"Bandits! Female bandits!!!" Cheng Ye huddled on the sofa, looking at the women in front of him in terror, hugging a pillow and trembling.
Cheng Zhi slapped him impatiently and made a shushing gesture, "Keep your voice down, are you going to wake Mom and Dad up?"
Sitting on the other side of the sofa, Xiao Feiran poured Cheng Ye a glass of hot water. "Little brother, you're wrong to say that. It was that person who tried to break into our house. We were acting in self-defense."
Huang Yiyi nodded in agreement, "Yes, if we hadn't struck first, we would have been robbed. You should thank your sisters."
Cheng Ye was still in shock, the scene from just now flashing through her mind again, and she still couldn't accept it. "I understand the logic, but you guys are way too skilled. And what you just did might have killed him."
Cheng Zhi couldn't help but tap Cheng Ye on the head, seeing him as a budding flower who had never experienced the devastation of the apocalypse. "Brother, wake up! Are you going to wait for the police to come and rescue you, then arrest the bad guys and bring them to justice? By then, the grass on your grave will be two meters high!"
Cheng Ye winced and clutched his head. His sister wasn't wrong; since the typhoon started, he hadn't seen a single police officer. The neighbors were frequently robbed, or they went out to steal from others. Their family was considered the best off in the area.
Cheng Ye calmed down and stopped talking.
Cheng Zhi waved her hand, signaling everyone to go back to sleep. She took a sip of water and got up to walk to her room.
Halfway there, Cheng Ye suddenly called out to her.
"Sister, I'm sorry."
The apology came so suddenly that Cheng Zhi didn't react for a moment. After a couple of seconds of stunned silence, she replied, "It's okay, I didn't take it to heart."
Cheng Ye shook his head, somewhat remorsefully saying, "I was really heartless just now. I only thought it was terrifying how skilled you guys were at hitting people. Now that I think about it, the reason you're so skilled must be because you've been bullied by a lot of people."
Cheng Ye looked up and met Cheng Zhi's eyes in the darkness, asking earnestly, "Sister, are you having a hard time out there? Maybe you shouldn't leave. Home is always better than out there."
Seeing her younger brother being unusually serious, Cheng Zhi felt a lump in her throat. "We still have to go. After all, it's not like things will always be bad. I think things are pretty good right now. Don't worry about me. I'm your older sister. I can handle everything. Go to sleep early."
After saying that, he turned around and opened the door.
She lay down quietly, and looking at her mother's sleeping face, Cheng Zhi was reluctant to close her eyes.
In two days, she will embark on her journey again, and she doesn't know when they will meet again. She doesn't want to waste a single minute of this time.
Perhaps because her gaze was too focused, Cheng's mother also woke up. Startled when her eyes met Cheng Zhi's, she playfully hit Cheng Zhi through the blanket, saying, "Ouch, you're up in the middle of the night, you scared me to death!"
Cheng's mother didn't hit her hard at all, and with the blanket between them, it didn't hurt at all. Cheng Zhi chuckled twice and leaned closer, "Hehehe, who told you to be so pretty? I don't even want to close my eyes when I sleep."
Mom closed her eyes, smiled, and said, "You're always so talkative. Staying up so late, is something on your mind?"
As expected, no one knows a child better than their mother; Cheng Zhi's little schemes couldn't be kept from her mother at all.
Cheng Zhi sighed and said somewhat dejectedly, "Mom, I'm so conflicted right now. I feel like I'm going to split in two."
Cheng's mother turned to the side and gently patted Cheng Zhi's back, just like she used to soothe her when she was a child. "That's how people are. They want everything. Just take it slow and do it one thing at a time. Go spend time with your friends first, and then come back to us."
She didn't need to say anything; her mother would know everything she was thinking. In the darkness, Cheng Zhi nodded. "While I'm gone, you all need to take good care of yourselves."
"Don't worry, your dad is a retired soldier, and your brother is in his prime. With two grown men protecting me, I'll be fine. But you five girls, you must be careful in everything you do outside."
The next morning, Cheng Zhi and the others got up early and dragged Cheng Ye out of bed as well.
They changed the curtains, reinforced the doors, and even put an electric fence around the iron staircase outside.
With everyone's consent, Cheng Zhi, behind Cheng Ye's back, took out some supplies from her spatial storage and piled them in the guest room.
Most of the food consisted of dried potatoes and sweet potatoes, along with a small basket of cucumbers and cherry tomatoes.
When Cheng's parents woke up in the morning and saw these things, they were speechless with amazement. "Where did these come from? These cherry tomatoes are so fresh and juicy!"
The girls looked at each other, thinking, "We can't exactly say they grew them themselves, can we?"
"This is... we found it by chance on the roadside when we came back. It's wild." Xiao Feiran was willing to say anything, regardless of whether others believed it or not, as long as she believed it herself.
Sure enough, Cheng's father didn't believe it at all. "You guys are really lying without thinking. How could it grow so well if no one took care of it? It would have died of drought long ago."
Cheng Zhi quickly stepped forward, "Oh, don't worry about it, it's edible anyway."
Since things had come to this point, her parents stopped asking questions. Besides, their daughter was leaving that evening, and they didn't want to waste time on such matters.
Since the disaster, they haven't had a proper meal. Today, Cheng's father decided to make oil-splashed noodles to send his daughter off.
When they were little, Cheng Zhi and Cheng Ye would watch their parents knead and roll out dough. Now that they're grown up, they still squat down next to them, and there are even four other girls squatting down with them.
The more Cheng's father looked at it, the more he wanted to laugh. He tore off a lump of dough and threw it to them, letting them play with it.
The dough landed in Cheng Zhi's hands, which she grabbed and ran off with, shouting, "I'm not giving it to you! I'm keeping it for myself!"
Before she could take two steps, she was pinned down by the remaining five people. Zheng Wan snatched the dough away, shouting, "Trying to embezzle it? We'll scratch you to death! Scratch her!"
At a command, several hands began to scratch Cheng Zhi.
Cheng Zhi laughed until tears streamed down her face. Between laughs, she begged for mercy, "Hahahaha, I was wrong. Please, esteemed gentlemen, spare me. I don't want my share of dough anymore, I'll offer it to you."
Only then did they stop, and Cheng Ye even kindly helped Cheng Zhi up.
Cheng Zhi was very touched and was about to say that her younger brother had grown up and wouldn't kick her when she was down, but Cheng Ye said, "I know you're touched, but don't be. I helped you up not for any other reason, but because I thought you were in the way lying here."
Cheng Zhi, who had been moved to tears, was speechless: "..." Sure enough, a younger brother will always be a younger brother, he will never grow up!
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