So that explained everything.

The problem remained unchanged.

They’d only known each other for a month, but to Lin Mo, these people were rare friends—and he’d save as many of them as he could.

(Just a little longer...)

(Wait just a little longer...)

Lin Mo carefully kept track of the time.

According to the female gang leader, she planned to make everyone die miserably after putting them through every possible terror. That meant the next person would probably die in... about twenty minutes.

“Um...”

His hands were bound. Behind him, the curly-haired woman with two short guns at her waist was still breathing heavily, her eyes fixed on his neck.

Her gaze roamed all over Lin Mo, and she kept swallowing, too.

Maybe it was because, among the five of them left, he looked the weakest and smallest—and because the female gang leader herself had declared he was the only one who’d be allowed to live. The gang members chatted and laughed while watching the other four, but they were all on their guard;

the women who’d gathered around Lin Mo, though—two-thirds of the group—did nothing but lick him from head to toe with their eyes. Every now and then, they’d lean in to sniff him. That was all.

...After watching them for a while, he’d concluded that the black-haired woman behind him held a high position in the gang.

Female supremacy. The apocalypse...

Female supremacy...

So Lin Mo relaxed his shoulders, made his expression even more timid, and let his eyes grow misty.

He turned slightly and glanced back at her.

“I’d like to use the bathroom.”

“Huh!” The black-haired woman seemed surprised that Lin Mo dared to speak to her.

In an instant, her beautiful, pale face flushed from the base of her neck all the way to her cheeks.

“Y-You said... what?”

“I’d like to use the bathroom.” Lin Mo softened his voice as much as he could. “You... said you’d let me go, didn’t you? She meant it, right?”

“The boss keeps her word.” The black-haired woman’s expression turned stern at once. “But whether you live or die depends on whether the things you’ve saved up are enough to satisfy us...”

“...” Lin Mo lowered his eyes, then looked up again.

He gazed at the woman pitifully. “I need to use the bathroom.”

“Hold it!” (The black-haired woman)

“But I don’t even know if the things I’ve saved up will be enough to keep me alive...” Lin Mo said softly. “I’ll help you find them, I promise. But I’m still so scared... I want to live. So—”

He bit his lower lip, slowly raised his eyes to meet the black-haired woman’s, and made his hint clear:

“Could you... come with me for a little while?”

“Ah—uh, well...”

The woman immediately straightened up, her chest thrusting out.

Her already heavy breathing grew even more ragged.

“B-But... I mean—” She still tried to use her duty as an excuse to talk herself out of this inappropriate idea.

“It’ll just be the two of us.” Lin Mo deliberately leaned back toward her feet.

He carefully sat down on the woman’s worn leather boots, shifting his weight up and down a few times.

“Please... I don’t want my first time to be nothing but suffering. Just take pity on me, okay?”

Crack—

Deep in the black-haired woman’s heart, the thread called reason seemed to snap.

With many women watching enviously, she led Lin Mo outside. But she didn’t take him to the bathroom inside Big Goldfish Supermarket. Instead, she headed beyond the square, which was enclosed by crude fencing, and kept going until they were outside the wall. Then she could no longer hold back. She grabbed Lin Mo by the shoulders and began pressing her lips to his neck.

“Wait.” Lin Mo noticed.

A few bandits were following them, hoping to watch a good show.

“Can we go a little farther?”

He leaned close to the woman’s ear and whispered, “I don’t want the others watching...”

“Huff... huff...”

The black-haired woman struggled to draw a short gun from her waist. Bang!

She fired toward where the other female bandits were hiding. After a burst of raucous laughter, the area fell quiet again.

“My little prince, you can have anything you want...”

...

Twenty minutes later.

On an old bed in a desolate, run-down three-story villa, Lin Mo kicked the woman’s corpse off him.

The woman who’d been desperate to strip off her clothes just moments ago had suffocated to death. Her eyes were still open.

“Ugh... She was so strong.”

Even now, Lin Mo’s hands were still trembling.

Just now, someone had untied the steel wire binding his hands. Then, by sheer luck, she’d turned her back to him, baring her pale back. While lust had clouded her mind, both her pistols had been left by the door with her long pants. Lin Mo seized the chance, grabbed her belt, and wrenched it tight around her neck.

After that came struggling, struggling, and more struggling.

She was terrifyingly strong. It took him more than twice as long to strangle her as it would’ve taken to strangle a super-middleweight boxer.

“No.”

“There’s not enough time now, no matter how fast I move.”

Lin Mo quickly got off the bed and grabbed the short guns and pants by the door.

He quickly searched the pants and found only six rounds in one cylinder, plus eleven loose homemade bullets.

“Why’d it take her so long to get her panties off when she’d already taken her pants off...”

Lin Mo kept both guns and the ammunition, then looked again at the black-haired woman, who’d fallen off the bed and was lying with her rear raised high.

“A lock.”

“How strange... Does anyone in The World really need to wear a chastity belt?”

Lin Mo rolled her over.

Then he spotted something bulging beneath her waist...

Uh.

After giving it a couple of taps, he confirmed it wasn’t what he’d imagined. Phew...

He took stock of the situation again. There was no time left to save another victim. And since the bandits all knew what he and the woman had gone off to do, even if he took more than an hour, nobody would suspect a thing.

“I’ve got plenty of time to investigate this.”

After searching nearby for a while, Lin Mo found the key the woman had been holding earlier.

“How tragic.”

He gave a teasing smile and muttered to himself, “If you hadn’t happened to be wearing this, you probably wouldn’t have had to die?”

He tried to unlock it.

The lock had a bizarre mechanism. Even with the key, it took him quite a while to turn it.

Click—

“Just kidding.”

The lock opened.

At last, Lin Mo’s constantly tense heart eased.

So he teased her, “But if you hadn’t been wearing something like this, maybe you could’ve had a good time before you died.”

“Now let’s see what else you’ve been hiding... Ugh.”

He found something that shouldn’t have been there.

Three compressed biscuits. In the apocalypse, they were an absolute must-have for home, travel, and combat—something you could use to quickly replenish your strength in a pinch.

Maybe that was exactly why she’d hidden them inside the chastity belt she’d found somewhere. They were essential, but not something you needed to use right away. Lin Mo took off the belt and gave the raised part at the front a quick look. Whoa, it really did seem to be made for men... This world was pretty messed up, too.

“Two fully loaded guns, twelve rounds; six more; and eleven more. That’s only twenty-nine rounds in total.”

“And there’s no way I’ll hit every shot.”

“Even if I hit, judging by that woman’s physical strength... I couldn’t be sure a shot straight between the eyes would kill her.”

At that thought, Lin Mo clenched his teeth.

“No matter what, this world really is...”

“A complete disaster.”