Only children are forced to choose.

At that moment, the scar-faced man spoke up as well. “Also, your wife is quite pretty. How about letting her spend the night with me?”

“You want to play with my wife?” A surge of murderous intent erupted from Xue Feng.

The scar-faced man’s sneer became even more vicious. “That’s right. Your wife is beautiful, and all of us brothers want to—”

Bang! Bang!

Before he could finish his sentence, Xue Feng moved in a flash, drawing his pistol from his waist and firing two shots straight into the man’s head.

The scar-faced man didn’t even have a chance to finish his words before his body collapsed to the ground, lifeless.

“He’s got a gun! Boss, run for it!”

Xue Feng had suddenly pulled out a gun and, without a word, dispatched the scar-faced man with clean, decisive shots. The remaining two were utterly terrified and, desperate to survive, they fled in opposite directions.

Bang!

Xue Feng fired again, this time hitting the tattooed man in the leg and sending him sprawling to the ground.

By this time, the bald man had already dashed back into the guardroom.

Bang! Bang!

Before the bald man could shut the heavy iron door of the guardroom, Xue Feng fired once more, felling him right at the threshold.

He then grabbed An Xiaowei by the arm and rushed into the guardroom.

He dragged the bald man’s corpse outside and immediately bolted the heavy iron door from within.

“Feng, what are you doing?” An Xiaowei frowned. “This guardroom stinks to high heaven after what those men did here. Why are we coming in?”

“Shh!” Xue Feng motioned for her to be silent.

An Xiaowei saw him checking the window, so she poked her head out to look as well. What she saw made her face go pale.

Zombies were extremely sensitive to gunfire. In order to deal with those scavengers, Xue Feng had fired five shots in quick succession. The noise had drawn nearly every zombie in the neighborhood.

Now, the courtyard was swarming with the undead, densely packed everywhere. However, all of them were attracted by the injured tattooed man and had not noticed the two people hiding in the guardroom.

When Xue Feng shot the bald man and the scar-faced man, he had aimed for lethal spots and killed them instantly. But with the tattooed man, he had only wounded his leg, not finishing him off.

An Xiaowei had wondered at the time why Xue Feng didn’t shoot again and kill the small-time leader. Wasn’t he leaving trouble behind?

Only now did she understand—Xue Feng had deliberately used the wounded man as bait to draw the zombie horde away.

At this moment, the tattooed man was being devoured by a hundred frenzied zombies. The scene was so gruesome and bloody that it was unbearable to watch.

By contrast, the area around the guardroom where Xue Feng and An Xiaowei hid was eerily quiet, not a single zombie in sight.

Having figured out Xue Feng’s plan, An Xiaowei suddenly felt overwhelmed with a sense of security around this man—she had to stick close to him no matter what!

The guardroom wasn’t as clean and tidy as An Xiaowei’s old apartment, but it was certainly much safer.

The Jiamei Residential Community guardroom had two rooms. The main one in front served as the security office—a five-by-five meter square with only one door and one window. The windowsill was about 1.6 meters above the ground, too high for zombies to climb in. The main door was a heavy iron slab, more than sufficient to withstand a zombie attack.

Those three scavengers had already fortified the place, turning it into their temporary refuge. The sturdy doors and windows had been further reinforced.

Behind the security office was a smaller room with a bed, a television, a refrigerator, and other amenities, as well as some supplies the scavengers had collected.

After a quick search of both rooms, An Xiaowei asked, “Feng, you’re not planning for us to live in this filthy place, are you?”

“I think it’s perfect,” Xue Feng replied with a calm smile. “Zombies prefer dark, hidden places. This guardroom is in an open area. Once the sun rises, there will be almost no zombies around here. The apartment buildings, on the other hand, are full of shadowy corners and stairwells where zombies could be lurking.”

“But…” An Xiaowei grimaced. “You may be right, but this place is so dirty! Living here is unbearable for me, I’ll have an allergic reaction…”

“You really are a silly girl,” Xue Feng said coolly. “We’ll rest here for a while, eat something, and recover. Once the zombies outside disperse, we’ll go back to the apartment and move over our personal belongings. We’ll change the sheets and clean the place up—problem solved.”

Still, An Xiaowei was reluctant to leave her cozy little home. “Feng, when we go back, we can just close the building’s main entrance. Then there won’t be any zombies in the hallways!”

“You’re too naïve, An Xiaowei,” Xue Feng countered. “There are over a hundred households in that building. What good does locking the door do? Someone else will always open it. Unless we kill every other survivor in the building, there’s always a risk of zombies getting in.”

“Alright, you’re right,” An Xiaowei nodded obediently, fully convinced.

…

By dusk, the zombies outside had mostly drifted away. Xue Feng took An Xiaowei back to the apartment to collect her personal items.

She was an exceptionally meticulous girl. While she couldn’t bring everything, she made sure to pack all her clothes, sheets, and bedding.

Back at the guardroom, An Xiaowei proved once again how adept she was at winning favor. She pulled from her luggage a form-fitting cheongsam, and after slipping it on, she presented two pairs of stockings—one white, one black.

“Feng, which do you like?”

He burst out laughing. “Only children make choices. Black today, white tomorrow… We’ll change it up every day of the week—it’ll never get old!”

Despite her cleverness, An Xiaowei was still innocent; she had never even dated anyone because her standards were too high. Her face flushed immediately. “You’re so naughty, Feng!”

Xue Feng chuckled, scooping her up and falling with her onto the warm, comfortable bed.

…

The next morning, Xue Feng once again heard the system’s prompt:

[Ding! Today’s intel has been updated!]