shame

Zhou Lexing's move took only a few seconds to demonstrate, but the people around him were stunned. The two people closest to him subconsciously took two steps back.

"Heh, I thought you were really knocked senseless, but it seems you still have some brains after all."

The person leading the way in the small warehouse slowly walked forward a few steps. By the bright moonlight tonight, Zhou Lexing could still vaguely make out the other person's appearance.

This man was tall with a round, fleshy face and a faint double chin. His sinister single eyelids were softened by his chubby face. He had a malicious smile on his lips and was putting on a contrived act of a gangster boss.

Zhou Lexing frowned: "You're Liu Wu?"

These days, it's not easy to find a fat guy. Thinking back to what the long-haired man had said, Zhou Lexing couldn't help but sigh. He really did look like he had eaten a lot of oil.

When Liu Wu heard Zhou Lexing's question, he assumed that Zhou was deliberately trying to embarrass him. His face twitched involuntarily, but he suppressed his anger and continued to maintain a half-smile: "Yes, I am your father!"

The people behind him immediately burst into laughter as a gesture of respect.

Zhou Lexing didn't engage in verbal sparring with him; he simply exerted force with his hands. The man being suppressed thought his arm was about to break and cried out in pain, immediately silencing the dry laughter.

Liu Wu's face turned as black as the bottom of a pot.

Zhou Lexing didn't beat around the bush: "Where's Li Cheng?"

Upon hearing this, Liu Wu became smug again: "Look at me, I just praised you for being clever, but it turns out you're still a fool."

After Liu Wu finished speaking, he deliberately paused for a moment, but the group of people behind him, suppressed by the previous screams, were now looking at Zhou Lexing's big brother with a bit of tension. They didn't react for a moment, and the opportunity to support him just passed by.

Liu Wu looked back in annoyance, and the group of people chuckled weakly.

Zhou Lexing was starting to have trouble keeping up with these people's thought processes: "Give Li Cheng back, and I'll return him to you, otherwise..."

"Ahhhhh! No, no, no! My hand, my hand!" The person was in so much pain that tears streamed down their face. Their face was pressed directly onto the gravel, and they almost swallowed a mouthful of sand while crying out for mercy.

Liu Wu sneered again: "So you're a fool. Li Cheng is living the high life at home now, why would he need you to stand up for him?"

Zhou Lexing looked up at Zhou Bobo, who had been sitting on the ground without reacting.

Zhou Bobo kept his head down, almost as if he wanted to crawl into a hole in the ground.

Zhou Lexing's sense of unease along the way was confirmed. Strangely, he felt no anger, but simply asked him, "Were you the one who went up the mountain with me that day?"

Zhou Bobo looked up after a while, and seeing that Zhou Lexing was indeed staring at him, his face, hidden in the dim light, turned even paler, but he still nodded with difficulty: "Brother Le, Xiaoxiao and I didn't mean it. This is the only lie I've ever told you in my life. I had no choice. He waits for my brother outside the elementary school every day, I..."

At that time, Liu Wu's men frequently contacted Zhou Bobo. After the original owner noticed this, she invited Zhou Bobo to go to the mountains. Zhou Bobo and Zhou Xiaoxiao were very familiar with their boss's temperament. Zhou Xiaoxiao was afraid that something would happen, so she insisted on following behind them.

Just as Zhou Lexing was about to attack Zhou Bobo, Zhou Xiaoxiao struck him from behind. The two of them ran away, never expecting that this would cause the original owner to hit a sharp rock and die. However, it was the original owner's impulsive act of taking action that finally made Zhou Bobo agree to Liu Wu's words and put on this show, taking advantage of Zhou Lexing's amnesia.

As Zhou Lexing listened to Zhou Bobo's incoherent words, fragmented memories suddenly connected in his mind. In a daze, he seemed to see Zhou Bobo lying on the grass, begging for mercy with a look of fear on his face. Gradually, his image overlapped with Zhou Bobo's face covered in tears in front of him. Then, his perspective suddenly rose, and he saw the cause and effect from a strange God's-eye view.

All of this flashed through Zhou Lexing's mind in the blink of an eye. Zhou Xiaoxiao's fear and tension, Zhou Bobo's sadness and terror when he was suspected, and the original owner's ruthlessness and darkness when he wanted to kill him overwhelmed his thoughts. Zhou Lexing remained still and slowly nodded: "Okay, I understand. You can go back now."

Zhou Bobo stared at him in shock.

Even Liu Wu, who was waiting to see a good show, couldn't stand it anymore: "What the hell do you mean?! I just beckoned him to bring you here. Now that you're in, don't even think about leaving unscathed! And you still haven't reacted? Are you even a man? I think you're really not smart enough! Your head is practically bubbling with stupidity!"

Liu Wu spent so much effort to lure Zhou Lexing here, not to see Zhou Lexing's nonchalant and annoying demeanor! What he wanted to see was Zhou Lexing enraged, breaking down, and then being beaten to a pulp by his men!

"You son of a bitch! Don't just stand there like idiots! If you kill someone, it's on me! I'll cover their family's meat expenses for a year!"

These words immediately caused a stir among the crowd, who no longer cared about the guy who was being pinned to the ground with snot and tears streaming down his face.

Zhou Lexing knew that things would not end well today, but he did not expect this fat man to have such a bad temper. He still did not understand what grudge the original owner had against this Liu Wu. Sure enough, he still needed to take the initiative first in order to get the information out of him.

Seeing the group of people surrounding him, Zhou Lexing didn't hesitate any longer. He simply grabbed the arm of the man on the ground who was groaning, and with a crack of bone, the man screamed again and couldn't lift his arm anymore.

The people who surrounded him remained unmoved, each holding wooden sticks, hoes, or other objects as weapons. Some even brought a large cleaver for slaughtering pigs, clearly aiming to kill him.

Zhou Lexing swept his foot across the sand, picked up the wooden stick that had been thrown on the ground earlier with one hand amidst the dust, grabbed Zhou Bobo who was too weak to get up with the other hand, ran forward for a while, and then simply pushed him forward.

"run!"

Without him, Zhou Bobo might still be able to survive.

With him around, neither of them will survive.

Zhou Lexing didn't take it seriously and ran in another direction. Sure enough, the crowd surged towards him. He was fast, and the tail chasing behind him didn't even touch him.

Liu Wu stood at the entrance of the small warehouse, waiting and waiting, but the group of people did not bring Zhou Lexing over, nor did they see Zhou Lexing in such a miserable state.

It was pitch black here, and we couldn't see what was going on ahead.

He paced impatiently back and forth in front of the small warehouse, but after a few laps he was panting heavily, and his suppressed temper couldn't help but flare up again.

"Damn it! You, and you, split up and go see what's going on! Damn it! A whole group of us can't catch a single person! What are you all good for! A bunch of useless cowards!"

Liu Wu was so angry he wanted to jump up and down, but his weight wouldn't allow it. He mustered his strength and berated the few people who stayed by his side, which made him feel a little better.

Their original plan was quite good; they only thought of locking Zhou Lexing, whom they had tricked, in a small warehouse. Whether he lived or died was up to them. But Liu Wu really didn't expect that this mad dog, who would bite the hand that fed him for a single curse word, would be so cowardly as to turn around and run away.

"Damn it! He always talks so big, but he's just a coward."

Are you talking about yourself?

Liu Wu was so angry that he cursed and swore. Suddenly, he heard someone dare to talk back to him. He immediately glared at them, only to find that the person he had been looking around for was standing right behind him.

"you……"

Liu Wu was shocked. Of the four men who stayed with him, two were sent out to check the situation, while the remaining two had silently collapsed to the ground and remained motionless while he was pacing around and swearing.

Zhou Lexing flashed a bright, harmless smile, but before he could react, he grabbed Liu Wu by the neck.

Liu Wu immediately struggled, but he couldn't budge the rock-solid arm. He managed to gasp for breath, but couldn't make a sound. Soon his eyelids drooped, and his arm went limp. Only Zhou Lexing's support from behind prevented him from falling and causing a big commotion.

"Tsk, it's quite heavy."

We definitely can't stay here any longer.

Zhou Lexing hoisted the small three-room-sized body onto his shoulder and turned to run into the dark, overgrown weeds behind the small warehouse.

After an unknown amount of time, the bright moonlight was once again obscured by the clouds. One by one, the thugs, who had returned empty-handed, returned to the small warehouse, only to find that Liu Wu, who had planned the whole thing, was no longer there, and even his good brothers, who were always by his side, were lying on the ground, fast asleep.

They didn't dare to make a sound to disturb him, assuming that Liu Wu had gotten impatient and gone home to sleep. After exchanging glances, they all went home dejectedly.

After all that work, they hadn't caught a single person. Forget about a year's worth of meat, they probably wouldn't even have enough for two ounces of meat.

When Liu Wu woke up groggily, the first thing he heard was the clear sound of flowing water. He closed his eyes and opened them again, finally confirming that the dark figure in front of him was Zhou Lexing, whom he hated with a passion.

"You son of a bitch, huh!"

Liu Wu had barely uttered his vulgarities when he felt a sharp pain in his eye, realizing he had acquired a panda-like eye.

Zhou Lexing squatted down in front of him, looking nonchalant: "Go ahead and curse me. Every time you curse me, I'll hit you. You get to curse me to your heart's content, and I get to hit you to my heart's content. How fair is that?"

What kind of fairness is this?!

Liu Wu was so angry he almost vomited blood. He was panting heavily like a bull. He wanted to fight back, but found himself tied up like a dumpling, making it difficult to even move.

"You, you, you..."

His voice trembled with anger, and he couldn't utter a single coherent sentence.

Seeing that he finally understood the situation, Zhou Lexing asked, "Why did you set a trap to harm me?"

These days, there's an invisible barrier between villages. If Liu Wu were to lead a group of people to surround him in Zhoujia Village, it could easily escalate into a conflict between villages. So Zhou Lexing could understand why Liu Wu went through all this trouble, having Zhou Bobo lure him there. He just couldn't understand why this man could spend so much time, energy, and money to gather so many people to deal with him.

What a deep grudge that must be.

Sure enough, upon hearing Zhou Lexing's innocent question, Liu Wu trembled with rage: "You! You're allowed to strip me naked and throw me in the pigsty, but I'm not allowed to have someone beat you up?!"

After Liu Wu finished speaking, the fear deep within him surged again, mixed with thick hatred, causing him to choke back tears as he accused, "You son of a bitch! All I did was curse you once! How dare you, how could you...!"

Liu Wu suddenly recalled the terror and helplessness he felt when he regained consciousness in the pigsty. He remembered the shocked and ambiguous looks in the eyes of the people from the pig-raising cooperative who came to check on the pigsty. In the blink of an eye, the whole village knew about it. He felt utterly ashamed, his father was furiously cursing him, his mother was weeping, and the neighbors were pointing fingers and whispering...

Liu Wu remembered!

Liu Wu remembered everything!

"ah--!"

Those humiliations he had tried so hard to forget were so vivid in his memory, as if they had just happened that morning. Liu Wu suddenly screamed, finally unable to hold back, and burst into tears.