Chapter 272

“We’re leaving. The grain and the Crystals stay. What use are you after that?”

Magnus Specter gave a bitter laugh in his heart. It was plain as day. If Emily Ward were calm, she’d never fail to see it. But once feelings got tangled in it, people lost their heads. Right now, she was already in a mess.

“Fine, Sister Emily. I respect what you want.”

Emily was leaning against Magnus’s chest. He lightly patted her shoulder and said, “But let us go see their base first. See how they live. Maybe...” He gave a helpless little smile. “Maybe I’m the one being petty. If they really are decent people, letting them join us isn’t impossible. As long as our women agree, I’ve got no objection. How about that?”

“But...”

Emily hesitated and swallowed the rest.

She knew damn well what Kevin Ward and those five cronies were like. She’d just seen enough of them. Still... maybe the people at their base were different. Maybe not everyone there was rotten.

This was probably the last chance Magnus was giving them. If she refused now, even that last thread would snap.

The two of them walked back to the convoy. Emily got two off-road vehicles and hauled Kevin and the other six over. Magnus watched them climb in while cursing under their breath. He let out a quiet sigh, turned, and got into Chloe Clark’s vehicle, telling her to follow behind Kevin’s car. Then he signaled for the heavy convoy in the rear to move with them.

“So what now, Magnus? What exactly does Emily mean?”

Following the lead car toward their base, Sophia Reid hurried to ask. She and Charlotte Renard both knew this matter was a headache. Nasty and hard to handle.

“We’ll go look at their base. If they’re decent, we take them in. If not... Sister Emily says she’ll stay.”

Magnus sounded sullen.

Chloe glanced at him, puzzled. Seeing he hadn’t told Sophia and the others about making the women tie ponytails with cartoon-pattern hair ties, she kept her mouth shut.

They followed Emily and Kevin’s lead vehicle into the train station. It turned left, drove a little over a hundred meters, then went down past the platform. There were six trains there. On top of two green-skinned carriages, strips of animal meat of all sizes had been laid out to dry. At the rear roof of one carriage sat a huge duck head.

Kevin’s car stopped beside the door of a green train carriage. A man got out holding a plastic bag in both hands. He waved urgently toward the carriage. Someone inside immediately slid the door open. The man rushed up into the train, and right after him went Emily, Kevin, and the rest.

So they lived in the train.

Magnus got out and swept his eyes around. For the moment, he saw no large poultry like chickens, ducks, or geese. Sparrows darted through the air now and then. He had four female squad members activate Metal Crystal and get out with torches in hand, covering the others as they boarded. He himself stayed on guard, eyes roaming the surroundings, ready for trouble at any second.

More than one hundred forty female members came down from the two vehicles. Magnus figured that was enough. He left the remaining seated bus on perimeter watch, then boarded the green carriage last.

Inside, the train was wrecked to hell. The window glass wasn’t sealed, so some light still got in. Magnus squeezed past the women and moved to the front. Kevin was being dragged backward at a quick pace by two companions, each holding one of his arms, both men whispering sharply in his ears as they went.

Emily followed behind with an icy face, glaring at her own brother.

Damn it. Just as expected. Exactly as in the last life.

Same filthy habit. Never changed.

The bastard liked girls with ponytails, and liked those cartoon-pattern hair ties.

Back in the previous life, Magnus had gone out on a mission with Olivia Lawrence, Liana Jabbar, and the others, while Sarah Franklin and Emily stayed behind at the timber mill. At the time, Sarah had her hair in a ponytail and wore that kind of hair tie.

Emily only found out about her brother’s sickness later, when she jammed a gun against Kevin’s head.

After that, Magnus naturally learned too.

But by then, everything was already too late.

The Emily now still didn’t know. So she thought her brother was just plain scum. Nothing more.

Magnus said nothing. He only followed behind Emily in silence. One of Kevin’s companions, furious at him for being useless, slapped him across the face and hissed something harsh in his ear. Only then did Kevin recover a little. He pinched his own thigh twice, hard, then turned around and kept leading the way.

They passed through three carriages. All three were piled with junk, nothing worth much. At the end of the third carriage, over a dozen sacks of cash had been piled on the seats. Looked like they’d hit a bank at some point and still dreamed the government would take back control, still dreaming of getting rich.

Starting from the fourth carriage, people were living inside.

A wave of rank piss-stink hit them straight in the face.

Emily’s brows tightened a little.

Kevin grinned, turned back, and even hooked Emily’s arm in a fake show of intimacy. “Yeah, it’s a bit dirty, sis. Don’t mind it. Once we join your Ice Regiment, I’ll make these bastards bathe every day for you, heh. Sis, when the time comes I’ll find you a few brothers who really know how to serve—”

Before he could finish, the air itself seemed to go cold.

On the left side of the carriage were long three-person benches, and men lay stretched across them. The short seats on the right housed the women.

The men were of all ages. Almost every bench had one sprawled over it. There weren’t many women. Maybe one woman to several seats. They were all disheveled, hair hanging loose, curled up beneath torn clothes and ragged quilts, staring nervously at Emily and the others filing in.

The moment the men saw so many women, they all sat up.

The whole carriage turned noisy at once.

The ones farther back were too far to see clearly, so they simply stood on the seats and whistled over.

“Kevin! Old Zhang! Where the hell’d you dig up this many girls?”

“Holy shit! Jackpot! You lot actually pulled it off!”

“Come here, little sister, come let your big brother have a look! I’ve got meat for you to eat! Come on, come on, get over here...”

One big fellow standing on a seat started untying his trousers while he talked.

A man beside Kevin immediately roared, “Fuck! Zhao Xiong, watch yourself! These are our guests!”

“Oh?” Zhao Xiong burst out laughing. “Guests? Hahahaha... Old Zhang, spell it out for me. Are these little women our guests... or are they our patrons, huh? Hahahaha... I’ve done damn near everything in this life, but I sure as hell ain’t ever sold myself on stage!”

The men all around erupted in laughter.

Emily’s face went green with fury.

Seeing her expression turn ugly, Old Zhang immediately pulled out a handgun and pointed it at Zhao Xiong. “Zhao Xiong! You sick of living, you bastard?!”

“Fuck!”

Once he saw Old Zhang was serious, Zhao Xiong cursed and sat back down on the long train bench, sour-faced.

In front of him, a woman was kneeling.

In both hands, she carefully held a duck bone, gnawing at it with all the strength she had, chewing even the bone itself. Zhao Xiong had lost face, and his temper was foul. Barefoot, he kicked her straight in the face. The sole of his foot smashed into the tender flesh of her cheek. That seemed to ease his mood a little.

The woman let out a hoarse cry and toppled to the floor. Gritting her teeth through the pain, she sat back up, knelt before Zhao Xiong again, and kept gnawing at that duck bone clutched tightly in both hands.

Then Zhao Xiong raised his foot and kicked at her again...