Reborn One Week Before the Apocalypse

Chapter 107: Chapter 99: Strange Bodyguard

Uncle He was quick to hire the bodyguards. Just two days later, he sent Tang Mo a message informing her of the departure date.

Tang Mo planned to blend in with the team this time. Revealing her Space superpower could attract trouble, so she decided to pose as an agile superpower user.

After all, her agility attribute value was already over 200, so it wouldn’t be a problem to claim she was an agile superpower user.

Without her Space, packing a lot of things became inconvenient.

Tang Mo carried her usual backpack, in which she had packed some water, nutrient solution, and a change of clothes.

Since she had chosen to blend in, she naturally couldn’t take out any of her gourmet food.

Tang Mo rolled up her Hunter Sleeping Bag and secured it to the top of her backpack. The sleeping bag was small and light, so it didn’t hinder her movement.

The group had arranged to meet at 8:00 AM under a large tree outside the gates of S Base.

The appointed time was eight, but Tang Mo arrived at the meeting point at seven forty-five.

When Tang Mo arrived, Uncle He was already there waiting with a dozen or so people. They had very little luggage; many were practically empty-handed.

’That made sense. They were so poor, where would they get extra things to carry?’

Besides the people Tang Mo had met last time, there was also a tall, dark-skinned man leaning against the tree with a pack on his back.

The man introduced himself as Zhou Jian, one of the bodyguards for the trip.

Aside from Zhou Jian, the other four bodyguards had not yet arrived.

The group waited under the tree for about another twenty minutes before the other bodyguards finally showed up.

Uncle He’s expression soured, but at this point, he couldn’t afford to get angry. After all, he had to rely on their protection for the journey ahead.

Once everyone had gathered, they set off.

It was clear that the group Uncle He led did not have an easy life. Everyone was scrawny, and aside from a few children roughhousing, the group was completely listless.

Zhou Jian had a similar temperament to Tang Mo; neither was very talkative.

Only the four bodyguards who came together were loud and boisterous the whole way, telling crude jokes that made the women in the group frown and wish they could cover their children’s ears.

Uncle He tried to reprimand them once, but to no avail, so he could only sigh and fall silent.

He had been in a rush to leave this time and the pay he offered was low, so he had expected not to find any high-quality bodyguards. He just hadn’t expected to hire people like this.

Fortunately, Zhou Jian seemed quite reliable, which at least gave Uncle He a small measure of comfort.

Tang Mo was pulled along by Lin Wan to walk with the mother and son. They chatted idly from time to time, which made the time pass quickly.

The trip from the base to B City would conservatively take about half a month—of course, that was calculated based on Tang Mo’s speed.

But at the current pace of this small team, they’d be lucky to make it in a month.

With so many women and children in the group, they made little progress, stopping and starting all morning.

Tang Mo wasn’t in a hurry, but the other bodyguards were clearly getting impatient.

They had expected the two-Crystal-Core mission to take half a month, but now it was looking like a full month. Their unrestrained complaints along the way made everyone else in the group afraid to speak too loudly.

”If you don’t want the job, leave now. Don’t ruin my mood on the road.”

Zhou Jian was the first to lose his patience, warning the other men.

”What did you say? You got the guts to say that again?!”

The leader of the four men, a short and stout man, rushed forward as soon as he heard Zhou Jian.

The attribute values of his group were all around two hundred, while his was slightly higher, at three hundred.

They had originally been part of a small team, but their captain, disgusted that they were weak yet ate a lot, had simply kicked them out.

This was the first mission they had taken on their own. Seeing the old, weak, and vulnerable people they were supposed to protect, they were overjoyed, thinking they could act like kings for the next month.

Now, someone had suddenly thrown a wrench in their plans, and they were naturally furious.

’There are four of us, and no matter how strong that Zhou Jian is, he’s just one person. How dare he provoke us? Is he tired of living?’

Zhou Jian didn’t answer. Instead, he started looking for something on the ground.

He picked up a broken log as thick as a grown man’s thigh, held it in his arms, and with a flex of his biceps—CRACK!—the wood snapped in two almost instantly.

”Behave, or get lost.”

Tang Mo had the clearest view of Zhou Jian’s action. It wasn’t just the Strength, but also the fluidity of his movement.

This was not something a person with a Comprehensive Attribute Value of around 200 could do.

Tang Mo’s gaze on Zhou Jian grew more thoughtful. ’If Zhou Jian is really hiding his true strength as I suspect, then what’s the point of him joining this team and spending so much time to earn two Crystal Cores?’

’Is Zhou Jian’s presence in this team a good thing or a bad thing?’

This was all getting more and more interesting. A playful, intrigued expression appeared on Tang Mo’s face.

She was starting to look forward to this journey more and more.

Zhou Jian’s display of strength had thoroughly stunned Wang Er and his men. Though their sleeves were already rolled up, they were frozen in place, not daring to take another step forward.

After muttering a few words, he and the men under him finally toned it down significantly.

’Two Intermediate Crystal Cores for a month of work,’ they thought. ’We figured only people like us would take a job like this.’

’Someone as strong as Zhou Jian could make money so much faster just by being a Hunter. He must be a lunatic.’

Uncle He looked at Zhou Jian with gratitude in his eyes.

Meanwhile, Tang Mo had learned the basics of Lin Wan’s situation through a bit of small talk.

Women of any age tend to get familiar with each other quickly when they get together.

As expected, Lin Wan was about the same age as Tang Mo. She had given birth to Mao Tou when she was twenty, and he was now three and a half years old.

However, Lin Wan wasn’t a married woman; she had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Her insistence on having the baby had caused quite a stir back in Yunshui Town.

At nineteen, she had a fight with her parents and ran off into the great desert nearby. Just as she was about to die of thirst, a man saved her.

She was beautiful, and fearing trouble, she had made herself look ugly even though she was just running away from home.

The man never knew what she really looked like, but she saw his face clearly.

The night before they were about to leave the desert, in a wooden cabin, they slept together.

Lin Wan was the one who initiated it. The girls from Yunshui Town were known to be passionate and follow their hearts, especially when the man she liked was also her savior.

But the next morning, the man left all his water and food in the cabin and vanished without a trace.

Heartbroken, Lin Wan walked out of the desert on her own, then faced all the rumors and gossip by herself and gave birth to Mao Tou.

”I don’t regret it,” Lin Wan told Tang Mo.