New Changes in the Base

Yun Che and Xing Feng didn't attach too much importance to the warehouse mayhem, only a fool would do stuff like that. After unloading the goods, Xing Feng said goodbye to his uncle and aunt, then left with Yun Che and He Yongyi in his own car. When they were back, it was about 1:30 in the afternoon. Yun Yao had prepared a whole table of tasty dishes, everybody was waiting for them.

"What's wrong with Heiyu?"

After slurping a piece of tender meat, Yun Che took a look at mastiff-sized Heiyu being rubbed and kneaded by Yun Cheng. It wasn't very Heiyu at all.

Arwuhhh…

The shrunken Wolf King whined at Yun Che during his munch on a piece of frozen lamb steak, sounding quite pitiful. Ye Xingchen explained, "When we came back, Heiyu said he was going to show the Wolf King around the house, but everybody loved how docile the Wolf King was, so Heiyu felt left out, and then, well, you know, this."

Heiyu was jealous. No wonder he was feeling down.

"Hehe. No wonder."

As his master, Yun Che shook his head instead of saying nice things to Heiyu to cheer him up. Maybe Heiyu was in Space alone for too long, he actually yearned for attention. He felt really bad about him being left out or neglected. But everybody knew what Heiyu was like, soon, he'd be back to his daily lively state.

"I heard many people died during the quest."

Yun Yao suddenly asked Yun Che. She would get pretty worried about Yun Che and his mates every time.

"Yes, a great loss for the military, not that bad for superfunction squads. Every squad sent their best people and all the space superfunction possessors were well-protected. But I won't join any cooperation initiated by the military or the government again," Sick of talking about the quest, Yun Che changed the topic, "Anything interesting happened in the base lately?"

Gu Mingxuan picked up the conversation. "Two things happened. One, as you predicted, shortly after you left the base, the rumor spread through the base that you kept the use of water superfunction from everybody on purpose, accusing you of being selfish. Surprisingly, many superfunction squads backed you up, although there were people who helped spread the rumor. The second thing was, there was a large change on the superfunction squad ranking chart. Four 10-people squads came out of nowhere, copying us by doing difficult quests only. At first, people laughed at them, saying that they would overreach themselves but they shut everybody up because they seemed to have finished those quests quite easily. And then, from day 2, they started to team up with other squads and share the loots with everybody. Within the last couple of days, they've earned themselves quite some reputation among superfunction squads. What's more, all four of them have entered the top 10 list. One of them called Doomsday Shura, they replaced Joy Squad to be the third place, snapping at our heels."

The copycats had something in common: half of the squad were level-3 superfunction possessors and they had a space superfunction possessor. They were all lean but highly-functional squads.

"All 10-people squads with a similar style as ours, huh?"

This was really interesting. Yun Che put down the chopsticks as he was almost full. Yun Che still got half a bowl of steamed egg custard with minced pork. Yun Che had been the second most exhausted next to Heiyu.

"Yes. One of them is an all-girl squad with an aggressive name, Overlord Girls, which sounds pretty military-ish. As far as I know, other than the one in Mo Army, the only girl regiment is in the Second Brigade of Wang Army. Those female soldiers were the real deal, even male soldiers wouldn't date them."

No man would want his wife to be tougher than him. But there were exceptions, for example, Yang Huaien and Mo Wenyang's dad, Mo Jiancheng.

"You sound like a sexist, you know?"

After slurping the steamed egg custard that Xing Feng got him, Yun Che teased Gu. When the doomsday befell, many women were dead or zombified because they were too weak. Most of the rest would find strong, solid men to reply on. Only a handful of women survived by their strong will and outstanding abilities. In fact, they even lived quite well after the doomsday. Yun Che actually had respect for women like them.

Almost immediately, Gu Mingxuan drew all the women's attention here. He hurriedly tried to clear the air with a friendly smile. "No way, everyone in this world was born to a woman. I have nothing but respect for women."

Gu Mingxuan didn't want any problem with women.

"Hehe. But I noticed that you aren't wearing your glasses."

Yun Che liked to joke around with his mates, but he just noticed the glasses that Gu Mingxuan would always wear to keep up his civilized appearance were gone.

"Don't you remember your comment on glasses?" Gu Mingxuan thought.

But what he actually said was, "Well, sometimes I need a change of image…"

Zhou Zeyu and some other guys sniggered as they remembered what Yun Che said before about the glasses. Gu Mingxuan must have been afraid to wear glasses in front of Yun Che again. And he would even have a double-fold eyelid surgery if Yun Che knew him before the doomsday in case Yun Che would make fun of his single-fold eyelids.

"Che, which room will the Meng brothers be living in?"

When everybody was full, it was time for Meng Xu to rest. Lu Haixuan thoughtfully raised the question for them.

"How about you stay in Zeyu's room for the time being? Our neighbor's house and ours need a little renovation in the following days. Let's reorganize the rooms after that."

With more and more people in the squad, the living space became further narrowed, which gave Yun Che quite a headache.

"OK, the Meng brothers can take my room. I'll sleep in Zeyu's room."

The dudes didn't care that much. All they needed was a place to sleep.

"OK. Take them upstairs. It's best that Meng Xu wears an eye patch in the following days. Let's try to have a nice sleep, starting tomorrow, Yehan will be leading the squad to quests like before. I have something personal to deal with. Also, don't mind the new squads, they are a bunch of copycats, they can never beat us."

After the gratifying lunch, Yun Che addressed his plan as he walked to the living room. According to Gu Mingxuan, the new squads seemed to try to gain the trust of some of the squads. Peak couldn't stop this from happening, so instead of starting an internecine contest, they might as well stay put for now and await a better opportunity to crush them. As for the rumor, it would soon die down.

None of them was hot-headed, so they understood Yun Che's arrangement. In fact, Yun Che didn't even need to mention it. As of yet, whether Yun Che was around or not, Peak had never taken a beating because everything would come down to strength in the doomsday.

"Brother."

Yun Cheng cheerfully hopped up to Yun Che. He still remembered the crystal nuclei that his brother promised him.

"Hehe. Here, this can fill your belly, but don't eat too much."

Leng Yehan had given Yun Che a heads-up. Yun Che smiled and gave his brother a large bag of level-3 crystal nuclei.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah! Brother is the best. I love you the most."

With a full bag of level-3 crystal nuclei in hand, Yun Cheng was ecstatic. He hugged and kissed Yun Che. Leng Yehan lowered his eyelids, he just heard similar things not long ago. Although Leng knew Cheng always saw his brother as the most important person, sometimes, he wished that he could be the most important one to Cheng.

"All right now, Yehan needs some sleep. Go upstairs with him. Let Yehan keep the crystal nuclei for you, don't spill them all over the place."

Yun Che had stuff to do, or else he would love to spend more time with his brother. Putting aside the fact that Yun Cheng was a zombie, he still preferred this Yun Cheng over the old insightful Yun Cheng.

"OK."

Yun Cheng knew he had to be a good boy since his brother had come back with all these delicious crystal nuclei. He got off of Yun Che and hugged Leng Yehan's arm. "Han, go to bed!"

"Sure."

Leng Yehan's displeasure went away. He didn't even say goodbye to everybody before going upstairs with Yun Cheng. Yun Cheng, however, waved his hand at everybody. He looked just like Chenchen, but the grownup version of him.

Zhan Yafei later went back to their room with her mother. Lu Haixuan and Zhou Zeyu helped Meng Gang take his brother upstairs. Lu's mom and Yun Yao cleaned up the dining room. Lu's grandpa knew Peak wouldn't take him to quests, so he just went out for a walk on his own with his tobacco pipe in hand. Yun Che, Xing Feng, Ye Xingchen, Jiang Shang, Gu Mingxuan were still in the living room. Yang Huaien and the rest all went back to Chaoyang's house to see their own family.

"Master…"

After being Yun Cheng's toy during lunch, Heiyu was still upset. When he saw Yun Che, he immediately jumped on his lap. Yun Che kindly took out an energy bar in order to prevent him from whining. "Heiyu, I want to eat grilled fish for dinner. How about you get me some in Space?"

It'd be a tough task to cheer Heiyu up. After deliberation, Yun Che decided to send him back to Space and let him cool down on his own.

"Huh?"

Heiyu squealed out his complaint. He couldn't believe his master assigned work to him instead of comforting his poor, broken heart. It was so cruel.

"Look, my hand still hurts. You can't let me catch the fish, can you? Please, you're the best!"

Buttering him up would work much better than any other means. Yun Che rubbed and kneaded Heiyu as if his hand wasn't injured at all, but it mainly because the ointment that Heiyu gave him was magical. His hand did have pretty much recovered. He wouldn't feel the pain if the injury wasn't being poked.

"All right, all right, stop it, I'm not a dough! I'll catch the fish for you, are you happy?"

As expected, Heiyu gave in in no time, having no idea his master just tricked him. Yun Che smiled and went further, "And some games maybe?"

The longer he stayed in Space, the better.

"OK, you pig!"

Heiyu threw a contemptuous look at Yun Che. While he called Yun Che a pig, he took another energy bar from his tummy after finishing the first one. Xing Feng and the rest couldn't help but snigger. "So who is the pig?"

"Thank you, then, Boss Heiyu."

"Hey, I didn't say I was going to…"

Before he finished talking, Heiyu's body disappeared from view. Yun Che heaved a sigh of relief as he finally got rid of him. That was clean and neat, or else Heiyu would be torturing him for another couple of hours. To be honest, Yun Che was genuinely afraid of Heiyu's nagging, because his cheekiness and shamelessness were too much to handle.