Chapter 57: Slaves and Slave Masters

"Why do you say that?" Zhao Qiang asked.

"I might as well be honest with you." Hu Qinghan wore a look of utter disdain. "A couple of nights ago, we received a distress signal from them. Those idiots, moving houses for no good reason, got completely wiped out by zombies halfway there. That so-called Mighty Tiger or whatever probably all went to hell by now. Tell me, with that alliance in that state, what is there to be afraid of?"

"Heh heh, friend, don't say I didn't warn you, but I happen to be the captain of the Mighty Tiger squad," Zhao Qiang thought to himself, while putting on a sudden look of complete enlightenment on the surface. "So that's how it is."

"Take a look at our construction site. We have everything you could possibly want, and the walls are thick enough that even a tank couldn't break through. How about it? Join our crew, and you'll have a good life ahead of you, kid." Hu Qinghan still hadn't forgotten his original purpose.

"Sure thing," Zhao Qiang chimed in. "That rotten alliance is finished anyway, so I'll just follow Brother Hu from now on."

"Good lad. I'll take you to meet the boss in a moment," Hu Qinghan said with a wide grin. "Hey kid, where did you get this piece? Can you get some more for your brother? Your Brother Hu here has been driven out of his mind these past few days."

Looking at Hu Qinghan's greedy expression, Zhao Qiang carelessly waved the gun in his hand and said, "No problem. With this thing around, getting cigarettes is just a matter of asking for as many as you want." With that, the men all burst into triumphant laughter.

...

"Brother Sabre, do you think Qiang has been gone so long that something might have happened to him?" Chen Ergou asked, feeling rather anxious. When dealing with zombies, any member of the Mighty Tiger squad had the ability to charge in and out of a horde three times over. But when facing living, breathing humans, the squad always operated as a team. Just like during the old Huanghua Airport operation, their victory had relied entirely on the unity and cooperation of the whole team.

"Relax," Sabre answered casually. "Just a bunch of rabble. Zhao Qiang is more than enough to handle them on his own, not to mention we're right here."

"Exactly. At a distance of 200 meters, we can charge over in less than half a minute. Besides, with me here, what are you worrying about?" Guo Zijiang chimed in. Even if some problem arose, given Zhao Qiang's skills, he could easily hold out for half an hour. Furthermore, the team members would never let Zhao Qiang hold out on his own for that long.

"Tell me, is that camp really like what they said?" Chen Ergou asked, a question that had been bothering him. Acting solely on the word of a single stranger—what if they got it wrong?

"Are you an idiot?" Guo Zijiang said. "Isn't that the exact reason Zhao Qiang sneaked in there alone? Otherwise, why would we waste our breath talking to them? Why not just charge in and slaughter them down to the last man?"

"Shut your traps, all of you!" Sabre said coldly. "Keep your eyes locked on the target. The moment there's any anomaly, I want every living person with a gun inside cleared out of sight within a minute, except for Zhao Qiang. If any of you mess this up, I'll personally put the lot of you through another round of special training."

"Yes!" Guo Zijiang shrank his neck. Sabre's special training was even more terrifying than zombies; he would rather face every single zombie on earth than ever go through another training session hosted personally by Sabre.

...

Inside the unfinished building, although the conditions were not much to speak of, compared to the shanty towns where the other survivors lived, it was absolute heaven versus hell. Zhao Qiang couldn't even imagine how those survivors had managed to endure such an environment during those sunless, freezing days.

The camp's population consisted of two parts. The largest group by far was the unarmed survivors. To survive in this camp, they had only two choices: the first was to venture out at their own risk in search of essential supplies. The only things you could rely on were yourself and a pickaxe of the kind found everywhere on a construction site—though now even pickaxes were gone, leaving you at best with a somewhat sharpened scrap of sheet metal. If your luck was good enough, you could bring back everything you needed and survive.

The alternative was to become a slave. As for what kind of work you did, that depended entirely on the whims of the slave masters. After a day's labor, if the master happened to be in a good mood, he might toss you a crust of black bread or something to fill your stomach; if you managed to anger him, well, I'm sorry, but you'd get nothing besides a brutal beating.

No one wanted to be a slave, and many who felt confident in their luck believed they could avoid it. Indeed, the luck of many among them held out initially, and they successfully returned alive with food and other supplies. However, the Goddess of Fortune did not favor them for long. As time went on, more and more people were left behind forever in the outside world. When the final lucky survivor staggered back to the camp covered in wounds, only to eventually transform into a mindless zombie, the remaining people were left with only one choice: to become slaves.

The so-called slave masters were simply survivors with better-than-average luck, making up the second group of people in the camp. Either they had acquired firearms through various means beforehand, or they had used every possible trick to steal guns from others. In short, those with guns ultimately became the slave masters of this camp.

The slave masters did not spend every day indulging in luxury and idleness. Maintaining the camp's defenses and scavenging for supplies were their primary tasks, since they too needed food to live, and bullets and slaves could not magically conjure up meals. Of course, compared to ordinary survivors, the slave masters usually traveled in groups, equipped with weapons and transportation, making their efficiency in scavenging vastly superior to that of the common survivors.

All the survival supplies, weapons, and ammunition collected by the slave masters were controlled by a single person—the boss Hu Qinghan had mentioned, Li Zili, whose name differed by only a single character from the guy Zhao Qiang knew, Li Zixin. And what Li Zili relied on was his ruthless cruelty along with his capable subordinates known as the Eight Great Vajras.

Hu Qinghan held the top rank among the Eight Great Vajras. Each of these eight men possessed unique skills: some were crack marksmen, some excelled in close combat, and others were deadly with blades. Most importantly, they had previously sworn brotherhood as sworn peers and had secured police officer Li Zili as their patron. They used to roam the countryside wearing urban management uniforms and acting as auxiliary officers, and when the disaster struck, they leveraged years of accumulated tyranny to establish themselves directly as the ruling class here.

"Brother Zhao, put on a good performance. If the boss appreciates you, adding a 'Ninth Brother' to the Eight Great Vajras shouldn't be a problem at all," Hu Qinghan patted Zhao Qiang's shoulder. Unnoticed, the two had reached the tenth floor of the unfinished building—the location of Li Zili's "imperial palace."

"Definitely, definitely," Zhao Qiang said with a flattering smile plastered across his face. As he looked at Li Zili's "palace," the fury burning in his heart grew even fiercer.