Chapter 292 - Anxious Feelings
"Wait a moment!"
Seeing that Bai Zemin directly walked out without intending to talk about anything, Shangguan Bing Xue unconsciously stopped him and abruptly sat down on the bed.
Bai Zemin effectively stopped his steps. However, the next moment he continued walking toward the door and pointed behind him as he calmly said, "Perhaps we'd better talk later. I think you might want to take a shower and change your clothes."
Before she could even respond, he had already opened the door and left without giving her time to say anything else.
Shangguan Bing Xue was stunned as she listened to the sound of footsteps moving farther and farther away until it reached the point where she could hear no sound other than the one coming from the outside world beyond the large window in her room.
Bai Zemin's last words still hung in the air and, confused, Shangguan Bing Xue looked down to observe her own body.
Her white dress was completely soaked with sweat from her own body, which consequently made the silky material strive to embrace every curve of her magnificence, outlining her seductive figure in an especially tempting way. As if this were not enough, because the material of the dress was white and delicate, the sweat caused the deep black color of her bra to contrast with the white and be partially visible from the exterior..
While looking at her own clothes pressed to her body, and her slender legs as well as fleshy thighs glistening due to her own body's sweat, Shangguan Bing Xue was stunned for almost a full minute.
After she finally reacted, she raised her head and looked towards the closed wooden door. A small sigh slipped through her pink lips at the same time as a complicated look appeared on her beautiful face.
Earlier she had decided to test Bai Zemin, and in that way get to know his true self. That was why she basically decided to leave her life and body in his hands.
Of course, before doing this she had been observing his attitude towards everyone since day 1 of the apocalypse when the Soul Record reached Earth. However, even though based on what she had seen so far he would do nothing, people's hearts were unfathomable and deep so nothing was definitive.
If Bai Zemin had wanted to hurt her or do improper things to her while she was unconscious, there was nothing she could do about it. However, if this really happened, then she would easily know 24 hours later since her Ice Maker skill kept the temperature of every part of her body always at the same level.
In short, if Bai Zemin's hands or any part of his body had improperly touched Shangguan Bing Xue's body, she would have known right away as soon as she woke up a day later.
However, not to her surprise, the only places she felt that were touched by Bai Zemin were her back and lower knees.
Shangguan Bing Xue soon realized that he probably should have carried her personally, and this was the reason why he had no choice. From her point of view, such a thing was natural considering that she had entrusted him with her entire life, so it was understandable that he did not let other people get too close when she was not even able to protect herself.
Not only did Bai Zemin not touch her more than necessary and in areas that could not even be considered offensive, but he also stayed locked inside her room, sitting a distance large enough not to be considered "dangerously close" but at the same time close enough to reach her at the slightest hint of trouble.
Moreover, while Shangguan Bing Xue did not know for certain whether he had been looking at her body while she was unconscious, the probabilities were slim since the couch on which he was sitting had its back to the bed where she was lying. The reason she was fairly certain of this was because she could clearly see how the leather of the armrests dipped slightly inward with the mark of his arm; indicating that he hadn't moved from there in a long, long time.
As she stood up and headed to the bathroom after getting some clothes, she felt extremely confused inside as Bai Zemin's performance was even better than she expected from him.
In the end, he even refused to look at her because he knew she was in no condition to talk. While this also meant that he had already seen her situation, this could not be blamed on anyone as it was simply unavoidable.
Shangguan Bing Xue's emotions were very difficult to move since her mother passed away, there was practically nothing in the world capable of making her heart seemingly buried under a thick layer of frost shudder or beat erratically. However, even if she wanted to deny it, it was impossible not to accept that Bai Zemin was a man who could truly be trusted.
"I guess we really can be friends after all." She murmured as she relaxed in her private tub.
* * *
Of course, Bai Zemin had no idea that if he had done anything improper Shangguan Bing Xue would have found out.
He wasn't a pervert to begin with, and as if that wasn't enough, Shangguan Bing Xue was not a woman capable of biasing his judgment regardless of how beautiful she was.
Bai Zemin could even resist the suppressed charm of Lilith, who was a Sixth Order succubus. Then how could he not be able to resist Shangguan Bing Xue?
No matter how beautiful the ice princess might be, there was simply no comparison to Lilith. The only way Shangguan Bing Xue could compete for a couple of seconds before being defeated was when she smiled.
Regardless of what thoughts, emotions, or ideas Shangguan Bing Xue might have in her head, Bai Zemin immediately became busy after leaving the villa.
The first thing he did was to meet with Lu Yan.
There, the two men chatted for more than an hour where they planned the movement to start moving the survivors out in two days.
After leaving Lu Yan's villa, Bai Zemin met Evangeline in the private area east of the base and the two joined together for a walk around the surrounding area.
Bai Zemin's dark leather armor attracted a lot of attention from the survivors who saw him passing by and the great red sword on his back was responsible for automatically clearing a path through the masses just by its presence.
As for Evangeline, this young assassin naturally attracted the eyes of many men due not only to her small but lovely body but also because of her clear mixed-blood characteristics. However, whenever the eyes of the survivors met her pair of emerald eyes, they would immediately look away in fright, fearing that they would be cut into pieces because of how sharp the young beauty's gaze was.
Bai Zemin together with Evangeline arrived at an area that was guarded by several armed men. Even before they walked into the yard they could already hear the sound of hammers, drills, grinders, and many other power tools roaring against the night sky.
When the armed men saw the young man walking next to a beautiful woman they all stood up straight and greeted hurriedly with somewhat fearful expressions. At this moment there was no one in the entire base who did not know that a person named Bai Zemin had taken total power and control of the base.
Even if not many had seen him in person, every armed person or soul evolver had seen him when they were called and assembled in the open field. Therefore, no one dared to disrespect this young man who always had a slight indifferent smile on his face nor did they dare to look at any woman standing next to him with burning eyes for fear of losing their sight soon after.
Naturally, Bai Zemin and Evangeline had no idea that the armed men guarding the site had automatically identified them as a male and female couple.
When the two walked into the yard they saw a group of over three hundred survivors working relentlessly late into the night. As floodlights illuminated a perimeter of a hundred meters in length and breadth, everyone moved busily and shouts could be heard amidst metal being cut or smashed.
The bones of mutated beasts of major size were being laboriously cut and then modified to take a circular shape. These bones were then tossed aside and a sub-group of survivors picked them up before beginning to wrap mutant beast hide around them.
Slowly, wheel after wheel was built and moved into a large factory where another large sub-group of survivors were modifying several buses and big trucks.
The mechanics removed practically all the carcasses from the vehicles and exchanged them with heavy parts of monster shells that were killed by the soul evolvers after a hard battle. These shells with high defense could make medium caliber bullets ricochet leaving small white marks and only heavy bullets could pass through their defenses.
Even level 15 wild beasts with sharp claws would not be able to break through the defenses of these shells that previously belonged to beetles, turtles, and other creatures.
The crystals had been removed long ago from the vehicles. What replaced them were lines the height of an adult palm and with extensions that ran from the rear of the vehicle to the front, just before the driver's seat.
Along these lines, the soldiers could position their firearms to aim outward, and thanks to the long length they could move relatively comfortably to take better aim and fire more accurately at the enemy target.
After observing the progress for approximately thirty minutes, Bai Zemin and Evangeline quietly walked away without disturbing anyone.
"At this rate, it is very likely that within 2 days and a maximum of 3 days all the vehicles will be completed to move the survivors." Evangeline struck up a conversation as they walked through the lighted streets of what had been temporarily transformed into a military area.
"I hope so..." Bai Zemin sighed. "With over 80 large vehicles capable of supporting several tons of weight thanks to the change in their materials, we can probably move around 150 survivors in each one as long as they are squeezed in a bit."
"That's pretty good if you ask me." Evangeline noted calmly. "A total of approximately 23 or 24 vehicles to move all the survivors, which would leave over fifty to move ammunition, weaponry, personal property of the top echelons of the base as well as their families, all the food in reserve, monster materials, etc."
Indeed, the reason Bai Zemin was willing to spend large amounts of mutated meat and rice grains to hire approximately 300 mechanically experienced employees from among the survivors was because he was really in a hurry to finish the modifications of the various vehicles.
Previously he had planned to move everyone slowly, but for some reason, he felt apprehensive so he decided to speed up the pace as much as possible in order to move everything that had to be moved to the Beginning Village in one go.
That anxiety made him feel really uncomfortable but he didn't know where it came from. Therefore, he could only expect the worst and adapt to the circumstances as best as possible since, unfortunately, Bai Zemin was still a human no matter how strong he was.
With the amount of vehicles that Fu Xuefeng and Kang Lan's group brought from the Beginning Village added to the amount of vehicles in the North Camp, Bai Zemin somehow believed that within a couple of days he could leave this territory and return to his true domain.
Only then would he feel more at ease.
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