The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind 015

"Can you take me home? I live in that alley..." Wu Qian slowly stood up with the help of the man in front of her, intentionally or unintentionally pressing her body against his.

"Yeah, sure."

"That's great, thank you." Wu Qian smiled happily; she was very confident in her looks.

As the group walked into the alley, a man poked his head out from behind them, revealing a greedy smile before following them.

Looking at the messy warehouse in front of them, the burly man asked in confusion, "Your house is this big?"

Wu Qian suddenly burst out laughing and violently shoved away the man who was supporting her. "We have a big family!"

Following her laughter, several figures emerged, staring at the three backpackers below as if looking at prey.

The leader wrapped his arm around Wu Qian, who had pressed herself against him, and praised, "Your acting is getting better and better!"

"Hey, you guys, hand over your stuff, and we can still give you a quick death!" The gate behind them was shut, and the man who had been tailing them grinned.

The next moment, his smile vanished. A crossbow bolt pinned him directly to the door, and the man let out a shrill scream.

"They have weapons!"

"No shit! Who doesn't have weapons if they've survived this long! Attack!"

"Boss, do you have a girlfriend?" Zhao Hu muttered.

Fang Zhiyi found it baffling. "What kind of question is that?"

"Nothing, I just saw you seemed pretty happy earlier..."

"Are you looking down on us?" Seeing the three actually chatting, the leader flew into a rage. "Hack them to pieces! We'll have food today!"

However, the few men who charged forward let out screams one after another. With just simple thrusts and sweeps of the blade in Fang Zhiyi's hand, they were completely incapacitated.

Immediately after, there was a loud crash. The bandits all looked toward the door in unison. A nearly totaled car smashed the gate open, sending their pinned accomplice flying. His eyes rolled back, and he passed out cold.

"I told you I should drive, I should drive!"

"Drive my ass, do you even know how to drive a manual?"

"What if we crash? The boss will have to fix it all over again!"

The people in the car argued as they jumped out, and the tide instantly turned.

The bandits were dumbfounded.

"Old rules. Slaughter the leader and hang him at the door. As for the rest... capture them and take them back." Fang Zhiyi sheathed his knife. He had no other choice. These people hid very well and never showed their faces when they encountered someone they couldn't mess with. To catch them all in one fell swoop, he had to go through a bit of trouble.

Chaos instantly erupted in the warehouse.

The survivors in Panyang City received news that there was a survivor base in a village not far outside the city. It was said that people could get enough to eat there and wouldn't be oppressed.

Rumors also spread among the bandits here that a group of lunatics was sweeping through the entire city.

The gang led by Cripple Wei, who occupied the south of the city, was completely wiped out. Cripple Wei himself was hung on his own front gate, his death gruesome.

The Centipede Society in the east of the city also met with disaster. Those people all had crossbows and cars. The Centipede Society couldn't resist at all. It was said that all their members had been taken away.

On Fang Zhiyi's side, he began assigning tasks to the captured criminals. Building walls today, moving stones tomorrow, and even making them repair the city.

Chen Rui once thought that repairing the city couldn't be done with just manual labor.

Fang Zhiyi smiled. "I know."

"?"

"When it comes to those scumbags, we just can't let them sit idle."

Chen Rui felt a chill run down his spine. Fortunately, he had followed him from the very beginning.

The largest bandit gang in the city put out the word that they would make Fang Zhiyi and his people wish they were dead. At first, they thought it was the military. After a brief period of confusion, they figured out it was just a group of ordinary people, a mere motley crew.

The Skeleton Society regained its courage. They were very satisfied with the current environment: no laws, being able to control and enslave others just by using violence, and killing anyone they disliked. They would absolutely not allow any other faction to threaten their position.

They put out the word in the morning, and by the afternoon, Fang Zhiyi's people had surrounded their stronghold.

The leader of the Skeleton Society didn't care much about his opponents' reaction. He didn't believe a group of people of unknown origin could finish him off. Even before the apocalypse, he was a local tyrant here. When surrounded by the flood, he had also killed many who refused to obey him.

That was until that young man leisurely appeared in their hall.

Following Fang Zhiyi's plan and relying on the cover of ranged weapons, Chen Rui and the others broke through the bandits' defenses layer by layer, even rescuing many imprisoned survivors.

But he was still very anxious. Fang Zhiyi had actually gone in all by himself. He knew well that nothing could happen to Fang Zhiyi, so he urged his subordinates to step up their offensive.

After learning the whereabouts of their leader from a petty boss kneeling on the ground with his hands on his head, Chen Rui led his men and rushed over.

When they kicked open the "Hall of Loyalty" where the leader was, they only saw their boss sitting in that golden chair, holding a man's severed head in his hand. Blood dripped onto the ground from the head's severed neck. The man's face was full of terror and agony, yet Fang Zhiyi looked as if he had done the most ordinary thing in the world, even teasing them that their speed needed improvement.

The surroundings were filled with bandits wailing in agony. Some had their hands twisted into bizarre shapes, while others had their jaws dislocated, their faces covered in terror and pain.

That scene would appear in Chen Rui's nightmares even many years later.

The bandits in Panyang City began to flee. Even the Skeleton Society had been annihilated; how could they dare to oppose those people?

For a time, the ruined city actually quieted down.

What lifted everyone's spirits even more was that the water well in the village once again gushed with water, and this water was clearer than before and even had a sweet taste.

"I guess I helped too, right?" Little Hei puffed out its chest with some pride. It had dragged the spiritual spring straight out of Bai Haomin's spatial dimension and stuffed it into the village's well.

After leaving the spatial dimension, the spring water's effects diminished quite a bit, but it was still slightly better than ordinary water sources. At the very least, the seeds that Zhao Hu and the others had painstakingly collected began to sprout, and the growth of rows of green vegetables filled everyone with joy.

Survivors who heard the news continuously rushed over from other places, wanting to join Fang Zhiyi's base. The escort team was overwhelmingly busy, and those enslaved bandits also got a new job: expanding the housing.

The newcomers didn't understand why there were coolies in this base. Fang Zhiyi had long anticipated this. The new arrivals would be taken by the old residents to visit a special attraction.

It was the hard evidence collected from the strongholds of these bandits: mutilated skeletons, air-dried human flesh, bloodstained ropes, piled-up murder weapons... The people who walked out from there had solemn expressions, and when they looked at the bandits being driven to work, they no longer had a shred of sympathy.