From Apocalypse Boss to Farmer: My Vegetables Make Me Stronger!-Chapter 227 - 218: Surplus Value

Gu Xi wasn’t surprised that Ye Junhan had noticed something was off with Yabao.

After all, the man had always been sharp.

What did surprise her was the timing of him speaking up...

Everyone thought Yabao was her companion plant. And one of the conditions for a ’plant person’ to successfully integrate was for the companion plant to be powerful enough, with the highest possible degree of fusion with the ability user.

For Ye Junhan to point out Yabao’s strangeness at this particular moment... it was hard for Gu Xi not to read into it.

"Yabao really likes you." She calmly poked the little sprout, which had secretly twisted itself into a pretzel, and looked up at the man. "Would you like to... interact with it?"

But what Yabao was actually expressing was a desire to "play," a word Gu Xi just couldn’t bring herself to say to Ye Junhan.

"Alright."

The moment Ye Junhan finished speaking, a small green sprout shot out from Gu Xi’s fingertip, circled his wrist once, and then dissolved into motes of green light... merging into his body.

Ye Junhan sensed a change in the ability within him. He abruptly lifted his gaze to the girl across from him. Something surged violently in the depths of his dark eyes, but it quickly returned to calm.

"Yabao is very special." Judging others by his own standards, Ye Junhan hated when people meddled in his affairs, but in the end, he couldn’t help but offer a word of caution.

"Of course." Gu Xi lowered her gaze to the little green sprout re-emerging from her fingertip, then changed the subject. "Things will probably be hectic over at the Central Base for a while. Let’s leave the lab matters to He Yue and Xu Hai."

With the military transporting those things back, it was impossible for the base not to react.

Chaos was inevitable.

Given Ye Junhan’s unique status, it was best for him not to get involved in this sort of thing.

Ye Junhan lowered his gaze, looking at her.

After a long moment.

"Alright."

...

「Central Base.」

At dawn yesterday, all the survivors brought back to the base by transport planes were sent to the isolation hospital in District 19 for treatment after undergoing a preliminary screening and a twenty-four-hour quarantine.

The isolation hospital was newly built by the base a few years ago. Its original purpose was to handle the growing number of pre-mutants within the base whose internal X Energy levels were about to exceed the limit.

Once these pre-mutants turned into monsters, they became incredibly destructive and needed to be isolated far from the populace. As a result, the isolation hospital was not only enormous but also heavily fortified.

Each building in the hospital was even surrounded by large open areas, allowing armored vehicles and attack helicopters to quickly arrive and lock down the entire facility in the event of a riot.

This time, several hundred survivors had been brought back, with over a hundred of them severely injured. So, after some consideration, the base authorities sent all the survivors, along with the dozen or so seriously wounded members of the Guard Team, to this hospital.

The isolation hospital was huge, but it had very few patients, as anyone showing signs of mutation was quickly sent to Site 176. Therefore, even with the sudden influx of several hundred patients, the hospital’s infrastructure was more than adequate.

However, the doctors and nurses at the isolation hospital had little experience treating external trauma. Many of the wounded brought back this time were suffering from exactly that, and most were in critical condition. A few ability users were even left with only half their bodies, kept alive on the journey back solely through the strenuous efforts of a Healing Ability user.

Fortunately, the most severely injured were members of the base’s Guard Team and high-level ability users, so the base authorities certainly wouldn’t give up on them easily. Experts in the field were quickly transferred from other hospitals.

Even the Abnormal Ability Research Institute dispatched two of their Healing Ability users to assist.

The military hospital also sent a large number of medical personnel to provide support.

The entire isolation hospital was suddenly bustling with activity.

Soon, after a preliminary examination, all the wounded were sent in batches to different isolation buildings according to the severity of their injuries.

The members of the Guard Team happened to be sent to the same building.

Lu Xiao was the most severely injured among them. When the convoy was attacked, he had just been standing outside taking a piss...

The moment he was plunged underground, Lu Xiao didn’t even have time to pull up his pants. He hastily formed a Water Escape to shield his body, but when the massive Pangolin came rolling over like a high-speed meat grinder, his Water Escape didn’t last even a second.

And just like that, Lu Xiao lost all three of his legs.

The conditions at the isolation hospital were good, and Lu Xiao was placed in a private room.

That afternoon, the base leadership came to the hospital to visit the survivors, and the head of the Guard Team came as well.

"What exactly happened that day?" Zhan Yue asked Lu Xiao the moment he entered the room. "Why did the mutated people only attack you? He Yue said you were ambushed, but as far as I know, the Special Service Team suffered no losses, with only a few people getting minor scrapes..."

"Mr. Zhan." Lu Xiao, half-lying on the hospital bed, tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t allow it. After he struggled for a moment, Zhan Yue gave an indifferent wave, gesturing for him to answer while lying down.

Lu Xiao lay back down on the bed. The memory of that day still made his heart pound with fear.

"Mr. Zhan, the captain intentionally delayed us that day, so we found an excuse to stop midway..."

Zhan Yue frowned, interrupting him. "He Yue stopped the convoy mid-journey, and Ye Junhan didn’t stop him?"

"He did," Lu Xiao recalled. "The Special Service Team sent a Wind Element ability user over. When the incident happened, Mr. He was trying to get information out of him..."

Zhan Yue’s expression immediately darkened.

For a non-combatant like him to have secured the position of a department head, how could he not be incredibly shrewd?

With just a moment’s thought, he understood all the convoluted dealings involved.

’That idiot, He Yue. Didn’t he stop to think why, out of all the people in the Special Service Team, they would specifically send a good-tempered and easy-going Wind Element ability user to warn him?’

"And what about Gu Xi?" he asked Lu Xiao after a moment’s thought, his expression unreadable. "When the convoy was attacked, did Miss Gu make a move?"

Lu Xiao shook his head. "I don’t know. When it happened, Miss Gu was in Ye Junhan’s command vehicle..."

The Guard Team’s vehicles were some distance from the command vehicle, and the mutated people appeared so suddenly that they were completely unprepared. Aside from the few Earth Element ability users on the team, they were practically wiped out.

Lu Xiao was particularly unlucky. He lost his three legs in the first clash and immediately passed out from the pain.

Luckily, the Special Service Team’s rescue was prompt. Fang Rui was very skilled at treating external wounds, and they soon ran into the research institute’s convoy. With a Healing System user like Ye Nan there, he barely managed to hang on to his life.

Lu Xiao recounted everything he knew, holding nothing back.

Zhan Yue, his face grim, asked a few more questions before getting up. "Alright, I understand everything now. You just focus on resting and getting better. Don’t worry about anything else; the base won’t abandon you. It’s getting late, so I’m going to go check on the others." 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Lying in bed, Lu Xiao watched him leave with a seemingly moved expression.

Once the door to his room closed again, cutting him off from outside view, one corner of Lu Xiao’s mouth hooked up in a smirk. His eyes were filled with undisguised hatred and ridicule.

’Look at how beautifully Mr. Zhan talks,’ he thought. ’The base won’t abandon them...’

’But how will they take care of us?’

’By having wave after wave of mediocre leaders come put on a show? To let more people see the base’s ’preferential treatment’ and then foolishly throw their lives away for them?’

’And when this all blows over, they’ll just send us to an ability user asylum to be kept like invalids, only to secretly take the Crystal Cores from our brains and squeeze out the last bit of value from those of us who gave everything for the base?’

’But on what grounds?’

Thinking of the mysterious slip of paper that had appeared out of thin air in his hand before he left, Lu Xiao lowered his eyes.