Wu Chengyue paused on the stairs, then turned and looked at her in a strange way. "Don't you know how to cook?"
"Do you want me to try?" Lin Qiao looked at him blandly.
Wu Chengyue looked very confused.
"What is wrong?" asked Lin Qiao.
Wu Chengyue adjusted his expression as he shook his head and responded, "Nothing. No, you don't need to cook. I'll cook." While speaking, he turned and kept walking upstairs. With his back to Lin Qiao, he furrowed his eyebrows when trying to think.
Lin Qiao had noticed the weird expression that was on his face earlier. What was wrong? Was it a strange thing that she didn't know how to cook? She was just saying… Oh, no! Wait, Lu Tianyu knew how to cook! Damn, he might realize it!
Did Wu Chengyue think that she didn't want to cook in his house? He seemed to know that Lu Tianyu knew how to cook.
'The zombie lady said that she might blow up the kitchen, and made it sound like something that would happen for real. It means that she did that a lot, or she wouldn't have said it so smoothly. But, I've done the background check on Lu Tianyu before. Lu Tianyu knows how to cook. I don't know if she's good at cooking or not, but she wouldn't blow up a kitchen for sure. Was the zombie lady lying to me? Was that an excuse she made up? Did she say that because she didn't want to cook?' Wu Chengyue thought while going upstairs.
He felt that what the zombie lady said sounded too much like something that would really happen instead of a random lie. Why did he feel so weird about it?
With a confused face, he walked into his study room.
Lin Qiao watched him disappear on the stairs, thinking if she should prepare dinner to prove that what she said was not true. What if he believed that she didn't know how to cook and started to suspect her?
…
In a building that was located in District B in Sea City Base, a group of people was present in a room, some sitting and some standing.
"What? You lost them?" Bai Xuer heard some men say that the people who were supposed to be following Lin Qiao's car had lost the target, so she instantly popped her eyes and yelled angrily, "How useless you are! Can't you even keep your eyes on two women?"
"Shut up!" Ding Biao gave Bai Xuer a cold glance and said, "Lu Tianyu is no longer as weak as she used to be. You better not see her as the old Lu Tianyu, or you'll be the one who's gonna suffer."
An obvious scorn toward Bai Xuer was detected from his words.
Hearing his cold words, Bai Xuer glared at him and argued, "Not weak? How? I don't see how capable she is. She's still living under someone else's protection, isn't she? I doubt she could do anything without the other woman. Since you think so much of her, let's find out what she can do."
"Alright, stop fighting!" A man who looked about thirty-year-old stopped the argument. Then, he looked at Ding Biao and said, "Lu Tianyu survived, but didn't show up in Sea City Base during the past year. Why do you believe that she was in All Beings Base for the whole year? Did you find out about where she came from?"
Ding Biao shook his head and said, "No, I didn't. That's how I found her suspicious. There's no record of her at the base gate. The people that we sent after her were stopped by some other people on the way. Some people are certainly protecting that woman in secret."
"She has disappeared," said the man, "It's not easy to find her in this huge base. Haven't you found anything about those kids yet?"
Ding Biao shook his head again.
"Since she has shown her face, I think she is certainly up to something. The entire base knows what kind of person she is… She is a troublemaker. Let's just wait for her to show up again," Bai Xuer said something that the others all agreed with.
The man nodded and said, "Emm, send some people to the places that she used to visit a lot."
Ding Biao nodded with hesitation and then said, "I get it. But, I think this time… she looks a lot more mysterious than before. I can't see through her so easily anymore."
The man responded with a cold voice, "No matter if she can be seen through easily or not, keep an eye on her. She isn't the only target. The other two women and those children are our targets too. We can always find something about them."
"Mm, I get it," Ding Biao quickly nodded.
Then, the man said to Bai Xuer, "Get rid of Jiang Anan as soon as you can. If the others notice her, we'd be in trouble."
Bai Xuer paused briefly, then nodded and said, "Okay, I get it. I'll take a few men to do it tonight."
"And her mother," the man added.
Bai Xuer looked at him with hesitation and said, "Her mother doesn't know about those things. Do we have to kill her too?"
The man gave her a glance and said, "Have you forgotten about what happened earlier today? If she gave you trouble in public again, people would notice. Do you understand me? What if people noticed Jiang Anan through her?"
"Okay, I get it," Bai Xuer nodded.
At that moment, Ding Biao abruptly joined the conversation, "Jiang Anan is infected by the zombie virus, so she can't possibly survive. I don't think she'll wake up. If she does wake up, she'd be a zombie. So now, her mother is more dangerous than she is. We should make that woman disappear ASAP."
"In this case," said the man, "why don't we let her become a zombie and then bite her own mother to death?"
"That's a good idea," Bai Xuer had her eyes glowing, "They will be two poor people who got injured by zombies and turned. No one will ever figure out what they had to do with us."
…
In a commoner district, a woman was lying in a coma in the bedroom of a small, ordinary apartment. Her face was bluish pale, and her lips were light-purple. She lay motionlessly under the blanket.
A sallow, sad, middle-aged woman walked in and looked at her daughter.
Jiang Xiuran stood by the bedside with despair and sobbed, "I told you not to trust them, but you wouldn't listen. What now? You saw her as a friend, but she was only using you. Do you understand me, Anan? Why wouldn't you listen to Mama?"
Suddenly, door knocks were heard.
Jiang Xiuran blinked and relaxed her furrowed eyebrows, but didn't react. The sharp rap on the door didn't stop.
Jiang Xiuran turned around and wiped her eyes and face with her sleeve, then walked out of the bedroom to the door, looking outside through the peephole.
"Who are you?"
A man was standing out there. The light in the hallway was dim, so his face wasn't seen clearly. "Please open the door. We are here to save your daughter," the man said.
Jiang Xiuran didn't open the door, but looked at him vigilantly and asked, "Who are you? Why are you saving my daughter?"
She did need help desperately at the moment, but that didn't make her stupid enough to trust anyone who showed up at her door.
The man took a slight step back to expose his face under the light and then said, "Don't worry! If we were here to hurt you, we wouldn't have knocked on the door."