Taking in Survivors

"Run! There's a weird entity in the gas station! The captain got eaten!"

"Help! The sky's falling! We're doomed!"

The people of the Butcher Convoy all tried to run.

But Chen Fan had no intention of letting them leave so easily.

"Go!"

Chen Fan pointed at the Ten Thousand Souls Banner.

The Ten Thousand Souls Banner flew above the Butcher Convoy, pouring out billowing yin energy that formed a ghost domain around the convoy.

The hundreds of giant insect yin souls inside the banner, along with some human yin souls, all roamed around the Butcher Convoy.

The people in the Butcher Convoy could even see familiar faces among them.

"Ah! Honey! What happened to you?"

"Heavens, that's Old Chen!"

"I only cheated you out of bread once, Old Wang! Don't come after my life!"

"Is... is that the captain? It can't be, can it?"

The many yin souls surrounded the people of the Butcher Convoy, drifting and floating about without pause as they revealed sinister, terrifying smiles.

"Hehehe, my master said none of you are allowed to leave without his permission!"

"Hehehe, nobody can go..."

"Can't go! Can't go!"

The people of the Butcher Convoy had never seen anything like it. Their faces turned ashen, and they trembled all over.

Some of the more timid ones even rolled their eyes and fainted.

Everyone was frightened into staying still by the yin souls.

The Fairness Convoy arrived, and Nie Shufeng and the others got out and came over to Chen Fan.

Nie Shufeng looked at the convoy surrounded by yin souls not far away and asked curiously, "What happened?"

Chen Fan explained, "Their captain brought some people over to bully our guide, so I killed him. Then the rest tried to run. How could I let them get away?

They should all count as my spoils of war. How could I let them leave so easily? Brother Shu, don't you think I'm right?"

Nie Shufeng chose to ignore what Chen Fan had called him and instead frowned at the terrifying sight of the many yin souls flying around the Butcher Convoy.

"You're not going to kill everyone, are you?" Nie Shufeng asked.

Chen Fan widened his eyes. "You're judging me by appearances, aren't you? You see how ghostly my artifact looks and imagine I'm some demonic cultivator? Your words really hurt. I just want to see if they have any supplies I need."

Nie Shufeng shook his head and said helplessly, "I jumped to conclusions. It's not that I'm a bleeding heart; I'm just afraid you'll get carried away killing and kill me too."

"Haha, how could that happen?" Chen Fan found it funny. Was he that kind of person?

"Yuan'er, take some people to gather the supplies. I'll go over there and see if they have anything our convoy needs."

After calling out to Li Yuanyuan, Chen Fan started toward the Butcher Convoy.

But Li Yuanyuan refused. "No, I want to go pick out a car. I don't want to be squeezed into one car with you stinky men anymore."

Although some people in the Fairness Convoy had been killed the night before, leaving cars vacant, those were still the convoy's internal resources.

They would certainly distribute them among themselves. If Li Yuanyuan wanted one, she would have to trade supplies for it.

And she happened to have hardly any supplies.

Chen Fan was a little displeased. Who was she calling stinky?

After saying that, he sniffed himself.

Ugh...

No, rather, who didn't stink in the apocalypse?

Did Li Yuanyuan smell nice?

How come he hadn't noticed?

Still, Chen Fan adjusted the assignments.

"All right, then. Qian Lei, take Old Yan and Sun Hong to gather the supplies. Yuanyuan, come pick one out."

Chen Fan brought Li Yuanyuan over to the Butcher Convoy.

When the roaming yin souls saw Chen Fan arrive, they parted to make a path.

Li Yuanyuan followed beside Chen Fan, unable to resist drawing her head in as she looked at the eerie souls.

They really were rather frightening.

The survivors of the Butcher Convoy were huddled together for warmth, trembling.

They stayed in groups of three or five, terrified that the yin souls around them would eat them if they weren't careful.

When Chen Fan and Li Yuanyuan appeared, the survivors looked over warily, fear on their faces.

Chen Fan clapped his hands to get everyone's attention. "All right, everybody, look over here. I have an announcement. Good news: I'm the one who killed your captain. There's no weird entity, so relax.

The bad news is that you've fallen into my hands. If you make me unhappy, it'll be about the same as running into a weird entity."

Listening from the side, Li Yuanyuan pressed a hand to her forehead helplessly.

"So you need to behave, understand? I'm just here to collect the supplies belonging to the people I killed, the ones in those cars. Those were my spoils of war to begin with. As for the rest of you, I'm not interested in your meager belongings.

You'd all better behave, or else the hundreds and thousands of yin souls in my soul banner are hungry!"

As Chen Fan spoke, the yin souls drifting nearby cooperated by letting out ghostly wails and howls.

He was actually bluffing. There were only a few hundred yin souls at the moment, and most of them belonged to giant insects.

When he had killed the giant insects, many of their corpses had been blasted away, so he hadn't collected many.

The yin souls, however, were easy to collect. One sweep of the Ten Thousand Souls Banner brought them into it, so he had collected plenty.

The Butcher Convoy's survivors around him didn't dare make a peep. They all looked at Chen Fan fearfully and lowered their heads in submission.

Chen Fan began checking the supplies in the vehicles.

People who drove really did have more supplies than those who rode or walked.

Chen Fan looked over the dozen or so vehicles in the convoy. He had killed the owners of ten of them, and their supplies added up to so much that there was no way to carry it all.

Chen Fan called out to the survivors, "A few of you, come over here. I need people who can drive. Gather the supplies from these ten vehicles and pack them into three or four. You won't be working for nothing. Each of you gets a pack of bread and a bottle of water."

The survivors exchanged glances among themselves.

A pack of bread and a bottle of water for moving supplies from several vehicles-that wouldn't even make up for the energy they'd use.

Chen Fan's expression grew cold.

"If nobody volunteers, I'll start picking names. And then there won't be any pay..."

Someone finally raised a hand.

"I'll do it..."

"Um, I can drive..."

Only then did Chen Fan nod in satisfaction and direct a few people to start gathering the supplies.

Afterward, he walked around the Butcher Convoy and actually found an RV.

His eyes lit up.

There were still people in the RV; they hadn't gotten out to surround Qian Lei earlier.

Chen Fan walked over.

An honest-looking man got out of the driver's seat.

He bowed and nodded at Chen Fan with a fawning smile.

"Hello, boss..."

Chen Fan nodded. "Is this your vehicle? Are you the only one in it?"

The driver hurriedly shook his head. "No, I'm just the driver. Boss Chu had me drive this vehicle for him. There are a few of Boss Chu's mistresses in the back..."

Boss Chu was the captain of this convoy.

Chen Fan's face darkened. He hadn't expected the RV he'd taken a fancy to to be that dead baldy's shag wagon.

It didn't matter. He could have someone give it a thorough scrubbing inside and out later and replace all the sheets and bedding...

Chen Fan could only console himself that way. In the apocalypse, he couldn't afford to be too picky.

"What's your name?"

"My name's Zhao Duotian."

Chen Fan had Zhao Duotian call everyone out of the RV.

There were four women in all, all dressed in skimpy clothes. Some were quite pretty; others looked ordinary to Chen Fan.

They were all looking at Chen Fan timidly.

Clearly, they had been treated harshly.

Chen Fan cursed the dead baldy inwardly. He really had known how to enjoy himself.

After a brief conversation, he learned that the RV had previously belonged to one of the four women, a woman named Rongrong.

Before the apocalypse, Rongrong had been a travel blogger who drove her RV around, filming her refined life in it.

She had even gained a million followers online.

Life had been good, but then the apocalypse arrived.

To survive, she had joined this convoy, only to walk into the tiger's den.

For the sake of views, Rongrong had designed and fitted out the RV very nicely.

The layout was sensible, and it had every amenity.

Not only did it have a bed in the back, but there was also a cab-over bed at the front.

Besides that, it had a bathroom, washing machine, air conditioner, diesel heater, refrigerator, kitchen, and cabinets-everything one could need.

Chen Fan was very satisfied.

What delighted him even more was that the RV's fresh water tank had recently been filled.

That meant he could finally take a bath.

Without another word, Chen Fan sent Zhao Duotian and the other women to another vehicle.

In any case, he only planned to consolidate the supplies from those ten vehicles and drive three or four away. He could give them any one of the remaining vehicles.

As for Rongrong, Chen Fan kept her behind to be the RV's driver.

After all, Rongrong had designed it, so she knew it better and would be more comfortable driving it.

Besides that, Chen Fan had no other intentions. He wasn't Zhuanzhuan.

Rongrong nodded silently, without much joy on her face.

Her experiences over the past few months since the apocalypse had left her numb, and she didn't know Chen Fan yet.

In her view, after the apocalypse, human decency was too much to hope for.

So she didn't feel she had escaped the tiger's jaws.

Meanwhile, Li Yuanyuan had taken a fancy to an orange-yellow off-road pickup truck fitted with a snorkel.

It also had plenty of supplies inside.

Chen Fan remembered seeing an advertisement for it before the apocalypse.

It seemed to be called the Ranger.

Since Li Yuanyuan had set her sights on it, Chen Fan didn't compete with her for it. He gave her the supplies in the truck too.

Although the whole convoy was his spoils of war, he had gained several vehicles' worth of supplies, so he wasn't short of that little bit.

The supplies were almost all consolidated.

The supplies looted from ten vehicles filled four of them to bursting.

Including the RV and Li Yuanyuan's pickup, that made six vehicles in total.

Chen Fan planned to take them all back to the convoy.

By now, he was feeling a little regretful. If only he had a storage artifact, he wouldn't need so many vehicles to transport everything.

Just as Chen Fan was about to leave,

Zhao Duotian emerged from the crowd and approached him with a shy smile.

"Um, boss, they saw that I could talk to you, so they sent me to ask if you could let us join your convoy. Our captain's gone now, and we don't have any supernatural people. It'll be hard for us to survive..."

Chen Fan chuckled. "You can join, but my Mortal Convoy has a rule: every survivor under its protection must hand over ten percent of their supplies. If you can accept that, join us. If not, you'd best leave now.

I'll make this clear in advance: if anyone agrees to join and then changes their mind at the last minute, I'll be unhappy."

He changed the one portion of supplies the Fierce Fish Convoy had previously collected to ten percent.

To his surprise, Zhao Duotian didn't hesitate. Instead, his eyes lit up.

Only ten percent? Boss Chu had always collected thirty percent.

"No problem, no problem! Boss, we're all willing to join the Mortal Convoy!"

Seeing his expression, Chen Fan couldn't make sense of it for a moment.

Why was he so happy about having ten percent of their supplies collected?

But he soon realized.

Damn it, he'd asked for too little!

Still, it didn't matter. Collecting supplies was just a formality.

After all, there was no such thing as a free lunch.

With his supernatural abilities, he wouldn't lack supplies in the future.

And so Chen Fan withdrew the ring of yin souls from the Ten Thousand Souls Banner and led everyone from the Butcher Convoy into the gas station.

He arranged for those who needed fuel to fill up and the others to gather supplies.

By now, however, Qian Lei and his companions, along with the people from the Fairness Convoy, had already gathered most of the supplies in the gas station's convenience store.

The people from the former Butcher Convoy could only pick through what remained and line up for fuel.

Chen Fan had the supplies from the four vehicles moved into a cargo van.

It was a large Huolala van with a full eight cubic meters of cargo space.

All the supplies from the four vehicles were loaded into it, filling it to the brim.

From now on, the van would be his supply vehicle.

Sun Hong would drive it.

From now on, he would rest in the RV.

Rongrong would drive the RV, while Yan Kuan would stay in the front passenger seat.

Qian Lei and Li Yuanyuan each had their own vehicles, so he didn't need to worry about them.

That was the arrangement for the Mortal Convoy's core members for the time being.

He had Yan Kuan find someone to clean the RV.

With nothing else to do, Chen Fan wandered around the gas station, waiting for the convoy to finish looting and get back on the road.

Meanwhile, in the Fairness Convoy.

Wang Bing sat in her BMW SUV, sweeping both hands back and forth above a crystal ball.

The crystal ball glowed with a faint white light.

Wang Bing's expression grew increasingly grim.