picked up an enamel cup and asked cautiously, “Old man, it didn’t work?”
Seeing Shen Xiu only made Chen Wei angrier.
“That Wang Cuiying you found is completely useless. Qiao Yuan asked her two questions, and she blurted everything out. Now look what’s happened!”
“Now everyone knows I paid her to extort money!”
“Dad, why are you so angry? Wouldn’t it be easy to deal with that little girl?”
Chen Wei and Shen Xiu turned toward the bedroom doorway.
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