Chapter 66: Ready
Seeing Zhang Hua still standing there in a daze amidst the chaos, Liu Xiaona took pity on him. She kindly handed the young water mutant a glass of water, nodding toward the window. “Here, sit down and drink this slowly.”
Zhang Hua looked down at the glass. As a water-attribute psychic himself, he couldn’t help but wonder, Is a glass of water really all I need right now?
But watching Liu Xiaona immediately spin around to dive back into packing, he couldn’t just sit idly by. He threw the water down in one gulp, stood up, and hurried over to help her box up the supplies.
For three straight hours, the supermarket operated at a grueling pace. On the first floor, Liu Xiaona and Zhang Hua packed crates like machines, while up on the second floor, Song Yuqing and Little Meat Bun frantically pulled espresso shots and sealed cups. Gaha acted as the bridge, her legs a blur as she sprinted up and down the stairs hauling the heavy coffee trays.
Song Yuqing was running on absolute fumes, but she didn’t dare stop. The faster these supplies reached Base No. 35, the safer her prime clients would be.
Naturally, Nanjiao wasn’t making it any easier, pinging her terminal every few minutes with anxious prompts.
[Nanjiao]: Is it ready yet?! Is it ready?! Has it shipped?!
[Song Yuqing]: No!
After firing back a few short, irritated replies, Liu Xiaona finally snapped from the constant notifications on the first floor and simply muted Nanjiao’s chat window entirely.
Undeterred by the silence, Nanjiao simply changed tactics. He began placing tiny individual orders just to use the buyer’s memo section to spam them.
One tactical backpack… One outdoor tent… One mess kit…
Liu Xiaona was forced to reopen the chat window just to yell at him.
[Liu Xiaona]: Buddy, if you keep flooding the terminal with these dummy orders, we’re never going to finish packing the actual crates!
Outside, the air hummed with the beating of wings. A massive flock of delivery pigeons had converged on the property, roosting in thick clusters among the bamboo groves and the branches of the towering tallow tree. The moment Liu Xiaona called out, they would fly into the shop in an orderly line to receive their cargo.
By the time the full order of a thousand cups of attribute coffee was packed and secured, Song Yuqing’s hands were trembling from exhaustion, and her head swirled with a dizzy, sleep-deprived fog.
The moment her butt hit the chair behind the cashier counter, a terrifyingly energetic Liu Xiaona bounced over.
“Hey, manager,” she said, her eyes flashing mischievously. “With their main army out on the march, there should only be a skeleton crew left guarding Base No. 27, right?”
Song Yuqing forced herself to sit upright, trying to match her employee’s stamina. “Man, you can handle a sleepless night way better than I can.”
“Of course! You have no idea what I used to do before the world ended!” Liu Xiaona lofted her chin proudly. Back in the day when she was strapped for cash, she would pull brutal, consecutive all-nighters just to clear freelance design commissions. “So, are we planning to rob the place?”
“What do you mean ‘rob’?” Song Yuqing corrected with a smirk. “Let’s use a nicer term. We’re going to demolish their assets.”
Ping-ping!
The order terminal chimed yet again. Song Yuqing glanced at the screen. An additional order had just been placed for a hundred cups of specialty coffee and fifty survival backpacks stuffed with medical supplies.
Keep pushing! For victory!
Song Yuqing tried to pump herself up, but her lower half felt entirely glued to the chair.
“Gaha! Gaha!” Gaha eagerly volunteered, stepping up to take over the packing. She grabbed the new batch of coffee cups and gestured for her boss to take a break. Her purple dreadlocks swayed wildly as she dashed right back up the stairs.
“So, what do you think? My new little brother and I can make a quick run over there and be back in no time!” A deeply sinister grin spread across Liu Xiaona’s face.
Beside her, Zhang Hua shuddered violently, his hands waving in frantic refusal.
Song Yuqing pondered the idea for a moment, then leaned in to whisper a covert instruction directly into Liu Xiaona’s ear.
As she listened, Liu Xiaona burst into a fit of wicked giggles. “Brilliant! Oh, Lin Han is going to absolutely lose his mind!”
Refusing to waste another second resting, Liu Xiaona scooped up a yawning Little Meat Bun, grabbed a thoroughly bewildered Zhang Hua by the collar, and marched out the door. They were heading to Base No. 27 to pull off a masterpiece.
The mental image of Lin Han coming home to a thoroughly ruined base and standing there in utter, helpless shock gave Song Yuqing a second wind. She dragged herself out of her chair and went back to assembling the final few survival backpacks.
As she sorted through the manifests, a specific buyer’s note caught her eye:
“I don’t have any superpowers, but I refuse to just sit back while my friends fight. Does the God’s Supermarket have any weapons an ordinary person like me can use? I’d love to buy one.”
The order sheet included a name and a contact number. Judging by the characters, it sounded like a young girl—though she couldn’t rule out the alternative, considering Liu Xiaona was a guy with a girl’s name.
Unwilling to disappoint an eager customer, Song Yuqing selected a heavy-duty kitchen knife and retrieved a set of anti-zombie protective clothing from her spatial storage. Then, she walked out to the front courtyard and snapped off a thick, sturdy stalk of fresh bamboo. Thanks to Liu Xiaona watering the grove with pure water every day, the bamboo had grown exceptionally dense and resilient—perfect to be weaponized as a personal defense staff.
Once the custom bundle was packed, Song Yuqing dialed the number provided in the memo.
“Hello? Hi there, I’m the manager of the God’s Supermarket.”
“Hello!”
A sweet, youthful voice vibrated through the speaker, belonging to a girl who sounded to be in her mid-teens.
Song Yuqing walked her through the specific mechanics of the protective suit and the treated bamboo staff. The young girl grew so incredibly excited that she practically kissed the phone in gratitude, leaving Song Yuqing blushing slightly.
“Just a heads-up, this is going on store credit,” Song Yuqing added gently. “You’ll owe the shop three zombie souls later.” It was a friendly corporate rate, heavily discounted.
“Deal! Thank you~”
Song Yuqing had no way of knowing that the moment the girl hung up the phone, Ruan Fanfan stepped into the room and sat down right beside her.
“Who were you just talking to?”
“Shopping!”
“You don’t even have an active combat ability, and you’re already trying to get an order shipped?” Ruan Fanfan frowned, her voice stern. “Stay inside. Going out there right now is completely unsafe.”
“No way~ I’m going,” the girl protested, her large, expressive eyes blinking defiantly.
“Xiaoyi! Why can’t you just listen to me for once?!” Ruan Fanfan scolded, her brow furrowing with irritation.
“Cousin, you’re the one who runs around the wasteland constantly,” Xiaoyi shot back. “Talk about unsafe! And now you’re turning around and blaming me.”
Left entirely speechless, Ruan Fanfan turned on her heel and stormed out of the room. The moment she crossed the threshold, she quietly pulled the heavy door shut and turned the deadbolt, locking her cousin inside from the hallway.
Hearing the sharp click of the lock, Xiaoyi bolted upright and sprinted over to pound frantically on the wood. “Cousin! What the hell are you doing?!”
“Just get some sleep, Xiaoyi! Stay out of this!” Ruan Fanfan called back.
She walked over to the hallway window, pulling back a tiny corner of the heavy curtain to peer down at the streets of Base No. 35.
Outside, columns of combatants were moving past in organized groups. Here and there, clusters of neighbors were huddled together under the dim lights, staring intently at their mobile screens.
“Hey, look at that! The status says ‘Dispatched’! Man, they move fast!”
“I wonder if this attribute coffee is actually as good as the rumors say.”
“Are you kidding? Didn’t you hear Nanjiao’s broadcast? The stuff can instantly spike your combat output by more than two times!”
“We can definitely win this.”
“Hell yeah! Either way, I’m fully loaded and ready.”
Ruan Fanfan let the curtain drop, her face clouding with intense anxiety.
Because her cousin lived here, Lin Han had deployed her to sneak into Base No. 35 ahead of the main column to act as an inside operative. But the moment she arrived, she had uncovered a terrifying reality.
Not only had Base 35 successfully established a massive e-commerce supply line with the God’s Supermarket, but they had also completely neutralized their water crisis and somehow caught wind of Wan Youzhi’s movements well in advance. Looking around the base, there wasn’t a single trace of fear or panic; the entire population was in high spirits, brimming with a fierce fighting spirit.
Their entire strategy had relied on a textbook blitzkrieg sneak attack. But facing an enemy this well-prepared, their chances of a clean victory were instantly cut in half.
Glancing back at the locked door, Ruan Fanfan made a swift decision. She slipped her phone from her pocket, unlocked the terminal, and navigated to the e-commerce app.
“Cousin!” Xiaoyi cried from the other side, her voice cracking with tears.
Ignoring the pleas, Ruan Fanfan wordlessly checked the network status, verified the data stream, and then quietly pocketed the device. She flicked off the hallway lights and melted into the shadows, slipping out of the building completely unnoticed.
From a nearby dead treetop, Conghui glided down silently, guiding Ruan Fanfan into the twisted depths of a barren forest outside the perimeter. Once they were safely concealed by the deadwood, the purple-blue parrot rapidly expanded, transforming into a massive avian beast. Ruan Fanfan vaulted onto its broad back, and with a heavy sweep of its wings, the bird launched them into the dark sky, leaving Base 35 far behind.
A little over ten kilometers away, Wan Youzhi and Lin Han’s invasion convoy had pulled off the main road, setting up a temporary camp to rest their engines.
“Well?” Wan Youzhi asked, pulling off his hair tie to neatly re-bundle his long hair into a tight topknot. “Did you find anything useful?”
“It’s a total mess,” Ruan Fanfan reported grimly, sliding down from Conghui’s back.
She quickly laid out the exact situation inside Base No. 35. As the details unfolded, Wan Youzhi’s brow furrowed into a tight, severe knot.
“How is this possible?” he muttered, his voice dropping. “The future I saw didn’t look anything like this.”
Lin Han opened his mouth to offer an explanation, but Wan Youzhi instantly raised a sharp hand, cutting him off.
Closing his eyes, the seer focused his internal energy, forcing his precognitive powers to strain against the temporal current, desperately searching for an alternate timeline.
After a long, agonizing silence, Wan Youzhi finally opened his eyes, his voice sounding hollow and raspy. “Alright… I see it now.”
He motioned for Lin Han and Zhang Lei to lean in close, his voice dropping to a low, chilling whisper as he laid out his revised strategy directly into their ears.
