Chapter 665: Not One Person Missing
“True enough. Why make things hard for you.” An Ran nodded.
She turned slightly and looked at the people outside the tearoom. They had been manipulated into coming here to hold back Zhan Lian and Luo Feifan so that Chen Chaofa’s people could smoothly kill her. Now many of them had already been killed by Zhan Lian and Luo Feifan.
With Flesh Flower’s appearance, those people froze where they stood. Their fighting stopped. They were intimidated.
So Chen Chaofa was the one who provoked the conflict, but the ones who chose to slaughter each other were human beings themselves. Telling people to let go of hatred sounded easy, but carrying it out was extremely difficult.
Human beings were contradictory by nature. Even if one person bore no grudge, another might carry resentment. After killing enough innocents and accumulating more and more lives on one’s hands, the heart simply stopped caring.
An Ran suddenly understood something. If she wanted to step out of this dispute, then she had to become the stopper of the dispute. No matter what face Chen Chaofa took, his real goal was to kill.
If she wanted his goal to fail, if she wanted him forced into the open, she needed to control every person here. They must not be allowed to keep killing. Even if they had deep grudges, as long as she pressed them down so they could not kill, Chen Chaofa would grow anxious and reveal himself.
An Ran lifted her hand. Flesh Flower swallowed the men howling on the floor.
She stood and walked out of the tearoom. Little Mint and Zhao Ru followed behind her. Mint held Doll in her arms.
An Ran looked silently at the people outside the tearoom. Every one of them was covered in blood. Fear was written on their faces.
An Ran spoke, her voice neither loud nor soft. “Everyone gather in the hall. Not one person missing.”
“Why should we listen to you?” Someone shouted.
Before his words finished, he was wrapped up by one of Flesh Flower’s twisting stems.
The shrill cry made the crowd collapse to the ground. Only Zhan Lian and Luo Feifan remained standing.
Within a few seconds, the man wrapped by Flesh Flower had been eaten until only his clothes and a skeleton too tough to digest were left.
“All right. Enough arguing. Is there no end to your bickering. Line up. I will divide you into teams. If you are willing to follow orders and help search people, line up here.”
Zhan Lian tilted his head and loosened his joints. He looked back and gave An Ran a smile full of careless confidence.
He understood her. He agreed with her. To make everyone obedient and stop killing, she had to use force. Ordinary force would not work. It had to be something heavy and terrifying enough to suppress every mouth and every thought.
Some people walked over in groups of twos and threes, lining up obediently to receive their numbers. Some still hesitated, unwilling to let go of their grudges and be absorbed into Zhan Lian’s command.
“You have five minutes left. If you are not standing here when time is up, you will all be plant fertilizer.” An Ran looked sideways at the large clock hanging on the hall wall.
Since the apocalypse came, she had almost forgotten the date, but the clock inside the Grand Fortune Hotel still ticked forward second by second.
By the time the limit she set ran out, everyone had stepped in front of Zhan Lian, lining up quietly. No one dared to disrupt order. No one dared to speak even a single argumentative word.