Chapter 22 - Killing The Chicken To Warn The Monkey
NOTE: Graphic description of violence
“You guys, go and get me a glass of water,” Qi Jingchen suddenly said. After the two of them heard this, they immediately sent one out to get water.
Qi Jingchen blinked, then said to the remaining bodyguard, “You, go get a book for me to read.”
“Qi shao, the young master ordered that at least one of us has to be by your side,” the remaining bodyguard stated, motionless.
The corner of Qi Jingchen’s lips curled, but he didn’t insist. It was right at this time when someone suddenly ferociously pounced towards him from the side.
When Qi Jingchen saw someone pouncing over, he didn’t move at all. However, the bodyguard at his side reacted extremely quickly, immediately kicking out at him and causing that person to fall back by two steps.
However, that person seemed like he wasn’t afraid of pain, throwing himself over towards Qi Jingchen once more. His pair of hands extended forward, his fingernails sharp and pitch-black.
When that bodyguard saw this, how could he not understand the situation? He reached a hand out to pull out his gun while he kicked at that person.
That person had half-turned into a zombie, and didn’t know pain at all. He unexpectedly reached out and held the bodyguard’s leg, scratching it. Fortunately, this bodyguard was wearing long military boots, so there wasn’t a problem.
With a ‘bang’, the sound of a gun, a bullethole appeared between that person’s eyes — the bodyguard who had previously gone to get water returned. Simultaneously, the bodyguard whose leg was grabbed, also opened fire twice, all aimed at his head.
That person who had already half-turned fell to the floor, after a few twitches, he didn’t move anymore.
This ‘you come, I go’ battle had ensued very quickly. At this time, those family-dependent people who had remained behind finally reacted.
“Ah!” Mother Yao cried out in fear, immediately rushing towards the two bodyguards. “Murder! You actually killed my son! Wretched bastards!”
Mother Yao acted if she had gone crazy, and Father Yao’s state was more or less the same as her. “My son! Jialong! You all will not die well! I’ll kill you!”
“He became a zombie!” The two bodyguards obstructed them in front of Qi Jingchen, taking their guns out to point at the Yao parents.
“You shoot! Shoot!” Mother Yao cried, reaching out and grabbing the gun in the bodyguard’s hand. “My son is dead; I also cannot live. I want you all to pay with your lives!”
Father Yao didn’t say a word, but his actions were exactly the same as Mother Yao. They ignored the guns in the bodyguards’ hands and clashed against the bodyguards.
The two bodyguards were promptly at their wit’s end. They had all previously lived in a peaceful era. Even though they were used to killing zombies nowadays, towards ordinary people, they still were somewhat unable to open fire. In the end, they only used their hands to push them away.
At this time, the other family-dependent had gathered over, wanting to understand what on earth happened— Without rhyme or reason, someone was killed, they were all scared and puzzled.
The situation suddenly became disorderly.
Yan Zhe was the same as Qi Yaoyao and the Yao parents; they all stayed behind because they exhausted their energy. Now, he ran over to Qi Jingchen with deep concern. “Qi Jingchen, you’re ok ba?”
As he spoke, he even wanted to reach a hand out to help Qi Jingchen.
Qi Jingchen raised his head to look at Yan Zhe and suddenly showed a smile.
That smile honestly looked a little odd, and had Yan Zhe panicking in his heart, but he still didn’t stop the movement of his hand.
For Yao Jialong to become a zombie was because of Yan Zhe.
These few days, Yan Zhe had continuously killed zombies together with the people Nie Yi had later rescued. Towards these people and even their family, he had some extent of understanding. Naturally, he also knew that Yao Jialong was very resentful towards Nie Yi and the rest.
He had secretly collected the fingertip of a zombie, then poked a hole into a soy egg and allowed Yao Jialong to pick it up. Just as expected, Yao Jialong didn’t inspect whether the soy egg had intact packaging or not, and hurriedly ate it.
For Yan Zhe to do this, was contrarily, not to have Yao Jialong attack Qi Jingchen, but was to have him manufacture some chaos and nothing more. If it succeeded, it would make it convenient for him to take action; if it didn’t, it didn’t matter to him.
In fact, according to Yan Zhe’s initial opinion, Yao Jialong should have turned into a zombie within the family-dependent troops and bite other people. If they were still in the truck, likely, a truckful of people would all suffer a calamity— even though, when someone just turned into a zombie, they would still have their sense of reason. However, he was confident that even if Yao Jialong still had his sense of reason, he would still not tell other people that he was becoming a zombie.
When that time comes, he could possibly take advantage of the confusion to approach Qi Jingchen, or think of a way to attract more zombies to let Qi Jingchen be bitten…
Yan Zhe had this sort of plan, but the final development wasn’t quite the same as what he had imagined. Of course, what was currently happening was still incredibly satisfying.
Perhaps the Heavens disliked Qi Jingchen… Yan Zhe had already made a decision, that he must have Qi Jingchen turn into a zombie.
Nie Yi was more and more estranged from him, and it was most likely because this Qi Jingchen had said malicious words about him. As long as Qi Jingchen died, the person Nie Yi protected would definitely be him!
In truth, Yan Zhe couldn’t be considered as very familiar about Nie Yi. After all, even though Nie Yi had previously liked him, he hadn’t confessed at all, and the two of them had more interactions with the status of a senior and junior schoolmate. It was because of this that he had previously assumed that Nie Yi had probably been enticed by Qi Jingchen’s ‘skills in bed’, silently criticizing Nie Yi for a chaotic private life, even while thinking of the seducing sort of method.
It was also because of this that he had felt that so long as Qi Jingchen was killed, without this person playing dirty tricks, Nie Yi would be the same towards him as in the past…
When he thought up to here, Yan Zhe had thoroughly ignored Qi Jingchen’s peculiarity. However, just as he touched Qi Jingchen, a ball of fire abruptly appeared on his hands.
“AH!” Yan Zhe shrieked, swinging his hands as if his life depended on it, wanting to extinguish the blaze on his hands. However, it wasn’t the slightest bit useful, as stabbing pain transmitted from his hands. Then, both hands were roasted by that ball of fire, and it wasn’t long before they were roasted into coals. His hands had already become like this, but his arms were unexpectedly fine and without harm.
Personally seeing that his own hands were gone just like that, Yan Zhe emitted a screech, unable to do anything.
“Who else wants to die?” A cold voice suddenly resounded. This voice wasn’t the slightest bit loud, but it had thoroughly suppressed Yan Zhe’s screeching. Everyone looked over, only then did they discover that the window was opened unknowingly, and Nie Yi was sitting on it. That fire was obviously done by him.
Nie Yi had always been strong and indifferent, but up until now, those family-dependent couldn’t be said to be afraid of him, since Nie Yi was a human, like them, after all. Only now did they feel a sense of their blood running cold. Some children were even unable to resist bursting into tears. Of course, just as their voice came out, their mouth and eyes had been covered by the people beside them, for fear that it would let Nie Yi be unhappy and angry.
Now, even the Yao parents, who had wanted to stake their lives with the bodyguards just then, had also stopped their movements in fright upon seeing this scene of using a fireball to cause a person’s hands to be burnt into nothing.
“Nie Yi!” Yan Zhe screamed, the severe pain making him feel like fainting, but it was also this severe pain that made him completely unable to faint.
It was really too painful, too painful… Yan Zhe was this old, and had never experienced this sort of pain before!
Now, the fireball on his hands had already disappeared; after that, his hands had also disappeared!
How could Nie Yi do this? How could he do this?!
Yan Zhe was in exceeding pain, but Nie Yi didn’t even give him a single glance, and said, “All of you, get out of my way!”
Including the Yao parents, everyone hastily backed away from Qi Jingchen and the rest. At this time, the corpse of Yao Jialong on the floor was exposed.
Nie Yi stepped forward and kicked the shot-apart head of Yao Jialong. “If you feel that zombies shouldn’t be killed, you can go outside in the zombie pile and wake up.”
After everyone dispersed, they could clearly see Yao Jialong’s appearance. His corpse had already turned black in this brief time and was a complete zombie.
“He was just talking to me. Could it be that you all touched his body?” Mother Yao was still unwilling to believe all of this.
“He was still talking just now, just means that he still had his sense of reason and had only half-turned into a zombie. Knowing that he was becoming a zombie, he didn’t leave and even wanted to harm people. Killing him a hundred times still wouldn’t be enough!” Nie Yi smiled coldly as he spoke. He had told these people before: if a zombie infected them, then speak out a little earlier. Everyone would then isolate them.
The Yao parents had now also remembered Yao Jialong’s previous strangeness. They opened their mouths, but didn’t speak out anymore.
“Nie Yi, why did you do this?!” Yan Zhe said, looking at Nie Yi in hostility. Right now, he was itching to tear Nie Yi into pieces, yet was afraid to move.
“You want to hurt Jingchen,” Nie Yi said.
“I don’t!” Of course, Yan Zhe wouldn’t admit it.
“Do you think I’m blind?” Nie Yi sneered, slowly walking towards Yan Zhe. Simultaneously, a fireball flew towards Yan Zhe. This time, the fireball wasn’t heading towards Yan Zhe’s hands, but instead was going for Yan Zhe’s face.
The flame thus wrapped Yan Zhe’s head in it. His shrieks were let out from within the fire, pained to the point that he rolled around the floor. It persisted for a full minute; only then did everything end spontaneously.
The fire died out, and this time, his head didn’t actually thoroughly vanish, leaving behind a scorched skull, looking all the more frightful.
After seeing this display, the two bodyguards were faintly unable to adapt to this, so there was no need to speak of everyone else… Shao Zhenglan was bringing people up the stairs, and when she opened the door, it was just in time to see Nie Yi throw a fireball towards Yan Zhe’s face.
This scene of Yan Zhe being ‘roasted’ was taken in by her at once, and she could even faintly smell something similar to barbeque… Shao Zhenglan’s face changed, and she clasped a hand over her mouth and retched on the spot.
It was as if her dry heaving had turned on some sort of switch, as other people also began to throw up one after another, some even crying as they vomited.
In the end, it was contrarily Qi Jingchen, who had previously wanted to throw up over drinking fish soup, who was sitting down steadily without the slightest problem. It must be known that Yan Zhe’s death in their last life was a whole lot more terrifying than now.
At that time, when Nie Yi caught Yan Zhe, he used fire to roast him, then used water to douse it, repeatedly continuing for a good few hours… Later, it was still because he watched till it was bothersome, only then did Nie Yi stop.
For Yan Zhe to die was quite reasonable, but why was this Yan Zhe so useless, unable to think of a way to kill him as well ne?
Qi Jingchen sighed, his face filled with rue.
Ping Shengchao didn’t throw up; instead, he paid more attention to Qi Jingchen. He just happened to see this appearance of Qi Jingchen and was all the more certain that many of those previous behaviors were an act of Qi Jingchen. Yet at this time, it was likely that it was him who had actively wanted to die— This person was willing to take the initiative to die in order not to be a burden to Nie Yi. So towards Nie Yi, he also could be regarded to have profound affection…
“I won’t kill without reason, but if someone provoked me, this is precisely the conclusion!” Nie Yi surveyed the area. “You’ve all seen my methods. I, Nie Yi, am not that type of person who would save people out of kindness. I saved all of you merely because Jingchen likes liveliness. If there weren’t Jingchen, I wouldn’t care if you all died! I can tolerate you not having any skills, but no matter who it is, don’t you dare think of hurting Jingchen.”
No matter whether it was the family-dependent or those that had followed Shao Zhenglan back, they all had already been terrified by Nie Yi’s prior methods. Now, regarding Nie Yi’s words, naturally they did not dare disobey.
Previously, all of them genuinely had complaints towards Qi Jingchen and didn’t particularly look up to Qi Jingchen, but now… this was the first time they realized that Qi Jingchen was definitely not someone they could provoke.
The thoughts of these people, Nie Yi could also guess, as he continued, “In this troop, Jingchen is an existence that is more important than me. So long as you’re still in this team, then the first thing to ensure is Jingchen’s safety. If he receives any harm, as long as I’m alive, I will definitely kill all of you to accompany him in death, turning all of you into dust!”
Baobao Notes
Killing the chicken to warn the monkey means punishing someone as an example towards others.
In my opinion, Yan Zhe’s death was a little too soon, since it seemed to have been implied that he was going to be a big part in at least one arc. But then again, Nie Yi did kill him in his last life, so waiting to kill him is just courting death.