139: Chapter 139 All Supplies Confiscated, Reborn Man Questions His Life Behind Bars
The thick white tear gas choked him, making his lungs feel like they were on fire.
Zhang San lay on the ground, his face pressed against the rough concrete, smeared with saliva and snot.
Three or four special forces soldiers wearing black gas masks had their knees pressed hard against his back.
"Cough, cough... What are you doing!"
He howled at the top of his lungs, his throat feeling as if he had swallowed razor blades, pulling and aching.
"Let me go! I am a Reborn! The apocalypse is coming soon!"
A SWAT officer twisted his arms behind his back. "Click."
Cold steel handcuffs locked onto his wrists, the gears snapping shut tightly.
"Apocalypse? I think you've been watching too many cop movies."
The SWAT officer sneered through gritted teeth and brought his rifle butt down hard onto Zhang San's back. It wasn't a light blow.
Zhang San groaned, his internal organs shaking from the impact.
"It's true! Tomorrow the temperature will drop to minus eighty degrees!"
He twisted his neck, shouting with wide, bloodshot eyes.
"These supplies are for saving lives! If you confiscate them, all of humanity will die!"
"Behave!"
The SWAT officer grabbed his collar and hauled him up from the ground.
Several powerful flashlights swept back and forth across the massive air-raid shelter.
The armed police captain leading the team took off his mask and spat. He looked at the stacks of rice reaching the ceiling, and the two anti-aircraft machine guns set up in the middle.
This wasn't a shelter. It was basically a small armory combined with a strategic grain depot.
"Good grief, look at this quantity." The captain rubbed the gun oil off his hands. "It's enough for a combined arms battalion to fight a small defensive battle. Take him away!"
Two men held Zhang San by the arms, dragging his feet along the ground as they pulled him out.
His windbreaker was covered in dust, and his heels left two long trails on the floor.
He looked back. Several soldiers were placing seizure seals on the premium M9 Wagyu beef.
"My meat... my guns..." he muttered, tears streaming down his face mixed with tear gas powder.
He had been reborn once, borrowed from every loan shark, and nearly sold a kidney just to accumulate this fortune. Now, it was all gone.
As a child of destiny, he hadn't even started showing off before he was thrown into the station.
Half-Mountain Manor.
Qin Yuan sat behind the large mahogany desk in his study. On the desk sat a cup of cold black coffee, with a ring of brown water stains around the rim.
Gu Qianqian chewed on the end of her pen, staring at the inventory report on the screen.
"Boss," she mumbled.
"That bastard hoarded eight thousand tons of rice, five hundred thousand boxes of instant noodles, and three hundred tons of antibiotics."
"He even got a full set of military-grade body armor, all of which was raided by the armed police."
Qin Yuan leaned back in his chair. He tapped his index finger rhythmically against the desk, making a "tap, tap" sound.
"Confiscated?"
"Yep." Gu Qianqian threw her pen down.
"The armed police are thrilled. They said it's all being taken to replenish the national strategic reserve. They even took those two anti-aircraft machine guns to use as training equipment."
Who wouldn't be happy getting such a huge windfall for free? This kid could at least say he contributed to the country.
Qin Yuan rubbed his temples. What a farce.
A protagonist of an apocalypse story, having just built his base, gets his nest raided by SWAT before the apocalypse even arrives. It was too ridiculous.
"But Boss," Gu Qianqian sat up straight in her gaming chair.
"The meteorological bureaus everywhere are still sounding alarms. They say the cold air from the polar regions has already formed."
She scratched her slightly greasy hair. "If a deep freeze apocalypse really hits, can our manor's heating handle it?"
Qin Yuan didn't speak. He opened the system panel.
He looked at the long string of Favor Points in the top right corner. Apocalypse? In Qin Yuan's dictionary, those two words didn't exist.
"System," he murmured in his heart. "Wipe out this bullshit deep freeze storm for me."
[Command received.]
[Causality Law interference initiated, rewriting global meteorological parameters...]
[Deducted twenty million Favor Points.]
The mechanical voice in his mind was devoid of inflection. The wind outside the window suddenly stopped.
The originally gloomy sky, which had been pressing down on people, making it hard to breathe, saw its clouds ripped open by an invisible hand.
A ray of sunlight leaked through. It struck the study window, glaringly bright.
Three days later. Jiangzhong City, the Third Psychiatric Prison for Serious Criminals.
The iron door slammed shut with a "clang." The prison guard jingled the keys at his waist, his footsteps fading into the distance.
Zhang San was wearing a loose blue and white striped hospital gown. The clothes smelled of unwashed disinfectant.
He sat on the edge of the iron bed against the wall. Holding his knees with both hands, he stared blankly at the square glass on the wall with its small iron-barred window.
Sunlight shone in through the iron bars. It hit his face just right, feeling warm. Even a little hot.
Outside the window, there were several lush camphor trees on the playground. From the trees, the faint sound of cicadas could be heard. "Cicada... cicada..." The sound was annoying.
Zhang San picked at the dirt under his fingernails. He felt something was wrong. Today should be the third day of the apocalypse.
According to his memories from his previous life, by this time, the outside temperature should have dropped to minus forty degrees. The whole world should be frozen solid.
Why? Why was the sun still out? Why were the cicadas still chirping?!
He stood up abruptly from the bed, rushed to the iron window, and grabbed the bars with both hands. He pressed his face against the glass and looked out.
On the playground, several inmates in hospital gowns were having recreation time. Some were playing basketball, others were sunbathing. There was even a fat man who had taken off his shirt because of the heat, cooling off shirtless in the shade of a tree.
"Fake..." a dry sound came from Zhang San's throat. "This is all fake!"
He shook the iron bars violently. The rust scratched his palms, stinging a bit.
"Let me out! The apocalypse is here! I need to go back to my fortress!" He shouted out the window.
His voice echoed across the empty playground, but no one paid him any attention.
The shirtless fat man glanced at his window in disgust and rolled his eyes. "Another one went crazy."
Zhang San slumped to the floor, his back against the cold wall. He suddenly remembered that phone call. He remembered the man named Qin Yuan.
"It was him..." Zhang San held his head, his fingers digging into his messy hair, pulling hard.
"What the hell is going on?!"
He had hoarded supplies for half a month. He had spent all his money. He had even been charged with illegal possession of firearms and would be locked up in this dump for the rest of his life!
And yet? The apocalypse didn't come? The sun was still hanging in the sky?! Then what was all this he did for? Was he a clown?
"Ahhhhhhhhh!" Zhang San suddenly let out a shrill, miserable scream. He buried his head in his knees and began to wail.
He cried his heart out, tears and snot smearing all over his hospital gown.
This shitty rebirth. This goddamn system. It was all fucking lies!
Just as he was questioning life in his cell, at Qin Family Manor, in the study, Qin Yuan looked at the newspaper in his hand.
The headline read: "Climate Anomaly Warning Lifted! Global Welcome to a Rare Warm Winter!"
He threw the newspaper on the table and picked up his freshly brewed hot tea. Gu Qianqian pushed the door open and walked in, holding a document bag.
"Boss," she walked to the desk and slapped the document bag down on it. "Something happened at the Kunlun Mountains."