Chapter 62: Tallow Fruit
Oh? Little Meat Bun sent them some Chinese tallow fruit? What a crazy coincidence!
Song Yuqing looked at the little panda-like creature, who was currently pretending to read a book with a remarkably pious expression, and reached out to affectionately rub his head.
“Good boy~ Look at you, you’re my lucky little star~”
Little Meat Bun narrowed his eyes into happy slits, grinning foolishly. That’s right! I am the ultimate lucky star!
After reading the rest of Nanjiao’s messages, Liu Xiaona realized she finally had a way to restore her original skin tone. Overjoyed, she reached out to squish Little Meat Bun’s face in celebration, but the little creature ruthlessly slapped her hand away.
Little Meat Bun glared. Excusé moi? Is this face something your grimy hands can just touch?
Watching Liu Xiaona’s embarrassed rejection, the new hunter covered his mouth to stifle a laugh.
Ding-ding~
Nanjiao’s messages kept pouring in, forming another long wall of text.
[Nanjiao]: The surface of the tallow fruit has a natural layer of white wax. Turns out, that wax is the absolute key to reversing the water-type mutation!
He went on to explain that the handsome mutant who had turned black at Base No. 35 had completely lost his mind, throwing a massive tantrum in the middle of the street. Terrified the guy would hurt someone, Xie Hao had stepped in to pin him down.
During the chaotic struggle, the handful of tallow fruits Xie Hao had been carrying spilled across the pavement. Xie Hao forcefully slammed the screaming man face-first into the ground, right on top of the scattered fruit, crushing them instantly.
Dazed by the impact, the handsome man finally went quiet. But when Xie Hao yanked him back up, his face was thoroughly smeared with crushed tallow pulp. Once the gooey mess slid off, they noticed a stark, clear white spot left behind on his cheek.
Spurred by this accidental discovery, Nanjiao had taken a bold gamble. He extracted the wax, molded a crude bar of soap from the tallow fruit, and used it to thoroughly wash the handsome man’s face. Seeing a genuine ray of hope, the vain mutant had been so overcome with joy that he kept throwing his arms around Nanjiao in tearful gratitude—much to Nanjiao’s immense annoyance.
[Nanjiao]: It actually works! So please, harvest every single tallow fruit you can find, turn them into soap, and put them on the supermarket shelves immediately!
Song Yuqing glanced out the window at the towering tree. She had never expected that this massive Chinese tallow tree could serve as a signal base station and provide a medical antidote.
[Nanjiao]: We have a total of twenty mutated water espers here at Base 35. Could you trouble yourself to whip up twenty large bars of soap for us first? Please hurry~
[Nanjiao]: I’ve already dispatched the delivery pigeons to the God’s Supermarket~
Song Yuqing’s eyelids twitched. He wanted her to manufacture twenty bars of handmade soap in a single night?
Even the stingy Master Fu had never exploited her labor this severely!
[Song Yuqing]: …
Song Yuqing sent back a line of ellipses. In response, Nanjiao promptly fired back a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to press the fruit and process the wax into soap.
“Alright! Let’s get to work!” Liu Xiaona and the hunter cried out, suddenly bursting with energy. Now that a cure existed, they wanted to be the absolute first in line to use it!
Under Song Yuqing’s direction, Little Meat Bun and Gaha joined Liu Xiaona and the hunter, scaling the massive tree to forage for fruits hidden deep within the dense canopy. On any normal day, no one paid attention to whether the tallow tree was bearing fruit; after all, the colossal thing was taller than an entire apartment building.
The hunter, however, was exceptionally clumsy at climbing. After struggling up a few meters, he lost his grip and slipped right back down. Giving up on his aerial efforts, Song Yuqing had him stay on the ground to help her gather what fell.
Up in the branches, Gaha and Little Meat Bun proved to be absolute harvesting prodigies. Working together like an agile zombie-panda duo, they rapidly snapped off clusters, sending a heavy rain of tallow fruit cascading to the earth. Below, Song Yuqing and the hunter scurried around the trunk, scooping up the fallen bundles and hauling them to the kitchen by the armful.
Song Yuqing had zero experience making handmade soap, let alone any idea how much raw material was required to yield twenty-two individual bars. All she could do was continuously funnel the harvest inside. Before long, every square inch of the kitchen countertops and stovetops was buried under a mountain of green and white fruit.
“Is this enough?!” Song Yuqing yelled up into the leaves.
In response, Liu Xiaona, Little Meat Bun, and Gaha slid down the trunk one after the other.
Far from being exhausted, Liu Xiaona was practically vibrating with excitement. Rolling up her sleeves, she marched into the kitchen and began barking orders at Song Yuqing to prep the base ingredients. “I need coconut oil, olive oil, and lye solution!”
Coconut oil and olive oil were easy enough—the God’s Supermarket had plenty of standard grocery stock.
But lye solution? What on earth was that?
Liu Xiaona smirked, proud to finally know something her boss didn’t.
Granted, sourcing pure chemical lye in the middle of a polar night was an impossible ask. To bypass this, Liu Xiaona tasked Song Yuqing and Gaha with gathering dry firewood to burn down for wood ash, which they would use to leach a natural alkaline solution. Meanwhile, Liu Xiaona, Little Meat Bun, and the hunter took charge of roasting the harvested tallow fruit and grinding the waxy seeds into a fine, workable paste.
Dividing the labor efficiently, the team spent hours sweating over the stove. By the time they finished, they had successfully molded nearly a hundred individual bars of soap, setting them aside to cool and solidify.
During the final stretch of their labor, the five delivery pigeons from Base No. 35 touched down on the supermarket’s windowsill. Each bird wore a miniature gadget resembling a pair of headphones strapped snugly over its tiny head.
Almost the exact moment Song Yuqing spotted the avian couriers, a deafening blast shattered the quiet storefront as the computer speaker blared:
“You have a new order! Please check the terminal!”
“You have a new order! Please check the terminal!”
…
The relentless alerts instantly jarred a deeply drowsy Song Yuqing awake. Suppressing her exhaustion with a surge of capitalistic joy, she rushed to the screen. A staggering fifty orders had flooded the system, every single one transmitted from Base No. 35.
Purified water, instant noodles, tactical backpacks, rice, heavy quilts…
And pinned to the bottom of every single invoice was an urgent memo: Soap needed desperately. Please list on shelves ASAP.
There was no doubt Nanjiao had instructed the residents to flood her system, using the bulk orders as a loud tactic to keep Song Yuqing moving.
As if the digital alerts weren’t enough, the security gates at the entrance suddenly chimed in.
“Ding! A total of one hundred zombie souls have been credited. Please fulfill the corresponding online orders immediately.”
A crushing sense of urgency slammed into Song Yuqing. “We need to speed up the curing process!” she yelled toward the kitchen.
“On it!” Liu Xiaona shouted back, her hands flying as she monitored the molds.
Ping! Ping! Ping! A customer is nudging their order! The continuous, piercing notifications began to feel like a literal mountain pressing down on Song Yuqing’s shoulders.
“Shh! Stop rushing me!” Song Yuqing smacked the side of the monitor, praying the AI would show some mercy.
“A customer is urging dispatch! A customer is urging dispatch!” The soulless computer, completely devoid of empathy, merely repeated the automated warning.
Lacking the courage to actually shut the terminal down and risk losing the data, Song Yuqing clamped her hands over her ears, fled into the kitchen, and slammed the door shut to drown out the noise.
Because the soap paste required at least two to three hours to firmly set, the sheer exhaustion finally caught up with them. Song Yuqing, Little Meat Bun, and the hunter collapsed onto the floor, instantly dead to the world. The little creature’s snores rumbled like thunder through the small room, but neither Song Yuqing nor the hunter budged an inch.
Only Liu Xiaona remained entirely full of energy. Before the world ended, she had spent countless hours binge-watching aesthetic DIY handmade soap videos, always itching to try it herself. Tonight, her oddly specific dream had finally been realized.
Under normal circumstances, artisanal soap required a curing period of about a month to fully air-dry. However, since these were strictly intended as an emergency antidote to neutralize a toxic mutation, the aesthetic drying phase was entirely irrelevant.
Liu Xiaona poked the surface of a bar with her finger. Perfect—it had completely solidified. Seeing that Song Yuqing was still fast asleep, she crept out to the storefront terminal and listed the soap on the digital inventory. Song Yuqing had already specified the pricing model beforehand: given the emergency state of the base, the exchange rate would be set at one zombie soul for three bars of soap.
The moment Liu Xiaona uploaded a batch of eighty bars, the listings vanished. They were snapped up in the literal blink of an eye.
Ping! A customer is urging dispatch!
Ping! Customers are requesting a restock!
…
Business was absolutely booming.
Laughing at the madness, Liu Xiaona ran back into the kitchen and vigorously shook Song Yuqing and the hunter awake. “I’ll have to trouble the manager to handle the packaging and fulfillment herself. I desperately need to go take a shower and wash this black off!”
Song Yuqing rubbed her crusty eyes, her brain completely scrambled from the abrupt wake-up call.
“Gaha!” Gaha eagerly raised his hand, gesturing that he could handle the shipping logistics.
“Absolutely not. You and Little Meat Bun are completely illiterate,” Liu Xiaona said, giving the little zombie a gentle, affectionate tap on the head before disappearing into the bathroom.
Unable to even keep her eyelids open, Song Yuqing manually pried her eyes wide with her fingers and stumbled out to the front desk.
“Alright, pigeons, line up,” she called out sleepily. She pulled some high-grade tea leaves from her spatial storage and scattered them as feed to re-energize the five birds.
She looked at the massive digital manifest. The sheer volume and weight of the combined orders—kilograms of rice, heavy quilts, and stacks of canned goods—were immense. Could these tiny, fragile birds actually lift a cargo that heavy?
