N-A-A Chapter 129 : Chapter 129
Chapter 129 : Chapter 129
Chapter 129: The Final Curse Cuts the Deepest
It was nearly six in the evening.
The new camp construction plan had been finalized, and recruitment had gone extremely well too!
Far more than twelve hundred people had signed up.
But that very first group to register not only had much higher loyalty to Li Mu, but their strength and courage far surpassed those soldiers who came much later.
So these twelve hundred men could truly be called the best of the best, fierce as dragons and tigers!
Among them, there were even more than three hundred reserve soldiers.
Li Mu was very satisfied with the results of the day.
Just as he was preparing to return to the city, the head of the Construction Department caught him outside the Command Headquarters. Judging by the way he looked, he had clearly been waiting there for quite a while.
“Tiger Marquis Li!”
The man was in his forties, smiling so broadly that his face practically bloomed, looking utterly ingratiating.
“What is it?”
Li Mu had seen this department head that very afternoon and assumed he had come to talk about the construction plan.
“Tiger Marquis Li, could we speak somewhere a little more private?” the man said with a smile, indicating that this was not the best place.
Li Mu looked at him suspiciously, then walked straight to a corner of the wall not far away.
“Just say it here.”
“Tiger Marquis, it’s like this. Our Abyss-Suppressing Army Construction Department regularly takes in non-death-row criminals as laborers, right?”
“Well, I happened to receive a batch over the past two days, and among them, there are six or seven people, all surnamed Li...”
As the department head said this, he kept studying Li Mu’s reaction.
He seemed very nervous.
Li Mu frowned.
“Li Dayong and the others?”
Ever since what happened to the Li Family last time, all of his uncles, elder uncles, uncles by marriage, and the like had been arrested.
All that remained of the Li Family now was a group of women and one Li Xiaohao.
Li Mu had actually been planning to go find Li Xiaohao tonight. He had not expected someone to deliver members of the Li Family right into his hands first.
“Yes! I’ve heard about what you went through, Tiger Marquis, but I don’t know all the details.”
“After taking these people in, I truly had no idea how to handle them, so I came to ask you for instructions!”
The department head looked extremely troubled.
Li Mu laughed inwardly. This old fox was absolutely cunning.
It was definitely not just some coincidence that he had happened to receive a batch of criminals over the past two days.
He had probably gone out of his way to collect them after learning that he would now be serving under Li Mu.
He wanted to curry favor with him, but was not entirely sure how deep Li Mu’s hostility toward the Li Family ran.
So he simply came to let Li Mu set the tone himself.
“I have no instructions.”
“When our Abyss-Suppressing Army takes in these criminals as laborers, it is so they can reform through labor and atone through merit.”
“Just do your job.”
After saying that indifferently, Li Mu turned and left.
“Understood, understood!” the head of Construction nodded frantically behind him.
But his eyes were already spinning rapidly.
A figure as important as Tiger Marquis Li naturally could not openly tell him what to do.
But that did not mean he could fail to understand the spirit of the leadership.
As far as attitude went, Tiger Marquis Li and the Li Family were unquestionably enemies, and since they were criminals, then they should be reformed with proper severity.
Smack!
He slapped his palm with his fist.
He already knew what to do.
That night, inside the Military Residential District, Li Mu opened the window, transformed into a bird, and shot up into the night sky.
In a stand-alone house with its own courtyard on the edge of the East District, all the women of the Li Family, including Li Xiaohao, were gathered together, holding a family division meeting.
Ever since the Li Family had been thoroughly investigated, most of their property had been frozen.
The Li Family villa was gone.
They had sold everything that had not been confiscated.
And in the end, still trying to maintain the Li Family’s pathetic dignity, they rented this stand-alone house with a courtyard.
The women of the Li Family had no choice but to endure such days, but the daughters-in-law naturally had thoughts of their own.
At this moment, Li Mu’s eldest aunt by marriage sat there with her arms crossed over her chest, her face fierce and ugly.
“I don’t care! Li Dayong still has at least seven years left in prison! There’s no way I’m living like some half-widow for that long.”
“Give me my share of the money. Once it’s divided, I’m leaving, and we’re even!”
Old Madam Ma was so angry that her whole body trembled. Thumping her cane on the ground, she demanded, “If you want to go, then go! I can barely protect myself right now. I have no money to divide with you!”
“That’s bullshit!” the eldest aunt by marriage shouted.
“Who doesn’t know you still have a bit of property left with the Zhou Family? The Zhou Family already handed all that money over to you. You’ve got at least two or three million left!”
“I want half!”
At once, the eldest daughter spat disdainfully.
“Pah! What gives you the right to want half? Even if there is money, you won’t get a single cent. What contribution have you ever made to the Li Family?”
“Why should any of it be divided to you!?”
“Besides, Xiaohao’s settled down now. As long as he doesn’t keep provoking Li Mu and just develops properly,” “then even if he can’t reach the top, at the very least, supporting this whole family in food and clothing won’t be a problem!”
“In a few years, when they get out, at most we’ll move somewhere else and build things up slowly!”
The eldest daughter spoke with great passion, as though the Li Family had already survived its hardest period and could now begin thinking about starting over.
At that moment, Li Xiaohao’s mother, Feng Lan, said faintly, “My son... has no obligation to support all of you...”
That single sentence instantly froze the atmosphere in the room.
“Feng Lan, what do you mean by that!?” the eldest daughter, Li Juan, shouted angrily.
The eldest aunt by marriage gave a mocking laugh. “What else could she mean? She means she doesn’t plan on taking care of you people!”
“Right now, the entire Li Family is depending on Li Xiaohao. If he’s willing to support you, then you get to eat.”
“If he isn’t willing anymore, then what do the rest of you amount to?”
“That’s enough! Enough!!”
Old Madam Ma shook her head and shouted loudly. She truly could not bear listening any longer.
The Li Family was no longer the Li Family of the past. There was only one ending left for them now—complete collapse.
In pain, she pointed at the eldest aunt by marriage.
“If you want a share, then fine, we’ll divide it. I’ll give each of you a sum of money.”
“From today onward, we’re even.”
Then she looked toward Li Xiaohao, forcing as much tenderness into her eyes as she could as she asked, “Xiaohao, Grandma will leave all the remaining money to you. We’ll move away, and you can take Grandma, your eldest aunt, and your mother with you. We’ll start over, all right? You’ll take care of us, won’t you?”
By the end, her eyes had reddened.
From beginning to end, Li Xiaohao had been sitting there in silence, staring blankly at the tabletop.
No one knew what he had been thinking.
Ever since Li Mu had beaten Song Yan senseless on the arena stage that last time, Li Xiaohao had lost all desire to resist Li Mu.
The only things left in him were a maddened obsession with Li Mu’s divine abilities and endless hatred toward his grandmother!
Now that the family was splitting apart, that hatred had already reached its limit. There was no need for him to keep pretending anymore.
Li Xiaohao raised his head and looked at Old Madam Ma with cold eyes.
“You old... bitch!!”
“It’s all your fault, all your fault!!!”
He shot to his feet, eyes bloodshot, body trembling, his teeth grinding audibly.
The crazed look on him instantly frightened everyone into silence.
Old Madam Ma was even more shocked than the rest.
Li Xiaohao hissed viciously, “If you, you old bitch, hadn’t taken it upon yourself to swap away my divine-grade talent and give it to Li Mu...”
“I would definitely be some powerful figure dominating a region by now!!”
“In what way am I inferior to Li Mu? That was my talent. It was a talent that should have been mine from the start! It clearly would have suited me better!”
“If I had those abilities, I would definitely have used them better than Li Mu did!”
“But you...”
Li Xiaohao pointed fiercely at Old Madam Ma. If not for the fact that he was afraid of being arrested again for murder, he would have beaten her half to death on the spot!
He suddenly took a deep breath, forcing his rage back down, and sneered with red eyes:
“Heh... hehehe... you old beast—even if I do rise again, I won’t take care of you in the slightest!”
“I’ll let you die old and alone, without even a grandson to see you off at the end!”
“I hope you go to hell!”
Old Madam Ma froze completely.
It was as though her soul had been ripped away. A single cloudy tear slipped from her dim old eyes.
She closed them in pain.
She had never imagined that the grandson she had cherished for over ten years—the one for whom she had been willing to give up everything, the one for whom she had even destroyed the entire Li Family—would now speak the most vicious curse of all to her.
In the end, she had managed to become hateful in both directions.
After venting all of his madness, Li Xiaohao seemed much more relieved.
He threw back his head and stretched fiercely.
Then he laughed.
“I understand now. As long as I don’t provoke Li Mu, and with this S-Grade talent, I can start over and lie low properly.”
“One day, I’ll rise again.”
“Unless you, Li Mu, keep soaring upward without ever falling, the moment you give me an opening...”
Before he could finish speaking, a bird flew in through the window and shot straight toward Li Xiaohao...