In another villa in the villa district.
A jeep drove into the courtyard. Two men dressed in camouflage jumped out of the vehicle. One of them actually had an American M9 rifle slung across his back.
They entered the villa. In the living room, five or six men were either sitting or standing around. One of them sat leisurely on the sofa, holding a Beretta 92F pistol in his hand and gently wiping it with a piece of cotton cloth.
“Brother Zheng, the two villas next door have both been cleared out. We can have the brothers go over and move the stuff in a while. We sent Aran and Axia to guard the main gate,” the man carrying the rifle said to the man sitting on the sofa.
“Atao, how many people are still in the villa district?” the man called Brother Zheng asked.
“There are more than a hundred villas here. You said not to alert anyone, so we didn’t go check them one by one. From a distance, it looks like around twenty households still show signs of living people. Some of the houses look like no one has lived in them for a long time.”
The one answering was still the man carrying the rifle.
“Old Wu, how are the things on your end coming along?” Brother Zheng asked again.
On the other side of the sofa, a middle-aged man who had been doing nothing but looking down at his phone raised his head and answered, “Just as you instructed, everything from the warehouse has been moved here. Every brother has a gun, and there are plenty of knives, so they can take whatever they want. The only problem is that we don’t have many bullets.”
“That’s fine. Those monsters outside aren’t hard to deal with. Knives are enough. As for ordinary people…” Brother Zheng gave two cold chuckles. “Just scare them with a gun, and they’ll obediently listen.”
“Brother Zheng is right,” Atao, the man with the rifle, immediately chimed in. “When we went to deal with the people in the neighboring villa just now, they dropped to their knees in fright before we even took out the guns. One stab each, and we took care of them.”
“Hey! Were there any women?” A young man who had been fiddling with the tableware at the dining table in the living room suddenly raised his head and asked.
“Yes,” Atao replied unhurriedly.
“Fuck! And you killed them? You should’ve brought them back! The brothers have been pent-up for days!” the young man snapped.
“You should’ve said so earlier. I would’ve brought one back for you. How was I supposed to know you’d even take a sixty-year-old woman?” Atao burst out laughing.
“Fuck!” The young man cursed and gave Atao the middle finger.
The others also broke into laughter.
“Enough.” Brother Zheng spoke. “Women aren’t going anywhere. What’s the rush? Wait another two days, then we’ll make our move. Atao, tomorrow, you and Old Wu will go door to door and knock. See if there are any tough nuts to crack.”
“Yes, Brother Zheng,” Atao answered.
The others also stopped joking. It was clear that Brother Zheng carried considerable authority among this group.
“Make your acting convincing. Don’t go up to people looking all vicious, like you’re afraid they won’t realize you’re a bad guy.”
Hearing that, Atao replied with a grin, “Got it, Brother Zheng. I’ll make sure to play the part of a helpless victim asking for help.”
The others all let out sinister chuckles.
Just then, a woman walked out of the kitchen. She wore heavy makeup and revealing clothes. Holding a tray in her hands, she walked toward Brother Zheng under the greedy and lecherous gazes of the men.
Brother Zheng grinned wickedly and hooked an arm around her waist. She let out a soft moan and immediately went limp into his arms. The fried rice on the tray shook and nearly spilled over.
The woman said coquettishly, “Brother Zheng, you’re so naughty! I brought you your food.”
“Good. I’ll eat you and the food together.”
Brother Zheng laughed and, right in front of everyone, ripped off the woman’s top.
The woman gasped and collapsed into Brother Zheng’s arms. The other men let out all sorts of suggestive laughter.
Only the young man stood up somewhat irritably. He scratched his head and asked the person beside him, “Where’s that old bald guy?”
The person beside him stared at him in surprise. “Don’t tell me you’ve gotten so worked up that you’re interested even in that old bald guy?”
“Bullshit!” The young man nearly smashed the cup in his hand into the man’s face. “I’m going to beat that old bastard up and blow off some steam!”
“Go ahead, go ahead,” the man teased. “The old man’s kneeling in the bathroom, facing the wall and reflecting on his mistakes. Just don’t kill him. Brother Zheng said he’s still useful.”
“I know.”
The young man irritably raked his fingers through his hair, shook out his hand, and headed toward the bathroom.
Not long afterward, a man’s miserable scream came from inside the bathroom.
The woman trembled in Brother Zheng’s arms when she heard the scream, then immediately began giggling coquettishly again and went along with him.
The Li Family Villa.
Quan Xiaoyu remained silent until he had finished all the food on his plate.
During this time, what he had mainly been thinking about was whether he should tell Li Nan about the space.
If he didn’t tell him, how would he explain the disappearance of all these supplies? He had promised Li Shunwei that he would always take care of Li Nan unless he himself died. In the days to come, the two of them would have to depend on each other and live together. Keeping such a secret from Li Nan would not only make life inconvenient, but might also damage the trust between them.
Li Nan was practically a child he had watched grow up. He knew the character of both father and son in the Li family well. Li Nan had always been an upright and kindhearted child. Although the brutal changes he had gone through and the tests of human nature had made the boy more sensitive and guarded, judging from Li Nan’s behavior, he had not lost his conscience because of it. Instead, he had become even more mature and strong.
Li Nan needed to know this secret, and he had earned the right to know it.
Quan Xiaoyu had once wrongly trusted Jialun Xu and handed everything over to him. Even so, he still believed that the prerequisite for gaining someone’s trust was to first give them your own trust.
He had been blind once, but he couldn’t be blind every single time.
If he kept being blind, then he would deserve to die. Who else could he blame?
“Xiaonan, come with me. I have something very important to talk to you about,” Quan Xiaoyu said seriously.
His seriousness made Li Nan somewhat nervous. He nodded and followed Quan Xiaoyu to sit down on the sofa in the living room.
The two sat facing each other. Quan Xiaoyu looked directly into Li Nan’s eyes and said, “I’m only going to say what I’m about to tell you once. But this concerns my life and safety. It may concern yours too.”
Li Nan became even more nervous. He looked back into Quan Xiaoyu’s eyes without even daring to blink. He swallowed and nodded hard.
“Whether it’s that girl named Yuning or you, both of you have obtained special abilities. For now, let’s call them supernatural abilities.”
He paused and only continued after Li Nan nodded.
“And I have obtained a special ability too.”
Li Nan nodded and seriously began counting on his fingers.
“Xiaoyu-ge has become stronger, faster, and also…”
He stopped and carefully looked Quan Xiaoyu over.
“You’ve become younger, and even more… handsome.”
That last sentence nearly made Quan Xiaoyu choke. He looked somewhat embarrassed and waved his hand.
“Cough, cough. That’s not important. What’s important is that, besides becoming stronger and faster, I’ve gained another ability.”
Li Nan’s eyes widened as he stared at him.
“I don’t know whether you can understand the concept of a ‘space.’ It’s like… I can sense a separate space, one different from our three-dimensional world, where I can store things according to my thoughts. Other people can’t see it or sense it.”
Quan Xiaoyu tried his best to explain the concept of a space in a simple and understandable way. What he described was the state of an ordinary spatial ability user’s space.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Li Nan. It was just that his own space was too strange. If Li Nan accidentally let something slip in the future, not only would Quan Xiaoyu be in danger, but Li Nan, as someone who knew about it, would be in danger as well.
If it were merely an ordinary spatial ability, then even if it attracted people who wanted to fight over it, he would not be regarded as some kind of abnormal existence and become a target of even greater covetousness.
As Li Nan listened, his nervousness gradually turned into excitement.
“I know! A space is like an inventory bag in a game, or Doraemon’s pocket, right, Xiaoyu-ge?”
His eyes sparkled as though he had discovered a whole new world.
Quan Xiaoyu gave a dry laugh inwardly.
Great. A child’s imagination really was amazing. Now he didn’t have to rack his brains trying to explain it.
“That’s more or less what it means. So…”
“So all the stuff in the house can be put into your space. If someone comes to rob us, we won’t have to be afraid anymore, right?”
Quan Xiaoyu was instantly filled with awe at a child’s imagination.
It seemed he really didn’t need to explain anything else.
Judging by Li Nan’s expression, he didn’t care at all where Quan Xiaoyu’s ability had come from. He acted as though it was only natural that Quan Xiaoyu should possess such an ability.
Quan Xiaoyu had no idea what Li Nan had imagined in his head, but in any case, not having to explain himself further was a very good thing.
“Xiaoyu-ge, when do we start?”
“Start?” Quan Xiaoyu was momentarily confused.
“Putting everything away! Put all the useful things into the space!”
Li Nan’s eyes were shining so brightly they seemed about to glow.
Quan Xiaoyu couldn’t help smiling wryly. He wasn’t an impatient person by nature. He had originally wanted to inspect the basement first, but Li Nan was eager to get started and looked unwilling to wait even one second.
Faced with this rare display of childishness from Li Nan, Quan Xiaoyu chose to indulge him.
He let Li Nan pull him by the hand to the storage room, where he put everything inside into the space.
Watching the supplies disappear into thin air, Li Nan looked astonished. Then he made Quan Xiaoyu bring the vanished things back out for him to see.
When he watched things suddenly disappear and then appear out of nowhere, Li Nan marveled over it again and again.
After his amazement subsided, he grabbed Quan Xiaoyu’s hand and dragged him straight to the third floor, declaring that they should start hiding everything in the display room on the third floor.
Quan Xiaoyu could neither laugh nor cry as he went along with his fussing. At that moment, he was absolutely convinced that Li Nan was without a doubt Li Shunwei’s biological son.
The father had a defensive obsession and had built himself a fortress. The son was no less extreme. He wanted to hide every single bit of their supplies away and seemed unwilling to leave even a single strand of hair outside.
Thus, under Li Nan’s obsessive instructions, Quan Xiaoyu emptied every room on the third floor.
He didn’t even spare the original belongings in the rooms, muttering to himself that they might be useful someday and shouldn’t be wasted.
A moment later, he asked Quan Xiaoyu whether the space was full yet, worrying that there were still things downstairs that they hadn’t managed to put away.
Li Nan had completely worn Quan Xiaoyu down. He could only tell him that it wasn’t full.
“It has plenty of room.”
Li Nan immediately grabbed him happily and dragged him down to the second floor.
Another thorough sweep followed on the second floor. If Quan Xiaoyu hadn’t persuaded him that the two of them still needed to live there and that they had to leave the necessary daily necessities in the house, Li Nan would have wanted to empty the entire second floor as well.
It wasn’t until Quan Xiaoyu repeatedly promised him that they would take those things with them whenever they eventually left that Li Nan finally gave up.
Author’s Note:
Guess who that woman is.