Chapter 51: Invited to Beat You Up

Holding it up to examine it for a long time, he finally asked, "Boss Lu, what kind of meat is this?"
"Zombie meat," Lu Li said coldly.
Luo Mu was stunned for a moment, the meat dropping back into his bowl. But the next second, shoveling it into his mouth recklessly, he thought, "Forget it! I'll eat first and ask questions later!"
Eating stir-fry for lunch and hotpot for dinner, the two little ones truly felt like a pie had dropped from the sky. It was simply too delicious!
The five of them swept the table clean. Luo Mu was still left wanting more, though his stomach was stuffed to the brim—his brain, however, was still screaming for more!
Lu Li glanced at the time. It was almost ten o'clock. "I plan to relocate to the Blossoming Base tonight," she announced.
She looked at Shen Bing. "You must come with me, since you're the manager of the convenience store, and bring the other little ones along."
The truth was, she couldn't handle everything by herself, and she couldn't possibly split herself into eight pieces. Damn it all, she had no choice but to recruit people!
Shen Bing nodded. Following Boss Lu meant having good food and drinks; he understood this logic well.
Dahan and Xiao Di nodded vigorously, deeply moved that even when going to another base, Sister Lu still hadn't forgotten to take them with her.
Luo Mu leaned in closer. "What about me? What about me?" he asked, his face a mask of eager anticipation.
"You? Get lost!" Lu Li pushed his face away with extreme disdain. She certainly didn't want to keep a ticking time bomb by her side.
Feeding him hotpot was just like seeing a pitiful stray cat and tossing it some scraps out of casual pity.
"That mission was posted by Liu Wenchun! I've already rejected it, and the reward is a thousand crystal cores..." Luo Mu explained hurriedly, terrified he wouldn't get to eat hotpot anymore in the future.
"I'm only worth a thousand crystal cores? And just tier one at that?" Lu Li's focus was evidently on something entirely different.
Luo Mu opened his photonic computer, swiped to the mission page, and said, "It's one thousand two hundred crystal cores now."
Lu Li grew even angrier. Once her reputation grew in the future, she had better be worth tens of thousands of high-tier crystal cores!
"You said Liu Wenchun posted the mission?"
It seemed that woman's hostility toward her was only deepening. Still, it didn't matter. The daughter of a minor base leader was worth squat.
She might not care, but she wasn't a soft persimmon to be kneaded at will, either. She called Luo Mu over.
Casually tossing a crystal core at him and biting down on a toothpick, she instructed, "Go give Liu Wenchun a severe beating, the kind that puts her in bed for half a year. That's your reward."
Luo Mu looked down. A single tier-one crystal core. Good grief, the level of insult was off the charts.
"You got it, I'm on my way!" Luo Mu readily agreed, this time obediently stepping down through the vehicle door.
Given his strength, entering the base completely undetected was a piece of cake. He slipped all the way into the core district and located Liu Hongtao's residence.
Climbing through Liu Wenchun's window, he found her fast asleep, and promptly hauled her out, blanket and all.

Finding a deserted alley at random, he dumped her onto the ground with a loud thud and yanked out the rag stuffed in her mouth.
"You! Luo Mu! What do you think you're doing?" Liu Wenchun's eyes were filled with terror, her hands and feet tightly bound so she couldn't move an inch.
Luo Mu pulled out that crystal core, waved it in front of her eyes, and then activated the recording function on his photonic computer.
"Commissioned by someone to give you a beating!" Luo Mu said leisurely, acting completely nonchalant.
"Who is it? Name your price, and I'll pay you double!" Liu Wenchun said anxiously, a suspicion already forming in her mind.
Luo Mu refused, saying righteously, "The reward is one crystal core, and I am an assassin with principles. I do not accept mid-contract employer switches."
Liu Wenchun stared in disbelief, the words "one crystal core" echoing in her mind as she felt profoundly insulted.
Before she could recover from the insult, his fists fell relentlessly. Luo Mu didn't hold back his strength.
Punch after punch landed solidly. "Pfft... Ugh." Liu Wenchun spat out a mouthful of blood, feeling as though her internal organs had been displaced.
Her heart was filled with unprecedented despair, and her body suffered a pain she had never known before. Tears and snot poured out uncontrollably.
Was she going to die here? For the first time, she harbored the thought that she should never have provoked Lu Li.
This one-sided beating lasted for ten minutes. Liu Wenchun was pale-faced, and not an inch of skin covered by her clothes under the blanket was intact.
Bruises of blue, purple, and red intersected cruelly, making anyone's scalp tingle at the sight.
Luo Mu shook his fist. "Refreshing!" He let out a sharp whistle and walked away without looking back.
Liu Wenchun lay alone in the alley wrapped in her blanket, her whole body aching as if she had been run over by a car hundreds of times.
Damn Lu Li! Damn Luo Mu and Shen Bing! Why would people in the top twenty of the leaderboard help her?
Liu Wenchun couldn't figure it out, nor could she move. The slightest twitch brought agonizing pain to every part of her body, so she had to wait until dawn for someone passing by to discover her.
She felt like she was dying, her breathing growing slower and slower...
...
Outside the base.
Luo Mu ran back in high spirits, eager to claim credit from Lu Li, only to find that the RV and the convenience store had vanished!
His world had collapsed. Where had Boss Lu and Shen Bing gone? There wasn't a single trace left on the ground, as if they had never been here at all.
He suddenly remembered Boss Lu saying she was going to the Blossoming Base.
Awakening as if from a dream, Luo Mu hurriedly mounted his beloved motorcycle and sped toward the Blossoming Base, driving without a single rest all the way.
After a frantic hour of riding, Luo Mu finally spotted the towering walls of the Blossoming Base and instantly breathed a sigh of relief.

Sure enough, a hundred meters outside the base gates, he found the RV and the convenience store. Luo Mu dragged his exhausted body over.
The convenience store was closed and pitch-black, and the four sides of the RV were sealed up, looking like a giant iron box from the outside.
The pitiful Luo Mu had no choice but to sit on the ground leaning against the RV, hugging his knees to wait for dawn.
...
"Ah—" A scream shattered the morning peace of Hope Base.
Following that came a wave of chaos. When Liu Wenchun regained consciousness, the first thing she saw was a doctor wearing glasses and a white lab coat.
He waved a flashlight back and forth in front of her eyes. Liu Wenchun found the glare blinding, and her vision gradually blurred.
As she slowly closed her eyes, Liu Wenchun vaguely heard the doctor whisper, "She's crippled. I'm afraid she'll never stand again."
Liu Wenchun desperately wanted to get up, but her body refused to muster any strength. Her eyelids grew heavier and heavier, and her limbs felt as though they had been filled with cement.
She slipped back into unconsciousness while Liu Hong涛, standing beside the hospital bed, wore a grave expression and continuously questioned the doctor.
...
On the second floor of the RV outside the Blossoming Base.
The space where the sofa used to be was now replaced by a bunk bed, with Xiao Di sleeping on the bottom and Zhan Ting on the top.
These were the little ones from Shen Bing's courtyard.
Habitually, Lu Li opened her photonic computer and swiped to her personal profile, noticing that the progress bar, which had remained stagnant for a long time, had moved.
Lottery Shop Base Conquering Progress (1/1128).
She tapped on the progress bar, and a map of China popped up on the screen, with a five-pointed star lighting up in the region corresponding to the heartland.
She was slightly stunned, having almost forgotten about this matter entirely. After thinking for a long time, she remembered this was considered the main storyline quest.
It was just that she had felt it was too difficult to complete back then, so she simply minimized it and dragged it into the corner.
Yesterday, when she left Hope Base, she had left behind two automatic scratch-card machines, which was why the progress bar had moved?