"What's going on?"
After a while, Bingbing, whom Thomas Xu called, didn't come out, but Boss Hu came out wearing only shorts, his back bare, holding a can in one hand. He looked at the people outside with their heads down and hands raised, and immediately smiled as he walked over, strutting around and saying proudly, "Oh, have we captured some prisoners? What kind of people are you to dare to target our village? Don't you know this is a bandit's den? Hehe~ Our rule has always been to kill men and take women; are you delivering food to us?"
As Boss Hu said this, the seven or eight people in front of him instantly changed their expressions. Looking at the lewd man in shorts, they could guess with their toes that he was definitely not a good person. The beautiful young woman was even more terrified and began to cry softly, and the girl named Xiao Jie also shrank closer to the big bearded man, looking fearful.
"Get lost, Old Hu, don't scare the little girl; look how frightened she is!" Thomas Xu glared at Boss Hu with annoyance, walked over to the girl, smiled, and handed her the can, saying, "Don't listen to his nonsense. We don't kill people unless they provoke us. Here you go, your pineapple can!"
The girl glanced fearfully at the nearby Boss Hu, timidly took the two cans from Thomas Xu's hands, and held them in her arms. She then looked at Thomas Xu and asked shyly, "Brother... can I give one can to my sister?"
"Of course, it's yours once I give it to you. You can share it with whoever you want!" Thomas Xu casually nodded, took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, turned around, and handed one to Jack and the big bearded man. Then he stepped back a few paces, leaning against the pickup truck, and laughed as he watched the girl and the young woman devouring the canned food. He tilted his head and said to Jack, "Brother Lin, how are they going to handle this?"
Jack turned to look at the folding chair that Cao Mei had brought for him from the yard. He sat down with a cigarette in his mouth, exhaled a puff of smoke, and said to the big bearded man, "Alright, put your hands down. First, tell me what's going on!"
Upon hearing this, the big bearded man quickly shifted his gaze from the can in the young woman's hand back to Jack. He swallowed hard, slowly lowered his raised arms, and said, "Brother, we are all from Jiangcheng. We've been stuck in a hot spring resort in the suburbs. Since our food was running out, we had no choice but to come out!"
"Oh? That's not far from here! How long have you been out? What's with these guns?" Jack asked the big bearded man, a hint of amusement in his voice.
"We've been out for three days. We were all enthusiasts of live-action shooting games, and we secretly bought these guns through channels. Just before the doomsday hit, we were having a gathering at that resort. The gathering was almost over, but who would have thought that while we were eating BBQ and singing, the zombies appeared? There were originally twenty-eight of us, but after a few of us got eaten while trying to escape, only about ten of us are left… uh, now there are only seven!"
The big bearded man instinctively glanced at the few remaining people beside him, sighed deeply, and continued, "Brother, we didn't actually plan to threaten anyone with fake guns. But the day after we came out, we ran into a group of people who wanted to rob us of our food with real guns. We had no choice but to scare them off with our fake guns and ended up taking their food. I thought this place was full of women who wouldn't use guns, so…"
"So you thought it would be quicker to just rob for food, right?" Thomas Xu, standing nearby, sneered at the big bearded man and added, "Hmph, big beard, I really don't know whether to say you're lucky or unlucky. If you had come a few hours earlier, when Brother Lin and I hadn't drunk too much, your group wouldn't have had to die at all. Now look, most of your people are dead. This is what you call bringing disaster upon yourselves!"
"Well, today's incident is all my fault, so I ask you, brothers…" The big bearded man hesitated for a moment but still clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, saying, "You can kill me or do whatever you want, but please spare my friends and my wife. They are innocent, and I will bear all the consequences myself!"
"Husband (brother-in-law)…" The young woman, who was eating a pear, turned her head in panic to look at the big bearded man, and the girl also looked at him in shock.
"Hey, still a man of loyalty, huh?" Hu Laoda crossed his arms and stood confidently in front of them, but his expression was full of disdain as he looked at the big bearded man.
"What's your name?" Jack stared at the bearded man for a moment, then suddenly pulled out a cigarette from his pocket and tossed it to him.
The bearded man, somewhat taken aback, cupped the cigarette in his hands and didn't dare to light it in his mouth. He awkwardly held it in his hand and forced a smile, saying, "Big brother, my name is William Guodong!"
"Let's all go to the yard and have something to eat!" Jack said with a smile, getting up and walking towards the yard.
"Huh? Big brother, you're not going to kill me?" William Guodong shouted in surprise at Jack's back.
"Fool, if they wanted to kill us, would they invite us to eat?" The young woman exclaimed in delight as she came up to grab William Guodong, lightly tapping his arm and urging, "Hurry up and go inside, I can already smell the barbecue!"
There was indeed barbecue, as almost everyone had drunk too much tonight and their stomachs were empty. Plus, after scaring William Guodong and his group into a cold sweat, they felt even hungrier. So once the women saw the crisis was over, they immediately called for Chef William to arrange a late-night snack for everyone.
"Honey, you drank quite a bit tonight, have some kelp and ham soup to warm your stomach!" When Jack came in, Bai Ru immediately brought over a bowl of freshly made hot soup and pulled Jack to sit down at the desk.
"Come on, everyone find a place to sit. Now that the misunderstanding is cleared up, don't be so reserved!" After drinking a few sips of soup, Jack noticed a few people led by William Guodong cautiously walking in. He put down the soup bowl and waved at them with a smile.
"Hey! Hey!" William Guodong nodded vigorously as he approached, nervously wiping the sweat from his hands on his pants. After pulling out a chair, he didn't sit down but turned to the young woman behind him and said, "Yalan, sit down!"
"Hmm!" The young woman nodded gently, carefully leading her sister to sit beside the table. Looking at Jack, who had a warm smile on his face, she gave him a flattering smile and reached out to grab a bowl of ham soup from the table.
"Hey, hey, do you have any sense at all? Can you even drink this soup?" As Bingbing walked over with a large bowl, she immediately opened the hand that the young woman had extended, saying disdainfully, "This kelp and ham soup is reserved for my man and Lin Ye. We usually can't even get a taste of it, and you think you can drink it? If you want to eat, have this instead!"
As she spoke, Bingbing placed the large bowl of instant noodles on the table with a cold smile on her face. It was a whole bowl of steaming hot instant noodles. Although the noodles were plentiful and smelled delicious, for some unknown reason, they were all broken into halves, and two small chicken bones with bite marks were sticking out from inside. It was clear that this was a mix of leftover instant noodles from many bowls, hastily reheated for them.
The young woman retracted her hand with a somewhat unpleasant expression, not daring to show her displeasure to Bingbing, but she also did not reach for the bowl of beggar-like instant noodles. Instead, the man beside her, William Guodong, cheerfully took the bowl and gratefully said to Bingbing, "Thank you, miss. You've really helped us out. You have no idea, during the time when we were running low on food, we had to gnaw on pickled radishes for over a month. The sour water in my stomach was constantly bubbling up; I felt like I was turning into a sour radish myself. Now that I see this instant noodles, it truly feels like a feast!"
"Hehe~ If you like it, eat more! If it's not enough, there's plenty in the bucket over there!" Bingbing sneered dismissively, pointing to the food waste bucket in the corner. When she turned around and saw Thomas Xu stretching and walking over, her cold smile immediately transformed into a flirtatious grin. She sweetly picked up the ham soup from the table and handed it to him, saying in a pleasing tone, "Brother Xu, come drink some soup! Didn't you say you felt weak tonight? Drinking this hot soup will definitely give you some energy!"