Chapter 83

Ye Xiao fretted for a moment, convincing himself it must be his imagination; even if she'd coddled him like a child, it was simply evidence of her concern for him.
Once he settled that, another thought struck: they had been that close the whole night? Had they slept in each other's arms like that?
This development felt sudden; Ye Xiao was a little stunned. More importantly, he felt it was a serious, meaningful step, and yet it had happened so muddled and unplanned that he felt both guilty and a touch regretful.
They hadn't announced their relationship, hadn't arranged a nicer room, hadn't chosen a special day, no ceremonious dates, promises, or proposal, and they certainly hadn't married...
Stop! Ye Xiao cut off his fantasies, rubbed his temples, and felt that the six hours from last night still left him disoriented, his head was fuzzy.
A small movement woke Lin Tantan. Seeing him pressing his head, alarmed, she quickly grew worried, "Are you still feeling bad?"
Ye Xiao lowered his hand, looked at her, and, without obvious awkwardness, shifted back a little and sat up. "No. Thank you for last night," he said.
Lin Tantan sat up too, and then realized her left arm was completely numb. Ye Xiao hurriedly kneaded it. "You don't have to put up with me like this. Next time I lay my head on your arm, just push me away." He paused, then changed his tone, "No, next time don't worry about me. Go back and sleep by yourself."
He'd been too tired last night and hadn't been able to hold out; otherwise he should have sent her back to rest first.
But Lin Tantan was thinking of something else. "You're working yourself too hard. We don't know how many days this will last, why don't we try to draw this toxin out?"
She explained to him the principle she'd used to treat Mei Baisheng back then, saying they could try the same method to extract that strange energy from his body.
Ye Xiao fell silent, holding her arm and not speaking for a moment.
Lin Tantan was wearing a thin sweater; the cuffs were a little long, but if you peered past the sleeve edge you could still see the missing part of her left arm. Ye Xiao respectfully didn't stare, he even avoided that spot when he massaged her arm, but now, through the sweater, he gently took hold. "So you channeled that zombie energy into your own body?"
He'd suspected as much, but thinking it over still made his chest tighten. He put on a stern face. "So this time, you're planning to channel the energy into yourself again?"
"Uh..."
"And then slice a piece off yourself again?"
"Well..." That sounded so strange. Lin Tantan scratched her cheek. "Look, my hand's slowly growing back. It's almost to my wrist."
Ye Xiao gauged the length through the sweater; it really was true. He asked carefully, "Can I have a look?"
Lin Tantan's answer was to roll up her sleeve without hesitation. "Go on, take a look." She was unusually generous about it, though she did find the stump a little ugly, Ye Xiao had seen it before.
Ye Xiao: "..." He found it odd. Sometimes she was shy and awkward around him, but more often she was breezy and unconcerned, as if dealing with a brother.
His feelings of pity and protectiveness had nowhere to go; it left him a little bemused.
He looked openly at her arm. It had been hidden under clothing and had never seen the sun, so it was particularly pale, soft and plump to the touch, surprisingly healthy.
Ye Xiao cleared his throat and fixed his gaze on the missing part. It wasn't ugly, just a bit strange. Compared with when the wound was fresh it had grown at least three centimeters; it really was almost to the wrist, and it wasn't hard to imagine the entire hand growing back before long.
If such strange things happened to someone else, Ye Xiao might have found them odd, but with Lin Tantan it felt natural, she was, after all, an unusual person.
He was glad for her, but still warned, "It's good that it's growing back, but don't go thinking you can just regrow and cut it off again whenever you please, grow a bit, cut a bit. Do you think you're a cucumber?"
Lin Tantan: "..." She blinked wide-eyed, not daring to believe she'd been teased.
Ye Xiao amusedly ruffled her hair, making the strands even messier. "Anyway, don't even think about channeling my energy, and you're not allowed to use this method to treat anyone else. I absolutely refuse."
Lin Tantan frowned. "But..."
"Don't worry for now. This toxin should be good for me," Ye Xiao added.
Lin Tantan was surprised. "How do you mean?"
He wore a thoughtful expression. "I feel like it's modifying my body. I can't explain it clearly yet, but it should be more beneficial than harmful."
Lin Tantan was about to press him for details when there was a loud pounding on the door. She was still lost in guesses about that strange energy, if Ye Xiao said it was harmless, then it probably was.
She'd only ever heard about people who ate mutated or anomalous materials and changed their physiology, gaining some opportunity. For a sinister, gaunt man's ability to have such an effect, if true, that man could have become an inexhaustible source of body-modifying energy!
He could have been a treasure for the whole base. Were they really going to kill him? No, he'd probably brought it on himself.
What a waste!
Lost in such messy thoughts, she reflexively went to open the door, completely forgetting whose room it was.
When she opened it there was no one outside; peering out, she saw Jiang Xiaotian knocking on the neighboring door.
Clutching his stomach and white-faced, Jiang Xiaotian widened his eyes. He looked at Lin Tantan, hair a mess, clothes wrinkled, clearly just out of bed, then glanced between the two rooms. "Am I hallucinating? Tantan, is this your room? Ah, never mind. Tantan, I drank that pork-rib soup downstairs and now my stomach feels like there's a rock in it. Am I dying?!"
He hugged his stomach, his face ghastly, and lunged to grab Lin Tantan's shoulder, draping himself all over her.
He really couldn't hold on, just climbing the stairs had used up all his strength.
Before he could fully hang on, a powerful hand reached from behind Lin Tantan and scooped him up. Ye Xiao's stern, frowning face appeared. "How much did you eat to get yourself like this?"
Jiang Xiaotian was stunned; he looked at Lin Tantan and then at Ye Xiao, whose clothes were even more wrinkled. "You, you..." Before he could say anything more, his eyes rolled back and he collapsed.
It was as if he'd fainted from fright.
Lin Tantan: "..." Was that necessary? They'd only come out of one room, was the shock really that great?
With the commotion she felt embarrassed too and didn't look at Ye Xiao's face. Glancing at Jiang Xiaotian's condition, she said, "It's nothing serious, he overeaten some anomalous ingredients and can't digest the energy, so his stomach is bloated. Make him vomit for now. Ahem, I'll go change my clothes first."
With that, she slipped away.
Ye Xiao glanced at his clothes, shriveled like dried pickles from being soaked, then at Jiang Xiaotian, who looked like a dead hog. He resigned himself to dragging the man up and, without an ounce of gentleness, rousted him awake and told him to make himself vomit.
Lin Tantan changed her clothes, washed up, and came out to find Jiang Xiaotian had already finished vomiting. He sat on the sofa with bloodshot eyes and skin as white as a sheet, looking like a rabbit, vacant and pitiful.
Lin Tantan tended him. "How much did you eat? Your stomach's about to be ruined."
"It smelled good!" Jiang Xiaotian rubbed his eyes. He'd barely finished his chores and come back; when he saw the big pot of meat soup he helped himself to a huge bowl, ate blissfully, fell asleep, and was then woken by stomach pain.
"Food with anomalous power, a little is fine, but eat too much and you'll get into trouble. We've had patients like this at the clinic; some, unaware, ate too much and dropped dead," Lin Tantan told him.
Jiang Xiaotian hunched his shoulders. "It's not that extreme, food can't kill you that easily, sigh." Then he slid back into gossip mode, flirtatious: "You and the captain, hehe, when are you two going to have a wedding feast?"
Lin Tantan blinked. Ye Xiao, who'd heard, put a hand on Jiang Xiaotian’s shoulder and hauled him up. "Feeling better? If so, go get some sleep." He scolded Jiang Xiaotian's "hehe" with a glance and added, "Tantan was helping me with treatment, don't get any silly ideas."
He glanced at Lin Tantan. "But a wedding feast will come sooner or later."
That was essentially a declaration of their relationship. Lin Tantan opened her mouth but said nothing. Jiang, acting as if he'd been given an order, trotted off cheerfully. He planned to stroll around before napping, and when he wandered to the back of the villa he heard a big splash followed by a scream: "Ah, when did a puddle appear here!"
A puddle? What puddle? Lin Tantan suddenly realized, could it be the water she'd been dumping from the second floor yesterday? She'd been emptying and refilling a tank every few minutes for four or five hours; that adds up.
She ran to the backyard and found a huge hole had somehow appeared, filled with water. Three-Root and the mutated rats were splashing around in it; no doubt they'd dug the pit themselves, likely burrowing directly beneath where she'd been pouring water.
And now there was Jiang Xiaotian paddling in the pool, the little creatures all staring wide-eyed at his performance.
...
After breakfast, Lin Tantan left with Ye Xiao, there was a meeting today and Ye had asked her to come along.
At the construction site the perimeter wall was already finished: the lower half a solid wall, the upper half formed into attractive decorative cutouts, topped with sharp stone spikes and an electric fence. Directly ahead were two large iron gates, and beside them a security booth manned around the clock.
Lin Tantan gaped. "When I was here before they'd only done a little over half, it's all finished already?"
The car stopped at the gate; the guards came out and only let them in when they recognized Ye Xiao. The road was dirt but well compacted, so the drive was steady. The car parked in front of a completed building opposite the gate. It wasn't a skyscraper, but a central functional building, the core of the site.
Lin Tantan stepped out and looked up at the three-store building. It was only coated in cement, without paint or tiles, but next to the base's many haphazard, ramshackle structures, some verging on slum housing, this one looked positively grand.
The first floor was tall and spacious, with a large conference hall that could hold over a hundred people, plus a small meeting room and a reception room.
The second and third floors were all offices, divided into many functional departments: population and information, weapons, resource allocation, warehouse management, medical, ability consultation, job assignments, market transactions... everything was laid out properly.
These offices weren't just coated in cement; they'd been skim-coated, and the doors and windows were proper wooden doors and aluminum-frame windows. The whole place was neat, square, and well-lit.
Lin Tantan toured the areas and felt amazed. "This is really well done." She'd been to Lu Jianping's office building before, and it wasn't this nice.
Ye Xiao smiled from behind her. "This building is our front, of course we had to put some effort into it. Time was tight and materials limited, so it's only just presentable for now. We'll make it better when we can."
Lin Tantan said, "Given the circumstances, this is already great."
Coming down the stairs, Ye Xiao pointed to a two-store building under construction on the left. "That's for your clinic."
Lin Tantan was a little surprised. "This scale, isn't it a bit large?"
"We built it first. If you want a big clinic, run it big; if you prefer something smaller, the extra space can be used for other things. The small building behind the clinic is for weapons.” Ye Xiao then pointed to the right side of the functional building. "Over there are the canteen, the market area, and the waterworks."
Lin Tantan looked at the buildings being constructed over there. There had been nothing there before; now the first floor was already going up.
The large tract of land behind the functional building was also filled with houses under construction, mostly residential areas and several large storage buildings, which would serve as warehouses for grain, weapons, and other supplies. They'd already been set up and were being guarded.
Further back, near the mountainside, there was a modest-sized cultivation area.
Even though she had a rough idea of the layout before, seeing it now gave Lin Tantan a different feeling: it was like watching her home being built little by little.
Ye Xiao looked at her and suddenly said, "Tantan, what do you think we should call this place?"
"Huh?"
"Other groups have names like the Qingying Society or the Red Eagle Gang, we should pick a name too."
Lin Tantan's mind gave a little twitch: "The Azure Dragon Gang."
Ye Xiao: "..."
"Hahaha, just kidding. What do you think we should call it?"
Ye Xiao didn't want something that sounded too bandit-like, nor did he want a name with a martial flair, something like Flying Eagle or Blazing Fire. He leaned toward more hopeful, unifying themes. He briefly considered Chaoyang, but thought it lacked force, so he settled on the character Yang, to evoke sunshine and hope.
"The character Yang is good, so righteous and warm," Lin Tantan said.
Something stirred in Ye Xiao's chest. "Then let's call it Zhengyang."
Lin Tantan blinked. A name that would only appear years after the end times was being used now, then she laughed. "That's nice. Always keep a righteous heart, be an upright person, always hold hope and strive for it, the meaning is excellent."
Ye Xiao smiled too; their thoughts had indeed been in sync.
After a while more people arrived, and Ye Xiao led Lin Tantan to the large assembly hall.
On the stage was a row of long tables and a number of seats below. Lin Tantan was led up to sit, then watched people file in, some she recognized: Jiang Zhongyi, Ming Ze, Yang Xinyu, Zhao Yidan, Fan Fang... but most were strangers.
Everyone summoned here today was a core member. Once the seats filled, Ye Xiao began to speak, first outlining the state of the world and the country: how many people had died across the globe, how many had perished within the nation, how many provinces and cities no longer had functioning governments, and how the capital, the country's heart, had descended into chaos. Bases scattered across the country had become new power centers; only roughly half of them remained under official control.
Lin Tantan looked at him, unsure where he had gathered such detailed information. The point was clear: conditions were harsh, and threats came from the zombies, mutated fauna and flora, and even from other humans. To survive, they had to unite.
He rattled off a string of facts, but not a single wasted word. For the first time Lin Tantan realized how eloquent Ye Xiao could be, it sounded like a rallying speech, and it stirred something fierce in her. The people in the hall were even more fired up, almost ready to stand and shout slogans about building their own home with their lives.
She couldn't help but remember the first time she had seen Ye Xiao give a speech, when she was very small, watching the only surviving footage of him. It was just over a minute long and already a little blurred, but his powerful words had made her revere him as a guide, a beacon during the hardest, most desperate times.
And now she was sitting in a similar scene herself; she felt a little stunned, a little wistful, and above all quietly proud.
Ye Xiao wrapped up with a summary: from today on, their Zhengyang Base was officially established. Everyone present was a founding member and should stand united, and so on.
They were all excited and applauded in unison.
Then came the distribution of roles.
Before assigning duties, he announced the four leaders.
Ye Xiao would naturally be the captain, Bai Cheng the deputy captain, Xu Qin another deputy, and Lin Tantan...
When Lin Tantan heard her name she looked at Ye Xiao in surprise, was she really a deputy captain too?
It was clear, however, that her and Xu Qin's deputy titles were mostly honorary. Her real responsibilities were overseeing medical affairs and consulting on anomalous abilities; Xu Qin would head weapons development. Both roles were crucial.
The true leaders, in practice, were Ye Xiao and Bai Cheng. Ye Xiao handled overall coordination and decision-making; Bai Cheng managed the day-to-day details and practically everything else, the real administrator. That matched her memories.
They then subdivided into combat teams, medical, planting, logistics, construction, information technology, weapons, law enforcement, administration, and so on. Bai Cheng read the lists; some were so long he skimmed through them, promising that full postings would be displayed later.
Lin Tantan took the roster and was impressed. The "more than two thousand core members" Ye Xiao had mentioned had indeed been assigned across the various groups, no one was left idle. Even family members had been placed, many into miscellaneous logistics teams.
She found her own medical team: of course she was the leader, Ming Ze the deputy. The rest of the list had only a dozen or so names, all familiar wood-type ability users she'd taught before. She sighed; her medical team was thinly staffed and short on talent.
Members of these functional teams had mandatory tasks to complete; these were the obligations and duties of Zhengyang Basr members.
For example, the combat squads were split into many shifts, which team guarded the base today, which patrolled or stood night watch tomorrow, all laid out on a roster. While on duty you had to follow orders; during off time you could do as you pleased. For the medical team there were scheduled clinic shifts: after your shift you could take private work or go home and sleep. A water-affinity woman assigned to administration might work in an office and then sell water from the plant after hours to help support her family, actions that were allowed and even encouraged.
Of course, different duties brought different rewards. The weapons team might get better housing; the logistics team might get less. Combat team members' families might receive preferential treatment while members of other teams would have to support their families themselves.
So people were encouraged to work hard, develop their talents, and transfer to better teams when possible.
Lin Tantan read the printed papers while Bai Cheng explained the rules. She nodded again and again, the semi-compulsory, semi-free system was well designed. It kept the group from becoming too lax without inspiring resentment from overly strict control. Most important, whatever benefited the team could be rewarded through various channels.
"One last important point, you might be wondering what the Enforcement Team actually does?" After Bai Cheng finished speaking, Ye Xiao added, "Qin Han, leader of the Enforcement Team, explain your main responsibilities."
Qin Han stood up. Lin Tantan found him a bit familiar, he was the man Ye Xiao had rescued from the police in Yang City. Rumor had it he was a veteran. He looked upright and serious as he began to outline the team's jurisdiction.
They handle theft, robbery, brawling, insubordination, acts that damage the collective interest, all of it. Once someone is caught and the evidence is clear, they're dealt with under the base's regulations: fined where appropriate, expelled when necessary. There are even prisons for those people and they must undergo forced labor. In extremely heinous cases, murder and the like, the punishment is execution by shooting.
When he finished, the assembly hall fell quiet. Many people exchanged stunned looks and whispered to one another, they hadn't expected anything like this.
If you asked which part of society was hit hardest by the apocalypse, the justice system would be high on the list. Take the Ning City base: even if people like Ding Jinbo thought it was decent, discipline there was still poor. Behind closed doors, injuries, killings, and looting were all too common.
The base simply didn't have the resources to deal with it. What could they do with lawbreakers? Locking them up means feeding them, and there wasn't food to spare. So for minor offenses they'd fine people and seize food and supplies; for serious cases they'd just execute them, both to dispose of the problem and to make an example.
Ye Xiao wasn't a base administrator and didn't have to worry about that now, but rules are necessary. Within the group he controlled, some disciplinary measures were still essential.
Ye Xiao said, "In special times we can't just copy pre-apocalypse regulations. The Enforcement Team has professional judicial personnel who can adjust the rules as needed. Of course there will be a public notice period; if anyone objects they can raise it then. Once the notice period ends the rules will be formally added to brigade regulations and everyone must follow them. If anyone can't accept that, they can leave Zhengyang at any time."
No one spoke. The atmosphere grew more solemn, Ye Xiao was satisfied. The meeting was drawing to a close. Finally he said the housing blocks weren't finished yet, so everyone should continue living where they were for now; when they were ready everyone would move in together.
Then Bai Cheng called out for each team leader to come up and collect their lists and go round up their members, say what's needed, make any adjustments, do the necessary mobilizing.
Lin Tantan had only a dozen or so team members, most working at the clinic beside the villas. There was no need to shout at them to rally; she was thinking about how to arrange those dozen people once the clinic finished construction and opened.
How busy the internal clinic would be depended on how many teammates got hurt or sick. Internal treatments didn't pay much, it was a friendly, internal rate: they'd accept a few crystal cores as a token for the energy spent. So they'd definitely need to keep the outside clinic open. How else would they make extra money?
Relying solely on the subsidies the medical team got from the base would only allow members to have an average life. To improve quality of life or the team's status, she as leader had to find other ways, the same for every team.
And there were too few people, even Xu Qin's weapons development team had more members than hers. It was embarrassing. After the meeting broke up and Ye Xiao was busy, Lin Tantan called Ming Ze outside to discuss how to recruit more capable and trustworthy people.
Ming Ze was at a loss. "Why not recruit from the wood-type ability users we hired at the clinic?"
Lin Tantan thought that might be their only option. They at least had more contact with those people, knew something about them, and it would be easier to observe them.
"The base will be expanding too. We'll post a recruitment notice for our medical team," Lin Tantan said with a sigh. "I thought Shao Ping would be good, but... talent is hard to come by."
Ming Ze froze for a moment and lowered his head. "Miss Lin..."
"Call me Leader, don't keep saying Miss Lin," Lin Tantan corrected him.
Ming Ze complied. "Leader, there's something I want to tell you."
His seriousness made Lin Tantan serious too.
Ming Ze's story was simple: he grew up in a single-parent household, depending on his father. His father died in a hit-and-run; the driver was drunk but the family had money and influence, so they covered it up.
Ming Ze nursed that grudge. Years later, after becoming a doctor, he encountered the same driver. Consumed by hatred, knowing the man had heart failure and chronic constipation, he swapped his constipation medicine. Not long after, the man strained while trying to relieve himself, suffered an acute myocardial infarction, and died.
Lin Tantan: "..."
Her face looked strange. "Constipation can be truly agonizing," she said. She once treated a very wealthy patient who'd suffered stubborn constipation; he'd tried every medicine with diminishing returns. After her regimen, he reportedly had several days of heavy bowel movements, lost twenty to thirty pounds, looked healthier, the bloating went away, his appetite returned, and at his follow-up he cried with gratitude, that shows how much he'd suffered.
Ming Ze: "..." Is that the point?
Lin Tantan looked at him with mixed feelings and sighed. "I can't really judge that. Since pre-apocalypse law failed to punish him, I'm not going to sentence you to death for it now. But don't do things like that again. If you harm anyone under my command in the future, I'll have no choice but to ask you to leave."
Ming Ze looked ashamed. "I won't. That man owed my father his life and escaped justice, which is why I... But I have no quarrel with others. I'll never do something like that again."
Lin Tantan patted his shoulder. "I won't punish you for the past, but things are different now and scumbags are more common. If you truly run into a bad person, you shouldn't just take it, if they have to die, they have to die. But don't use abilities meant to save people to kill. Getting addicted to it or ending up traumatized would be bad, right?"
Ming Ze was puzzled: "Then what should we do?"
"You tell me, I'll switch to a different ability and go kill him," Lin Tantan said with a smile, narrowing her eyes.
Ming Ze realized once more that his squad leader was a formidable sort.
After he laid the secret he'd buried in his heart out in the open, he felt much lighter; he no longer had to worry about someone using it to blackmail him. He knew he was guilty, but he was selfish, he didn't want this ruining his life now. He would save many, many people to atone for the sin of killing in the name of his profession; if that still wasn't enough, they could settle it with him after he died.
He smiled gratefully at Lin Tantan. Ye Xiao came out of the council hall, saw them standing together and laughing at each other, narrowed his eyes slightly and walked over. "Tantan, Ming Ze."
Lin Tantan told Ye Xiao about wanting to recruit more people. Ye Xiao agreed, the medical team really was too short-staffed.
Ming Ze said he had to head back to the clinic to handle some things. Watching his back, Ye Xiao glanced at Lin Tantan and couldn't help asking, "Do you really prefer that type of guy?"
Lin Tantan almost choked on her own saliva, widened her eyes and looked at him. "Why are you still hung up on this?"
Ye Xiao wore a self-righteous look. "Because I'm actually worried, you seemed to go along with it before."
She thought to herself, As if I went along with it, but she didn't want this misunderstanding to become something weighing on Ye Xiao, so she clarified, "I don't like his type, he looks too fragile. I don't like him. He only has a wood-element ability; sure, he can save people, but when danger comes he won't hold up. I don't like that."
The more she said it, the more Ye Xiao's mouth curved upward. She found it funny and enjoyed seeing him pleased. "I admire you more for being like this."
Ye Xiao looked at her. "And yet you said you wanted him as a boyfriend."
Lin Tantan: "..." This guy was so petty. She said, "I just blurted it out on a whim, I meant to use it as an excuse to turn you down when you came, but I immediately changed my mind and didn't bring it up again."
Ye Xiao was finally satisfied. Lin Tantan hurriedly changed the subject and asked whether it might be inappropriate for him to make her deputy captain, since even Zhong Xiong hadn't become deputy, he was one of the veterans of their team.
Ye Xiao told her not to worry. Zhong Xiong didn't care about those things, and his lack of an ability was a real weakness; he himself felt he couldn't control others, so naming him deputy would just invite trouble. As for Mei Baisheng and the others, they were junior in their seven-person squad and weren't thinking about deputy positions.
"As for you, you deserve the deputy post, and the others already know you're a five-ability user, they won't think anything of it."
"They all know? Ahem. Still, even if I had many abilities, I don't need to be deputy captain."
Ye Xiao laughed. "Fine, think that if you must. You can't hide being a five-ability user. Once people see what you can do, it looks bad to have you sidelined as merely the medical team's leader when you could be deputy in the Zhengyang Base."
I see, Lin Tantan thought, and decided she'd better stay the mascot.
And so the "Zhengyang Base" was officially formed that day. Soon the whole base knew, they were still recruiting. Although enlistment standards were strict and candidates had to pass many checks, word spread that food and lodging were provided, the pay and benefits were excellent, prospects promising, and internal roles well organized. From the outset it looked orderly and thriving, so many people wanted to join.
There were a great many applications. Fortunately, the base's administration split off a dedicated recruiting office from the population information department; a whole team took charge of background checks and visits, doing their best not to miss good talent and to keep ill-intentioned people out.
On the founding day, the newly formed construction crew was pulled together and went outside the wall to find land, start laying foundations and build houses.
There was no avoiding it, the houses there weren't nearly enough for five thousand people. They had planned to squeeze people in before, but with more land now they didn't need to cram together, and the population would only grow.
Ye Xiao had been assigned a fairly large tract by Lu Jianping, several streets, but he only took the right to use the area, meaning he could build on it freely. He wouldn't force the current residents to move, but to free enough space to build they'd inevitably have to tear down some old houses. So a relocation office was set up to negotiate with the long-time residents, provide them with new homes and compensate them for their old ones.
The locals could barely believe such good fortune and were overjoyed; who wouldn't want to live in the solid, spacious concrete houses of the Zhengyang Base? Even if the conditions were a bit rough, it was still a blessing, and the battalion would provide material compensation.
People in other places regretted not having chosen to live here earlier; now it wasn't so easy to get in. The original residents could continue living as before, but anyone else hoping to move in would have to get Ye Xiao's permission.
While construction at Zhengyang Base continued in full swing, another group of mercenaries arrived at the Ning City base. They were more professional than Ding Jinbo's five, they'd drawn up Plans A, B and C, divided roles clearly for who would do intel and who would tail, and they entered the base with confidence.
What they didn't know was that a previous group of their kind had already met their match here. Ye Xiao had raised his guard and embedded his people among the gate guards, who were highly sensitive to unfamiliar faces entering each day and carefully questioned anyone they didn't recognize.
Even though this new group of mercenaries tried to tone themselves down and act like ordinary people, their contempt for such a small base showed, they hadn't disguised themselves convincingly.
As a result, they couldn't even get past the first checkpoint. One by one they were detained. Pretending not to know each other did no good; Ye Xiao's gate team was razor-sharp, filled with veteran detectives and private investigators whose eyes, judgment and experience were all top-notch.
That evening Ye Xiao was notified that a group had been captured. He went in person to interrogate them and confirmed they were mercenaries hired to target Lin Tantan. They worked for a private organization in the capital, had nothing to do with Min Yande, and knew nothing about the mysterious device.
What to do with them? Seven men, killing them all seemed inhumane. Ye Xiao thought for a moment: "Aren't we short on cement for the construction? Send them all to help make cement."