Chapter 99: A New Mission (Part 3)
After a full night’s restful sleep, Song Yuqing’s deep fatigue had completely vanished. She immediately got out of bed and hopped onto the online shopping platform to inspect the activity log. Just as she had anticipated, the global user base had flooded the message terminal with notes of solidarity, actively backing God’s Supermarket through their purchases.
Across the country’s survival sectors, the local zombie populations were quietly yet steadily declining. The general public viewed this sudden drop-off as a massive, positive sign that humanity was finally winning the war of attrition.
Song Yuqing accessed her pocket dimension and materialized a substantial bulk of daily provisions directly onto the supermarket floor, deliberately choosing not to log them onto the standard inventory shelves. She did this because once an item was officially stocked on the magical shelving, no one except verified store employees possessed the authority to retrieve it.
Before deploying, she entrusted the critical task of guarding the premises and manually processing incoming orders to Zhang Hua and his remaining water-type companions. They would run the register until she, Liu Xiaona, Gaha, and Little Meat Bun returned from their venture.
Zhang Hua was naturally more than eager to accept the responsibility; managing the storefront was a flawless way to completely erase his crew’s outstanding debt on the store ledger.
“Hey, Manager… do you think one of us should stay behind to supervise?” Liu Xiaona asked, looking a bit anxious as she watched Zhang Hua excitedly touch and inspect everything behind the counter. “Just to be safe.”
“It’s fine,” Song Yuqing smiled. She extended her hand, palm facing upward.
Understanding the cue, Gaha and Little Meat Bun quickly stepped forward, placing their paws squarely over hers. Liu Xiaona scratched her head, chuckling as she placed her hands on top of the pile to complete the chain.
With a single, focused thought from Song Yuqing, the environment instantly blurred, and the quartet materialized inside her private pocket dimension.
The spatial storage zone appeared to have expanded significantly overnight, transforming into a long, narrow gallery. Song Yuqing took a quick head count of the available entryways and discovered there were now exactly twelve doors lining the corridor. If they strictly adhered to Master Fu’s new protocol—exploring the realities behind two doors per month—they would only manage to access six of them before their three-month doomsday deadline expired.
Song Yuqing called out into the void, desperately trying to summon Master Fu to clarify the math. However, after a long stretch of silence, the system failed to show up or offer a single response.
The oppressive, hollow quiet of the space left a subtle knot of unease tightening in her chest.
“Don’t stress over it, Manager. Shall we just head through the primary door and locate Sister Qin first?” Liu Xiaona suggested, already crouching by the familiar threshold, waiting for her boss to turn the handle.
Song Yuqing sighed. For now, they could only take things one step at a time.
Before crossing over, she provided Liu Xiaona and Gaha with a brief, summarized brief on what this specific parallel world looked like. Little Meat Bun nodded sagely along with her explanation. If the little panda possessed the capacity for human speech, he undoubtedly would have been the one leading the orientation—after all, this reality was his actual home world!
Song Yuqing twisted the doorknob, stepping through the threshold into the parallel reality for the third time. On this jump, the coordinate system materialized them directly outside the perimeter of the parallel world’s magnificent, high-tech version of God’s Supermarket.
“Whoa!” Liu Xiaona’s eyes went completely wide. She stared at the towering architecture, feeling as though she had just been dropped dead center into a high-budget sci-fi movie.
Song Yuqing smiled at her reaction. “Just wait. You’ll probably see things even more bizarre than this on our next few jumps!”
Little Meat Bun threw his arms wide, joyfully sprinting in small circles across the pristine pavement. It’s been ages since I was last home! The air in this reality truly is the most refreshing!
Song Yuqing couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the bear’s pure, unadulterated excitement. Liu Xiaona joined in, pointing at Little Meat Bun’s clumsy, ecstatic rolling. His sheer enthusiasm made him look like an adorable, oversized clown.
Directly behind the frolicking panda, a young boy wearing a tilted baseball cap stood watching them. He kept casting deep, irritated glares at Song Yuqing’s group, his face painted with an unhappy expression.
“What are you weirdos looking at?” the boy suddenly barked.
Song Yuqing blinked, momentarily stunned before realizing the child was actually addressing them. The boy crossed his arms, aggressively twisting his face into an ugly grimace at the group.
“Well, aren’t you a little brat?” Liu Xiaona snorted, shaking her head. “And here I thought you looked cute.” In their bleak, apocalyptic home world, encountering an innocent, well-clothed child was an extreme rarity.
The boy’s brow furrowed into a deep scowl. “You’re the ones who started laughing at me first! And now you’re calling me rude?!”
“Huh? Kid, we weren’t laughing at you at all, we were laughing at—” Liu Xiaona’s voice died in her throat, her casual expression instantly hardening into pure disbelief.
Right before her eyes, the little boy marched straight forward, stepping completely through Little Meat Bun’s physical form as if the giant panda were nothing more than thin air, continuing his stride toward the counter.
Little Meat Bun froze mid-roll. Oh, right. He had forgotten that in this highly advanced reality where he had been raised, his current projection manifested as an intangible ghost. Song Yuqing recalled Master Fu’s earlier technical brief: Little Meat Bun essentially functioned as a spiritual patch designed to fix anomalies within this specific sector.
“Ah… uh…” Liu Xiaona and Gaha traded a thoroughly spooked glance.
“Hey there, little guy,” Song Yuqing said, quickly leaning down to address the boy in her most gentle, reassuring tone. “We truly weren’t mocking you. We were just sharing an internal joke.”
“Hmph!” The boy planted his hands firmly on his hips, planting his feet right in front of Song Yuqing, Gaha, and Liu Xiaona, completely refusing to back down. Though he was small, he clearly carried himself with an immense amount of stubborn authority.
“Haha, this kid is a character…” Liu Xiaona chuckled, only to be met with a lethal glare from the child.
“You must apologize!” the boy demanded, stomping his foot. “Apologize to me right now!”
“Alright, alright. We’re incredibly sorry,” Liu Xiaona coaxed, crouching down to match his eye level. “We swear on our lives we weren’t laughing at you.”
The boy pouted, looking entirely unconvinced. Suddenly, a bright green circle of thick briar vines erupted from the center of his palm, rapidly weaving themselves into a tight perimeter around Song Yuqing and her staff. He fell completely silent, locking his arms across his chest as the thorns effectively barred them from leaving the spot.
Panicking, Little Meat Bun tried to throw his weight against the supernatural barrier to tear the foliage apart, but his spectral paws slipped harmlessly through the vines. Frustrated, he tried harder, flailing wildly against the green wall.
“Little Meat Bun, calm down! Don’t stress!” Song Yuqing called out, trying to soothe the anxious bear, but her words did little to stop his frantic clawing.
The little boy tilted his head, looking at the empty air around them in confusion. “Who exactly are you talking to?”
“Look, kid,” Liu Xiaona said, a cold sweat breaking out on her brow. She felt incredibly wronged by the misunderstanding, but she had no way of explaining the spectral panda, and she certainly couldn’t engage in a serious elemental battle against an actual child. “I swear, we didn’t mean any offense.”
“Here, let’s make peace. How about a treat?” Song Yuqing intervened smoothly. She reached into her inventory, pulled out a premium box of store snacks, and gently pressed it into the boy’s hands.
The colorful packaging immediately captured the child’s attention. Satiated by the offering, he gave a casual flick of his wrist, causing the thorny barrier to dissolve back into the pavement.
Little Meat Bun let out a massive sigh of relief, ceasing his frantic scratching to throw a deeply dissatisfied glare at Liu Xiaona and Gaha. What is wrong with you two? You’re both highly capable combatants—why did you just stand there like statues? What if that little brat had actually hurt Song Yuqing?
The boy stepped aside to grant them passage, but Song Yuqing remained exactly where she was.
“How about we make a deal, little guy?” she coaxed. “Can you tell me where we can find a specialized diagnostic machine capable of identifying zombies? Or maybe a distributor who sells crop seeds that can flourish within a barren wasteland? If you help us locate them, we’ll buy whatever snacks you want. Within reason, of course—if it’s astronomically expensive, we can’t afford it.”
Beside her, Little Meat Bun pouted, standing in somber silence. He knew his home world inside out; technology or agricultural strains like that simply didn’t exist in this hyper-modern era. At the very least, he had never once encountered them in his entire life.
The boy’s eyes lit up as he looked up from the snack box. “Seriously?”
We have a lead! Song Yuqing and Liu Xiaona exchanged a thrilled look, both nodding frantically at the child.
“Absolutely!”
“What are you guys even talking about? ‘Zombies’ and ‘wastelands’?” The boy muttered, peeling open the box to pop a bright candy into his mouth. “We only learn about those concepts in ancient history class. If you weirdos actually want to look at things like that, you’ll have to go visit a historical museum.”
“We don’t want to just look at them,” Liu Xiaona clarified. “We need to actually purchase them.”
“Oh. Then you’ll have to track down a private antiquities collector,” the boy answered nonchalantly, adjusting his cap.
Song Yuqing’s mouth twitched. An antiquities collector? “Right…”
“Yep!”
“Think you could guide us to one?” Liu Xiaona pressed desperately, willing to exhaust every single avenue to clear Master Fu’s criteria.
The boy chewed his candy, his voice turning muffled and dismissive. “Me? Why would a kid like me know any of those high-society adults?”
Song Yuqing and Gaha turned to stare at Liu Xiaona in complete, deadpan speechlessness.
However, Little Meat Bun’s ears suddenly perked up as if a memory had just clicked into place. With a sharp grunt, he grabbed Song Yuqing and Gaha by the sleeves, aggressively hauling them toward the opposite side of the avenue.
