Chapter 34: You Call This Social Anxiety?

Xia An pulled out a crossbow bolt, her body splattered with fresh blood, and could not help but retch again.

Su Miao simply watched in silence.

Bodies and blood covered the floor; a little more vomit from Xia An hardly made a difference. In this apocalyptic world, if Xia An wished to survive well in the future, she had to become accustomed to blood, or at the very least, not be afraid of blood and corpses.

These were things Xia An would have to adapt to on her own; there was little Su Miao could do to help.

Once the crossbow bolts were retrieved, Su Miao cleared away the fallen cabinets and bed, then rinsed the bolts in the rainwater by the door before storing them in her magical space.

The next task was to move the corpses outside into the rain, letting the water wash them away.

The bodies on the first floor were relatively easy to move.

With Xia An's help, the job was far more efficient than usual; within minutes, they had dragged all the corpses from the first floor out into the rain.

However, moving the bodies from the stairs proved more troublesome—too many, piled atop one another, heavy and unwieldy.

Especially the few corpses that had been blown apart.

Words like "mangled" or "horrific" no longer sufficed to describe them.

Unsurprisingly, upon seeing these bodies, Xia An vomited once more.

Yet, Xia An was resilient; she fetched a mop and broom, and despite her revulsion, forced herself to clean the filth from the stairs.

The blood smeared on the floor and walls could not be completely removed, no matter how hard they tried, so the two simply did what they could.

Given that the shattered bodies would not easily be washed away by the rain if thrown outside, Su Miao found several foam boxes meant for vegetables from her magical space. She had Xia An collect the remains in those, then sent them out into the rain, where the rushing water would carry them away.

They worked from upstairs to down, not finishing until after one in the morning.

"Xia An, are you alright?"

Su Miao looked at Xia An, whose expression had become rather numb.

"I'm fine, sister," Xia An replied weakly.

It seemed she had vomited so much her body felt hollow and drained.

People always said you would get used to vomiting, but evidently, that was a lie.

Su Miao took a set of new clothes from her magical space. "I've run a hot bath for you in the tub. Go wash up. Here are clean clothes—just throw away the ones stained with blood."

The fresh clothes might be a bit large, but there were no better options.

Xia An accepted them. "Thank you, sister."

Su Miao went to another bathroom to rinse off, then soaked in the tub and changed into clean clothes, feeling much more refreshed.

She glanced at the chaos that now filled the villa. Those who had attacked her—again and again—had they never noticed the corpses outside?

At any rate, she needed to find a way to permanently resolve this problem. If possible, she would hunt down every last one of those who had attacked her last night.

But for now, Su Miao decided to sleep. She would deal with everything else after she’d rested and recovered her strength.

...

The foreman returned, bringing three men with him.

Later, two more staggered back.

All of them looked like lost souls.

The five workers left behind in the villa stared at those who had returned, their faces blank, unable to comprehend what had happened.

How could it be that twenty-six people went out, and only six returned? Were the rest all dead?

"Where are the others?" the foreman asked the last two who had come running back, his face terrified as he glanced at the darkness and torrential rain outside.

"Gone. All gone," stammered one middle-aged man, blood smeared across his face.

He had cut himself in his panicked flight, and in his terror, hadn’t even had time to tend the wounds.

"Boss, they’re all dead. If we hadn’t run, we’d be dead, too," said another, his tone frantic.

All dead?

The workers left behind were horrified. Had the operation failed?

They hurried to bolt the villa doors, terrified the murderous witch would suddenly come bursting in.

"Didn’t you say she was just a recluse?" The foreman was panting, still in shock. "You call that a recluse? She’s a social terrorist!"

"More than twenty brothers, gone!"

The bloodied worker asked anxiously, "Boss, what do we do now? Will that murderous witch come after us? And what about the security team? They said if we offended her, we’d be offending them too..."

The foreman clenched his fists, desperate, but knowing all the worry in the world was useless now.

What was done was done.

So many of their brothers were dead.

There was no way to fix it.

But he had to keep calm.

"The murderous witch never leaves her house. It’s always been this way—if you escape and don’t go back to bother her, she basically never hunts you down. So we don’t need to worry about that," the foreman analyzed. "As for the security team, there are just over twenty of them, and they’re already at odds with Fei Chengqiang over in the ruins. We still have eleven people; even if they find out what happened tonight, they won’t have the guts to go after us."

"Still, just in case, tomorrow we’ll go directly to the security team and demand an answer!"

"At the very least, we need to get some food before we leave this place!"

The bloodied worker asked, "Boss, do you think they’ll agree?"

The foreman’s face, still retaining some of its former fleshiness, twitched. "They’ll agree, because I’ll offer Chang Jieming a deal he simply can’t refuse."

The others looked at their foreman as if he’d lost his mind.

But they were out of food.

If they didn’t get something to eat soon, they’d starve.

Even the bark and leaves around the resort had been stripped clean.

Even if they wanted to gnaw on bark, they’d have to brave the storm and trek even farther into the mountains.

No matter what the foreman intended, as long as he could get them food and get them out, they would follow.

...

Before dawn, Chang Jieming received word of the construction gang’s attack on Su Miao’s villa.

According to the report, the gang had fled, leaving many corpses behind.

It could only mean Su Miao had won.

This confirmed Chang Jieming’s previous assessment of her.

There was no doubt Su Miao had eliminated Long-ge’s gang from the villas.

Too formidable!

What concerned Chang Jieming even more than this news was the explosion heard from Su Miao’s villa—was it dynamite, or something else?

As head of the resort’s security team, he was sure there were no such dangerous items in the villas.

Not even the warehouse in the tourist building swept away by the landslide had contained any.

Curiosity aside, he quickly realized there was a bigger problem.

"Anyone who dares offend Miss Su Miao is declaring war on the security team!"

That was the threat Chang Jieming had issued some time ago.

He’d been hoping to borrow Su Miao’s reputation as a deterrent.

Now, if he failed to act against the construction gang, the security team’s words would soon be meaningless.

If he did act, it would be twenty-three against eleven—superior numbers, yes, but what would the casualties be?

Chang Jieming didn’t dare gamble.

Worse still, if they clashed with the remnants of the construction gang, Fei Chengqiang from the ruins might seize the chance to strike, and the entire security team could be wiped out.

Headache!

Chang Jieming thought for a moment, then considered another possibility.

If the security team’s response remained uncertain, the construction gang might come directly to the security team.

If they couldn’t defeat Miss Su Miao, would they try their luck with the security team instead?

At that thought, Chang Jieming shivered.

He spun around and ran to the dormitory, shouting loudly,

"Everyone up!"

"All hands on deck!"