Chapter 664: Token of Friendship
In the end, both Kate and Anna decided to keep their babies. Unfortunately for Xiaoyun, it meant he was now having to be a father once again.
The only positive news out of the whole thing was the fact that he no longer needed to wear protection with any of them.
He could creampie each of them as much as he wanted, although he was starting to feel a little burnt out having to satisfy all nine of them every night.
Outside of his personal life, the three-day deadline for the food-for-fuel deal was coming closer and closer to an end.
Xiaoyun had been going to the storage unit every few hours. Just when his ability was no longer giving him a headache from using it.
He didn’t even bother with hiding his ability. No longer using a truck as he just created them straight inside the storage unit.
Yueyue was forced to clean up after him, wiping all the footage from the camera before taking the remote control to play a clip of no one inside when Xiaoyun entered.
---
"Great to see you again, Mr.Zhang," Xiaoyun murmured, shaking his hand as the two of them stood in Foshan’s airport.
"Great to see you too, Mr.Chen."
As the two of them separated, everyone could see the attitude of Zhangfei changing completely.
His arrogance was replaced by a humble, respectable look towards Xiaoyun as if his past three-day experience had changed him as a person.
"You soldiers should have gotten the food loaded into your plane, right?"
"They’re currently loading it in... Mr.Chen, do you have a little time to renegotiate the deal?"
"Renegotiate? Are you not happy with the current deal?" Xiaoyun curiously asked, looking a little surprised by how much Zhangfei had changed.
"No, sir. I mean, we are more than happy with the deal. But my commander back in the base had told me the deal is unfair for you.
I personally agreed with it too. So we want to adjust the deal so that you guys no longer have to pay for the pipe check fees."
The answer shocked Xiaoyun a little, more so for Houqin, who couldn’t believe Zhangfei’s side was willingly rejecting the food that was already in their palms.
"You sure?"
Seeing Zhangfei nodding his head with his bodyguard all standing in silence behind him, Xiaoyun thought about it for a second before shaking his head.
"I don’t see the need for negotiation."
"What?"
Zhangfei, all of the bodyguards, and even Houqin were caught off guard by Xiaoyun’s answer.
"A deal is a deal. It would feel wrong for me to make you guys work for free when the deal specifically stated that we would be the ones paying for it."
"B-But——"
"You can keep the 400 tonnes of food as a token of friendship... No need to push back any further, we’re all in this together."
Hearing Xiaoyun’s selflessness, Zhangfei suddenly bowed down in gratitude as his bodyguards all looked a little shocked by it.
"Thank you so much!"
"No problem... Looks like your soldiers are coming over. Can one of you open the door for them?"
As a few of Zhangfei’s oldiers walked towards the terminal exit, one of Xiaoyun’s soldiers quickly headed over there to open the door for them.
"Colonel Zhangfei! We finished loading the 100 tonnes as you had asked." One of the soldiers said out loud as he saluted towards him.
"Go load in the rest... We’ll remember this, Governor Chen. If you ever have any trouble, just give us a call."
Before Xiaoyun could say anything, Zhangfei threw a brick phone over to him, leaving the airport with the rest of his soldiers.
"Commander, why did you reject their adjustment?" Houqin questioned, unable to understand why Xiaoyun didn’t accept the offer.
"Because we’re all in this together... We all have a common enemy. I don’t see the need to be so stingy."
As the cargo plane resumed loading in the distance, Houqin couldn’t help but feel a little insulted by his words.
"B-But that’s 400 tonnes of food."
"We can always make more... Friendship is hard to come by in this dog-eat-dog apocalypse."
Xiaoyun murmured as he looked towards the brick phone, which had a long antenna on the top right corner.
"That could have fed the army for half a month..." Houqin grumpily murmured as she still refused to value the two things as the same.
"I’ll go make up the difference myself. You don’t have to worry about it." Xiaoyun reassured.
"Still... Whatever. You’re the leader. Not me."
As Houqin murmured to herself, the cargo plane took off into the sky as all of the nearby soldiers watched it in awe.
---
Back in Yuqi’s office...
"Welcome back... How’s the deal with Zhangfei?’ Yuqi curiously asked as Xiaoyun took a seat right next to her desk.
"Went pretty smoothly. We should be able to see the fuel coming in by next month... What are you working on?"
"Just some miscellaneous work. You don’t have to worry about it... Hey Xiaoyun, have you talked to your friends recently?"
"My friends?" Xiaoyun asked in confusion.
"Chengyi and Pinli. Have they called you or sent you any text messages, or just anything?" Yuqi classified.
"No. Why, you ask?"
"Just wondering. That’s all."
"I can’t send a text to them. They don’t have the same cell towers connected to their provinces."
"I guess you’re right. I didn’t think about that... Just ignore what I just asked."
As Yuqi shifted her attention back to her work, Xiaoyun’s mind was still too intrigued by why she asked this out of the blue.
"Did they do something stupid up north again?"
"Not that... I was just curious. That’s all."
Seeing her unwilling to budge, Xiaoyun’s curiosity had only gotten worse. He just wants to figure out the bottom of this.
"Come on, Yuqi, I’m not stupid. Just tell me why you ask that... Is it something to do with migration again?"
"No, it’s nothing like that... Do you really want to know?"
Xiaoyun quickly nodded his head, waiting patiently as she wrote a few things on her work before turning around to look back at him.
"Your friends just sent their mom and sisters over here in Guangzhou. That’s why I’m wondering if they told you about this."
"Huh? What?"
Xiaoyun’s mind couldn’t connect any of the words, as they all made no sense when combined.
"They are currently living in one of the temporary apartments in Guangzhou. You can go talk to them yourself if you really want."
Xiaoyun thought about it for a second before shaking his head, rejecting the idea of a visit.
"They probably don’t want me to know about it... I’m just going to leave them alone." Xiaoyun answered.
"Okay then."
As Yuqi turned back to her work, Xiaoyun’s mind still couldn’t understand why his friends would have their family move from Changsha to Guangzhou.
"Yuqi, what do you think about why they moved over here?"
"I don’t know... Maybe they just find Guangzhou to be a better place to live compared to Hunan."
"I guess..."
Xiaoyun didn’t bother her work any further as he sat there in silence, thinking about the various possible explanations for the move.
"Oh, I almost forgot to tell you this, Xiaoyun. Li Fa wanted to meet with you later in the evening." Yuqi murmured.
"Li Fa? What does he want to meet me for?"
"I wouldn’t know. But probably something to do with laws... He’s going to come over in like a few hours."
"Okay..."
As Xiaoyun’s attention shifted towards thinking about what Li Fa wanted to talk about, his eyes suddenly got a little curious about what Yuqi was working on.
"Yuqi, what are you writing?"
"Just some future stuff... I probably won’t even put it into effect or anything." Yuqi murmured as she kept on writing.
"Really? Let me have a look."
He quickly scooched his chair closer, moving all the way right next to her as he looked over to the paper on her desk.
It was a new re-arrangement plan, a redistricting effort to fully separate each of the city and town into two different entities.
In other words, the mayor of a city would be equal to the mayor of a small town, regardless of their administrative district on the map before the outbreak.
"What’s the point of this?" Xiaoyun curiously asked, not really finding the need to employ two separate mayors.
"I was thinking how the population had been slowly spread out more and more, since there aren’t always going to be enough jobs in the city."
Yuqi paused for a second as she put down her pen onto the desk, then continued speaking.
"Let’s just say you live in a small village or a town, hundreds of miles or so away from the city center.
You and your fellow villagers had an idea to pool all your labor resources together to cut down some trees to make room for farmland."