Chapter 44: Difference of Opinion

While Lin Qingqing and the others were resting, Director Liu and his group were holding a meeting. The topic of their discussion was precisely the two newly arrived young women.

"I don't think we can let them leave," said the fat old man. Those two had saved the Wen family's daughter, and there was no way he was going to let the matter rest.

"And how do you plan to stop them if they want to leave?" someone asked, unconvinced.

"Hmph! Even if they want to leave, they have to deal with those monsters outside for us first." Another person, having witnessed the formidable combat strength of Lin Qingqing and her companion, wanted to take advantage of the situation.

"Didn't you call them witches earlier? Do you think they'll agree to kill monsters for you?"

"I wasn't wrong. If you hadn't seen those two young girls killing monsters, you'd know they're more monstrous than the monsters themselves."

"They beat up Old Zhang and Old Wang, too."

"Speaking of which, where are Old Zhang and Old Wang? Didn't that girl say they weren't dead, just knocked out?"

...

Who brought that up? Talk about touching a sore spot.

The group fell silent. There were no Old Zhang or Old Wang here anymore. At the time, everyone had been focused on saving their own skins and had long since forgotten about the two old men. By now, they were probably already zombie food.

At this thought, the atmosphere grew heavy. The people present felt both awkward and deeply afraid.

At that moment, a short old man stood up, offered a dry, awkward laugh, and smoothed things over. "We're all getting old, you know. Once people get old, their memory starts to fade. Cough—haha—wouldn't you agree?"

"Ah, yes, absolutely. Me too."

"Exactly, exactly. Me too."

"Couldn't agree more."

"My memory started slipping years ago."

...

Everyone chimed in, looking gratefully at the short old man who had made the initial suggestion. They felt he was wonderful, as he had practically voiced what everyone was thinking.

And just like that, amidst this chorus of shifting blame, Old Zhang and Old Wang were quietly written off.

"Cough—let's get back to business," Director Liu knocked on the table, skillfully steering the conversation back on track. He gave a deliberate cough and said:

"I also disagree with letting those two leave. Without Dazhuang and Chuanzi, who else here can kill those monsters? We're all a bunch of old bones and joints; what are we going to do when we need to go out for food in the future?"

"But how do we keep them here? We can't exactly lock them up, can we?" someone asked.

"Why don't we try talking to them properly? Appeal to their emotions and reason with them. Look, one of those girls even saved that little witch—oh, I mean, the Wen family's little niece. They must be good kids who respect their elders and cherish the young," suggested a bespectacled old man who looked rather refined.

"Do you think they're as easy to fool as Dazhuang and Chuanzi?" Director Liu disapproved.

"Then... how about I introduce them to some prospective partners? Look at those two young lasses, they're both bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and quite young, too. Anyone who has a suitable match at home should bring them forward and give it a try. In these turbulent times, as long as we can win them over, we won't even need to pay a bride price. Don't let such a great opportunity slip away."

It was Auntie Liu who made this suggestion. Only a community matchmaker like her, passionate about fixing people up year after year, could come up with such an idea.

As soon as Auntie Liu spoke, everyone felt a stirring of interest. Yet, as they looked around at one another, no one was willing to step forward and take the lead.

At that moment, a slightly plump middle-aged woman let out a scornful, cold huff. "Some wild girl from the boondocks thinks she's worthy of our Chenchen? Our Chenchen is the only male heir. The fortune-teller said we need to find someone young and plump, preferably born in the Year of the Horse. Those two scrawny things look like they wouldn't be able to bear children at all."

"Our boy is still too young; he's not suitable either."

"Your boy is already thirty, and you call him young?"

"So what if he's thirty? Your family has two sons, why didn't you spare one of them?"

"The two in our family are only in high school, not even of legal age yet."

"Who's issuing marriage certificates nowadays?"

"Without a certificate, that's just reckless behavior."

...

Once again, the crowd descended into an argument, opinions flying everywhere, yet not a single person stepped up to respond to Auntie Liu's suggestion.

Seeing everyone bickering into a chaotic mess and getting more and more outrageous, Director Liu covered his head in a headache and said, "Stop arguing, all of you. Those two girls might not even be willing. What's the use of arguing about all this nonsense right now?"

"Tsk—what could they possibly be unwilling about?" muttered the plump woman in defiance, only to shut her mouth sheepishly when Director Liu glared at her.

After discussing for a long time without reaching any conclusion, Director Liu had no choice but to wait for another day to sound out Lin Qingqing and the others before making further plans.

In any case, he was determined to keep those two women. In this apocalyptic era, two young females were scarce resources—to say nothing of the fact that they were supernatural ability users capable of both bearing children and fighting monsters.

From Director Liu's perspective, a woman was ultimately just a woman. Without a man backing them up, no matter how formidable those two were, they couldn't accomplish anything major.

"If negotiations fail, we'll just have to resort to some tactics. Desperate times call for desperate measures," Director Liu silently made up his mind.

While Director Liu and his cohorts plotted how to trap the two girls who had delivered themselves right to their doorstep, Lin Qingqing was busy trying to figure out how to persuade Lei Min to stay.

"Wen玲, do you know anything about the other people here?"

Lin Qingqing decided to start by gathering information about the residents of the residential compound from Wen Ling.

Wen Ling was young and didn't know most of the forty or fifty households here, but she was quite familiar with the more active ones.

Take the fat old man who cried over his grandson, for instance. They used to be neighbors living right above Wen Ling's uncle's family. After the apocalypse arrived, the fat old man's eldest grandson turned into a zombie and bit his own parents to death. The fat old man was quick-witted and managed to escape on his own. To this day, his zombified grandson was still locked inside their former home.

Then there was the woman who had leaned out of the second-floor window earlier to mock the crowd. Her surname was Liu, and she had a daughter who had moved back to her maternal home after a divorce, which caused the neighbors to look down upon her. When the apocalypse struck, her daughter was the first to awaken a water-type supernatural ability, but she was branded as a witch. Led by Director Liu, a group of people had forcefully tied her up and fed her to the zombies outside.

After her daughter's death, Auntie Liu had become somewhat unhinged. She never went outside, often grabbed people to hurl insults at them, or sat crying in the courtyard in the middle of the night. Director Liu couldn't do anything about her either, so he simply turned a blind eye and let her be.

There were a few other households like that, and now Dazhuang and Chuanzi had been added to the mix. Although Director Liu and his faction were domineering, undercurrents were surging beneath the surface of the compound, and more and more people were growing dissatisfied with them.

"Anyway, there's never a moment of peace in this compound," Wen Ling sighed like an old person.

It seemed this place was more than just ordinarily chaotic. Lin Qingqing pondered the information revealed by Wen Ling's words. Two female supernatural ability users labeled as "witches" had already been persecuted and killed by them; if not for her and Lei Min, young Wen Ling would have been the third.

"What do you guys think?" Lin Qingqing tentatively asked for Lei Min and the other's opinions.

"We'll leave as soon as Sister Lin recovers her health! I don't want to stay in this rotten place for even a single second!"

Lei Min said angrily, feeling thoroughly nauseated at the mere thought of Director Liu and his clique's faces.

"Then would you like to check out those supernatural ability users they mentioned? Perhaps there are some good ones among them," Lin Qingqing tried hard to divert her attention.

Hearing her words, Lei Min was somewhat surprised. Could Sister Lin be planning to save people?

"Alright then," Lei Min thought it was Lin Qingqing's intention, so she nodded in agreement.