Chapter 74

The two of them walked toward Charlie Seventh Avenue, speaking in low voices. When they arrived, Lin Tu quickly spotted Shelter No. 13. A large crowd had gathered there, seemingly moving things around, making it quite conspicuous.

Lin Tu asked Luo Te to wait for her, then walked over and questioned a man who appeared to be in charge.

"I'm looking for Na Wei."

"Who are you?" The man turned his head slowly. The moment he caught sight of the Rebel Army badge on Lin Tu's chest, his expression soured. "I don't know any Na Wei. There's no Na Wei here!"

"Liar!" Lin Tu grabbed the front of his clothes and yanked him close.

She already had a fairly good understanding of the Rebel Army's internal structure. If she could use this mission to infiltrate the Rebel Army, she might even get to see Rui Si and learn something about the true reasons behind the war between the two armies.

Her instincts were stirring. This was no simple matter. It might even be tied to the so-called outsiders and the energy stones.

"I don't!" the man cried out, pleading for mercy, struggling to no avail.

"Still lying." Lin Tu didn't want to waste words. She pulled out the small pistol the Rebel Army had given her and pressed it under his chin.

The area around them fell silent. Everyone stared at Lin Tu in terror, afraid that the next second the gun might go off. After a brief stillness, screams erupted and the crowd scattered in all directions.

Except for a pair of sisters—the elder wore a clean white robe, her golden hair drifting gently in the chaotic crowd, looking quite splendid. The younger was much younger, around sixteen, dressed in leather with a belt at her waist and tapered pants. She was covered in accessories and carried a large blade on her back that was almost as tall as she was.

"They're players," the elder sister said with a light laugh.

"Only you could tell that, Guan Suiyue," the younger sister rolled her eyes. "Mind your own business."

"Still not talking?" On the other side, Lin Tu was growing impatient.

The man was trembling, about to say something, when a figure stepped out from the crowd. Behind Lin Tu, Luo Te's pupils contracted sharply at the sight of that face.

"It's me. I'm Na Wei." The man raised his hands to signal Lin Tu to calm down. "Don't kill him. I'll take responsibility for my own actions."

Lin Tu hadn't intended to hurt anyone anyway—if he had only come forward earlier. She looked at him with cold eyes. "You owe the Rebel Army money, worth an ounce of gold. If you have it, hand it over now."

"How is it so much?" Surprisingly, the man said this, his words a bit incoherent. "I... I only scooped out a bowl of flour, didn't I? It's only been three months. How did it become so much? Is there some mistake..."

Lin Tu: "..."

No, there was no mistake.

As someone who had worked in finance, she immediately recognized this as usury.

There used to be a type of usury called "nine in, thirteen out," meaning if you borrowed ten thousand, you only received nine thousand, but you had to repay thirteen thousand. That terrible usury hadn't even doubled the principal. But the damn Rebel Army's loans had multiplied who knew how many times in three months. Lin Tu did a rough calculation: the daily interest on this loan had to be as high as thirty to forty percent.

Lin Tu had always kept her distance from such things. She never imagined she'd become a debt collector herself one day.

"Three months, from a bowl of flour to two or three bags of flour?" people in the distance whispered.

"Na Wei is too pitiful. I know about this. He even gave half of that bowl of flour to someone pitiful."

"My God, these Rebel Army people are crazy!"

As one of the "crazy" ones, Lin Tu rubbed her forehead and let go of the man she'd been gripping. There was absolutely no way Na Wei could come up with the money. She couldn't collect the debt, and what's more, she didn't want to. There were plenty of ways to get into the Rebel Army base. She wasn't crazy enough to use this method.

"Miss Lin!" At that moment, Luo Te hurried over.

He was inexplicably covering his face with a cloth, and he leaned in to whisper a few words in Lin Tu's ear. Her expression shifted slightly.

"Since you can't pay the debt, there's no problem with me taking you as payment, is there?" Lin Tu kept the gun pointed at the man. Na Wei had no choice but to raise his hands high and walk over, where Lin Tu grabbed him and pinned his arms behind his back.

"You can't do this!" someone shouted, defending him. "He's a good man! He's innocent!"

"Let Na Wei go! Spare him!"

"You're the crazy ones! We're just trying to get by!"

"We just want to live!"

...

A "bang" sounded as Lin Tu raised the gun and fired into the air. She coldly surveyed the agitated crowd. The white smoke from the muzzle disappeared into the night, but the thick smell of gunpowder lingered.

In an instant, the air went silent.

Lin Tu smoothly led Na Wei out of there. The crowd left behind watched their backs with complicated expressions. Anger surged in everyone's hearts. They were beasts, tools, property—everything except human. They were sick of it all!

"What a disagreeable player. Doesn't seem like a good person at all," Guan Suiyue said, letting her fingertips slide through her golden ear lobes and tucking them behind her ear, turning her face to her sister. "It looks like she's the last one Yi Ying mentioned. Guan Suixing, remember to stay far away from her in the future."

"Mind your own business!" Guan Suixing snorted coldly and turned to leave. "At least she looks better than you."

"But you can't have her as your sister," Guan Suiyue said softly, catching up with her sister's steps. "Are you hungry? I'll make you a midnight snack when we get back..."

Back to Lin Tu.

She escorted Na Wei but did not head back to the Rebel Army camp.

"Talk," Lin Tu said. She found a ruined building, threw Na Wei to the ground. The latter looked at her earnestly, and just as Na Wei thought Lin Tu was going to ask him for money, Lin Tu smiled. "Tell me everything you know about the Government Army spies."

"How could I? I..." Na Wei's pupils contracted, and he blurted out in disbelief, "How did you know?"

"It's me, Na Wei," Luo Te sighed, stepping out from behind Lin Tu. "Tell her. Those Government Army spies are no better than the Rebel Army. They frame people, murder, rob, burn—there's nothing they haven't done. They're all inhuman! Why are you still protecting them?"

Luo Te and Na Wei had known each other in the military years ago. The latter had taken a mission and gone undercover as a spy logistics officer in Rebel Army territory. At first, they kept in touch occasionally, and Na Wei would often complain to Luo Te about the spies oppressing civilians, wanting to leave the mission but unable to because he was under surveillance. Later, Luo Te was dismissed for a mistake, and the two lost all contact.

What Luo Te had whispered to Lin Tu just now was exactly this.

"I just heard that you gave half of the flour you borrowed to someone else, so I guessed you're not one of those who went along with the Government Army." Lin Tu said.

"Maybe..." Na Wei gave a bitter smile. "Can I trust her, Luo Te?"

Luo Te nodded firmly.

Na Wei thought for a moment, then covered his face and let out a long sigh. When he looked up again, he had made his decision. "They've done every evil deed. Falling into the Rebel Army's hands might not be a bad thing. I'll tell you."

With that, he rattled off a series of four names, along with an address. When he finished, he collapsed to the ground. "If you want to take me to pay the debt, go ahead. I've helped them do so many bad things, I deserve it."

Lin Tu noted the names, put away her gun, and asked, "Who did you give the flour to?"

"Someone I didn't know," Na Wei said, lying on the ground with a resigned expression. "If you want to find him, you're out of luck. He doesn't even have a place to stay. Once the war started, he's probably nine chances out of ten dead."

"Miss Lin isn't that kind of person," Luo Te quickly retorted.

"Let's go," Lin Tu called to Luo Te, planning to leave. As they reached the door, Lin Tu suddenly thought of something and turned back to look at Na Wei. He had already sat up, staring blankly at their backs.

"Now that you've been taken away by me, a Rebel Army person, you can also disappear from the Government Army without raising suspicion," Lin Tu reminded him. "If you have nowhere to go, you can come find me."

"Oh..." Na Wei was a bit dazed.

Lin Tu left immediately with the four spies' names and address. She parted ways with Luo Te first—she was about to do something big.

An hour later.

In an unfamiliar shelter, Lin Tu finally waited for the last spy to return. She knocked the man unconscious with a single blow from her baton, tied him up, and locked him separately from the other three.

Looking closely, one could see that the injuries on the remaining three men decreased progressively from the first to the last.

The reason was simple: after Lin Tu caught the first person, she interrogated him about some secrets of the Rebel Army and the Government Army. When she caught the second, she asked the same questions, and if the answers didn't match, she beat the previous one until she got the truth. Clearly, these men were weak-willed. Once the first gave up most of the truth, the subsequent ones received fewer beatings.

Lin Tu waited for the last man to wake up, and meanwhile scavenged around this somewhat luxurious shelter.

Look, a cabinet full of canned goods—fish cans, chickpea cans, canned luncheon meat, and even fruit cans.

And look, there's even cola, and plenty of cigarettes and alcohol.

Lin Tu used up a long-term Single-Use Backpack to stuff all the food she found in the kitchen. There were also some barely used pots and pans, brand new oil, salt, pepper, and so on. These people had collected quite a lot of stuff but kept it at home without using it, like decorations just to show off their wealth.

The shelter's decor wasn't bad either. The curtains were blackout curtains—good stuff. Lin Tu fetched a stool and took them down. Afterward, she noticed the stool itself was a solid wood Baroque-style soft stool, so she took that too. In the bathroom, there were unopened tissue packs and shampoo. The bedding in the bedroom smelled awful, but at least it was thick enough. With a wash, it could be taken back to the shelter for David and the others. The clothes were the same—even if Lin Tu wouldn't wear them, others could. She took them all, not wanting to waste anything...

Lin Tu happily scavenged good things, almost emptying the entire shelter. By the time she was done, the last man had woken up.

She asked him a few questions and, after confirming that the first three hadn't lied, she tied them all up in a line with rope, took the small paths, and escorted them in the dark to the Rebel Army camp.

The guard who saw Lin Tu again noticed that her hands were empty—she only held a rope, carrying no supplies—and his first instinct was to roll his eyes.

After Lin Tu had left before, he had made a point of checking on her mission. Everyone knew that collecting a debt was a mission where the debtor, due to the exorbitant interest, could never repay the full amount. A capable Rebel Army member would typically harass and threaten the debtor's relatives and friends, demanding money or taking people as compensation, squeezing everyone around him dry until they might barely scrape together enough for the mission amount.

As for the time needed... the guard knew well it could range from two or three days to several months. There was no way it could be done in just over an hour.

However, before he could finish his eye roll, he saw Lin Tu drag out a string of bruised and battered people from behind the door and throw them forcefully in front of him. They piled up one by one against the table in front of him, nearly knocking it over.

"Did you finish your mission, or are you here again..." The guard was the type to bully the weak and fear the strong. Seeing her fierce expression, he felt a bit deflated.

"I'm not doing that job," Lin Tu pressed down on the roster in front of him and said coldly, "I've done something else, and I don't need to report to you. After all, Government Army spies were right under your nose, and you knew nothing. It took someone with fifteen military merits like me to catch them."