Chapter 19 was reported.
During lunch break, Ding Yi and Ding Tai sat on the ground and began to dig pine nuts from pine cones.
"Are you all planning to throw these away?" Zuo Shan asked, pointing to the pine cones that had been nut-peeled.
“Well, although we can use them as firewood after drying, we still need to collect more this afternoon, and leaving them all behind would be too heavy,” Ding Tai said.
As the two were talking, they saw a towering man duck into the tent. As soon as he came in, he went straight to Ding Tai's side and sat down.
"Old Ding, you're getting more and more distant from me. Yesterday I sent someone to deliver tickets to you, but you refused to accept them no matter what. If I hadn't spotted you and your nephew today, were you still planning to ride in one of those small gangs' cars?"
As soon as the man spoke, Zuo Shan immediately remembered that this man was the mercenary leader he had met that morning. He hadn't expected him to be so familiar with Ding Tai!
It's said that having connections in the court makes it easier to get an official position. This Ding Tai is too honest; he actually refused the benefits that were offered to him. Compared to him, I, on the other hand, seem to lack any integrity in accepting the votes offered by Qi Yang.
But integrity is worthless in the face of hunger. Didn't you see that his little niece was skin and bones from hunger? The eight-year-old child looked as thin as a six-year-old. How could he, as her uncle, bear to do that?
In fact, Zuo Shan was wrong about Ding Tai. His niece Ding Yi's thinness was not caused by malnutrition at all. What she needed was a large amount of energy stones, which Ding Tai could not obtain even if he tried his best.
"Commander Lei, thank you for your kindness! But as the old saying goes, you can help in an emergency, but not in a long-term relationship! I, Ding Tai, already owe you enough, and I really can't accept any more."
"Besides, although I'm useless, I can still support myself. If I really can't make a living in the future, I certainly won't be polite to you," Ding Tai said neither humbly nor arrogantly.
"Your temper! I just can't do anything with you!" Commander Lei shook his head helplessly, pointing at him.
After exchanging a few pleasantries, Commander Lei had other matters to attend to and left.
Zuo Shan was genuinely impressed by Ding Tai; his ability to uphold his principles even in such dire circumstances was truly admirable.
She secretly decided that she would like to team up with the uncle and nephew to collect resources in the future if the opportunity arises.
The lunch break is four hours long, but almost no one dares to actually fall asleep. If someone steals all the work they've done that morning while they're asleep, they'll be in big trouble.
Therefore, during this time, all scavengers would organize their morning's harvest and wait for the mercenary group to send someone to collect half of their harvest that they were supposed to hand over. The other half of their harvest would be sealed in vacuum bags and returned to them later.
Zuo Shan also followed the others and dug pine nuts from the pine cones during his lunch break.
Ding Yi, watching her carefully put the hollowed-out pine cones into the sack, couldn't help but ask, "Sister Fan, aren't you tired of carrying so many inedible pine cones back with you?"
"I especially like the smell of burning pine cones. They're great for firewood after they're dried," Zuo Shan casually made up a reason.
"Then I'll leave our pine cones to you too, since they're useless anyway," Ding Yi said generously.
There's no shortage of firewood in the wasteland. The mutated plants are all very tall, and the branches of any small shrub can be dried and used as firewood.
They could have easily gathered firewood at nearby collection points; there was no need for them to go through the trouble of carrying pine cones all the way back to burn them.
"Thank you very much!" Zuo Shan said with a smile.
So, of the ten sacks that Zuo Shan brought, five were filled in one go. One of the sacks contained the pine nuts she had dug up, while the other four sacks were filled with hollowed-out pine cones.
An hour later, two mercenaries from the Flying Tiger Mercenary Group came into the tent to inspect the results. The scavengers obediently handed over all the pine nuts they had dug up.
As for the hollowed-out pine cones, they were thrown onto an open space outside the tent and piled up into a small mountain.
When it was Zuo Shan's turn to hand over the pine nuts, a mercenary's family member in the tent suddenly stood up, walked over to the two mercenaries in charge of inspection, pointed at Zuo Shan, and shouted, "Sir, I want to report her for hoarding pine nuts!"
Upon hearing this, the two mercenaries' faces immediately darkened.
According to the rules of mercenary groups, any scavenger who intentionally hides his harvest will not only have all his harvest confiscated that day, but will also be blacklisted and never recruited by any mercenary group again.
The person who reported her was a middle-aged man with a limp. He wasn't dressed too badly. Zuo Shan vaguely remembered that when they boarded the train according to their ticket numbers, he was probably in the first ten. He was probably a family member or relative of a mercenary.
The man's name was Cui Dapeng. He had noticed Zuo Shan long ago because she was a stranger to him; he had never seen her before when participating in missions issued by the mercenary group.
Cui Dapeng secretly guessed that the girl probably slept with some mercenary to get a train ticket.
The key point is that after she got on the bus, she only spoke to Ding Yi and his nephew; it seemed that no one else knew her.
Cui Dapeng's younger brother, Cui Dalong, used to be in the same mercenary group as Ding Tai. Back then, Cui Dalong forced himself on a scavenging girl from District 50 and was brutally beaten by Ding Tai, almost crippling her.
Cui Dalong is the only genetic warrior in the Cui family and the pride of the whole family, so Cui Dapeng especially hates Ding Tai.
Later, Ding Taiji was injured and left the mercenary group. Cui Dalong found an opportunity to almost kill Ding Taiji, finally getting his revenge.
Today, Cui Dapeng finally got a chance to see Zuo Shan stuff the pine cones he had dug up into a sack, while Ding Tai's niece, Ding Yi, also stuffed the pine cones they had dug into Zuo Shan's sack.
As everyone knows, pine cones are inedible. He heard the girl say that she kept the pine cones because she liked the smell of them burning, which sounded like a lie.
He suspected they had left some edible pine nuts in the pine cones to cover up their deception and withhold the portion that should have been handed over.
Since it was the girl's first time going out, if she were caught, she could simply pretend she didn't know the rule, cry and beg for forgiveness, and the mercenaries would surely turn a blind eye and let her off.
"You're saying I'm hoarding pine nuts? What evidence do you have?" Zuo Shan glanced at him sideways and said calmly.
“Sir, look at the four sacks of pine cones piled up next to her. If you said there weren’t pine nuts hidden in there, even a fool wouldn’t believe it!” Cui Dapeng said, pointing to the bulging sacks at her feet.
Ding Yi stood up angrily, about to speak up, but Zuo Shan gently pressed down on her shoulder.
"You think you're very smart, right? Then, in front of everyone, you dig out one pine cone from these four sacks one by one. If you can dig out just one pine nut, I'll admit that I hid my harvest."
"But if you can't dig up a single pine nut, then you'll have to give me all your harvest today as compensation. Do you dare to bet with me?" Zuo Shan said coldly.
"Why should I give you my gains? You're dreaming!" Cui Dapeng said angrily.
"Didn't you assume I was hiding my gains? According to the rules, anyone who hides their gains will have all their gains confiscated and be blacklisted."
In comparison, my losses are far greater than yours. If you don't even dare to gamble on this, then it proves that you are framing me!
"Sir, how would you punish someone who falsely accuses others?" Zuo Shan turned to one of the mercenaries and asked.
"Confiscate all of his earnings for today and blacklist him from my Flying Tigers group," the mercenary said expressionlessly.
Cold sweat broke out on Cui Dapeng's forehead. The reason he jumped out to report them was not only to implicate Ding Tai and his nephew, but also for another important reason.
The whistleblower gets a quarter of the hider's share of the spoils; he's done this kind of unearned profit before.
However, he only deduced that there was something fishy about it from the four sacks of pine cones at the foot of the left fan; he did not actually see that there were pine nuts hidden inside those pine cones that had not been dug up.
He could only pray that even if Zuo Shan hadn't deliberately hidden anything, as long as there was even one pine cone that hadn't been dug out from among the pine cones, he wouldn't be considered to have framed someone.
"Fine, let's bet. I don't believe you'll come home with four sacks of pine cones," Cui Dapeng said viciously.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
