Zhang San’s Conscience

“It’s been over half a month, and not a single piece of news. Did we come to the wrong place?” Bai Rui lay on the sofa, looking like a salted fish.

Ever since her Bai Xiao An ran away, she felt as if her entire life had lost its luster.

Ren Anhua had only been with the RV team for three days.

Although Lu Shanshui had said that the team members had feelings for her, Lu Shanshui himself knew that it was just an excuse to try and keep her.

Three days, what kind of deep feelings could there be?

Lu Shanshui didn’t believe it himself.

But at the time, he couldn’t think of a better excuse.

Was he supposed to say, “Although we turned you into a girl, modified your ankles, messed with your mind, and put you in strange clothes and other weird things, and in the end, we’re forcing you to swap your ability. Although we’ve been lying to you, we will still treat you well. Please believe us, join us, and become our family”?

Probably no one with a normal IQ would use such words to retain someone, and no one with a normal IQ would be retained by such words.

If anyone truly had deep feelings for Ren Anhua, it would probably only be Bai Rui.

But besides Bai Rui, the other members of the team had also been waiting in Su City for that pink-haired girl for over half a month.

Judging by the typical behavior of people in the apocalypse, this action seemed a bit strange.

Because they didn’t actually need Ren Anhua.

Ke Xingmei had already filled the void of a healer.

In terms of the RV team’s strength, Ke Xiaoshan’s healing ability was actually overkill.

Ke Xingmei’s biological healing was sufficient to treat the injuries they sustained in daily combat.

She could now perform biological repairs on a target through the Seed of Alteration, and the repaired target did not need to become a completely altered creature.

This type of healing was named Vague Alteration by Ke Xingmei, an incomplete form of alteration.

This technique, speaking of which, was thanks to some of the alteration data provided by Mr. Ren.

Admittedly, Mr. Ren’s alteration was chaotic and disorganized, but she was indeed Ke Xingmei’s first humanoid altered creature, and for Ke Xingmei, she was a groundbreaking case.

After Ke Xiaoshan’s ability changed, Ke Xingmei began to focus on supplementing their healing capabilities.

After the gap was filled, the team’s overall combat level had actually risen quite a bit.

After all, they now had one less healer to protect and one more top-tier high-temperature combatant.

They didn’t know what level of strength the current Ren Anhua had reached.

In their minds, Ren Anhua was a little healer who needed protection, just like the former Ke Xiaoshan.

Judging from this perspective, if Ren Anhua returned to the team, she would actually be a burden.

But even so, they still wanted Ren Anhua to return to the team.

Besides Bai Rui, who genuinely and purely liked Ren Anhua, the motivations of the others would seem somewhat strange when measured by the universal values of people in the apocalypse.

Their motivation was mainly guilt toward Ren Anhua and the hope of giving her some compensation.

To put it simply, in their self-serving course of action in the apocalypse, there still existed some very superfluous ethical conscience left over from the era of peace.

They couldn’t be called bad people, but they couldn’t be called good people either.

They were neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly bad.

The so-called hope of compensating Ren Anhua was probably mainly to seek their own peace of mind.

This behavior was probably equivalent to Zhang San and Li Si falling into a pit full of specific poisonous insects.

In order to survive, Zhang San stepped on Li Si and climbed out first.

Although Zhang San eventually rescued Li Si, Li Si was bitten by a poisonous creature because he was a step too slow and lost a leg.

If this example were applied to the relationship between the RV team and Ren Anhua, some conditions would need to be added.

That is, Zhang San is severely allergic to this poisonous insect.

Once bitten, no matter where, he will surely die.

Li Si is an ordinary person.

If Li Si is bitten, he will only lose the part that was bitten.

Using one of Li Si’s limbs to save Zhang San’s life was worth it in Zhang San’s eyes.

Although it might not seem so in Li Si’s eyes, Zhang San held the absolute initiative because he was stronger than Li Si.

However, afterward, Zhang San wanted to save both his own life and his conscience.

Although Zhang San had survived by stepping on Li Si, he still had a bit of a conscience.

After escaping, he would feel guilty toward Li Si, and this guilt would prompt him to go to the hospital and send a fruit basket to Li Si, who was lying in a hospital bed with one leg missing.

The RV team was that Zhang San, and Ren Anhua was that Li Si who had lost a leg.

What the RV team wanted to do now was to send that fruit basket.

Well, except for Bai Rui.

She truly wanted Ren Anhua, the person.

However, in the actual situation, given that Ren Anhua, this Li Si, was quite beautiful, besides wanting to send a fruit basket, the RV team, this Zhang San, would also give some extra things and have some extra feelings because of Ren Anhua’s beauty.

So, when describing their guilt earlier, the word “mainly” was used.

They did indeed have feelings of affection for Ren Anhua herself.

After all, who wouldn’t like such a beautiful pink-haired loli?

Admittedly, this kind of affection is common to everyone, an appreciation for beautiful things.

However, their affection was slightly different from the actual situation.

Their affection for Ren Anhua, the person, was mostly born during the three days they spent with her.

They liked the Ren Anhua who appeared pitiful and lovely under Ke Xingmei’s control, the Ren Anhua who became beautiful and exquisite under Bai Rui’s dress-up.

The Ren Anhua they liked was not the real Ren Anhua.

In this respect, they were fundamentally different from Meng Fanhai.

Compared to Ren Anhua’s inner self, the affection born within those three days was mostly based on her appearance.

Reality was indeed quite cruel.

If Ren Anhua hadn’t become so beautiful, they wouldn’t have waited for someone in Su City for so long, especially Bai Rui.

Bai Rui’s feelings for Ren Anhua were both shallow and deep.

It began with cuteness and ended with cuteness.

She became infatuated with Ren Anhua because of her appearance, but this infatuation based on appearance was extremely strong, so strong that this affection surpassed all the feelings she had ever had.

To be more precise, what she liked was not Ren Anhua, but the “cuteness” in Ren Anhua.

This caused the way she expressed this affection to not respect Ren Anhua’s personal wishes.

She merely hoped that Ren Anhua would become “cuter” and would not care whether Ren Anhua had the desire to become cuter.

So she would collude with Ke Xingmei to secretly influence Ren Anhua’s thinking, forcing Ren Anhua to accept her female identity more, and her habits also leaned toward being female, using a rather crude method to make Ren Anhua’s inner self “cute.”

And physically, she also made corresponding changes and additions.

For example, Ren Anhua’s ankles, and some other things.

These were all changes made without Ren Anhua’s permission.

Although Ren Anhua later accepted these changes herself, it was undeniable that if Ren Anhua had been given the choice at the beginning, she probably would not have accepted them.

This acceptance was actually the result of partial mental influence.

The dual influence of mind and body were complementary.

She actually contributed to the transformation of Ren Anhua’s inner self in a feminine direction.

For example, Ren Anhua now particularly liked her own legs.

If it were really her original male mindset, she would have done her best to avoid everything about her body.

After all, she was a steel-straight man who couldn’t be any straighter.

The RV team had been waiting in Su City for this steel-straight man for over half a month, to the point that they were beginning to doubt their initial judgment.

“It can’t be wrong. Her most likely choice is Su City. A person like her wouldn’t just hide in a small place. And… although she ran away back then, I think she will come looking for us on her own initiative.”

Lu Shanshui’s premonition was not wrong.

This was also one of the motivations that supported his stay in Su City to wait for Ren Anhua.

Having experienced the incident of Ren Anhua’s escape, Lu Shanshui also understood the characteristics of this person.

Ren Anhua would probably seek revenge on them.

He guessed it, so he was waiting here.

He was waiting for Ren Anhua’s revenge.

The phrase “I’ll join” in the car back then had made his conscience ache, but for the lives of his teammates, he could not make any concessions on this point.

If this revenge could make Ren Anhua feel better, he would also feel better.

Of course, the premise was that no one would die because of it.

To put it bluntly, he was seeking some self-comfort.

However, in such an era, there were not many people who needed to seek self-comfort for this reason.

For plunder, most people in the apocalypse were at ease with it, let alone an exchange.

They might even feel they had lost out.

Ren Anhua was such a person, but currently, she still held a trace of closeness to the RV team in her heart, which made it difficult for her to implement her revenge plan.

She had arrived in Su City, and her enemies were very close, but how to take revenge was beginning to trouble her.

Physical harm?

That probably didn’t mean much, because injuries could be healed.

Kill them directly?

She… she found that she probably couldn’t do it.

Finally, she recalled the days she spent with the RV team.

She still remembered that Lu Shanshui had once said he liked Ke Xingmei.

Lu Shanshui, the man who had deceived her the most, he even had his own beloved, and his beloved was right by his side.

Perhaps they were even in a mutual love that would last until old age.

The more Ren Anhua thought about it, the more unbalanced she felt.

Because not only had she turned from a man into a woman, losing the capital to share a bed with her beloved, but her beloved was also a spy planted by the military.

Comparing it this way, wasn’t she too miserable?

Ren Anhua felt that if she made Lu Shanshui’s beloved turn Lu Shanshui into a woman, then she would probably feel a bit more balanced.

This pink-haired girl finally preliminarily decided on her revenge plan.

If she thought of anything else later, she would just add it.

In any case, Lu Shanshui absolutely could not be a man.

Now, the Li Si who had lost a leg was planning to make Zhang San lose a leg too.

It all depended on how much of a conscience Zhang San had.