The moment Zhao Tianlei finished speaking, the female assistant looked at him suspiciously, as if she had connected him and that Lin Mu with the tactic of using food to lure girls.
How could Zhao Tianlei fail to understand that look? He immediately glared and said, "The food is over there. If you don't want to eat, there's nothing I can do. But don't lump me together with that bastard Lin Mu. If I meant you any harm, you could just scream."
With that, Zhao Tianlei prepared to leave. Seeing this, the female assistant hurriedly grabbed him, then crouched down and said to Shen Xinyu, "Xinyu, that Lin Mu was already trying to cause trouble for us just now. We should move somewhere with fewer people, so that if that guy comes down again, he won't implicate anyone else nearby. Besides, when we were being bullied just now, not a single person around here was willing to stand up and help us. They're all a bunch of cowards afraid to die."
The female assistant had deliberately said those words for the people around them to hear. When the surrounding men heard her, some of them really did turn their faces away. After all, everyone had seen Shen Xinyu and her female assistant offend Lin Mu.
If Lin Mu was truly unwilling to let the matter go and came down to cause trouble for them again, the two women were close enough to implicate the people nearby. So although these men usually treated Shen Xinyu like a goddess, at this moment, the goddess had become a ticking time bomb. Everyone around them wished they could stay as far away from her as possible.
Shen Xinyu was extremely curious about the female assistant's actions. She had no idea what Zhao Tianlei had whispered to her that made her say such things. But at that moment, the person Shen Xinyu trusted most was the female assistant. Whatever she said, Shen Xinyu believed. She knew that there had to be another reason for the female assistant to speak to the people around them like that and pull her somewhere else.
After a brief hesitation, Shen Xinyu stood up and followed behind the female assistant. She and Zhao Tianlei walked one after the other toward the corner. When they reached it, Ye Sitong and Wu Bin hurriedly stood up and asked Shen Xinyu with concern whether she was all right. After exchanging a few strained pleasantries, the conversation came to an end.
Still feeling unsafe, Shen Xinyu immediately said to the female assistant, "Sister Hua, why exactly did you pull me over here? Weren't we fine over there? Why did you come over here to disturb other people?"
Hearing Shen Xinyu, Zhao Tianlei quickly said, "Shen Xinyu, come over here for a moment. And you, female assistant—don't make a fuss. Keep your voices down. Wu Bin and Ye Sitong, stand guard at the entrance to this emergency passage. Don't let anyone come near. If anyone approaches, tell me in advance."
Ye Sitong replied, "Okay, Tianlei. Don't worry. Wu Bin and I will keep watch for you. If anyone comes, I'll keep coughing."
"Where are you taking us?"
Seeing Zhao Tianlei lead the female assistant and her toward a relatively secluded stairwell, Shen Xinyu's instinctive wariness flared up again. She immediately asked him nervously.
Seeing the goddess looking so guarded, Zhao Tianlei grinned and said, "What's wrong? Is the goddess really that scared? Come in and take a look. You'll find out."
As he spoke, Zhao Tianlei actually pulled the female assistant into the passage right in front of Shen Xinyu. Shen Xinyu froze for a moment, then hurried after them. After all, Shen Xinyu's female assistant was worlds apart from her. She was about the same height as Shen Xinyu, but weighed roughly twice as much. As for her looks, she was only half as attractive as Shen Xinyu. Thus, the female assistant had always been perfectly safe while staying with Shen Xinyu and had rarely been harassed, which allowed her to focus wholeheartedly on working for Shen Xinyu.
When Shen Xinyu followed Zhao Tianlei and the assistant into the stairwell out of concern, she discovered that Zhao Tianlei had no intention of doing anything to the female assistant. Instead, he took off his backpack, opened it, pulled out some things, and stuffed them into the female assistant's hands. "It's been all morning. You must be hungry too, right? I have some food here. Eat."
As he spoke, Zhao Tianlei took out bag after bag of snacks from his backpack and stuffed them into the female assistant's hands. Shen Xinyu watched the scene, completely unprepared for this big man to be so kindhearted. While everyone else had become selfish after the apocalypse began, this man still thought of others.
Then Zhao Tianlei also took out some food and put it into Shen Xinyu's hands. "Shen Xinyu, have something to eat too. You're so thin. Being a big star must usually be very tiring. To appear on-screen, you probably have to watch your diet and never eat snacks like these. But this is a special time. If you don't eat, you might starve. When zombies appear, you won't have the strength to fight or run. We have plenty of snacks, but water is scarce. There are only two bottles left here. Take this one and share it between the two of you."
Holding the snacks and water Zhao Tianlei had stuffed into her hands, Shen Xinyu was stunned. Just as Zhao Tianlei had said, ever since she became a star, she had avoided snacks to maintain her figure. But what girl didn't love snacks? Now that the apocalypse had arrived and everyone was starving, who would still care about their figure? By the time food became truly scarce, they might not even have the chance to gain weight if they wanted to.
Although the food was cheap, as Shen Xinyu held it in her hands, it somehow felt heavier than gold or silver. An inexplicable wave of emotion surged through her. The female assistant beside her had already been unable to resist her hunger and started eating, but Shen Xinyu simply held the food, unsure what to do. She could only look at Zhao Tianlei gratefully and say, "Zhao Tianlei, thank you. Just now, when the apocalypse began, I imagined it countless times. I imagined so many people coming to save me, but I never imagined that the person who would ultimately save me would be you."
"Smack." With a light sound, Zhao Tianlei roughly tore open a bag of bread. He then reached out, tore off a small piece, and held it to Shen Xinyu's lips. While she stared at him in stunned disbelief, he gently slipped it into her mouth.
"Go ahead and eat. As long as I'm here, I won't let you go hungry. But you'd better eat quickly. Who knows? Once those people outside are starving and smell the food, they may come running over to fight you for it. I can handle two or three people, but if a whole crowd comes over, they might even eat me."
With that, Zhao Tianlei smiled faintly at Shen Xinyu and walked toward the stairwell entrance, giving the two women some privacy so they could eat freely.
After half a day of hunger, with order and law gone, no one cared whether eating looked elegant. Under such hunger, filling one's stomach quickly was more important than maintaining a lady's dignity. Shen Xinyu could honestly say this was the first time she had felt that snacks, normally treated like junk food, tasted even better than staple foods. Being hungry truly was miserable.
"Xinyu, if you trust Sister Hua, then listen carefully to what Sister Hua has to say."
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