Chapter 18

Tong Shu and the others didn't sleep for long, since the assault boat was still parked downstairs. As soon as the alarm rang, she got out of bed; it was only four in the morning.

Tong Shu called Qin Xiaoxiao and Wang Jie, and the three of them went out with flashlights. Today, they planned to drive the speedboat to the small square in the community as soon as possible so that the residents in other buildings could also exchange their vegetables for fresh ones.

However, to their surprise, before they even reached the place where the assault boats were moored, they saw that the corridor was crowded with people. This made Tong Shu frown. Usually at this time, most of the residents here would still be resting at home. Could it be that they had discovered his vegetables?

Someone in the crowd spotted them and waved, calling out, "Xiao Tong, Xiao Tong! Is this your family's inflatable boat?" It was Zhang Ming, the young man who lived in apartment 1203.

Tong Shu nodded: "What's wrong with the speedboat? We went to H City yesterday and got a batch of vegetables. We plan to exchange them for some daily necessities with our neighbors when it gets light."

As Tong Shu and her two companions approached, everyone spontaneously made way for them. Only then did Tong Shu see clearly that a body, pale from being submerged, was lying on the stairs near the water. Tong Shu was so shocked that she trembled and took a step back. It was Wang Jie who caught her from behind, preventing her from tripping and falling on the stairs.

Wang Jie told Tong Shu to stay at the back of the crowd while he went forward to check. Although Wang Jie wasn't a native of this neighborhood, he had an excellent memory. He remembered that when the Tong family lent out the lifeboat, the person had said something, and it seemed to be a resident living downstairs.

"Oh dear, what's going on? Why are so many people gathered here?" A male voice came from behind. Hao Dadong pushed his way through the crowd to the front. "Ah! Isn't that Teacher Sun? He... he's dead!"

Zhang Ming said to Wang Jie, "Teacher Sun is a good swimmer. Lately, he has been taking advantage of the night when no one is around to go into the water to retrieve things. He brings out any usable supplies during the day to exchange with everyone. He originally invited me to go into the water with him, but my girlfriend was scared to be home alone at night, so I didn't go."

Looking at Sun Xiaolong's body, Zhang Ming felt extremely sad: "If only I had gone with him, with one more person to take care of him, he might not have died."

"Oh dear, going out at night is dangerous. Teacher Sun wanted to earn more money, but she ended up getting herself into trouble."

"No matter how good you are at swimming, it's useless. The water is so deep now. He's just reckless. If he just bumps into something in the water at night, he'll be dead."

...

Ignoring the surrounding residents' chatter, Wang Jie reached out to check Sun Xiaolong's clothes.

"Hey! What are you doing? Teacher Sun is dead, why are you still messing with him!" Hao Dadong stepped forward and grabbed Wang Jie's hand.

"What are you doing! Stay away from my brother!" Qin Xiaoxiao stepped forward and tried to pull Hao Dadong away.

Wang Jie also waved Hao Dadong's hand away with disdain, and turned to the gathered crowd, saying, "I don't think Teacher Sun's cause of death was simply drowning."

"What nonsense are you spouting! The person is soaked in water, what else could it be but drowning? Do you really think we're all illiterate? Don't try to scare us!" Hao Dadong shouted, pointing at Wang Jie.

"This... if it wasn't drowning, what else could it be?" an older woman in the crowd said, her voice trembling as she covered her mouth.

Wang Jie pointed to Sun Xiaolong's neck and said, "There are purple bruises on his neck and scratches on the back of his hands. Judging from these two points alone, he may have been in a fight before he died..."

Before Wang Jie could finish speaking, Hao Dadong suddenly pointed to Sun Xiaolong's chest pocket and said, "What's this?!" He then stepped forward, unzipped the pocket, and took out two tomatoes.

"These tomatoes belong to your family, right? I bet Sun Xiaolong is a thief who came here to steal things. Your family caught him and beat him to death and threw him in the water!" Hao Dadong said, feeling increasingly convinced of his deduction. Pointing at Wang Jie, he added, "Now they've come back, pretending to investigate Sun Xiaolong's death. I think they're just crying wolf!"

Wang Jie jumped to his feet: "What nonsense are you spouting!"

Tong Shu had recovered. She deliberately avoided looking at Sun Xiaolong's corpse, reached out and tugged at Wang Jie's clothes, pulling him to her side. Then she narrowed her eyes and looked at Hao Dadong: "Hao Dadong, when did you get here?"

"...What are you doing?!" Hao Dadong shouted, his voice trembling with fear.

"He came downstairs not long after you arrived," an old man nearby chimed in.

"Did someone tell him that we loaded tomatoes onto our speedboats?" Tong Shu asked the crowd for confirmation.

No, no.

“We had no idea there were tomatoes in the speedboat. We were terrified when we saw Xiaolong dead here.”

"Yeah, yeah, if someone dies here, who cares about a speedboat!"

...

As everyone spoke, their gazes toward Hao Dadong became quite subtle.

Tong Shu's inflatable boat was moored outside and had been carefully covered with a tarpaulin all night. Hao Dadong, feeling guilty yesterday, had pulled at the tarpaulin after stealing the vegetables, trying to cover up some traces of his crime. He didn't expect that this would give Tong Shu something to hold against him.

"Stop your fucking nonsense! I saw it with my own eyes, there are still some vegetable leaves on the ground! Where else could they have come from if they weren't from the assault boat!"

When everyone looked down at the ground, they saw that there were indeed some crushed lettuce leaves.

"In short, I'll examine the body carefully; at the very least, I can't let Teacher Sun die without knowing why..."

"Xiaolong!" Before Wang Jie could finish speaking, a person rushed out from the crowd, threw himself onto Sun Xiaolong's body, and burst into tears.

"My son! Xiaolong, wake up!" Sun Xiaolong's mother cried out in a hoarse voice. Then, an elderly woman, supported by a little boy and leaning on a cane, squeezed to the front. When she saw the figure lying on the ground, she trembled violently, rolled her eyes, and fainted.

The crowd suddenly became noisy. Wang Jie couldn't care less about Sun Xiaolong anymore and rushed over to rescue the old man, who was Sun Xiaolong's father.

The scene was chaotic.

Taking advantage of the chaos, Hao Dadong secretly ran back to the 12th floor and hid in his home, clinging to the wall.

"Damn it, this Tong Shu is really troublesome. I only said one wrong word and she caught me." Hao Dadong took the towel that Shi Pingxiang handed him and wiped the cold sweat from his head.

"Dad! You shouldn't have gone. If they suspect us, how can we stay in this building?" Hao Jia complained.

"What do you know! Someone died, and no one from our family went. Wouldn't that make people more suspicious?" Hao Dadong glared at Hao Jia. "Anyway, the Sun family has already discovered that Sun Xiaolong is dead. His parents are too old-fashioned to let Tong Shu and the others perform an autopsy. We'll just insist that we didn't know anything. What can the Tong family do to me then?"

Hao Jia thought about it and agreed. The world was already in such a mess, and countless people had died from natural disasters. Who would care about someone like Sun Xiaolong?

When Sun Xiaolong's father, Old Sun, woke up, he was devastated. Just as Hao Dadong had predicted, he refused to let Wang Jie investigate the cause of Sun Xiaolong's death. He only asked two kind neighbors to help carry the body back home, planning to find someone to bury it in the mountains behind the community in a few days.

The two elderly people even blamed the Tong family a little. Their son died next to their inflatable boat. They couldn't say it was their fault, but it was related to the Tong family. Their son had never been in trouble before when he was retrieving things at night. Why did something happen to him after they parked the inflatable boat in the stairwell?

Sun Xiaolong's son, Sun Chengcheng, stared at his father's stiff corpse, clearly too frightened to speak, and simply stood there dumbfounded with his grandparents.

Tong Shu and the others didn't say anything more. Qin Xiaoxiao felt sorry for the Sun family, who had lost their only breadwinner overnight, and secretly slipped a few chocolates into Sun Chengcheng's pocket.

The three returned home and told their elders about it.

Everyone found it hard to believe. They trusted Wang Jie's judgment; as a doctor, even if he hadn't studied forensic medicine, he had some understanding of the subject. If Sun Xiaolong had simply drowned, they would only feel sorry for him, but if he had been murdered, or that his drowning was caused by someone else, it was terrifying. It meant that there was another murderer in their neighborhood.

"I think that Hao Dadong is very suspicious!" Qin Xiaoxiao said angrily. "He even said that we harmed Sun Xiaolong. I think he's the one crying wolf!"

“Hao Dadong is definitely not a good person,” Tong Songming said. “But now that there are no surveillance cameras and no police investigating the case, no one has any evidence to catch the murderer. We can only take care of ourselves. In this apocalyptic world, everyone is on edge. Knowing that there is such a person hiding among our neighbors, we need to be even more careful in our future activities.”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

"...Then, are we still selling our vegetables?" Shuya asked in a low voice.

"Sell, of course we have to sell," Tong Shu said. "Only when everyone knows that we have the ability to continuously transport fresh supplies will people trust us and rely on us, and only then will we and the supplies become safer and safer."

“Shushu makes a good point,” Wang Jianye agreed.

After finishing their meal, Tong Shu, Wang Jianye, and Qin Xiaoxiao went downstairs together. The three of them drove the inflatable boat to the original small square in the community. Wang Jie then went door-to-door to inform the residents of the apartment buildings that if they needed anything, they could bring their extra supplies to the small square to exchange for fresh vegetables.

Everyone had heard the news that Tong Shu and his family had brought back a batch of vegetables from H City that morning. Hearing what Wang Jie said, they were overjoyed and deliberately stopped thinking about Sun Xiaolong. They started rummaging through their homes to see what they could take to exchange for vegetables with the Tong family.

"Four baskets of vegetables are missing," Tong Shu said, counting the vegetables on the boat.

“Teacher Sun only had two tomatoes on him, so he probably didn’t take them,” Qin Xiaoxiao said. “He must have been framed by someone else; this person even stole our vegetables.”

"To risk someone's life for a few vegetables..." Wang Jianye shook his head and said no more.

One by one, people received the news and drove over in their own vehicles. Tong Shu and the others shut their mouths and stopped discussing, focusing on exchanging supplies.