Chapter 36: Let’s Get Serious
By the time the sun was high enough to bake the pavement, everyone in God’s Supermarket was finally awake.
The absolute first thing Song Yuqing did upon dragging herself out of bed was to march to the entrance to check on the zombie corpses. In her deep exhaustion last night, she had completely forgotten to harvest the bodies!
But when she opened the door, the pavement outside was completely bare.
I already collected the zombies!
Little Meat Bun tapped a heavy paw against the casing of the security gate, looking up proudly to catch Song Yuqing’s attention.
“Wow, Little Meat Bun, you are an absolute lifesaver!” Song Yuqing cheered. She sprinted across the threshold, threw her arms around his thick neck, and affectionately rumpled the fur behind his ears.
The giant panda tilted his head back, closing his eyes as he soaked in the praise. It had been far too long since he had received this level of maternal affection! He had truly missed it.
“Ahem.”
Master Fu suddenly came online, his disembodied voice instantly shattering the sweet moment of maternal bonding.
“God’s Supermarket has successfully logged forty zombie liquidations. Your remaining target for the milestone is exactly sixty kills! Please maintain your sales momentum,” Master Fu announced, sounding thoroughly satisfied with the metrics. “Be advised, twenty-five of those logs were intermediate-tier variants. Exceptional work!”
Wait a minute…
Song Yuqing froze as she caught the loophole in his words. She suddenly realized that under Master Fu’s accounting matrix, a primary walker and an intermediate variant both registered as exactly one kill. She had foolishly operating under the assumption that a high-risk, intermediate zombie would count for at least two standard metrics!
“And whose fault is that? You have no one to blame but yourself for making unverified corporate assumptions!” Master Fu sighed heavily in her mind.
Fine! Song Yuqing swallowed her frustration, chalking it up to a lesson learned. Sooner or later, she was going to figure out a way to beat the AI at his own game!
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Song Yuqing began aggressively striking the edge of a ceramic bowl with a spoon, signaling her scattered staff to drop their chores and assemble on the shop floor.
Liu Xiaona, Little Meat Bun, and Gaha immediately formed a neat, disciplined line by the counter, while Xie Hao and Xie Zetian remained lazily slumped in their chairs, refusing to stretch their limbs.
“Personally, we aren’t officially on the payroll of God’s Supermarket,” Xie Zetian muttered, casually flicking his long bangs out of his eyes. “Why exactly are you looping us into your company huddles?”
“Just consider it a neighborly favor.”
Nanjiao, who had been sleeping soundly on the floor boards beneath a display rack, was violently startled awake by the clattering ceramic. Completely disoriented, he scrambled to his feet in a panic, instinctively shuffling over to stand right beside Gaha as he aggressively rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
“Alright, it’s time for an emergency brainstorming session,” Song Yuqing announced, setting the bowl down. “We are mandated to clear a target of one hundred zombie liquidations within the next five days. Our current deficit is exactly sixty corpses, and I need every single entity in this room to pitch an immediate operational solution!”
The logistical bottleneck was real. They couldn’t rely on Base No. 27 anymore, and Nanjiao’s nationwide digital e-commerce network hadn’t been anchored yet. Without an organic influx of customer foot traffic, pulling sixty kills out of thin air was going to be an absolute nightmare.
“Let’s just march out into the ruins and slaughter sixty walkers ourselves!” Liu Xiaona volunteered excitedly, his eyes flashing. Sixty basic zombies were practically a walk in the park for a high-tier mutant.
“Negative. If we do that, the financial ledger won’t balance correctly. We need transactions.”
“Then let’s just go out and buy sixty corpses,” Xie Hao chimed in, only to receive a sharp, resounding slap to the back of his head from his cousin.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Xie Zetian barked. “We’re currently secure, fed, and sheltered. Why the hell are you volunteering for extra manual labor?”
“Gaha…” Gaha murmured, gesturing toward the street. What she was trying to convey was that she could easily use her advanced telepathic traits to command sixty stray walkers to politely march themselves straight through the security gate’s vaporization field.
Song Yuqing failed to decipher her hand signals, but standing right beside her, Nanjiao offered a faint smile and shook his head. “That strategy won’t clear the system parameters.”
Song Yuqing blinked in genuine surprise. How on earth did he understand her dialect so perfectly?
“Don’t stress, I’ve mapped out a viable alternative,” Nanjiao continued, stepping forward. “The highest density of survival capital closest to our perimeter is Base No. 27. I can personally infiltrate their commercial hub and help establish a local supply line.”
“Absolutely not,” Song Yuqing countered immediately. “The administration at Base No. 27 is openly hostile to our operation now.”
“They’re hostile to you and your crew. But they don’t have a single shred of leverage or a personal grudge against me.”
Song Yuqing stared at the programmer, her defensive posture slowly melting into a look of intense anticipation. Okay, this scrawny tech geek is actually remarkably sharp.
Per Nanjiao’s blueprint, he would stealthily enter the compound under the guise of an independent rogue merchant, offering to partner with Lin Han to retail premium resources directly to the elite psychics. The raw physical zombie carcasses secured from the transactions would be funneled directly back to God’s Supermarket to clear their metric, while the valuable internal crystal cores would be left entirely in Lin Han’s hands as his corporate cut.
“The glaring flaw in that plan is that Lin Han isn’t suffering from a resource shortage,” Liu Xiaona interjected, narrowing his eyes. “The guy controls a massive vanguard of hunters whose sole job is to harvest crystal cores and scavenge supplies to keep his spatial void stocked.”
“Lin Han might possess bulk survival rations, but he absolutely does not carry the caliber of merchandise retailed under this roof,” Nanjiao smirked, shooting a meaningful glance at Song Yuqing.
He was entirely right. The premium, technologically advanced inventory she had scrounged from the underwater city was lightyears ahead of the stale, pre-apocalypse department store boxes tucked away inside Lin Han’s warehouse.
Even so, she felt an intense wave of reluctance.
“Tell me the truth, Manager Song—what other secret treasures are you hiding inside that spatial vault of yours?” Nanjiao asked, leaning in closer with a curious grin.
Without a single word, Song Yuqing silently took a massive step back, creating a wide pocket of distance between them.
“Come on, we already finalized our corporate partnership,” Nanjiao pouted, stepping right back into her personal space. “Why are you still being so incredibly reserved around me?”
“Hey! Back off!” Liu Xiaona barked, aggressively grabbing Nanjiao by the collar of his white robes and yanking him backward. “Are you entirely sure you weren’t secretly dispatched by Lin Han to run a counter-intelligence play on us?”
“Of course not! I don’t even know what a Lin Han looks like!”
“What if we authorize the release of our pre-cooked meals, premium raw meats, military survival rucksacks, and tactical armor sets to Base No. 27?” Song Yuqing negotiated slowly, cutting through the bickering. She was fiercely determined to hoard the enhanced cucumbers and tomatoes that could actively level up her staff’s superpowers.
“Perfect! A premium inventory drop like that is guaranteed to be an absolute commercial hit!”
Nanjiao immediately began packing his gear, preparing to depart for the base perimeter, swearing he would successfully secure more than sixty carcasses before his shift was done. Song Yuqing resolved to shadow him down the highway; after all, she functioned as the team’s only portable wholesale warehouse.
Little Meat Bun, Gaha, and Liu Xiaona immediately protested, terrified for her safety and demanding to deploy as a heavy security escort. But Song Yuqing firmly blocked them at the door.
When a deployment is too bloated, it becomes a massive liability for exposure.
Before clearing the lane, Song Yuqing carefully strapped a small, vibrant stalk of supernatural bamboo onto her back. Under the oppressive, fifty-degree heatwave baking the outer grid, she knew she wouldn’t survive the long march to the base without a personal climate buffer.
She turned back to give Liu Xiaona a final, serious set of instructions: guard the storefront perimeter at all costs, and use the downtime to seriously muddle over whether he was ready to officially sign his soul over to the establishment.
God’s Supermarket was on the verge of a structural tier upgrade, which meant the individual superpower thresholds of the core clerks were about to undergo a massive, permanent evolution. Song Yuqing genuinely didn’t want the driver to miss out on a career-defining milestone.
On the long highway leading to Base No. 27, Nanjiao and Song Yuqing walked in a quiet, single-file line. Neither of them initiated a conversation, and a thick, incredibly awkward silence settled over the ruined asphalt.
“Hey… I wanted to express my gratitude. For looking after Geng Kelin… for Gaha,” Nanjiao murmured suddenly, his voice entirely soft out of nowhere.
“Honestly, Gaha is the one who has been fiercely protecting me out here,” Song Yuqing replied softly, voicing her genuine thoughts.
By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, the awkward wall of silence had finally dissolved, and the duo successfully breached the outer perimeter of Base No. 27.
Song Yuqing slipped into a dense patch of scorched, dried-out trees to establish a concealed base of operations. Once she was securely hidden, Nanjiao swaggered confidently toward the primary security gates, casually hoisting a premium military survival rucksack over one shoulder, while his other hand carried a massive slab of fresh, marbled beef strung together by a thick red cord. Under the suffocating heat of the evening, the high-grade meat had actually begun to subtly braise itself against the air currents.
“Hold it right there! State your business!”
Ah Hu, who was currently pulling guard duty at the primary barrier, stepped forward to aggressively block his path.
“I have traveled across the grid to initiate a high-value corporate trade loop directly with Lord Lin Han,” Nanjiao announced smoothly, flashing a confident grin as he thrust the semi-cooked slab of premium beef straight into Ah Hu’s face.
The labor psychic’s jaw dropped, his tongue unconsciously licking his dry lips. He eagerly grabbed the meat, nodding rapidly. “Follow me closely. Don’t wander off.”
Crouched behind a charred tree trunk in the dark grove, Song Yuqing intensely monitored the compound entrance. Watching Ah Hu aggressively intercept Nanjiao had caused her pulse to spike with sudden panic. She couldn’t decipher the exact exchange from her vantage point, but to her absolute shock, the guard simply pivoted and led the investigator straight past the fortified barrier into the heart of the base.
Wow, this Nanjiao is remarkably capable, Song Yuqing thought, offering a silent nod of genuine respect. She kept her eyes glued to the security gate. Per their established protocol, if Nanjiao emerged from the base wearing a triumphant, cheerful grin, she would immediately materialize the bulk inventory from her vault onto the forest floor, conceal herself, and wait for his haulers to arrive. If he emerged looking downcast or panicked, it meant the negotiation had catastrophically failed, and they would immediately trigger their primary survival strategy: run away as fast as humanly possible.
Roughly thirty minutes crawled by before Nanjiao finally strolled back out past the steel gates.
His face was a thoroughly confusing mask—alternating rapidly between a brilliant, wide smile and a deeply tragic, sorrowful frown. Standing right beside him was Lin Han, who was happily wrapping a heavy, companionable arm around the programmer’s shoulders, boisterously praising Nanjiao as if he were his own long-lost blood brother.
Song Yuqing squinted through the dark, her cognitive gears grinding as she tried to decipher the bizarre theatrical display. The guy looks ecstatically happy one second and dead inside the next… Are we executing the supply drop, or am I supposed to evacuate the sector?
Before she could reach a definitive conclusion, Lin Han and Nanjiao had already cleared the concrete barriers, marching straight toward her hidden pocket in the dead forest.
Screw it. Let’s gamble!
Song Yuqing moved with lightning efficiency, channeling her spatial power to instantly unload a massive, towering stack of luxury rations, backpacks, and tactical armor onto the dirt, before diving behind a nearby earthen mound to break line of sight.
“Hahahaha! Holy crap, look at the sheer volume of this inventory!” Lin Han’s ecstatic roar echoed through the trees, his eyes wide with greed. “I’ll immediately mobilize my entire management detail to help you distribute this premium stock across every tier of the base!”
“You have my absolute gratitude, Brother Lin,” Nanjiao cheered, politely clasping his fists together in a theatrical show of corporate respect.
“Then the ledger is finalized! You retain exactly two parts of the incoming crystal core yields, and my administration splits the remaining eight!”
“A flawless arrangement…”
Hiding behind the dirt mound, Song Yuqing’s expression completely soured the longer she listened to the negotiation. A two-to-eight financial split? What kind of garbage corporate margin did this idiot just sign us up for?!
