Outside the prison.
Not long after Qiao An'an drove out of the prison with Fang Yuyang and Li Jianguo, they were caught up by Chi Ming in a minibus with more than ten seats: "Chen Zhou said that you only drove a truck and probably can't bring back so many people, so he asked me to drive with you."
One truck simply cannot carry that many people.
However, Qiao An'an had already planned it out before she set off. She could drive the seven-seater van outside the prison and take the children from the wooden house with her. The children were small, so she could definitely fit them all in the van. Although it would be a bit overloaded, it was already the apocalypse, and no traffic police would chase after her and issue her a ticket for bringing a few extra people.
She had previously seen a lot of glass in the yard behind the hardware store.
According to Chen Zhou and the others, that was bulletproof glass.
She wanted to use a truck to haul a piece of glass to the RV that had broken its glass when she went to the cabin to repair it. She had noticed the RV that had crashed into the community fence, denting the fence, but the vehicle only had some scratches and all other functions were fine. Later, she heard the owner, Chi Ming, say that the vehicle was worth tens of millions, and she felt it was a huge waste to throw it away like that.
She was thinking that after the repairs were completed, Fang Yuyang would drive the RV to take Grandpa Gu, Aunt Fang, and Nan Qiao. RVs are relatively comfortable, so she wouldn't have to worry about Grandpa Gu, who is elderly, and Nan Qiao, who is six months pregnant, being uncomfortable.
She planned to have Li Jianguo and Qin Chengguo drive the truck they brought over. After emptying the back of the truck, they could also bring the chickens and miniature pigs from the wooden house.
However, Shen Zhou's request for Chi Ming to drive out was well-intentioned.
Besides, since the car was already out, Qiao An'an didn't say anything more. At worst, she could just find someone to take the van back when she came back.
By the time the car reached the hardware store around the corner, they had basically shaken off the zombies chasing them.
Qiao An'an signaled Fang Yuyang to stop the car and called on everyone to throw the zombie and masked man's corpses from the back of the car into a nearby ditch.
After doing all this, she asked Li Jianguo and Fang Yuyang to go to the backyard of the hardware store to help her carry a larger piece of bulletproof glass, and also instructed them to bring a cutting tool for cutting it.
Li Jianguo and Fang Yuyang were puzzled: "Why would you lift a large piece of glass for no reason?"
Qiao An'an told everyone that she wanted to fix the RV window.
Chi Ming said that the cutter was too heavy, so there was no need to pull it. He knew the size and could just have it cut at the hardware store.
Fang Yuyang pulled the handbrake and connected the car charger to the cutter in the hardware store. Chi Ming and Li Jianguo carried the glass from the backyard into the hardware store and cut it to the size they wanted. Since it was their first time doing this, they didn't have much experience and cut three pieces before they got the desired size, which took a little time.
After the glass was installed on the vehicle, Qiao An'an took some farm tools from the hardware store. After doing all this, the two vehicles were ready to set off again.
This time, Qiao An'an didn't plan to bring Ye Jing along: "There's enough food and water in my bag for you to eat for a week or two. Let's part ways here."
Ye Jing had already washed up and changed into clean clothes from the prison's second-floor cloakroom. However, the clothes were all adult-sized, and he had to roll up the cuffs and sleeves several times to make them fit. Even dressed so incongruously, his handsome face was still undeniable. He took the bundle from Qiao An'an, raised his slightly upturned fox-like eyes, and stubbornly asked, "The law of the jungle is the law of nature. Is it wrong for me to want to become stronger?"
Qiao An'an originally planned to get into the car and leave directly.
Upon hearing Ye Jing's question, Qiao An'an stopped again, turned to look at the slender boy in front of her, and said coldly, "The survival of the fittest is an animal instinct, but we are human beings!!!"
The boy grew tall quickly.
Ye Jing looked at Qiao An'an, who was not even as tall as him, and said somewhat blankly, "But why are the people I see more disgusting than animals?"
The masked man, despite having plenty to eat, still robs others.
They are already powerful enough, yet they still kill those who are weaker than them and pose no threat to them.
Animals will stop hunting once they have enough food to eat.
From this perspective, human nature can sometimes be more disgusting than that of animals.
Qiao An'an was silent for a while before speaking, "Actually, there are only a very small difference between humans and animals. Most people would discard it in times of crisis, and only a true gentleman would preserve it. I'm not asking you to be selfless enough to help all the weak in need, but you should at least refrain from harming them."
This was the first time Ye Jing had ever heard such words.
He told Qiao An'an that he was abducted by human traffickers when he was very young. The traffickers would resell the abducted babies to families who wanted children because the babies didn't remember anything and could quickly integrate into the new family.
Teenagers were sent to the underground market to have all the internal organs removed.
Children like him, who were small but already old enough to remember things, and those who were ugly, would have their hands and feet cut off, or their eyes gouged out and their ears cut off, and be thrown to the roadside to beg.
Those who are pretty and cute will be taken to deceive single girls. They will lure the girls to alleys where adults are present, drug them, and then sell them.
Those who fail to meet their performance targets will have their hands and feet chopped off.
To keep his hands and feet, the tiny boy could only try his best to please the adults who had captured him. When the apocalypse came, the adults were afraid that the children would waste food, so they threw them into the cellar to fend for themselves. He survived by eating rotten flesh.
Later, when the masked man killed the adults who had captured them and was looting supplies, he opened the cellar and was able to see the light of day again.
In the Ghost Mask Man's prison, boys over the age of fifteen who don't try to join the Ghost Mask Man will be killed and thrown out to feed the zombies.
The prerequisite for becoming a masked man is to kill a masked man.
So he didn't think there was anything wrong with becoming stronger: "I just want to live..."
I didn't feel anything before I had children.
After having a child, Qiao An'an hated human traffickers the most. She couldn't imagine what she would become if her daughter Ya Ya disappeared one day. So she left comments on reports about human traffickers more than once, saying that human traffickers should be sentenced to death and, if possible, their entire families should be punished!
After listening to Ye Jing's story, Qiao An'an felt sorry for Ye Jing. She took half of the food and water that Ye Jing had brought for the journey from the car, put it in a bag, and handed it to Ye Jing: "Then live well. Maybe one day you can reunite with your parents."
Ye Jing gripped the bag tightly, and after a long while, she said in a hoarse voice, "I haven't heard the words 'Mom' and 'Dad' for a long time. I don't even remember what my parents look like or what their names are..."
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