352 Seeds of faith (1/2)

With the bandits gathering here, the previously isolated refugee settlement suddenly became much livelier.

Although one of the bandits stole some dried corn on the cob from a refugee's house during this period, the refugee did not say anything when they discovered the theft. Instead, it was Ren Xiaosu who gave the guy a good beating and even confiscated his bullets.

That refugee had even asked Ren Xiaosu to be merciful, and this made the bandit who got beaten up extremely ashamed.

After that, such things never happened again.

On the other hand, some refugees were still bullying their fellow refugees. They would go to their houses and act like punks while mooching off on their food. In the end, when Jin Lan and the others could no longer bear to watch, they beat up those punks and dragged them off to the other bandits to reform them.

These punks might be capable of bullying the refugees, but going against the bandits was something none of them even dared to think of.

The brick houses were rapidly taking shape. The bandits were all full of strength and could work extremely fast as well.

Ren Xiaosu looked at Xu Jinyuan, who was supervising the construction of a house. Off to the side, a female refugee was looking at him lovingly. Ren Xiaosu turned around and asked Yang Xiaojin, ”He's one of those that you said was problematic, right?”

”Mhm.” Yang Xiaojin nodded. ”But it seems like he no longer has any ulterior motives.”

Yang Xiaojin had been wondering if this group of people would cause them any trouble and had been spying on them. At the time, she was wondering why Ren Xiaosu was not worried. In the end, she realized her worries had been unnecessary. She could see that Xu Jinyuan was now looking forward to trading for bullets every day.

This time, they managed to build 12 houses in one go. In this desolate wasteland, brick houses were once again rising up from the ground. When Ren Xiaosu saw all of this, he felt a swirl of emotions. The sturdy brick houses were a symbol of the continuation of human civilization.

The houses were about 28 square meters each. One single structure required around 1,900 bricks to build, and more than ten people could live in it.

Although there were still too few houses compared to the number of people they had, the second batch of bricks were already being fired. When they took them out in another two days, they could continue building the houses.

Jin Lan and Zhang Yiheng were bragging to the refugees yesterday, saying they were going to build houses for everyone to live in.

At that time, Ren Xiaosu asked him while laughing: ”By the time y'all've collected enough bullets, do you still want to continue building houses?”

Embarrassed, Jin Lan said, ”We can't just watch our fellow villagers continue living in those mud huts, can we? And there's so many children as well. It gets very damp in the shelters, and that isn't good for their health.”

Zhang Yiheng added, ”We can even build a school, a factory…”

Ren Xiaosu chuckled. ”Why the hell would we build a factory? We don't even have the tech to run one!”

”What if we gain the tech in the future?” Zhang Yiheng mumbled.

Then Ren Xiaosu walked over to those brick houses that were just built. He told Jin Lan, ”Count how many bullets everyone has.”

It had been more than twenty days since the bandits started working, so a lot of them should have accumulated enough bullets by now. After counting for a long time, Jin Lan scratched his head and said, ”Because some new brothers have just joined us, we shared our bullets evenly between them. So everyone still has two to three more bullets to go. We should have enough by tomorrow after one more day of making bricks.”

It was the arrival of the new bandits that had delayed everyone's progress. Otherwise, they would have accumulated enough bullets through their additional work in carrying bricks, mixing clay, and sowing seeds.

Fortunately for them, no new bandits had joined recently, with their total number here controlled at around 400 people. Of course, there were also some bandits who'd escaped, but there were only a few of them.

Ren Xiaosu had mentioned to Yang Xiaojin that some of the bandit gangs to the north must have already started heading south. It couldn't have been more than ten days since new bandits came by to their settlement.

Therefore, they were very likely going to fight the gangs from the north to see who would be the victor.