Rotting Land: Survive

"Keep it simple. What exactly are the steps?" Tang Xiaoquan took a step forward. Unlike Old Xu, he wasn’t relaxed at all; in his mind, Ear Stud Guy’s story still sounded unreliable, and he had to guard against the guy playing some kind of trick.

"There’s not much to it. They gave us a website, I logged in and registered an account back then, and after that you just use it like a normal messaging app, you can send text."

"Yeah? Then give it a try."

"Old Xu!?" Hearing Old Xu agree to Ear Stud Guy’s proposal, Tang Xiaoquan turned his head, eyebrows raised, worry written all over his face.

Of course Old Xu knew exactly what Tang Xiaoquan was thinking. He raised his hand and patted the kid’s shoulder, then chuckled. "Relax. This punk is real afraid of dying. Even if you handed him the guts, he still wouldn’t dare pull anything now."

"Y-yeah, this big bro is right. You, you guys can rest easy, I-I definitely, definitely won’t do anything stupid." Cutting in with a joke, trying to seize the opening—Old Xu speaking up for him was rare, Ear Stud Guy wasn’t about to miss this hard-won shot at keeping his head.

"What are you babbling for? Did anyone tell you to talk?" Old Xu snapped a kick at Ear Stud Guy, then barked, "Do exactly what you just said and contact your people outside. Same thing as before—no screwing around, or you know what happens."

Old Xu didn’t even need to spell it out; Ear Stud Guy had already gotten a deep taste of his violence.

Holding the phone in his palm, Ear Stud Guy found the text message icon.

Then his fingers flew, quickly typing out a line of text.

Done, he stopped, turned, and handed the phone to Old Xu, nervously asking, "B-big bro, I-I finished writing the text message. You-you take a look, see if it’s okay? If it’s okay I’ll send it. If not, tell me what needs fixing, I’ll change it right away."

He’d probably never been this obedient in his entire life. Xu Renjie squinted at the screen in Ear Stud Guy’s hand for a moment, then nodded, confirming it could be sent.

"Hold up! Didn’t you just say you had to log in to that account to send this info? But you never logged in. How do you explain that?" Because he still had that thorn in his heart, Tang Xiaoquan paid extra attention to Ear Stud Guy’s every move.

Watching how Ear Stud Guy had operated the phone just now, he’d noticed the guy went straight into the SMS screen, no ’log into the website’ operation at all.

Hearing Tang Xiaoquan’s words, a nameless anger flared up in Ear Stud Guy’s head too. He could tell this young man in front of him seemed to be deliberately trying to give him trouble.

Ever since he came in, the kid had already mouthed off at him more than once.

Because of that, he had no idea how many kicks and punches he’d taken from Old Xu.

But given how things were right now, all he could do was swallow that anger back down.

"No, no, that... it’s not that you have to log in, it-it’s that I didn’t explain it clearly. It-it’s only the first time you log in that you have to register. After that you just follow the normal SMS process."

Tang Xiaoquan still didn’t really trust Ear Stud Guy’s explanation, but Old Xu didn’t give him any chance to press further and just cut straight to the order. "Send it. Send it exactly as written."

With Old Xu’s command, Ear Stud Guy stopped paying Tang Xiaoquan any mind.

He wasn’t stupid; he could see that in this group, Old Xu’s word was law.

Plus, with the shadow Old Xu had already left in his heart, Ear Stud Guy naturally treated Old Xu’s orders as absolute.

He keyed in his crew’s phone number and hit send.

After a brief pause on the screen, a system notice reading "Sent successfully" popped up in front of the Survivors.

"It’s sent, big bro."

Old Xu nodded; he’d seen the text on the phone.

Tang Xiaoquan finally let out a long breath of relief. Just then, when Ear Stud Guy’s fingers started moving, his heart had practically leapt to his throat.

He’d been terrified the thing he was worried about would actually happen, but it seemed the heavens were taking special care of him—the disaster he’d pictured hadn’t played out, Ear Stud Guy hadn’t lied.

"Big bro, now we just wait for my boys on the other side to reply."

Old Xu ignored Ear Stud Guy, because right at that moment Lei Tong walked in from outside.

"Well? How are they doing...?"

"Sigh!" Lei Tong had never been this depressed—this was the first time he’d failed to properly carry out an assignment Old Xu had given him.

"What happened?" Seeing Lei Tong’s dejected look, Old Xu had a pretty good guess.

"Sorry, Company Commander, I-I... ah, they won’t talk at all, I really can’t communicate with them."

Old Xu wasn’t surprised at Lei Tong’s situation. He patted his brother’s shoulder. "It’s fine, I get it. You’ve done what you can."

As he spoke, Ear Stud Guy hesitantly cut in, "B-big bro, th-there’s a reply."

"Oh? What does it say?"

"They’re asking what happened, how we got attacked by Zombies, and how the boys are doing."

"What about their location?"

"That..." Old Xu’s whole reason for making contact was to find out where his people were, but Ear Stud Guy had said a bunch without hitting that point at all.

Staring at the three questions on the phone, Ear Stud Guy just wanted to rush over to his own crew and tear into those teammates.

Shit, sending this kind of reply was basically them screwing him on purpose.

"Uh, big bro, heh-heh, th-they didn’t say. I-I’ll ask them for it right now!"

"Wait." Old Xu raised a hand, stopping Ear Stud Guy from doing anything else, and replayed the guy’s earlier wording carefully in his mind.

"Give me the phone." As the words left his mouth, Old Xu reached out and snatched the phone from Ear Stud Guy’s hand.

Once he had it, he dropped his eyes to the screen. Sure enough, just like Ear Stud Guy said, there were three parallel sentences, all starting with "how," and no mention of where the other punks were.

The wording was pretty plain, and on the surface nothing seemed off.

But when Old Xu really thought about it, something felt wrong.

Clearly, with Ear Stud Guy’s status, if the person texting back was his underling, they should be using more deferential language.

Especially in a situation like the apocalypse, people’s sense of self swelled, and young guys paid even more attention to these vague things like power and status.

Right now, though, the reply was clearly very aggressive—three parallel rhetorical questions starting with "how," full of interrogation. That kind of wording was what a boss would use.

Thinking that through, Old Xu’s eyes narrowed. "So you’re not the boss of your crew, huh?"

As soon as he said it, Ear Stud Guy’s whole body jolted, like someone had tapped his acupoints—he froze where he stood.

"Th-that, I..." As a street thug, Ear Stud Guy knew perfectly well how important status was.

He’d kept quiet about it earlier precisely because he was afraid once they knew his real standing, they’d write him off.

So right now he was scrambling to defend himself. "B-big bro, you, this... actually, what I say still counts with them. You want their location, right? I-I’ll get it for you."

𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Reaching toward Old Xu’s palm, Ear Stud Guy was desperate to get the phone back and flip the situation.

But Old Xu simply pulled his hand back, his face going cold as he said... (To be continued. If you’re enjoying this story, feel free to go to Qidian (qidian.com) to vote with recommendation tickets or monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users please read at m.qidian.com.)