Chapter 107: We Meet Again
In the torrential downpour, God’s Supermarket looked like an isolated island floating on a dead sea.
Having lost all external communication signals, Song Yuqing was trapped in a grim illusion that every single survival base across the country had been utterly wiped out by the catastrophic acid rain. She didn’t dare voice her terrifying anxieties to anyone, terrified that her panic would spark unstoppable rumors and break the fragile morale of the refugees packed inside the store.
“This rain can’t keep falling like this…” Liu Xiaona muttered, her face pressed against the glass as she watched the heavy deluge with rising panic.
Fortunately, the downpour finally ceased at daybreak.
The violent thrumming of the storm vanished, but an absolute silence remained. Corrosive puddles of acid rain coated the landscape, and no one dared to step outside the threshold. Everyone inside explicitly regarded God’s Supermarket as their Noah’s Ark.
Song Yuqing allowed the displaced neighbors to rest freely throughout the lobby, systematically distributing free rations of food and water to everyone. For now, all she could do was take things one step at a time.
“Do you think it’s going to rain again?” people whispered anxiously. Though the sun had technically risen, massive, bruised storm clouds still choked the sky.
Suddenly, out in the smoking ruins, a lone silhouette materialized, slowly picking its way toward the supermarket. Liu Xiaona was the first to spot the movement—a figure navigating the rubble while holding a large, army-green umbrella.
“Look! Someone’s out there!”
Song Yuqing, who was standing behind the checkout counter, tracked Liu Xiaona’s line of sight through the front window. The distant, solitary figure looked immediately familiar.
It was the eccentric old man from Base Zero.
“Wait, why is he out there by himself?” “The storm just cleared. Why would anyone run out into the open right now?” “He looks like an old man!” “Is he insane? Isn’t he terrified of being dissolved by the leftover acid?”
Amidst the frantic chatter of the crowd, the elderly man swaggered right up to the front doors of God’s Supermarket and calmly collapsed his umbrella with a warm smile.
“Make way, please, folks. Let an old timer inside.”
“Whoa, grandpa! Where on earth did you travel from?” “Base Zero.” “How are you not completely melted? Did the acid rain not catch you on the road?” “I have an umbrella,” the old man chuckled, gesturing to his gear. “A custom-built model.” He leaned the wet umbrella carefully against the plastic-wrapped trunk of the Chinese tallow tree near the entrance.
“What are you even doing here?” Liu Xiaona asked, squeezing through the huddle to grab the old man by the arm and pull him safely into the dry store.
“Well, hello there! It’s wonderful to see you again,” the old man beamed. “After you folks departed my apartment the other day, I decided to pack my bags and drive out after you. Unfortunately, my vehicle completely broke down on the highway, so I had to hoof it the rest of the way…” He looked across the packed, disheveled crowd filling the store and let out a soft, empathetic sigh. “But look at that—we meet again!”
Song Yuqing hurried over to join them, surveying him from head to toe in pure astonishment. The old man didn’t bear a single chemical burn on his skin; only the very bottom hems of his trousers showed signs of minor corrosion from the toxic spray.
“The umbrella and the boots are custom-engineered,” the old man explained, picking up on her unspoken question.
“How did you even know to gear up like this before stepping out? Just a precaution?”
The old man nodded sagely.
“What kind of material is it made of?”
The old man offered a deeply mysterious smile. “A trade secret.”
As Song Yuqing studied his weathered face, she noticed a subtle, troubling change. His wrinkles and age spots seemed more pronounced; after only a few days apart, the old man looked noticeably more aged. Assuming the sheer physical toll of surviving the wasteland was catching up to him, she pushed the observation to the back of her mind.
“Sir, did you happen to cross paths with any other survivors on the highway?”
The old man pouted, looking slightly slighted. “You keep addressing me as ‘old man’ or ‘sir’…”
“Brother?” Song Yuqing corrected herself instantly.
The old man choked, waving his hands. “Let’s not go that far. That’s just awkward.”
“Grandpa, why did you travel all this way to find the supermarket anyway?” Liu Xiaona asked, her eyes wide with confusion. “Weren’t you supposed to stay safely inside the Base Zero laboratory so the scientists could conduct their research?”
“Well, I left plenty of my cellular cultures behind for them. Let them analyze those test tubes at their own leisure,” the old man dismissed carelessly. “I want to actually live out my remaining days. In fact,” he turned to look at Song Yuqing, his eyes twinkling, “I’m planning to set up a small vending stall right next to God’s Supermarket.”
Song Yuqing blinked. “A vending stall?” She truly couldn’t comprehend the operational logic of the eccentric elder standing before her.
“Hold on, absolutely not!” Liu Xiaona’s voice nearly cracked in outrage. “Are you trying to muscle in on our retail territory?!”
“No, no, no, not at all,” the old man snickered, leaning in mysteriously. “I want to purchase a bulk order of acid-resistant fabric from God’s Supermarket so I can manufacture and sell custom umbrellas. Oh! And I can stitch high-grade raincoats too.”
Song Yuqing raised her eyebrows, still unable to follow his train of thought.
Xiaoyi, who was standing nearby, hoisted one of Aunt Peng’s industrial plastic rolls from the floor and called out, “Do you mean this material?”
The old man threw a brief glance at the high-density polyethylene. “What on earth is that garbage?”
Song Yuqing scratched her head. It turned out the old man had absolutely no technical knowledge regarding the plastic. “This is specialized sheeting engineered to completely resist acid corrosion.”
The old man shook his head dismissively. “No, no. That’s completely wrong. That’s not the texture I need.”
“Is this old guy losing his mind…?” some of the nearby refugees whispered, openly questioning his cognitive faculties.
Liu Xiaona and Gaha also threw him deeply worried looks. The old man appeared to be hesitating, an uncharacteristically embarrassed expression flitting across his face.
Suddenly, a realization struck Song Yuqing like a physical blow. She focused her gaze intently on the old man’s boots, then darted her eyes back to the green umbrella resting against the tallow tree. The textures were completely identical.
The old man leaned in close to her ear, his voice dropping to a faint, conspiratorial whisper. “I need you to dig into your spatial inventory and find those specific goods you imported from the parallel world. The canvas fabric. The exact material used to build those heavy-duty, protective backpacks.”
Song Yuqing’s jaw dropped.
Could it be true?! Is the material from those parallel-world backpacks completely impervious to extreme acid rain?!
The old man gave her a knowing wink. “How about we find a private corner away from the crowd and discuss the logistics of our joint venture?”
Song Yuqing recovered from her shock, nodding her head rapidly like a chick pecking at rice.
She quickly ushered her staff and the old man into her private back room to conduct the high-stakes conference. She wasn’t worried about leaving the main floor unattended; just as she expected, the refugees remained perfectly well-behaved, tightly packed into their localized gossip circles.
Inside her bedroom, the old man settled comfortably onto the edge of the sofa, while the four employees of God’s Supermarket sat cross-legged on the floorboards, craning their necks as they waited for him to speak.
Suddenly, the old man’s playful, child-like demeanor vanished entirely, his expression hardening into an uncharacteristically grim severity.
“Why are you staring at us like that? It’s seriously creepy…” Liu Xiaona muttered, uncomfortably shifting her weight on the floor.
“Gaha?” Gaha scratched her head, thoroughly confused. What’s the big deal?
The old man let out a long, heavy breath. “What I am about to tell you will sound entirely unbelievable. But I swear to you, it is the absolute truth.”
An inexplicable wave of panic fluttered in Song Yuqing’s chest. Forcing her voice to remain steady, she asked, “What is it? What exactly did you see out there?”
“On my trek across the highway, I crossed paths with a young man and a young woman—a couple traveling with a magnificent, brightly colored parrot. I had my umbrella to shield me, but they had absolutely no protection from the elements.”
Song Yuqing, Liu Xiaona, Gaha, and Little Meat Bun all froze, their eyes locking onto one another. Traveling with a massive parrot? A man and a woman? There was only one couple in the wasteland that matched that exact description: Ruan Fanfan and her boyfriend, Zhang Lei.
“And then what happened? Do you know who they were?” Song Yuqing pressed, desperately praying that the old man had misidentified them. After all, according to the terrifying future Xiaoyi had witnessed in the cinema, Ruan Fanfan was fated to be murdered by Zhang Lei.
“I’ve seen them before,” the old man said, though he didn’t specify the exact coordinates of their initial encounter.
He explained that he had first spotted the couple near the outskirts of Chen Town. He had been taking a brief rest inside his stranded car when the pair suddenly flew directly over his roof, riding high on the back of a mutated parrot, charting a trajectory in the exact same direction as the supermarket.
Then, without warning, the catastrophic acid rain had unleashed from the heavens. The toxic droplets instantly scorched the parrot’s wings, sending the massive bird plummeting straight to the asphalt. The couple suffered a brutal impact as they hit the ground, and the falling chemical rain immediately began to eat through their flesh, their raw wounds rapidly expanding across their bodies.
The old man had desperately tried to unlatch his car door to offer them shelter, but the acid was already actively dissolving his own roof. Panicking, he grabbed the makeshift umbrella he had stitched together from a spare parallel-world backpack fabric on a total whim—a split-second choice that ultimately saved his life.
He scrambled out into the toxic downpour, screaming for the couple to huddle beneath his canopy. But by the time he reached them, there wasn’t a single patch of healthy flesh left on their bodies. Summoning the absolute last shred of his remaining strength, the young man weaponized his wood-type mutation to cleanly execute the agonizing woman before instantly turning the power on himself to commit suicide.
Under the continuous downpour of the acid rain, their remains had systematically dissolved, melting away into a foul pool of liquefied tissue right before his eyes.
