Because of Zhuo Mingyuan's sudden breakdown, the dinner he'd promised to treat Ning Zhe and the others to fell through entirely. For refugees like them, spending several dozen or even a hundred yuan at a restaurant was never something to take lightly, so in the end they each just bought two bean cakes and left.
What happened to Zhuo Mingyuan didn't weigh on Ning Zhe's mood. He hadn't taken advantage of the man's money, and he'd helped him find a way forward, so as far as he was concerned, he'd done all that duty required. The refugee zone was full of tragedies just like this one, and even the softest-hearted person eventually grew a shell of stone around their heart out here.
The chubby young man, though, felt genuine sympathy for what had happened to Zhuo Mingyuan. Listening to Lin Xun recount the story, he'd even shed a few tears over it.
"Rumble!"
The moment the three of them stepped out of the restaurant, the roar of engines reached their ears. Glancing over, they saw a trail of dust rising along the dirt road in the distance, a column of horses closing in fast on the city gate, sending nearby pedestrians scrambling out of the way. Behind them, among four steel-frame vehicles, one had a wooden cross mounted upright on its rear, with a refugee bound to it, a black hood pulled over his head.
"Rumble, rumble!"
As the convoy drew near, the stronghold's massive gate slowly rose open. Two columns of guard troops emerged from inside to line the street and keep order, while the vehicles and horses swept through quickly, vanishing into the dark tunnel beyond the gate.
"Brother, did I see that right? The person tied up on that vehicle just now, was that... a refugee?"
Lin Xun watched the guard troops retreat back inside, the gate slowly lowering behind them. "What kind of crime could someone commit to get the guards driving out to make an arrest, and then hauled back into the city on top of it? I've lived here my whole life and this is the first time I've ever seen a refugee taken inside the stronghold! Don't they usually just execute people right outside the walls whenever something like this happens?"
"That many soldiers, all just to grab one refugee. Strange things keep piling up around this settlement lately." Ning Zhe narrowed his eyes, equally baffled.
"Brother Zhe, those big things that just went by, were those the legendary Hedgehog cars?" The chubby young man was still thoroughly stunned by the four vehicles. Having spent his whole life in the refugee villages, he always steered well clear of mounted mercenaries when he saw them, and this was the first time he'd ever laid eyes on actual guard troops. "I heard those cars are made entirely of iron. I can't believe how fast they moved! Though the smell of rust coming off them was pretty strong."
"That's not the smell of rust. That's blood." Ning Zhe corrected him, having caught the same iron-like scent in the air himself, his curiosity only deepening. Those soldiers had only brought back a single person, so why did the smell of blood hang so thick around them?
What exactly had they gone through out there?
"Dong! Dong!"
The bell inside the stronghold rang out, marking the hour. Lin Xun glanced at the last traces of orange light fading over the horizon. "Brother, sun's going down. Curfew's coming soon."
"Yeah, let's go." Ning Zhe took the lead, and halfway across the road, he noticed a long trail of blood dripped along the ground where the Hedgehog cars had passed, stretching all the way back to the city gate.
Nightfall was full of danger for refugees, but it also brought plenty of people their livelihood.
There were many gates around the stronghold. Besides the massive gates that led directly into the inner city, there were also many smaller barred gates meant for laborers. The workers in the outer city's industrial district worked around the clock in three or four rotating shifts, which meant even deep into the night, people were constantly passing through those gates.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Plenty of refugees dreamed of one day owning a place of their own in the settlement, since it would shorten the walk to and from work. Around Stronghold 87, no small number of people ended up attacked by beasts or simply vanished each year, on their way home from a late shift.
As darkness settled in, a red lantern rose above the gate of a large courtyard near the laborers' access route, a black square painted across its front.
This was the mark of the Black Banner Gang. Throughout the settlement, any courtyard hanging that lantern was one of the gang's brothels, where laborers could spend five yuan, or two cups of water, to pick out a man or a woman and satisfy whatever urges they carried.
Even with life this brutal in the refugee zone, plenty of people were still willing to scrape food and water from their own mouths just to satisfy the most basic urges of the flesh.
On this lawless wasteland, where order had been remade from scratch, plenty of the old rules no longer applied. Villains came in both men and women alike, and the Black Banner Gang's business ran best near the south gate, where the textile factory stood, staffed entirely by women. Those women, it turned out, spent even more freely on men than male laborers ever did on women.
"Bang!"
The sound of a fist slamming down on a table rang out through the brothel's courtyard. Inside the office, Xiao Qi, head of the Black Banner Gang, glared furiously at the young men standing before him. "What are you telling me? Something happened to my brother?"
"Brother Qi, we noticed Xiao Meng hadn't come back all night, so we sent people out to look for him. We found his body, and a few of his men, in an alley." One of the men facing Xiao Qi kept his head bowed, not daring to draw a full breath.
Though Xiao Qi was only twenty-three this year, he stood as the undisputed boss of his crew, not just for his ruthless nature, but because he had connections inside the stronghold itself. Once, a rival group in the settlement had tried to organize and muscle in on his brothel business, only to have the outer city's enforcement squad pin some trumped-up charge on them and hang them from the withered tree at the center of the square.
"Damn it! In this settlement! Someone actually dared lay a hand on one of my own men! You have two hours, you find me whoever killed my brother! I want blood paid back in blood!" Xiao Qi's chest heaved, his eyes sharp as knives fixed on the young man reporting to him. "Or your mother and your sister will be entertaining customers here tonight."
"Brother Qi! Please, calm down! I'll go find out right now!" The young man, his scalp prickling with fear, agreed at once and bolted from the room. He knew all too well that whatever came out of Xiao Qi's mouth was never an empty threat.
Half an hour later, the young man arrived at the alley where Xiao Meng had died, kicked open the rotting plastic door of one of the houses, and stepped inside.
"Aaah!"
A woman's scream tore out, following right behind the sound of the door bursting open.
"Fwip!"
Light from an oil lantern flared to life in the room. The young man looked at the middle-aged couple huddled inside. "We're with the Black Banner Gang. I've got one question for you. The young man who died in this alley today, who killed him?"
"I, I don't know! I only got home after dark, once my shift ended!" The middle-aged man's breath quickened the moment he heard who they were.
There was no law in the refugee zone, which was exactly why the refugee villages and the settlement had formed the way they had, a group of people huddling together for shared protection, in plain terms. The settlement's wardens took on a token role in keeping the peace, mostly just to justify their own positions.
But men like Ning Zhe, and gangs like the Black Banner, nobody dared touch.
"I never told you when he died, and already you're claiming you know nothing?" The young man gave a slight flick of his fingers. "Keep hitting him until he talks."
"Bang, bang, bang!"
The other young men swarmed in at once, and the middle-aged man let out a wretched howl.
The same scene was playing out in nearly every house along the alley that night, screams and curses blending into one another across the street.
"Stop! Please, stop hitting me! I really don't know anything!" After taking several blows, blood streaming freely from his nose, the middle-aged man curled up, clutching his head, begging over and over.
"Hsst!"
The young man raised the oil lantern he carried on a stick and lit the cigarette in his mouth, utterly unmoved by the man's pleading.
"Stop hitting him! If you keep this up, you'll kill him! I'll talk! I'll talk!" The woman beside him, seeing the state her husband was in, spoke through a face streaked with tears. "Earlier, when I went out to buy something, I saw Ning Zhe walking away from here. Later, when I came back into the alley, that's when I found the bodies."
"Ning Zhe? That death omen from the east side?" The young man's face darkened as he met the woman's eyes. "Why didn't you say so sooner?"
"We can't afford to cross people like you, but that Ning Zhe's no saint either. People like us, we don't want any part of this trouble. We just want to live in peace..." The woman, terrified and shaking, could barely get the words out between sobs.