Chapter 28: A “Peaceful” Night

The teachers at “Light of Hope” had very good benefits.
Not only did they have a fixed salary in points, but they could also be assigned a staff residence.

However, since most teachers had their own personal housing, the staff residential area next to “Light of Hope” was almost uninhabited.

The place Xia Xingli lived in was the staff residence that had once belonged to Xia Lixing.
As a powerful “pseudo A-rank” ability user, Xia Lixing’s benefits at “Light of Hope” were quite generous.
The staff residence he owned was the only small two-story villa.

At this moment, in the living room on the first floor of the small villa, Esther and Erin were sitting on the sofa, looking around with some curiosity.
Although it looked very luxurious from the outside, the inside of the house was surprisingly simple.
Before the residence was handed over, it already came with a full set of furniture.
And after Xia Lixing had lived there for over a year, the house was still almost exactly as it was when it was handed over, with almost nothing extra added.
Now that it was in Xia Xingli’s hands, it was still the same.

“Would you like some tea? Or juice?”

Xia Xingli walked back from what was probably the kitchen, holding a large bottle of juice.

“Juice is fine.”

Handing over the juice, Xia Xingli sat down opposite the two of them.
She didn’t ask right away, but waited until Esther had poured two glasses of juice before speaking unhurriedly.

“Alright, tell me, the reason you two ran out of school.”

“You’re asking so directly… Little Xingli, you’re just like our teacher sometimes.”

Esther grumbled, but seeing Xia Xingli’s serious face, she still spoke up.

“Fine, fine, I’ll talk…”

Holding the juice in her hands, Esther thought for a moment, seemingly organizing her words.
When she spoke, she said something that Xia Xingli had not expected at all.

“Actually, speaking of which, this matter is also related to you, little Xingli.”

“Related to me?”

Esther nodded. “Maybe you don’t know, little Xingli, but my father is an official in the coalition government. The reason I took leave this time was because the coalition government wanted to learn some things about you from me.”

“About me…”

Xia Xingli frowned.
To be honest, her impression of the coalition government was not very good.
In this apocalypse, when people should have been united, the coalition government was still wary of the “Guardians,” as if they were worried that their “ruling position” would be overthrown by the “Guardians.”
They even concealed some key information from the “Guardians” on many occasions.

After a moment’s thought, Xia Xingli understood why the coalition government wanted to investigate her.
After all, she was a powerful ability user who had appeared suddenly.
For the coalition government, it was impossible not to investigate such a huge variable thoroughly.

“Although this kind of practice by the coalition government is not very good, I had to cooperate since they asked directly through my father…”
Although her family worked for the coalition government, Esther still looked annoyed when she spoke of it.
“But anyway, I don’t know any information about you, little Xingli, so I just said some nonsense to fool them.”

“Well, I don’t really mind… Was Erin also questioned by the coalition government?”

Erin, who had been sitting on the sofa in a daze, looked up in a flurry when Xia Xingli mentioned her. “Eh? Not me… I took leave because of family matters. I ran into Esther on my way back to school…”

“I see…”
Xia Xingli had only asked casually.
After getting an answer, she nodded to indicate that she understood.
“Alright, I understand the situation. I’ll take you back to school later.”

“Eh? We have to go back now…”

Xia Xingli glanced at Esther. “It’s almost dark now. How long do you want to stay outside of school?”

“I was originally thinking of staying the night at your place, little Xingli…”

Xia Xingli stood up with a whoosh, ignoring Esther’s deliberately feigned scared expression, and opened the door with a cold face.

“Right now, immediately, come back to school with me!”

The edge of the central city had always been relatively desolate, and the area around “Light of Hope” was almost devoid of residents.

After nightfall, there were no lights at all in this vicinity.
The staff residential area was also pitch black, as silent as if there were no living creatures around.

A crescent moon hung in the night sky.
The moonlight filtering through the clouds was not very bright, but it still illuminated several black shadows that flashed by.

The movements of the black shadows were swift and silent.
Almost no creature could discover these black shadows.
They were like real shadows, rapidly approaching a small villa in the staff residential area under the hazy moonlight.

But they only got close to the small villa before these black shadows stopped.
It wasn’t that they wanted to stop, but because in front of them stood two people in long coats, blocking their path.

Without much talk, the black shadows scattered and rushed towards the small villa from various directions.
Three of them, however, rushed towards the man and woman.
Several flashes of cold light appeared among the pitch-black figures in night clothes.

The man unhurriedly took his right hand out of his pocket and pressed it down gently in mid-air.
The result of such a simple action was that all the black shadows were forced to stop, falling to the ground unable to move.

A heavy feeling, an extremely terrifying heavy feeling, as if the air, which originally had no weight, had suddenly become extremely heavy, and as if a force was pressing on every part of their bodies.
These people in night clothes had no strength to struggle, and the ground beneath them even sank slightly.

“Lian, just kill them directly.”

The man said very casually, as if those in front of him were not people, but ants that could be crushed at will.

The woman beside him nodded, walked up to one of the black-clad men, stretched out her fair little hand, and swung it down fiercely.

An ethereal scythe slashed down with her movement, passing through the person’s body without a sound.
There was no wound, and no scream, but the black-clad man was already dead.

“Death… ‘Scythe of the Death God’!”

It was unknown which black-clad man was frightened by this scene and cried out.
But the next moment, he was fiercely pressed into the ground by an invisible force, the sound of his bones breaking clearly audible.
Blood sprayed from his body, and his corpse was already completely embedded in the ground.

“Don’t scream. If you don’t make a sound, you can die more comfortably. Otherwise, I can let you experience the taste of being crushed into a meat patty bit by bit.”

It seemed that the man’s threat had worked.
The remaining black-clad men didn’t even dare to breathe, for fear that they would also be crushed into a meat patty like the unlucky fellow before them.

“Que, I don’t like such disgusting scenes.”

At a time like this, only the woman named “Lian” could still speak out against it in such a flat tone.

“Uh… Lian, don’t undermine me…”

“Just kidding.”

Like a couple chatting idly, in this casual conversation, all the black-clad men were deprived of their lives.
The man looked at the bodies lying on the ground and scratched his head.

“Should I call the ‘Cleaners’ to deal with this later? Or should I just crush them into the ground to become spring mud and nurture the flowers?”

“Take them away with the anti-gravity field.”

After throwing out this sentence, the woman walked away on her own.

“Uh, alright, alright, I knew it would be like this…”

Although he was complaining, the man still stretched out his hand.
The bodies lying on the ground suddenly “floated” slowly towards the sky, as if the earth and sky had been reversed, only stopping at a certain height in mid-air.

“Sigh, getting a basic salary, doing extra work.”

“Stop talking nonsense and let’s go.”

“Alright, alright, coming right up.”

Urged by the woman, the man also left this “battlefield.”
Beside him, the bodies floated strangely.

This one-sided battle ended so silently, or perhaps it should be said, it was a ruthless slaughter.
It seemed that no one had seen the process of this slaughter.
Even the human-shaped depressions on the ground had returned to normal at some point.

In the direction of the small villa, a faint, unnoticeable flicker of fire flashed a few times and quietly extinguished.

The night was still as quiet and peaceful as ever.