Apocalyptic Hoarding Diary

Chapter 431 Punching and Kicking

A response came from afar at the foot of the mountain, a sharp and bright voice with a hint of shrewishness: "What?! I'm coming right now! Which son of a bitch dares to steal my things? Don't they have a death wish?!"

The sound grew closer, and it was clear that the speaker had already started running up the mountain.

The man in the gray jacket's expression changed completely.

He instinctively took a step back, his eyes darting frantically through the crowd, as if searching for a crack to squeeze through.

But the circle of more than twenty people was so tight that it was impossible to see anything, and every face seemed to say, "Try running it yourself."

Lan Yue stood still, not moving an inch, only slightly raising her chin, the cold smile on her lips deepening.

She didn't say anything, but her expression clearly said: You're finished.

Soon, a middle-aged woman in her forties ran up the mountain, panting.

She was wearing a faded military green jacket, her trousers rolled up to her calves, and her canvas shoes covered in mud; she looked like she had just come from the trading point.

Four or five people followed behind her, men and women of different ages. Some were still clutching tools they hadn't had time to put down, while others were buttoning their coats as they walked. Clearly, they had all dropped what they were doing and rushed over to check after hearing that shout.

"Where? Where? Which bastard stole my things?" Zhou Xiaojuan hadn't even stood up straight yet, her eyes had already scanned the crowd, her voice shrill and bright, carrying a chilling ferocity.

No one answered her, because her attention was quickly drawn to the several crooked tents with their zippers wide open.

Of the five tents on the right, four had their zippers unzipped, and the curtains swayed slightly in the morning breeze.

Zhou Xiaojuan recognized her own hat; it was dark green, and there was a crooked flower drawn on the door frame with a marker pen—she had drawn it herself as a mark.

She rushed over, bent down and crawled into the tent, emerging in less than three seconds, her face already a deep purplish-red.

"It's all gone...all gone..." Her voice trembled. "I just exchanged twelve compressed biscuits, two bags of dried meat, and a packet of salt at the trading point yesterday...all gone!"

The other three owners also emerged from their tents, their expressions mirroring Zhou Xiaojuan's. They first searched the tents in disbelief, and after confirming that the items were indeed gone, their faces turned ashen, their lips trembled, and they were unable to utter a complete sentence for a moment.

"Mine too, the cookies I got last night, I haven't even opened them..."

"Where's my yellow backpack? The yellow backpack I put in the corner of the tent is gone!"

"Who the hell did this? How utterly despicable!"

They cursed as they searched around the tent, and soon found some scattered pieces of packaging, torn cookie wrappers, crushed cans, and a pair of old gloves that had been found in some tent and were carelessly thrown into the mud.

These things were supposed to be packed into bags and taken away, but the man in the gray jacket probably ran away while being chased by Blue Moon, scattering them all the way. Now they lie disheveled among the mud and rubble, silently bearing witness to everything.

The four owners' eyes fell almost simultaneously on the scattered items on the ground, then simultaneously looked up and turned to the gray-jacketed man in the center of the crowd, whose face was bruised and blood was still trickling from the corner of his mouth.

At that moment, the air seemed to freeze for a split second.

Then, Lan Yue spoke up, "Your things were stolen by this guy. I just caught him red-handed, so it's like he caught him red-handed, but he just won't admit it. Even though the stolen things are scattered all over the place, he's still very stubborn."

Upon hearing these words, the four owners no longer cared whether he acknowledged the loss or not; the last thread of reason snapped in their minds.

Zhou Xiaojuan was the first to rush forward, grabbing the man in the gray jacket by the hair and slapping him with her other hand, making a crisp "smack" sound.

Immediately afterwards, the other three pounced on him, raining blows of fists, slaps, and knees upon him. Their attacks were haphazard and unskilled, purely an instinctive outburst of pent-up anger.

"I told you not to steal! I told you not to steal!"

"How could you steal what I painstakingly saved up!"

"You shameless bastard!"

The man in the gray jacket let out a series of mournful howls, his body curled up on the ground after being beaten, his hands covering his head, futilely twisting his body trying to dodge the punches and kicks coming from all directions.

His cries of agony went from initial "help" to incoherent pleas for mercy, and finally to a series of agonizing screams, each one more pitiful than the last.

No one in the crowd stepped forward to break up the fight. More than twenty people stood two or three meters away, watching the scene with complicated expressions.

Several people who were initially hesitant about whether to help break up the fight quietly stopped when they saw the bags that fell out of the gray-jacketed man's pocket.

Just as the four victims' fists began to slow, their breathing became heavy and disordered, and the gray-jacketed man's wails faded from loud to faint, someone finally stepped forward.

The speaker was a man in his forties, wearing black-rimmed glasses.

He stepped out of the crowd and stood two or three steps away from the "battlefield." He reached out and made a pressing motion with his hand, his voice not loud but heavy: "Alright, alright, don't kill anyone."

The four owners seemed to have been put on pause, and their movements slowed down.

Seeing that they had stopped, the bespectacled man took two steps forward and said in a gentle but firm tone, "If someone is killed, we will go from being in the right to being in the wrong."

This person has solid evidence of theft; he's caught red-handed. Rather than crippling him and getting caught in the crossfire, we should hand him over to the staff at the transaction point and let them handle it.

As soon as these words were spoken, a buzz of agreement quickly arose from the crowd.

"That's right, it's not worth killing someone."

"Send it to the trading point and let them decide."

"Yes, let the sergeants judge how this kind of person should be dealt with."

"This is what will happen to anyone who dares to steal again."

Several strong and robust young men stepped forward.

Two of them grabbed the man in the gray jacket from both sides and pulled him up from the ground. His legs were so weak that he could barely stand and was falling like a lump of mud. The two young men barely managed to support him by dragging and carrying him.

Some people even forcibly pulled away the owners who were still cursing and swearing.

Zhou Xiaojuan was being pulled aside by a female companion of similar age, who was putting her arm around her shoulder, while Zhou Xiaojuan kept cursing, "Don't pull me! I haven't hit him enough yet! This son of a bitch—"

"Alright, alright," her female companion whispered in her ear, "Sending him to the trading point is more effective than beating him up. Don't worry, he can't escape."

The four owners of the lost items were persuaded and pulled aside to settle down.