Chapter 38: Playing Some Tricks
“Open!” the crowd roared, the surge of excitement sweeping everyone forward as they rushed the base supermarket.
Lin Han had taken up a position just outside the entrance at some point, looking down at the ant-like swarm with immense satisfaction.
Desperate to avoid being exposed to him, Song Yuqing and Nanjiao tried to force their way backward against the flow of the mob. But their efforts were completely in vain; they were violently swept up by the human tide and carried straight past the threshold into the heart of the commissary.
As they brushed past Lin Han, Song Yuqing literally forgot to breathe, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“Hold it!” Lin Han suddenly barked at the crowd.
We’re dead. We’ve been caught. I was too careless!
Song Yuqing and Nanjiao exchanged a look of pure, miserable dread.
“Form an orderly line!” Lin Han shouted, his voice laced with forced politeness.
The crowd didn’t slow down for a second. They had waited far too long for a proper blowout at the commissary, and not a single soul was willing to be left behind at the back of the queue.
The interior of the supermarket was split into three distinct zones: food, medical supplies, and daily necessities. The inventory in each section was thrown together in a chaotic mess, looking exactly like three sprawling piles of industrial waste. Not a single pristine item Song Yuqing had unloaded in the dead woods was anywhere to be seen on the floor.
Propped up inside the pile of instant noodles and canned goods was a handwritten sign declaring: 20% OFF. But if a shopper looked closely at the fine print, the scam became obvious. The “original” price had been retroactively jacked up to ten zombie crystal cores per serving, meaning the discounted rate was still a staggering eight cores.
“Wait, this math is completely rigged!” a voice grumbled nearby. “During yesterday’s standard distribution, a single ration card only cost five cores!”
Song Yuqing fought her way to the front of the food pile and picked up a random can. The second her eyes locked onto the label, her jaw dropped. The can, which Lin Han was retailing for eight high-tier cores, was explicitly expired.
Nanjiao nudged her shoulder, pointing a finger toward the adjacent drinking water palettes. The vast majority of the plastic packaging was visibly warped, ruptured, or dangerously bloated from thermal gas buildup.
A heavy, suffocating silence settled over the shoppers gathered in the grocery tier. Whenever a civilian mustered the courage to quietly complain, the predatory commissary staff would simply level a sharp, intimidating glare at them until they shut their mouths.
“It’s fine, it’s fine! There are other sections. Let’s go check the medicine!” someone in the crowd urged, desperately trying to salvage the event as the mob migrated toward the pharmacy counters.
Basic trauma medicines and bandages carried a advertised 10% discount. But a closer inspection revealed that the chemical compounds were either a few weeks away from expiration or had completely degraded into useless chalk.
“This junk is completely useless even if we buy it, right?” a scavenger questioned aloud, holding up a faded bottle.
“Exactly! The markup is an absolute joke!” Song Yuqing pinched her throat, pitching her voice into a sharp, raspy register to loudly chime in from the center of the huddle.
“Yeah! She’s right! It’s a total rip-off! We’re better off just trading through our usual channels…” The volume of the collective grumbling began to rapidly cascade across the floor.
Song Yuqing stole a quick glance toward the golden gates. Lin Han’s confident posture had stiffened, a highly uncomfortable, strained look passing over his features.
Ahem!
Lin Han let out a series of loud, dramatic coughs. On his signal, several elite psychics standing along the perimeter blurred into motion, seamlessly blending themselves into the thickest parts of the crowd.
“Holy crap, look at these prices! This is an absolute steal for high-grade medicine! This stuff is going to last for months!” one plant shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Check this out! This is pure, practical survival utility right here!” another bellowed.
“Hey, back off! I claimed this crate first!”
“You’ve already hoarded half the shelf, man! Stop being greedy and share the wealth!”
Two of the undercover psychics deliberately escalated a fake argument into a violent shoving match in the center of the medical tier, nearly trading bare-knuckle blows. Hooked by the artificial urgency, the surrounding civilians panicked. Unwilling to be outmatched or lose out on supplies, they abandoned their logic and began frantically grabbing the degraded inventory.
Over in the daily necessities aisle, another group of plants began loudly proclaiming that common items like toilet paper and bar soap functioned as pure luxury commodities in the apocalypse. Securing them at a discount today, they shouted, was basically printing free money.
Song Yuqing intensely monitored the shifting psychological currents of the room. The consumer desperation that the residents had kept under lock and key for weeks was being masterfully manipulated back to life. After all, the refugees of Base No. 27 hadn’t enjoyed a proper hot shower in nearly a month—not due to poor hygiene, but because they simply couldn’t afford the exorbitant utility credits under the new regime.
“Hey, how much for a bar of this soap?” a man asked, holding up a fragment.
“The baseline price used to be five crystal cores, but Commander Lin slashed it to a single core today!”
“Wow. That actually sounds pretty reasonable.”
Song Yuqing stared down at the displays of bar soap and toilet paper, every single unit having been deliberately broken or cut cleanly in half to double the inventory count. A look of profound, unmasked contempt crossed her face as she glared toward the platform.
“Uh, excuse me! Why exactly are my palms breaking out in a massive, burning itch the second I touch this soap?!” Song Yuqing shouted, dropping her register into an incredibly rough, gravelly growl.
“Holy crap, it’s covered in industrial grime!” a voice echoed.
“Do we honestly even require this garbage to survive?” Song Yuqing asked, turning around to aggressively grab the sleeve of a civilian standing beside her, framing her face with an expression of pure, existential panic. “Tell me the truth, big brother—should I preserve my remaining crystal cores for actual survival emergencies down the line, or am I forced to burn my capital on this junk? There are a million primitive alternatives to a toothbrush in the ruins, right? Give me some real advice here, man!”
The scavenger she was holding went completely rigid, his hand freezing inches away from a plastic bristles rack.
A burly man with thick, sweeping eyebrows and a heavy jaw standing right behind her let out a deep frown, falling into intense thought as her words registered. He glanced down at the massive armful of random sundries he had just aggressively snatched from the shelves, suddenly realizing he didn’t actually need a single piece of it.
“Think about it,” Song Yuqing continued, pitching her voice to carry. “Expired food tastes like trash and the portions are too small to satisfy your caloric needs. Expired medicine has a high probability of completely failing to neutralize an infection. And purchasing half a bar of contaminated soap represents an incredibly low return on investment…”
“Shh! Stop! Shut it!” Nanjiao finally managed to violently fight his way through the crush of bodies, desperately tugging at the edge of her dirt-stained sleeve to muzzle her.
Song Yuqing casually brushed his hand off her arm, offering him a subtle, reassuring nod that signaled: Relax, I know exactly what I’m doing.
“Commander Lin! This massive blowout is an absolute sham! The conversion rates are entirely rigged against the workforce!” the thick-browed man suddenly bellowed, bravely raising his voice to challenge the dictator directly across the floor.
The second a prominent figure fractured the illusion, the floodgates opened, and hundreds of residents began loudly voicing their structural complaints.
Ah Hu split the crowd with aggressive strides, leaning over the platform railing to urgently whisper a series of status updates into Lin Han’s ear. Lin Han’s face twisted into a highly forced, brittle smile. He raised his hands, gesturing imperiously for the room to fall silent.
“It appears that ever since my administration successfully liberated this compound from the tyranny of Xie Zetian, I have granted you people far too many luxury privileges,” Lin Han announced, his gaze turning incredibly cold as he surveyed the mob. “You’re all eating far too well! Has every single soul in this room completely forgotten how brutally difficult it is to secure baseline survival resources out in the waste? These items—even if their packaging is slightly compromised or their dates have lapsed—hold an immeasurable, life-saving value in the apocalypse! The current pricing matrix is naturally justified. It is calculated to ensure the long-term strategic development and security of Base No. 27! I, Lin Han, have always sacrificed my personal capital to protect this community.”
The crowd broke into a low wave of hushed whispering, the words bouncing clearly back to Song Yuqing’s ears. It was factual history; in order to unify the disparate civilian factions to violently overthrow Xie Zetian’s council, Lin Han had expended an immense amount of logistics to temporarily elevate the camp’s baseline quality of life.
“But that lifestyle was paid for by our own blood and sweat,” a young boy muttered in a sharp, defensive tone from the front row. “We pushed our limits to slaughter walkers and excavate high-tier cores at the cost of our own lives. That’s the only reason the store rooms were stocked with food and necessities in the first place…”
Song Yuqing tracked the voice, recognizing the young teenager who had previously fought off a zombie vanguard using nothing but a kitchen knife and an industrial stun baton. He had grown considerably taller over the past month, the soft, vulnerable youthfulness on his face slowly hardening into the stark features of a seasoned hunter.
“I think this entire pricing structure is an absolute violation of our contract!” the boy roared, mustering his courage as he thrust his hand into the air to launch a formal protest.
“Shh…” Lin Han hissed, raising a single index finger to his lips, an expression of intense, dangerous impatience cutting through his mask.
Within minutes, a heavy vanguard of over a dozen elite mercenaries moved in, violently driving the civilian populace completely out of the commissary plaza. Song Yuqing and Nanjiao allowed themselves to be swept along with the compressed crowd, exiting past the heavy thresholds onto the dirt sector outside.
What exactly is his tactical game here? Song Yuqing thought, her brows knitting together in complete confusion.
“Wait! We didn’t participate in the protest! We didn’t say a word!” a civilian panicked as the iron gates began to grind shut again.
“Attention all personnel! The central commissary is officially initializing a specialized flash-shopping event!” Lin Han announced from the top of the concrete steps, a manipulative, brilliant smile breaking across his face. “For a entry fee of exactly ten zombie crystal cores, any resident can secure a twenty-second operational window inside the storefront. During your block of time, you are permitted to harvest and carry away as many supplies as your physical body can support! The single operational restriction: the deployment of elemental superpowers is strictly forbidden. If you desire to participate in this high-yield event, form a queue immediately.”
Before the meteorites shattered the old world, Lin Han had routinely been hoodwinked by these exact types of predatory commercial promotion gimmicks run by major retail outlets. Now that he held absolute authority, it was his turn to deploy those exact same psychological tricks to aggressively drain the pockets of others.
Everything was calculated to maximize his crystal core metrics.
To expand his personal elemental reserves until his power was absolute.
In this world, the strong rule as kings.
Lin Han tilted his chin up, staring down at the huddled masses with an expression of pure, aristocratic superiority.
Under the aggressive, physical prodding of his mercenaries, the desperate residents of Base No. 27 rapidly fell into a massive, twisting queue outside the golden doors. Intrigued by the parameters of the flash sale, Song Yuqing instinctively moved to join the line, but Nanjiao firmly clamped a hand onto her shoulder, yanking her back into the shadows.
“Are you completely out of your mind?” he hissed under his breath. “Why do you possess an absolute, non-stop obsession with causing a scene inside a hostile camp?”
Song Yuqing shook her head innocently, a faint smile playing at her lips. She reminded him that on a corporate level, they were actually operating as Lin Han’s shadow business partners for this shift. The higher the volume of crystal cores Lin Han siphoned from the population, the higher the volume of physical zombie carcasses his haulers would be forced to deliver straight to the doorstep of God’s Supermarket to balance the trade ledger.
“So that’s why you were intentionally fanning the flames of dissent in there?” Nanjiao whispered, realization finally dawning on him.
Song Yuqing gave a loose shrug. Since Lin Han was orchestrating a massive, high-profile promotion, she had absolutely zero intentions of letting the shift pass without maximizing her own metrics. She had simply wanted to test the waters, checking to see if a localized civilian protest would force the dictator to make a few sudden, desperate price concessions that they could exploit.
Her gaze unconsciously drifted back toward the concrete steps—and right at that exact millisecond, Lin Han’s sharp, calculating eyes cut through the crowd, locking directly onto hers.
