Lu Bai didn’t answer, casually smoothing out a corner of the bedding.
Seeing this, Gao Pangzi tugged at the corner of his mouth and said, “Are you playing dumb with me?”
Lu Bai shook his head: “I just think this place is pretty good.”
“As a temporary settlement, this degree is enough to satisfy most people.”
Gao Pangzi turned his head and signaled his henchman to pull down the tent curtain.
Lu Bai acted as if he hadn’t seen it, flexing his fingers: “In that case, wouldn’t it be good to just stay put honestly?”
Hearing this, Gao Pangzi was so angry he started laughing.
“If I don’t… hey, fuck!”
His provocative words were only halfway out when he saw Lu Bai pull a Broomhandle Mauser from his bosom.
Gao Pangzi froze on the spot, cold sweat pouring down instantly.
He swallowed hard, forcing an ugly smiling face: “Little brother, don’t be nervous, I was just messing with you… just don’t let your hand shake.”
Lu Bai stared at him with a cheerful smile.
After all, with a gun pressed to his forehead, Gao Pangzi promptly yielded: “Cough, if you don’t like it, we won’t mess with you anymore.”
With that, he cautiously shrank back onto his own ground mat.
Lu Bai couldn’t be bothered to pursue it, tucking the Broomhandle Mauser back into his pocket.
It was worth mentioning that although the check in front of the gate was just to confirm if there were bite marks on the body.
But for safety’s sake, Lu Bai had only chosen to bring a Broomhandle Mauser inside, burying the Eight-Sided Han Sword by the roadside.
Now that he’d resolved this trouble with the Broomhandle Mauser, he couldn’t help but marvel at his own foresight.
To put it bluntly, Gao Pangzi was just an ordinary thug; even if he was burly, he was nothing special in front of Lu Bai.
But if it really came to blows, making too much movement would be troublesome.
Leaving aside how eye-catching it would be to carry a sword around everywhere, in terms of effect on ordinary people, the deterrence of firearms was clearly much stronger than that of a cold weapon.
Lu Bai smiled meaninglessly, then leaned back and lay down on the bedding.
He pillowed his hands behind his head, half-closing his eyes, looking for all the world like he was asleep.
At this moment in the tent, absolutely no one would check if he was asleep.
Gao Pangzi and the others huddled together, even unconsciously lowering their voices when speaking, and naturally had no mind to bully Cui Qing anymore.
Of course, Lu Bai really wasn’t asleep; he was checking the system panel.
The death fighter location info issued by the system indeed hadn’t updated yet.
He noticed that after the third announcement, the time intervals for the system’s location info announcements were gradually lengthening.
It started with announcements every two hours, slowly becoming four hours, eight hours, sixteen hours.
By now, over ten hours had passed since the last location info announcement, and the system still showed no movement.
Precisely because of this, his “hunting” efficiency for death fighters over the past few days had been disappointingly low.
The interval time was doubling gradually?
Lu Bai thought for a moment, then exited the system panel.
After all, his current rank was still first, so he wasn’t in a hurry.
By the same token, he figured the other death fighters’ efficiency probably wasn’t much higher either.
There were no entertainment facilities in the settlement; in this environment, even time seemed to slow down.
……
“…The more it benefits others without harming them, this is the Way of Heaven. The Way of the sage is to act without contention.”
After silently reciting it over thirty times, night finally fell.
During this time, Gao Pangzi and the others very perceptively got him a portion of food too; Lu Bai praised them for being sensible but had nothing else to say.
As for Cui Qing, he curled up on the bedding all afternoon, making no attempt to curry favor with Lu Bai for gain, nor any effort to ease relations with Gao Pangzi and the others.
Lu Bai thus enjoyed some peace and quiet, and didn’t resist this state of affairs.
“Notice: No passage allowed in ten minutes…”
The broadcast voice came from outside the tent again, and the crowd gathered outside chatting quickly dispersed.
Much like the midday process, medical staff in protective clothing came and went.
The difference was that this no-passage period would last until eight the next morning.
After all, cooped up in the tent with nothing to do, Gao Pangzi and the others chatted for a bit before going to sleep.
As time passed, the settlement gradually quieted down, leaving only the outside broadcast, volume lowered, still looping.
Lu Bai had originally planned to act under cover of darkness, but plans couldn’t keep up with changes.
With the system dragging its feet on announcing the death fighters’ location info, even if he wanted to make a move, he didn’t know where to find the objective.
Lying there on the bedding, enveloped in the pungent disinfectant smell, he drifted off to sleep in a daze.
He didn’t know exactly how long he slept.
Suddenly,
Lu Bai’s eyes snapped open, his gaze full of vigilance.
He smelled a thick bloody smell that even the disinfectant odor could hardly mask.
Strongly suppressing the impulse to get up right then, he casually scanned the situation inside the tent first.
The others in this tent all seemed to be in deep sleep, with Gao Pangzi rhythmically snoring.
Where was the bloody smell coming from? Next door?
Lu Bai hesitated for a moment, reining in the urge to go take a look.
No matter what, death fighters were still flesh-and-blood bodies at present and couldn’t directly confront an organized army.
Entering this temporary shelter meant the rules of the game had changed; the premise for “hunting” death fighters was not to expose oneself.
Considering the murderer might not still be in the neighboring tent, to avoid being mistaken for the murderer at the crime scene, Lu Bai simply did nothing—anyway, it would all be known after daybreak.
With this in mind, Lu Bai quietly lay on the bedding and didn’t fall back asleep.
It didn’t keep him waiting long.
Before dawn, the situation in the neighboring tent was discovered by a patrolling soldier, and soon dense footsteps appeared outside the tent.
Lu Bai kept his eyes closed, relying on his superhuman hearing to quietly listen to the movement outside.
“Fuck!”
“Hiss~”
Someone sucked in a sharp breath.
“Holy shit, what the hell is going on?”
“It can’t be that someone deliberately spilled un-congealed blood pudding on the bedding.”
Someone even had the mood to joke.
“How could it not congeal?”
“Stop being the straight man, hurry up and figure out what happened.” A calm voice interrupted the conversation without giving face.
……
Drip-drop~ Drip-drop~
It sounded like some kind of liquid being wrung out from fabric.
“Company Commander, there are no handprints, footprints, or any such traces left in the tent. Although we haven’t measured precisely yet, I estimate the blood collected from various spots in the tent adds up to maybe several dozen pounds—enough for a bath.” Someone reported the situation while clicking their tongue in shock.
“Cut the crap!”
That voice remained as calm as ever: “So in other words, all the blood from six people is here?”