The End of the World Base Master (4): 

After Gu’s father finished doubting Zhou Qinghao for a while, he let his own son continue helping him cultivate.

Gu Juntian said: “Dad, I can only help you for two hours. Later I have something to do.”

“What are you going to do?” Father Gu asked.

Gu Juntian said: “I’m going to cook and then bring it to Zhou Qinghao.”

Father Gu: “…” This was the son he knew, the one who was lovesick.

Gu Juntian added: “Oh right, Dad, when Zhou Qinghao came over this morning, he brought me big meat buns. They smelled amazing. Do you want some? I’ll go get them for you.”

Father Gu was a little displeased: “Why eat something so greasy in the morning? You need to take care of your health, understand? Grain porridge is the best!”

Father Gu and Mother Gu were born in the countryside, and their family was dirt poor when they were children.

Although before the apocalypse they lived in luxury, after it began, they became frugal, learned to live simply, and focused on saving food.

Their family did not eat poorly in the apocalypse; every day they had meat and vegetables with balanced nutrition. But they never indulged themselves or wasted work points at the cafeteria buying expensive food.

Because of this, even though their family had three people who didn’t earn work points, their villa’s underground cellar still stored a lot of food.

To store the food, Father Gu had an earth-ability user dig a cellar beneath their basement, and then asked an ice-ability user to place plenty of ice blocks inside.

That place had become a giant refrigerator.

“Do you want to eat the meat buns or not?” Gu Juntian asked.

Father Gu said: “I want them!”

Mother Gu’s cooking was decent, but she was frugal and focused on health, so her dishes were always bland.

She was born in the south and didn’t know how to make flour-based foods.

But meat buns were delicious!

And cultivation consumed a huge amount of energy… Gu Juntian brought up four meat buns, and Father Gu ate two in a row, wanting a third.

Gu Juntian quickly snatched it away and took a bite: “This one’s mine!”

Father Gu said: “You unfilial son, don’t you know how to show filial piety to your father?”

Gu Juntian bit into the bun and hummed: “I’m already very filial. Zhou Qinghao gave these buns to me, and I didn’t eat them all myself!”

The Gu father and son talked warmly, always about Zhou Qinghao. Zhen Jiayun, who had lived in the Gu family home for four years, was no longer mentioned.

But Zhen Jiayun was talking to others about the Gu family.

The man Zhen Jiayun liked was Shao Huirui, a level-four ability user.

He possessed lightning powers, was strong in combat, and had even founded the Thunder Team.

Zhou Qinghao and Gu Chengming also went out to collect supplies, but they spent at least half of every month at the base.

When they went out to collect or kill zombies, they were careful and steady.

People who went with them were very safe, but the harvests were smaller.

The Thunder Team was the opposite.

They stayed outside for long periods and ventured into dangerous places. Each trip yielded a lot, but many team members died.

The core members of the Thunder Team rarely decreased, but newly recruited ability users had an extremely high death rate.

Even so, many ability users still flocked to join, because the lifestyle of Thunder Team members was enviable.

It had already been four years since the apocalypse began. Almost all pre-apocalypse food had expired.

Though bases planted crops, vegetables, and even opened processing factories, food varieties had decreased sharply.

For ordinary people, eating meat was a luxury, but Thunder Team members ate well every day, so of course they were admired.

Many thought the lives of Thunder Team members were the kind of good days they themselves deserved.

The Thunder Team was not an official organization, but during the recent zombie tide, they also accepted employment to fight. Usually they lost members, but during the tide they barely lost any.

They weren’t very active in killing zombies, but after the tide, they were very enthusiastic about digging out zombie crystal cores.

Yesterday, while directing his men to dig cores, Shao Huirui was in a great mood.

Heaven was truly helping him!

During the zombie tide, not only had his ability advanced to level five, but Lu Chengming, that old fox, had his ability destroyed!

If one day Zhou Qinghao were ruined as well, then the base would be his!

As for how to ruin Zhou Qinghao… he often led teams outside and knew one thing.

Some laboratories had developed a drug that attracted high-level zombies, gathering them together so they could be wiped out with hot weapons.

This drug was hard to obtain, but crystal cores could buy it. If it were put on Zhou Qinghao, all the high-level zombies would target him, and he would surely die!

The tricky part was secretly getting the drug onto Zhou Qinghao.

Shao Huirui very much wanted the H City base.

He had always wanted to be a base leader like Gu Chengming.

In the apocalypse, each base ruled itself. Becoming a base leader was like becoming a local emperor.

With the strength of the Thunder Team, seizing a small base would be easy, but those bases were chaotic, poor, and sparsely populated—he wasn’t interested.

By comparison, H City’s safety base was a good choice.

It wasn’t too big or too small. H City was located on a coastal plain, industrialized before the apocalypse, with many light-industry factories. Now the H City base had many factories and vast farmland, achieving self-sufficiency.

He had visited many bases, and even some large ones weren’t as good as H City’s.

As for large bases, the Thunder Team couldn’t swallow them yet.

With Gu Chengming around, it was hard for him to take H City, but now that Gu Chengming had been crippled, things were different.

Shao Huirui was clever. As soon as Gu Chengming had an accident, he spread rumors that Zhou Qinghao had orchestrated it, setting zombies on him in order to seize control of the base.

He also planned to connect with those dissatisfied with Gu Chengming and Zhou Qinghao, gain their support, and then kill Gu Chengming while framing Zhou Qinghao.

He knew Zhen Jiayun, who lived at Gu Chengming’s house, and knew the Gu family stored a lot of supplies. He could also take advantage of the chance to rob them.

Although his income from leading the Thunder Team surpassed Gu Chengming’s, he spent lavishly. In terms of savings, he didn’t have a tenth of Gu Chengming’s.

After robbing Gu Chengming, his team could finally live in luxury. How wonderful!

Shao Huirui was enjoying his thoughts when troubling news reached him.

Zhen Jiayun had been thrown out by the Gu family and was looking for him.

He absolutely did not want people to know he was connected to Gu Juntian’s boyfriend! Shao Huirui didn’t want to see Zhen Jiayun, so last night he didn’t return home.

He thought Zhen Jiayun would go back to the Gu family if he couldn’t find him, but instead Zhen Jiayun kept wandering near his house.

If he kept avoiding him, Zhen Jiayun might start asking around and cause a scene.

But he couldn’t just kill Zhen Jiayun—he still had some feelings for him.

After all, Zhen Jiayun was his first love.

He was also from H City, and in high school he and Zhen Jiayun were classmates. They liked each other and were very close.

His family was poor, which made him mature early.

He knew only studying could change his fate, and he also knew that love between two men was not accepted by society, so he never confessed to Zhen Jiayun.

But their relationship was no different from lovers.

Later, he accidentally discovered that Gu Juntian liked Zhen Jiayun.

That was how he learned about Gu Juntian’s family background.

Gu Juntian had such great resources, yet his grades were mediocre. He was a useless good-for-nothing. And yet this useless man had a good father, so no matter how incompetent, he still had wealth Shao Huirui could never attain in several lifetimes.

No one knew how much he despised Gu Juntian!

When the apocalypse came, he was away at university.

He awakened powers and thought he could finally rise above Gu Juntian. But when he returned to H City, he found Gu Juntian’s father had become the leader of the H City safety base!

At that time, he hadn’t formed the Thunder Team yet, had few men, and limited resources—just an ordinary ability user. But Gu Chengming was different.

Gu Chengming organized people to clear zombies from H City, gained vast cultivation resources, and became the strongest in the base.

With Gu Chengming around, Gu Juntian’s life was far better than his. Even Zhen Jiayun became Gu Juntian’s boyfriend.

He hated Gu Juntian even more!

Now that Gu Chengming was ruined and Gu Juntian was about to fall, just thinking of it made Shao Huirui happy.

And the fact that Gu Juntian’s beloved Zhen Jiayun liked him wholeheartedly made him even prouder.

“Jiayun, I’m sorry. Last night I was busy clearing zombies outside and didn’t come home. I didn’t know you were looking for me. I made you suffer.”

“It’s okay, I didn’t suffer,” Zhen Jiayun said.

Yesterday he hadn’t eaten much, and after staying the night at Ji Jianghai’s place, he hadn’t slept well. Right now, he actually felt terrible.

But when he saw Shao Huirui, all his earlier unhappiness vanished.

This was the man he liked, so much stronger than Gu Juntian!

Zhen Jiayun looked at Shao Huirui with love, wanting to say many things, but in the end, reality made him bow his head: “Brother Shao, do you have any food?”

He had never gone hungry for this long in his life!

At the start of the apocalypse, even though he hadn’t lived with the Gu family, Gu Juntian had secretly given him food. He’d never lacked.

Shao Huirui immediately had someone bring food, then asked: “Jiayun, why did you leave the Gu family?”

Zhen Jiayun’s eyes reddened: “It’s all Gu Juntian’s fault…”

At that moment, Gu Juntian also guessed the person behind Zhen Jiayun was Shao Huirui.

The original body hadn’t known much about the base or its experts.

Even with the original’s memories, he couldn’t figure out who killed Father Gu or plotted against Zhou Qinghao.

Today, while helping Father Gu cultivate, he asked some questions to learn about the base, and immediately realized Shao Huirui was suspicious.

“Dad, I suspect the one Zhen Jiayun is involved with is Shao Huirui,” Gu Juntian said.

With such a shrewd father, whenever something happened, he just needed to tell him and let him handle it.

Father Gu said: “I’ll investigate.”

“Okay! Then I’ll go cook now!” Gu Juntian said. “I need to make the food early so I can bring it to Qinghao.”

Father Gu took a deep breath: “It’s fine to call him Qinghao in front of me, but not in front of Zhou Qinghao. You need to be respectful to him and not make him angry.”

If his son angered Zhou Qinghao, and Zhou quietly made a move against him, he wouldn’t be able to protect him!

Gu Juntian ignored his father’s warning.

What was wrong with calling him “Qinghao”? At least he wasn’t calling him “baby”!