Chapter 300: Fuck That
The rooftop across the road looked empty now, but that didn’t mean that the men who had been watching us since we entered the neighborhood had gone anywhere.
With our luck, they had probably moved somewhere less obvious after deciding that we weren’t going to attack them for staring.
Lingyun and Zhenlan went outside first to check the parking lot, followed by Chenghai pushing the cart. Yuche waited near the entrance until I caught up, then stepped through the door ahead of me.
The second the guys stepped outside, I pulled everything remaining inside the store into my space and followed them through the entrance before anyone thought to look back. I fought the smile that threatened to appear on my face as the glass doors closed behind me, hiding the empty shelves from view.
Unfortunately, the six armed men standing between us and the SUV were much harder to ignore.
Each of them wore a strip of red cloth tied around one arm, matching the markers we had passed on the road.
Did they really have to be color coordinated like that? Did they look at their arms every time they crossed a street to make sure that the colors lined up? That seemed.... stupid.
But who was I to judge? They might need the visual help for all I knew.
The man in front of the group of newcomers held his rifle across his chest while the others spread out behind him, blocking the most direct path to our vehicle. It was like they had done this a hundred times before.
Their attention moved over the five of us before settling on the cart and baskets filled with craft supplies. One of them raised an eyebrow while another one chuckled under his breath like I was the stupid ones for risking everything for crafting supplies.
Little did they know that these supplies might be the only thing to save their lives later.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
The man at the front and a few of his people on either side of him seemed confused by what they were looking at. They had probably expected food, medicine, weapons, or something else worth threatening people over.
Instead, we had thread, fabric, fake flowers, and one jar of purple glitter.
The man in front recovered first. "You entered Gu Han’s territory."
I looked around the parking lot, but I didn’t see Gu Han’s name written anywhere. Apparently, tying red fabric around street signs was enough to make people believe they owned everything nearby.
Maybe I should use some of the purple thread that I just got to do the same around my territory. Then again, that might cut off my free plant food, so I decided against it.
Xu Zhenlan stepped slightly forward, but he didn’t bother to answer the other man. Neither did Zhou Chenghai for that matter.
Instead, all four men waited for me to open my mouth.
Unfortunately for everyone, the stranger mistook their silence for fear. "Anything taken from this area belongs to our settlement. Visitors surrender half of what they find. No matter what it is."
"Visitors?" Lingyun repeated, cocking his head to the side. "Do you give tours? What about visas? Where do we apply? Is this like a monthly thing or a daily thing or a yearly thing? Come on, dude. You can’t say something like that and not give us any more information."
The man glanced Lingyun just as he was starting to really gear up and ignored him completely. Shit. That was probably going to come back and haunt him, given the look on Lingyun’s face when he was ignored.
Instead, the stranger looked toward Xu Zhenlan like he had clocked him as our fearless leader and opened his mouth to keep talking. "I wouldn’t try it," he sighed like we were the ones who purposefully came out here to ruin his day. "You don’t stand a chance at winning. Listen, keeping half of the supplies isn’t all that bad of a deal. It’s better than us killing you. Leave the rest, and there won’t be a problem."
I followed his gaze to the basket in Yuche’s hand like he couldn’t believe he was saying it. But he wasn’t backing down either.
He really did want half of my purple thread, half of my cross stitch patterns, and possibly half of the glitter.
Did I have more? Absolutely.
Was I giving what was mine to someone else? Absolutely not.
"We aren’t visitors," I said at last, rubbing my head.
The man finally looked at me. His eyes moved over my face, then down to the baby vine curled around my wrist, before dismissing us both.
"You entered our territory," he repeated. "That means you follow our rules."
I glanced toward the red cloth tied around his arm. "Ah. But I didn’t agree to your rules."
"You don’t need to agree."
He took one step toward the cart, and my baby lifted both its heads and hissed at him. The man stopped, although he tried to pretend the sound hadn’t bothered him. Maybe he did have some sense of self preservation.
Xu Zhenlan remained silent beside me, while Zhou Chenghai kept both hands on the cart. None of the men reached for their weapons or attempted to take control of the conversation.
They were leaving the decision to me.
The stranger pointed toward our supplies. "Half. Or we take your lives."
I looked at the purple thread Yuche was carrying, then back at the man blocking my way home.
My face dropped as I thought about what he was saying. He wanted half of what was mine, but we all knew that it wasn’t just half of what I walked out of the store with. He wanted at least half of everything.
Possibly half of my guys. Well, I could probably get rid of Zhou Chenghai and Xu Zhenlan. They would also want the SUV, since it wasn’t like they could take half of it, along with half the guns that had appeared in Lingyun’s and Chenghai’s hands.
And that wasn’t acceptable in any way, shape or form.
I knew better than anyone that the moment you gave someone a piece of what was yours, they started believing they deserved the rest. Today it was thread and glitter. Tomorrow it would be food, weapons, or my house. The man in front of me had no idea how badly he had chosen his first demand.
"Fuck that."
