Chapter 60: “I Am in Mourning.”
Having sorted out the [Cultivation] section, Ling Jing turned her attention to [Livestock].
If she could raise some baby chicks and milk cows, getting a steady yield of fresh eggs and milk would be wonderful.
Those two items could be sold on their own, or serve as essential ingredients for a wide variety of delicacies.
Unfortunately, her stash of Beast Core Coins was far too pitiful.
Although baby chicks were listed for sale, the system refused to let her buy them: [You have not yet purchased a coop].
Every time she tapped it, that exact prompt popped up.
A small chicken coop cost two hundred Beast Core Coins, and she was short on funds.
It was the same story for the sheep pens, cattle barns, and the rest.
She had no choice but to shelve the idea for now.
Might as well hold on to these one hundred Beast Core Coins. With so many mutated monsters roaming the wastes, she was bound to amass enough beast and plant core coins eventually to expand her farm.
One step at a time.
By the time she finished setting up the cultivation plots, it was already 3:30 in the morning.
This marked the very first all-nighter Ling Jing had pulled since arriving in the apocalypse.
Yet instead of feeling groggy, she was buzzing with energy.
Her haul had been extraordinary.
—A hidden lucky draw had dropped straight into her lap out of nowhere, upgrading her tricycle.
Relying on the upgraded electric trike, she had successfully hunted down a massive B-rank mutant, securing a mountain of rice while drastically boosting the Chinese Restaurant’s ingredient variety and reserves.
On top of that, she had unlocked the farm interface as a bonus.
Her rice and corn were already sown. Ling Jing could practically envision the day when the farm would supply all her kitchen’s needs, achieving total self-sufficiency.
If blindly pedaling in the dark for hours with nothing to show for it had made her feel down on her luck earlier, the events of the latter half of the night proved that every ounce of sweat had paid off.
Thank goodness she hadn’t given up and stopped pedaling. Otherwise, even with an upgraded trike, she never would have tracked down where that giant beast had fled.
Ling Jing went into the bedroom’s bathroom, gave her face a brisk wash, and scrubbed her hands clean.
She had zero intention of sleeping.
While the adrenaline was still pumping, time to get more work done!
The porridge pot? Upgrade!
Expand the volume, and unlock auto-refill and auto-dispensing while she was at it!
Tomorrow’s rice porridge wouldn’t have any daily limit—buy as much as you want!
Ling Jing opened the Mall again and went on a shopping spree.
Added: [Large Steamer-Boiler].
Now that she had corn, piping-hot, sweet steamed corn on the cob was an absolute must!
Added: [Drum Roasting Machine].
With chestnuts on hand, how could she skip sugar-roasted chestnuts?
With plenty of points in her pocket, it was time to expand the shop’s footprint as well!
Roll up her sleeves and get straight to it!
A familiar sensation washed over Ling Jing.
—The exact thrill she had felt back when she pushed a tiny cart through alleys and streets, scrimping and saving until she finally opened her very own brick-and-mortar shop.
And then watching that shop grow bigger and bigger.
The stunned, blissfully hooked expressions on her diners’ faces were pure joy to witness.
The feeling of a business soaring to new heights… was truly intoxicating.
Early morning.
Inside Seed City.
“Captain, outside the West Wall… does this Chinese Restaurant of yours really exist?”
Even after savoring the incredible dishes Zhou Xue had brought back, Xia Dong and the others still found it hard to believe.
It was the tenth year of the apocalypse. They had long grown numb to surviving on rock-hard ration bricks, knowing that if you were bitten, you simply waited for the rot to consume you until you died.
The backpack full of food Zhou Xue’s squad had carried home yesterday felt less like timely aid and more like an outright miracle.
A miracle so dazzling that, even standing right in front of it, one couldn’t help but question its reality.
Even though the comrades in the wooden shack had grilled Zhou Xue and the others countless times the previous day, the members of Dark Star tagging along this morning still felt an uneasy flutter in their chests.
It wasn’t that they were ungrateful.
They were just terrified of disappointment. Terrified of building up false hope.
Terrified that placing too much faith in something would only drag them down into a deeper abyss of despair.
Those who had lingered in the dark for too long kept their teeth clenched, relying on a numb, battered spirit just to drag their bodies through another day.
No matter how wretched that survival looked.
What they feared most was light that wasn’t real—a fleeting, phantom glimmer.
Something that coaxed their frayed nerves into letting down their guard, only to shove them off a steeper cliff.
“It’s real,” Luo Xianghuai chimed in. “We’re almost at the West Gate. You’ll see it with your own eyes the moment we step outside.”
“Hall, you were the loudest one raving about it yesterday. Why so quiet now?”
Quick glanced at Hall, who was trudging beside them like a walking corpse.
The kid hadn’t looked anything like this when they returned yesterday.
He had cornered everyone in sight, proselytizing about the miraculous Boss Ling—an emissary surely descended from the heavens—and the endless wonders of the Chinese Restaurant.
Until… until he finished recounting his harrowing tale of “surviving a night outside the walls” for the ninth time, and started looking for his handheld console.
“Hey, did any of you see my console? My little buddy was right here in my cardboard box! Where did it go?!” Hall had asked, grabbing anyone within arm’s reach.
“And my blue shirt! I just washed it and hung it out to dry! Did I forget to bring it in?!”
He had even sprinted out back to check the clothesline.
Finding them… was naturally impossible.
The shirt and the console had already been reduced to ash in the stone brazier.
Ascending to paradise a step ahead of their owner.
In the end, Zhou Xue was the only one with the guts to step up. While the others were frantically shoving the blame back and forth, she broke the truth to him.
…How to describe it?
Every shred of expression had drained from Hall’s face in an instant, the color siphoned completely out of him.
Like he had dropped dead on the spot.
According to the teammate who slept next to him, Hall had mumbled about his little console in his sleep the entire night.
…
“I am in mourning.”
Hall’s voice was utterly devoid of life.
Quick and Turner exchanged a guilty glance, and Quick spoke up, rubbing his neck in deep embarrassment:
“Uh, about your console… I’m really sorry, man.”
“You can’t blame it all on Quick. We honestly thought you were gone,” Turner said gently. “We figured if you made it to the other side, you’d want something to play, so we burned it so it could keep you company…”
Hall slowly lifted his head, the light completely snuffed out of his eyes.
“My little buddy… was only twelve years old.”
“…”
“I was the one who failed it.”
“No, no, no, I’m the one who messed up! If we get the chance later to scout deep into the ruins of the northern cities, I’ll scavenge another console for you, deal?” Quick offered.
“No matter how similar it looks, it won’t be him! I loved my little buddy most in this world—how could I ever settle for a replacement?!”
“…”
Quick cast a helpless, sideways glance toward Luo Xianghuai and Turner.
Great. The kid’s officially lost his mind.
“Hall, if you’re that heartbroken, does that mean you won’t be eating once we get to the Chinese Restaurant? Guess we can save the coin and skip your share,” Shelley said coolly.
“No way! Absolutely not! A man can’t fight on an empty stomach! I still have to avenge my little buddy!” Hall snapped back to life instantly.
“Avenge him against who?”
“Against the monsters that caused this cataclysm, against the mutants that drove us behind these walls, against this godforsaken world that devours human beings!”
“Figures. Bring up food, and he’s full of fight again,” Quick muttered.
“Then act like a normal person.” Shelley tossed Hall a sharp look, leaving him with those blunt words before stepping up to the front beside Zhou Xue.
“Captain, won’t it draw too much attention if so many of us head out together?”
Eighteen members of Zhou Xue’s squad had mobilized today.
Aside from the wounded and those left behind to tend to them, anyone who could stand was out here.
Zhou Xue’s plan was to first catch their breath at the Chinese Restaurant, then split into two details.
The Awakeners, freshly replenished with supplies, would follow her to continue culling mutated beasts. The remaining members would stay behind at the Chinese Restaurant, working alongside the other scavengers to earn coin and buy more food.
Then they would carry it back inside the walls for their bedridden companions.
“There was quite a crowd at the restaurant yesterday, and they all seemed to filter in from the West Wall,” Zhou Xue replied. “Let’s head over first and see how things look.”
She figured word of Boss Ling’s restaurant had already spread to plenty of survivors.
A dozen or so people shouldn’t stick out too much.
Yet when they arrived before the West Gate and saw the crowd gathering, greeting each other, and chatting in an orderly fashion… they were still taken aback.
Especially after the bell tolled, when the blade-bearing woman at the head of the pack gave a few concise reminders about road safety before leading the crowd out through the gate scanners.
“Are they… forming an organized convoy?”
“Is it a syndicate? Doesn’t look like one.”
Xia Dong watched the large column ahead, spotting lively children skipping along alongside elderly folks who moved with deliberate, slower steps.
Everyone carried basins, wicker baskets, or oversized sacks.
This didn’t look like a grim expedition into the wastes; it looked like laborers heading out for a shift together.
“It’s entirely spontaneous,” Zhou Xue remarked, her voice tinged with quiet awe.
Boss Ling was truly something else.
She didn’t know exactly when the Chinese Restaurant had appeared—it couldn’t have been long.
Yet that proprietor had already achieved something even the Commander had never managed to pull off.
—She had brought the ordinary people within these walls together in true solidarity.
