Chapter 183: A Painful Price

"I was wrong! I was wrong! Please, ma’am, spare me! I never should have threatened you!"

In a remote corner, the scrawny man’s miserable screams were endless. He begged for mercy again and again, his cries of pain unceasing.

His face was black and blue, looking as if he’d been brutally beaten.

The man was filled with a tearless despair.

He never would have expected this. He had only wanted to make her hesitate, to make her afraid to actually kill him. But instead of showing any fear, she had just given him a brutal lesson.

The pain was so bad he wished he were dead.

’This woman is vicious! She hits exactly where it hurts the most.’

"So you know you were wrong, huh? It’s fine. I’ll give you a chance to turn over a new leaf." Stella Sterling nodded, putting on an exceptionally agreeable expression.

However, the man didn’t dare feel happy just yet. This woman wasn’t nearly as pleasant as her words suggested—her methods were vicious.

"Ma’am, what do you want? Just tell me! Whatever I have, I’ll give it to you, as long as you let me go!"

He looked at her with a fawning expression.

Stella Sterling looked at him. "Take out everything you have on you."

Without a moment’s hesitation, he immediately took everything out, even pulling out a piece of rope.

He was just short of stripping naked to show Stella Sterling that he had nothing else hidden.

When he saw Stella Sterling’s gaze fall upon the pendant hanging from his neck, he hesitated for only a second before yanking it off and placing it in her hand.

The pendant had been worth a lot of money before the apocalypse, but now it was just a decoration. If he hadn’t thought the jade craftsmanship was decent, he wouldn’t have bothered wearing it.

Taking the pendant, Stella Sterling gave it a casual glance before tossing it into her backpack.

She looked at him. "Take me to your home."

’He still had something this good on him, and he even dared to wear it openly,’ she thought. ’There might be even better stuff in his house.’

"If I take you to my home... will you let me go?"

He looked at Stella Sterling expectantly, asking for a guarantee.

"Don’t worry. As long as you’re obedient, I won’t kill you."

Stella Sterling nodded, her tone much more serious this time.

Seeing her expression, the man started to believe her a little. "Okay, okay, okay," he said. "I’ll take you. Now hurry up and let me go."

Stella Sterling’s foot was still pressing down on him. He glanced at her foot, gesturing for her to move it.

Stella Sterling crisply removed her foot. The man struggled to his feet and then began to lead the way, limping ahead of her.

On the way, anyone who saw the man gave him a wide berth, as if he were a plague god.

Then, they would look at Stella Sterling with a hint of pity, likely assuming she was another newcomer who had been scammed.

However, seeing the man’s bruised and swollen face also made them curious. They wondered what had happened and who had beaten him up.

As Stella Sterling followed him, a kind-hearted person pulled her aside and whispered, "Miss, that man is a con artist. You should stay away from him. Don’t be around him. He has nothing to trade."

Stella Sterling looked at the enthusiastic woman. To risk offending that man just to warn her—she was truly kind-hearted.

She smiled at the woman. "Don’t worry, ma’am. He can’t fool me."

With a nod to the woman, she continued to follow the man.

The older woman shook her head. She had already warned her so clearly, but the girl refused to listen. There was nothing more she could do.

’What a shame,’ she thought. ’She’s probably going to be cheated out of everything she owns.’

"Let’s go."

Stella Sterling walked up to the man, who was waiting for her. Perhaps knowing he couldn’t escape, he had behaved himself and hadn’t tried to run off just now.

’This man must have cheated a lot of people,’ she mused. ’He has so many points. Even Ms. Ward, an official base employee, has to share a room, yet this guy has a private one.’

The room was piled high with all sorts of miscellaneous junk.

As he pushed the door open, the man’s face was etched with pain. He knew that if he didn’t give something up today, this woman wasn’t going to let him off the hook.

’Still,’ he thought, ’I can always earn back what I lose, but if I lose my life, it’s gone for good. The most important thing right now is to stay alive.’

The man’s room was like a junkyard. Aside from a single bed, everything else looked like trash.

There were wooden sticks, barrels, watches—a wide variety of things.

Stella Sterling rummaged through the room and found a pleasant surprise: a considerable number of jade ornaments.

Though the craftsmanship on some pieces wasn’t great, their sheer quantity made up for it.

She shot the man standing to the side a smirk. "Quite the collection you have here."

The man gave an awkward laugh, not daring to say anything more.

’These were all things I scammed off people,’ he thought. ’And a lot of it was given to me under threat.’

’Of course, I can’t tell her that. What if she remembers what I tried to pull earlier and decides to beat me up again in a fit of rage?’

Stella Sterling collected all of those things, then looked around again, gathering anything else in the room that might be useful to her.

The man watched her, his face twisting in anguish. This was all stuff he had spent a long time accumulating.

’I was planning to trade all of this for points after a while,’ he lamented internally, ’but now this woman gets it all for free.’

"Alright. Seeing as you’ve given me so much, I’ll spare your life."

Stella Sterling finally stopped. Her backpack was full, and her hands were carrying quite a few things as well.

Hearing this, the man finally let out a breath of relief. He then politely escorted Stella Sterling out.

Only after Stella Sterling’s back had disappeared from view did he return to his room, his expression turning grim.

’I was just unlucky to fall into that woman’s hands today,’ he thought. ’If I ever get the chance, I’ll definitely get my revenge.’

’For now, I need to figure out how to earn back what I lost today. Luckily, a lot of new people have joined the base recently. I can just find some more newcomers to target.’

’It shouldn’t take long to make it all back.’

After leaving that area, Stella Sterling didn’t go straight back to her own place. Instead, she went to find Ethan Young.

She told Ethan Young everything about the man. As for how to deal with him, that was Ethan’s business now.

’If I hadn’t promised Ethan Young I wouldn’t stir up trouble in the base unless absolutely necessary—and if I wasn’t trying to avoid problems for myself right now—I never would have spared that man’s life,’ she reflected. ’I would have just killed him. Eliminating a future threat is always the safest bet.’