Chapter 41 Chapter 41
At dawn the next day, the open space in front of the office was bustling with people and was surrounded by residents of the base.
In the center of the crowd were the arrested outsiders, about twenty people in total. To everyone's surprise, half of them were women. The singles were no less attractive than the men, and all of them were strong, like boxers.
There was also a familiar face among them, a female boxer whom Ye Xun had met once before when they were forming a team. Because of her muscular body that made a very impressive impression, Ye Xun recognized her immediately.
He was both surprised and expected it. He was surprised because he remembered that this woman's performance in the team was quite normal, and it could even be said that it was very good. Apart from Ye Xun and Qin Wei who relied on space cheating, she had the biggest harvest, catching three wild rabbits by setting traps.
This is expected because the base's current wall is five meters high. Without an insider, it is basically impossible to get in. You'd be lucky if you don't break your arms or legs when climbing over the wall.
Due to the serious circumstances, Chen Guoan announced that these people would be executed immediately. If the residents in the base had any relatives with them, once verified, they would not be allowed to participate in any recruitment for work in the base for three months, and the amount of sweet potatoes provided free of charge by the base would be halved.
For a moment, everyone present was very happy, except for the relatives and family of the female boxer, who were innocently implicated and wanted to tear her to pieces alive.
The woman is now extremely regretful. These people were her former colleagues who rented her ID card for the price of two kilograms of meat. It is also her fault for being greedy. Why did she covet such a small piece of meat? It would be fine if she died, but she also made her family suffer.
But it is too late to think about these things now. There is no regret medicine in the world. The mistakes made are irreversible. The relatives and friends of the victims will not forgive her. Even if she pays for her life with a life, the families of the deceased will not let her parents go.
Tears of regret flowed out from the sunken eye sockets, but were frozen by the cold wind before they could fall to the ground.
The hemp rope was wrapped around the neck and then tightened. The feeling of suffocation began to spread up like the sea water.
The process of hanging is extremely painful. You feel the air in your lungs getting less and less, your neck arteries being compressed, your head quickly becoming congested and lacking oxygen, your eyes bulging, and your face turning red and purple. From suffocation to death, you think it takes a long time, but in fact it only takes one or two minutes. If the executioner is weak, it may take a few minutes longer.
After the execution, these people's deaths did not look very good, with bulging eyes, sticking out tongues, bloodshot eyes, and even a little scary. But things are not over yet. After the crowd disperses, the guards will hang their bodies outside the outer wall to warn those unruly outsiders that this will be their end if they commit a crime.
The effect is remarkable. There are fewer people gathering outside the city walls. Many people honestly apply to stay in the base, or participate in the work of expanding the base, hoping to get their applications approved as soon as possible.
The atmosphere during those days was pretty good, and everyone worked honestly. But after just a few days, some people started making trouble again.
There were five outsiders who came to work at the base. They came from T City, which is next to H City. Since the last market, they had been eyeing Ye Xun and Xu Feng's families.
If someone can come up with so many pickled vegetables and calcium tablets, there must be plenty of food at home.
Ye Xun and Qin Wei would not go out unless necessary. Only Xu Feng went to the construction site early in the morning and returned late at night to earn work hours to build the wall. His home address had already been figured out.
One night, after finishing their work, the three did not go out with the crowd, but hid in the basement of Xu Feng Building, and waited until two or three in the morning before coming out.
Some of them were former locksmiths and were very familiar with common door locks. They could open one in a few minutes using only a piece of wire.
This time too, the door lock was opened, but it couldn't be pushed open. Several people used all their strength, but could only push it open a small gap. It was obvious that someone had immediately blocked it with something.
There was no point in continuing, and it would easily wake up the residents inside. I had to give up at this point to avoid attracting the patrol team, which would be a waste of time and effort.
But a thief would never leave empty-handed, so there is no reason to go there in vain. There are many residents in the building, so they can just pick one to patronize. So the three of them turned their attention to the door opposite Xu Feng, and after easily unlocking the door, the three of them walked into the kitchen quietly, opened the storage cabinet under the stove, and emptied out all the sweet potatoes and rice noodles inside, leaving nothing for this family.
The next day when Xu Feng got up, he saw that the furniture at the door had moved slightly. He immediately put down his yawning hand. Before he reached the door, he heard a woman's shrill cry coming from the opposite door.
He quickly called Zhang Tianyu over and helped move these things back to their original places.
After the living room was restored to its original state, I opened the door and the sounds coming from the opposite door became more obvious, with crying accompanied by cursing.
Xu Feng walked over and knocked on the door. Soon the man inside came to open the door. His eyelids were red and his eyes were dull and lifeless, as if he had suffered a great blow.
"Brother, what happened?" Xu Feng asked with concern, worried that he would once again irritate his buddy who was on the brink of collapse.
"My home, my home was robbed, and all the food is gone, all gone—" It is said that men do not shed tears easily, but this 1.80-meter-tall man choked up when he finished speaking.
What kind of beast is so vicious that he took away all the food for a family of four without leaving any? How can they survive?
The matter was eventually brought to the office, and the whole family surrounded Chen Guoan in the office, either crying or sighing. Every time Chen Guoan opened his mouth to ask what happened, the hostess would sob, making it seem like he was in a dilemma whether to ask or not.
Finally, he couldn't stand it anymore and shouted to the guard to take the woman outside and let her come in after she calmed down.
As soon as the woman left, the huge office finally quieted down. Chen Guoan asked the man what happened: "When did you find out that your things were stolen? What was lost? Tell me in detail."
The man was calm, he wiped away the tears in his eyes, and recounted the whole story: "I discovered that my house was robbed not long ago. When I woke up in the morning, I found the door of the living room was wide open. Then I hurried to the kitchen and found that the cabinet door was also open. Everything inside was gone. Two months' worth of food for a family of four was gone!"
"This group of people must have come after midnight! When I went to the bathroom at around one o'clock, the door was still open!"
Xu Feng next to him added, "Someone has come here before. A few days ago, when I was selling pickles at the market, my friend reminded me that things were not going well at the base recently and asked me to be more careful when I went to bed at night. So I used a large piece of furniture to block the door before going to bed. But when I went to check in the morning, there was a slight shift. It is definitely not something that one person can do to push such a heavy weight."
If it was the city H before the apocalypse where surveillance cameras were everywhere, finding a few petty thieves would be a matter of minutes. But now the surveillance cameras in the base are all broken and useless. There are nearly 30,000 people in the base, and finding someone is harder than finding a needle in a haystack.
"I already know the whole story. The problem now is how to find the thief. Only by finding the person can we recover the stolen food." Chen Guoan clearly laid out the current problem in front of the people. Is it difficult to catch the person? Not difficult. The difficult part is who to catch.
The mother of the man who had been silent all this time suddenly asked, "Could it be someone outside the fence? If you check the clock-in records from yesterday, wouldn't you be able to tell who didn't clock in?"
Chen Guoan and the patrol team were suddenly enlightened. It was indeed true that machine recording was much more convenient than manual search.
Chen Guoan immediately called the staff member responsible for counting working hours and asked him to retrieve yesterday's absenteeism information.
There were five people absent yesterday, two of whom were residents of the base. They had little motive for committing the crime because every resident with a formal ID card enjoys base subsidies and would not risk being kicked out of the base to steal these things.
Among the remaining three people, at least two were involved in the theft.
"Check this morning's clock-in records again." Chen Guoan ordered.
The staff checked the records as instructed, and at five in the morning, the three people swiped their cards to leave the base at the same time.
The criminal was caught, and everyone present was speechless. How could someone with this IQ dare to steal? Did he think that there would be no clues after cutting off the Internet and power?
The family, who had originally thought that they would never get the food back, finally had a smile on their faces.
Great, no need to go hungry.
Now that the person has been identified, we need to arrest him.
Ten color copies of the photo in the electronic information were printed and given to ten patrol team members, who were asked to arrest people based on the portraits. The ten young men were also equipped with pistols.
"If you resist, you will be shot on the spot." Chen Guoan will not be lenient to this kind of black sheep. At a time when all mankind should be united, he is doing such a harmful thing. Even if he lets him go this time, there will be a next time.
Human nature is selfish, and without moral constraints, we cannot be called human beings.
The patrol team carrying the prisoner's portrait set off to the construction site.
At this time, everyone at the construction site had heard that a house had been robbed, and they were whispering to each other while the supervisor was away.
A man who was watching a middle-aged man in his forties or fifties discussing this matter with his companions thought he was speaking in a low voice, but in fact he was speaking loudly. About three meters away from him, someone heard every word. It was the man who was responsible for unlocking the door last night.
"I guarantee you, those people who stole things last night must be from outside the base. Our base commander has a good management system, so why would he need a few mouthfuls of food? They are also a bunch of idiots, thinking that everything will be fine without surveillance. Are those time clock machines at the door just for decoration?! I bet that the patrol team will catch them and kick them out by this afternoon at the latest."
One of the thieves broke out in a cold sweat upon hearing this. The three of them had only been in the base for a week in total and had little understanding of what was going on in the base. Even this crime was a spur-of-the-moment decision.
He couldn't stay in this base any longer, and he didn't plan to notify the other two people. There were too many monks and too little meat. With more people, there would be less food. It would be better for him to enjoy it all by himself.
The thief made up his mind and was about to escape, but before he had gone 50 meters, he ran into the patrol team that came to arrest him.
He ran away, but if he was caught, the hidden food would definitely be taken back, and his wife and children at home would have to go through a life of hunger again.
His two short legs moved quickly and he ran the fastest speed in his life, but what was faster than him was the patrol team's bullets.
Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my back, and warm liquid flowed down my spine. Red flowers bloomed on the back of my white down jacket, and then there was eternal darkness.
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