Qin Sang wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip away.
“Wait a moment. This household has been the most difficult to communicate with. One of you needs to go talk to him and confirm. If he doesn’t want to use our official services, have him sign a confirmation as well.”
As soon as she said this, everyone remembered what Qin Sang had just said—all 13 households had to go through the process together. Not a single one could be left out.
Then, a few of the ones who had been causing the biggest ruckus walked straight over and started pounding on the bald man’s door.
“You’re pretty good at this,” Team Leader Lin said approvingly as he walked over with Shen Zhu.
Qin Sang shrugged. “I’m different from the rest of you. This role suits me best.”
One’s position determines one’s perspective. Team Leader Lin was an official appointee, so he had to strictly follow regulations. She had no such constraints. As a volunteer, she wasn’t even earning a single point for her help.
Indeed, a person with no desires is unassailable.
With that, Qin Sang told the team leader what she had discovered—the smell of blood, not hearing Sister Hu’s voice, overhearing him planning to flee, and the meddling neighbors.
She looked at them hammering on the door. These people had probably been sent by the bald man. She wondered if he’d be furious now that they’d turned against him.
——
Furious? Not yet, but the bald man’s face was dark with anger.
The people banging on his door were indeed sent by him. His building had 13 households left that hadn’t signed off. They’d formed a group chat to discuss negotiating with the officials to get some extra perks before leaving.
So he’d deliberately leaked that the relocation team was coming. Naturally, these people rushed over to demand benefits.
The bald man had been quite proud of his scheme. With so many greedy people swarming just three relocation team members, it would be easy to keep them occupied.
While they were distracted, he could slip away without a hitch. He had made up his mind to head north to a safe zone. He’d heard the temperatures there weren’t as high and the land was vast and sparsely populated. The chances of being discovered would be minimal. And maybe no one would come looking for him anyway.
But before he could finish dealing with things, the fair-weather friends started pounding on his door. He had no choice but to grit his teeth and open the wooden door again.
“What do you want? What do you want? Trying to get yourselves killed? You’re banging on my door that hard. Can you even afford to fix it?”
“Old Wang, open up and sign. We all have to sign together to leave today,” several people shouted as they pounded on the door.
“Fine, give me the form. I’ll sign. You don’t need to store my supplies.” Hearing this, several neighbors gasped with envy.
Seeing this, Qin Sang gestured for Team Leader Lin to give her the document. Taking it, she stood again in front of the steel door. “Please open the door. We need to verify your signature in person.”
“Can’t you just slip it through the grille?” Bald Old Wang said irritably.
Qin Sang raised an eyebrow, putting on a tone of utter indifference. Turning to the “good neighbors,” she said, “See that? It’s not that I won’t help you. It’s that your neighbor Old Wang doesn’t want to cooperate. There are only so many jobs in the safe zone. I’d hate for you to miss out on job postings because you arrived late.”
That lit a fire under the people pounding on the door.
Seeing this, Old Wang knew he couldn’t let them go on like this. He gritted his teeth, opened the door halfway, and carefully squeezed out, trying to close the steel door behind him.
Did Qin Sang intend to let him have his way?
Of course not.
She reached out and “casually” pulled on the outer handle of the steel door. It looked like she used almost no force, but her hand was coated with energy. So she yanked both Bald Old Wang and the door outward. Then, she “accidentally” tripped a few of the most aggressive good neighbors crowded at the front.
One by one, these good neighbors stumbled through the open doorway into Old Wang’s apartment.
Shen Zhu, who had been waiting nearby, immediately pounced like a tiger. Shouting, “Let me help you up!” he “accidentally” lost his balance and launched himself into a dive—straight into Old Wang’s living room.
It looked like a lot of chaotic motion, but the whole thing took less than thirty seconds. It happened so fast that Bald Old Wang didn’t even have time to react.
Then, two sharp sounds rang out.
One came from Shen Zhu, who had flown into Old Wang’s apartment. The other came from Bald Old Wang himself.
For a middle-aged man, Bald Old Wang reacted fast.
After cursing loudly, he instantly pulled a large pile of bricks from his spatial storage and hurled them at the crowd. Then he turned and ran for the stairwell without looking back.
Did Qin Sang intend to let him get away?
Absolutely not.
She pulled a half-moon-shaped steel fork from her own spatial storage—the kind of large steel fork that security guards at school entrances carry. She pinned Bald Old Wang to the ground in one go.
Satisfying!
Qin Sang had seen that steel fork in action many times and had always wanted to try it. She’d gotten this one from the village patrol team. On her first try, she’d actually used it to pin someone down. It was indeed extremely satisfying.
The good neighbors, who had been hit on the heads by the suddenly appearing bricks, stared in stunned silence.
At the same time, the backup Team Leader Lin had called stepped out of the open elevator doors.
…
“Qin Sang, is it really that easy to pin someone with that fork?”
“Does it feel as satisfying as it looks?”
“I should have gone with you guys.”
Back at Building 2, continuing their work, Qin Sang was immediately surrounded by the team. Everyone had heard what happened at Building 1 and had seen the heroic image of Qin Sang pinning a man with one hand.
Qin Sang had seen the photo too. The young man from the gossip-loving family had taken it and posted it in the owners’ group. Then someone from Building 2 had shown it to the team members.
“It’s… pretty satisfying,” she admitted. Especially since the person she pinned was such a scumbag.
Sister Hu had indeed been killed. Strictly speaking, she died from a large hole in the back of her head. Shen Zhu had found her body inside a suitcase.
According to Bald Old Wang’s confession, he hadn’t meant to kill her. He’d accidentally pushed her during an argument, causing her to fall. Whether that was intentional would be up to the medical examiner to determine.
But after Sister Hu died, Old Wang tried to put her body into his storage space. When that didn’t work, he decided to hide the body in a suitcase. He’d planned to drive himself, then dump the body somewhere along the way. With the whole country in the midst of a mass relocation, no one would notice one missing person.
That was Old Wang’s reasoning.
And the fact that corpses couldn’t be stored in a spatial ability had been classified as a sensitive term by the authorities. Any mention of it would be quickly censored.
Old Wang, who only ever watched softcore dance videos, naturally had no idea.
The reason for his argument with Sister Hu was even simpler. Having gained a spatial ability, Bald Old Wang had become arrogant. He thought he was heaven’s chosen one, destined to have women draped all over him. And sure enough, some women had latched onto him, believing that with the apocalypse coming, the only way to survive was to stick with a man who had spatial storage.
The logic was disgusting. But Qin Sang knew there would be plenty of people like that.
——
At around 11:00 PM, the team finished all the registration work for Building 2 ahead of schedule. After what happened with Bald Old Wang, the residents of Building 2 were especially cooperative. The remaining 12 households in Building 1 were the same.
With the work done, they prepared to head back to rest. Their lodgings were at a hotel near the neighborhood.
As they walked downstairs to the neighborhood entrance, they saw residents from Building 1 lining up to board the buses.
They would take the bus to the dock, then take a ferry across to the dock in the eastern province. From there, another bus to the nearest train station, then a train straight to Huashan City.
It was a rather cumbersome journey. But since they needed to avoid traveling during the day, breaking the trip into segments made it less troublesome.
Watching the long line of people, Qin Sang didn’t even have time to sigh before someone started arguing with the staff because their luggage was too light while others had more.
Qin Sang: …
She really didn’t see what there was to argue about.
“I was just saying this job seems easier than ours,” muttered Chen Zihan, the young team member.
Watching the noisy crowd, Qin Sang thought otherwise. This job was harder. Coordinating with these people every step of the way—it was really tough on the staff.
Back at the hotel, she washed up and lay down, finally able to exhale.
On her very first day as a volunteer, she’d already encountered a murder case. It was pretty insane. She video-called her parents and told them what happened, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Just make sure you protect yourself first and foremost. We’ve heard that in some places, people aren’t cooperating—they’re even going against the relocation teams.”
Qin Sang had been too busy to pay attention to the news. She opened her phone’s news feed. Sure enough, there were reports of people physically fighting the relocation teams. Thankfully, those people were few. Most residents were decent citizens. Even though they weren’t happy about the relocation, they were cooperating.
Looking at all the stories of people helping each other, Qin Sang felt she’d made the right choice becoming a volunteer. The family of eight spanning four generations she’d met that day was a good example—they had spirit. Even in an apocalypse, people like that would still find joy in living.
Just then, Xu Lin appeared in the video feed from her parents’ side.
“Don’t you have to work overtime?”
Xu Lin shook his head. “I’m off tonight. By the way, I heard the authorities are going to ramp up deep-sea fishing in the coming days. They might send you over to help.”
Hainan Island is a maritime province, surrounded by the sea on all sides. Where Qin Sang was currently staying was only a half-hour drive from the dock. It was entirely possible they’d be called upon to help transport the catch with their spatial abilities.
But after two days of working on two buildings, their spatial storage was already seventy to eighty percent full. They were planning to clear one more building tomorrow, then head back to Huashan City to unload.
So Qin Sang thought it was unlikely.
But the very next day, they received an urgent task from the dock.
Leave a Reply