Chi Yuanshan was practically choking with rage!
"Liu Dali, you'd better make yourself clear! I rented you that thirty-mu orchard for ten years and only charged you a thousand yuan! And I even let you pay it in installments after you started making money! Even—even the fruit trees on that mountain, I bought them with my own money!"
"You... It's only right and proper for you to return the orchard to me when the lease is up, but instead you go and poison it!"
He was so furious his neck turned red.
Before Liu Dali could even speak, his wife, Xu Cuifen, puffed out her chest, pointed a finger at Chi Yuanshan, and started cursing, "That's a load of bullshit! Everyone in the village knows how hard Dali has worked taking care of that orchard all these years!"
"Thanks to him, how much income has this village gained? You come back and the first thing you do is try to snatch the orchard away. Dali is an honest man, he doesn't know how to fight, so he gave it back to you. If you keep spouting nonsense, I'll rip your mouth off!"
Xu Cuifen's aggressive display was stunning. With her hands on her hips and chest puffed out, she forced Chi Yuanshan to keep backing away, making it look as if he were the one with a guilty conscience.
But her words, twisting black into white, were infuriating.
Song Yinghe couldn't stand it. She swatted away Xu Cuifen's hand, which was nearly poking Chi Yuanshan in the face. "What are you talking about? Taking back the orchard when the lease is up is 'snatching' it? And Liu Dali doesn't 'fight' for it? What right does he have to fight for it?! If Old Chi hadn't seen how poor your family was and given him this great opportunity, your whole family would still be living in some backwoods gully!"
"You ungrateful bastards dare to poison our orchard! Let me tell you, I've had the soil tested by an expert. If anything happens to our fruit trees, you'll pay for all of it! If you keep causing trouble, I'm calling the police! You can tell it to them!"
To everyone's surprise, Xu Cuifen threw herself on the ground in front of Song Yinghe, slapped her thighs, and started wailing, "What did I do to deserve this! Our Dali worked from dawn till dusk taking care of that orchard! We finally had a slightly better life, and now you city folk are jealous and want to take away our livelihood! You're trying to drive us to our deaths!"
"And poor Dali's mother is almost ninety years old, and she has to worry about this too! Aiyah, how can we villagers ever win against you city people! You just bully us because we're not educated, tricking Dali into slaving away for your family!"
"And now, just when the orchard is ready for harvest, it's not enough to kick Dali out, you have to try and extort us too! You don't know how to take care of the trees yourselves, and you expect us to clean up your mess! Is there any justice in this world? WAAAH..."
Chi Wan, hearing this, could no longer hold back. She rushed to her parents' side, her voice crisp and clear. "Ma'am, you keep saying we're 'extorting' you. Why don't you explain what this is?"
With that, she pressed the play button on her phone before Liu Dali could react and said, "I was keeping watch in the cabin on the mountain last night. At three in the morning, a group of them broke in."
"Luckily, I was in a sleeping bag. I didn't want them to find me, so I hid in the closet. That's when I heard them planning to poison our orchard! My parents and I went to check first thing this morning, and sure enough, someone had poured something at the base of the trees. How do you explain that?!"
As the voices of Liu Dali and his group echoed from the phone, the villagers looked at each other in dismay.
For a moment, even the village chief's expression turned sour as he looked at Liu Dali.
Liu Dali never imagined that this young slip of a girl, Chi Wan, would have a recording from last night.
But his eyes darted around, and he craned his neck stubbornly. "I don't know what you're talking about. Just because you say it was us, it was us? You city folks are always playing these kinds of tricks. You probably prepared this long ago to frame me and my bros."
Chi Wan gritted her teeth.
'Damn it, I missed the first few crucial sentences. Now I've given him room to argue.'
But she sneered, "Frame you or not, you can explain it to the police. You really think you can do something like this and not leave a trace? Let me tell you, poisoning is a serious crime. Not only will you go to jail, but so will those brothers of yours!"
"Pah! You little brat, who do you think you are, sticking your nose in this? Trying to scare me with jail time? You really think my bros and I are easy to bully?" Liu Dali spat on the ground, shot a look at a skinny crony, and lunged forward to snatch Chi Wan's phone!
Neither Chi Yuanshan nor Song Yinghe had expected Liu Dali to be so brazen as to attack someone in front of so many people!
But how could their strength compare to a farmhand like Liu Dali?
***
When they heard Li Xingye say they wouldn't have to go hungry anymore, the eyes of the other three men lit up.
"Boss, have you figured out a way to solve the food problem?" the bearded man asked, hurrying closer.
Li Xingye took a deep breath. "Qiangzi, I've awakened a superpower—a space that replenishes food, and the food inside never spoils."
To protect Chi Wan, Li Xingye didn't mention her existence.
But Qiangzi and the others were stunned by the news!
"Haozi, you... pinch me." Qiangzi's gaze went distant, and he said dazedly, "I haven't starved to death already, have I? Is this all just a dying hallucination...?"
Haozi, however, was staring intently at the scraped-clean eight-treasure porridge can. "Bro, does 'replenish' mean what I think it means?"
Seeing their reactions, Li Xingye let out his most relieved smile in days. "Once you recover a bit, there's more to eat."
"OHHH AWOOOO HAHAHAHA... I knew it! Heaven never truly closes all doors!" Having found hope in despair, Qiangzi let out a series of excited, bizarre cries, unafraid of attracting zombies.
"No wonder... I was just saying, something as rare as eight-treasure porridge disappeared seven or eight years ago. This is great! The base is saved!"
Seeing how happy the three of them were, Li Xingye subconsciously checked his space again.
In truth, even he had worried that this might all be a dream before death.
But the note Chi Wan had left before she went to sleep felt so real, so solid in his palm. The girl's neat, elegant handwriting was there, stroke by stroke: *I'll go stock up on food for you when I wake up~*
A fire burned in Li Xingye's heart. He turned to Qiangzi and the others, who had recovered some of their spirits, and said, "Rest up for a bit, then come with me to the villa district up ahead to look for things."
He figured Chi Wan was probably still sleeping. Returning to the base wouldn't yield much food right now, so he might as well go look for things like gold and jewelry for her first.
'She should be really happy when she sees them while she's stocking up on food.'
Hearing from Li Xingye that the food in the space needed to be exchanged for valuables like gold, Qiangzi and the others couldn't sit still. They were raring to go find some.
The physique of a superpower user was truly formidable. Even after starving for so long, the food they ate was still rapidly converted into energy.
Li Xingye went ahead and took out the high-calorie foods Chi Wan had bought, like chocolate cakes, and shared them with the men.
These tough men, who would shed blood but not tears, found their eyes turning red as they looked at sweets so common in the age of peace and tasted the sweetness in their mouths.
With a surge of energy, they charged into the villa district. After clearing out the wandering zombies, they began to pillage the long-abandoned houses like bandits, scooping up the gold and diamonds that lay scattered on the floors, ignored by all.
Meanwhile, Li Xingye collected all the Zombie Crystal Cores they found along the way and put them in his space. Worried that Chi Wan might find them smelly, he even took care to wipe them clean with a piece of cloth before piling them in a corner where nothing else was stored.
What he didn't know was that after he turned away, the Crystal Cores he had placed in the space shrank, just a tiny little bit.