Chapter 101: Progress Is Too Smooth
Song Yuqing gasped, taken aback.
“Do you even know how many points I have in my account?” she asked.
The local Master Fu raised his eyebrows, smirking. “Of course I don’t.”
He paused, snapping his fan closed before pointing it at her. “But let me make something clear: if you want to buy the specific items I have stashed away, you’re going to pay a heavy price. Emptying your entire family fortune is the absolute bare minimum.”
Hearing this bold claim, Liu Xiaona twitched her lips and cast a disdainful look around the cluttered bamboo cottage. To her, everything in the room looked like literal garbage.
Song Yuqing, however, didn’t feel the slightest pinch of pain. Even if she completely drained the points they had painstakingly harvested from the zombies back home, they could always just earn more. It wasn’t a major loss.
“But do you really have both of those items here? You seriously have both?” Song Yuqing pressed, trying to find a concrete guarantee in the man’s eyes.
Master Fu just tilted his head back, casually unfurling his fan and waving it in front of his face.
Song Yuqing shifted her gaze to Little Meat Bun for confirmation.
The panda just shook his head in confusion. He had spent his entire life watching Master Fu hoard all these random antiques, but he had never paid much attention to the inventory, let alone known what any of the individual pieces actually did.
“Don’t worry,” Master Fu said, his tone turning surprisingly solemn. “I collected a decent batch of those specific relics a few years back on a whim. But hear me clearly: no matter how many points you currently have on that card, you are handing all of them over to me. Are you absolutely certain you want to make this trade?”
“Yes, I’m certain,” Song Yuqing replied without missing a beat.
If she could genuinely secure both of those items right now, two-thirds of the impossible quota assigned by the system would be complete. Of course she was willing to zero out her bank account.
The only downside is that I won’t be able to buy any standard store supplies to bring back from this jump, she thought.
“Deal!”
Master Fu snapped his fan shut, hopped off his chair, and kicked on an old stereo. To the rhythm of a fast-paced, restless melody, he began violently rummaging through the drawers and storage crates.
Random pieces of junk flew over his shoulder one by one, gradually piling up into a small mountain right at the feet of Song Yuqing, Liu Xiaona, and Gaha.
Song Yuqing stood completely speechless.
Liu Xiaona leaned in, whispering directly into her manager’s ear. “Look at him tossing that stuff. None of it looks like it’s worth a dime.”
Near her feet, Gaha gently kicked a heavy sniper rifle that had rolled over to her toes, tilting her head. Well, that certainly doesn’t look like a cheap toy you can just throw around.
Song Yuqing prayed silently. A diagnostic machine capable of identifying disguised zombies, and agricultural seeds engineered to flourish in an irradiated wasteland. Forget trading all her points—securing those two items would be a massive steal even if she had to go into crushing debt to get them.
Even an idiot could see she was walking away with the real profit here.
As Master Fu dug deeper and deeper into the hoarded debris, the pile of rejected junk grew massive. Soon, Song Yuqing, Gaha, Liu Xiaona, and Little Meat Bun had nowhere left to stand, forcing them to shuffle backward step by step until they were practically pressed against the front door.
Song Yuqing reached out, gently stroking Little Meat Bun’s head. Watching him stand in the home where he had been raised, she couldn’t help but worry that the little panda might not want to return to the apocalyptic wasteland with her.
Sensing the anxiety in her gaze, Little Meat Bun patted his chest proudly and offered a playful, reassuring smile.
This panda belongs to Song Yuqing now.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay in this world and enjoy the good life?” Liu Xiaona teased, leaning over to blink at the panda. As far as she knew, Little Meat Bun hadn’t signed any binding employment contracts with the supermarket.
Since he wasn’t magically tethered to them, if he genuinely wanted to remain in the reality where he grew up, they wouldn’t force him to leave.
Little Meat Bun shook his head seriously, reaching out his thick arms to hug Song Yuqing’s leg.
The Master Fu in this world had been incredibly good to him, but Song Yuqing was good to him, too.
He let out a low, scolding growl at Liu Xiaona, feigning anger as if to say: Don’t ever joke about me abandoning you guys again.
Seeing the absolute determination in the little bear’s eyes, Song Yuqing let out a massive sigh of relief, unable to hide the bright smile breaking across her face.
After what felt like an eternity, Master Fu finally vaulted backward out of the junk pile, triumphantly hoisting a burlap sack and a small square box over his head.
He marched straight over to Song Yuqing. Before she could even react, he dumped the sack and the box squarely at her feet, thrust out an open palm, and demanded his payment.
“Hand over the money,” he said, skipping the pleasantries entirely.
Song Yuqing forced a smile. “Alright, alright!”
She crouched down to inspect the goods, and Gaha, Little Meat Bun, and Liu Xiaona immediately crowded around her. The four of them formed a tight, eager circle on the floorboards.
Standing above them, Master Fu crossed his arms over his chest, absentmindedly humming along to the stereo.
Song Yuqing peeled open the burlap sack to find dozens of vacuum-sealed plastic pouches packed with seeds. She pulled a few out to examine the labels.
Wow! There were strains for cabbage, cauliflower, onions, rice, and even Houttuynia cordata. And digging further into the sack revealed layers upon layers of even more diverse crops.
“And these are all genetically viable for a wasteland?” she asked, looking up.
“Yep!” Master Fu confirmed.
“I definitely made a profit,” Song Yuqing grinned, exchanging thrilled looks with her staff.
Next, she carefully cracked open the small square box, dying to see what a zombie-detecting machine actually looked like.
Resting inside the velvet lining was a piece of tech that looked exactly like a miniature, vintage camera.
“Wait… just this one?” Song Yuqing couldn’t help but ask. After all, the seeds had come in a massive sack.
“I’m only giving you one,” Master Fu smirked, looking slightly wicked. “I’m keeping the backup model for myself!”
Song Yuqing carefully lifted the mini camera out of the box, popped off the lens cap, and flipped the power switch.
She pressed her eye against the viewfinder and slowly panned the lens across the room.
Through the glass, Master Fu registered perfectly as Master Fu. Little Meat Bun showed up as Little Meat Bun, and Liu Xiaona appeared as Liu Xiaona. But when she pointed the lens at Gaha… the gargoyle was completely invisible on the screen.
Song Yuqing suddenly remembered the unique, silver-plated material coating the exterior walls of God’s Supermarket. Just like this lens, Gaha’s reflection never showed up on those walls. Technically, that raw material could also be classified as something capable of identifying a zombie!
At worst, I can just hand this camera and a scrap of our exterior plating over to the elite researchers at Base Zero and let them reverse-engineer the tech, she plotted.
“Deal!”
Having fully confirmed that the merchandise perfectly matched her required objectives, Song Yuqing readily pulled her supermarket points card from her inventory and slapped it into Master Fu’s waiting hand.
The man eagerly dug into his trouser pocket, producing a battered, handheld card reader, and swiped the plastic.
Ding—All points have been depleted.
“Thank you for your patronage. Please come again,” Master Fu grinned, tossing the empty card back to her.
“Oh, I definitely will,” Song Yuqing said, looking down at Little Meat Bun. Once the apocalyptic crisis was finally resolved and her schedule cleared up, she planned to bring the panda back here for a proper vacation so he could visit his old home more often.
“Where are you guys heading next?” Master Fu asked, his tone turning thoughtful. He lowered his voice, his eyes drifting down to the panda.
He didn’t know exactly where Little Meat Bun had vanished to all those months ago, nor did he know where this strange group of people was planning to take him next.
Liu Xiaona shot her manager a hesitant look. Should we tell him? Can we even explain it without breaking the rules?
Song Yuqing offered a mysterious smile. “I’ll tell you all about it the next time we visit.”
She was genuinely terrified that if she revealed too much about the multiverse, the resulting paradox might trigger another apocalyptic collapse in this reality.
“Just know that we’ll be returning to this city to purchase more goods in the future.”
She was telling the absolute truth, though she deliberately left the timeline vague. It could be next week; it could be three months from now.
Song Yuqing carefully packed the sack of seeds and the camera into her spatial inventory. Wanting to give Master Fu and Little Meat Bun a moment of privacy to say their goodbyes, she gestured for Gaha and Liu Xiaona to follow her, and the three women stepped outside to wait at a respectful distance.
From afar, Song Yuqing watched the man and the bear stare at each other in solemn silence. Then, without warning, Master Fu let out a shout and started playfully chasing Little Meat Bun around the yard, aggressively swatting at his fur. It wasn’t a real fight—it was the rough, affectionate roughhousing of two brothers.
“Don’t go!” Master Fu’s voice carried over the breeze, laced with mock anger. “Aren’t you afraid I’m going to be depressed without you around?! You heartless little brat! You’re asking for a beating!”
Song Yuqing smiled and shrugged. It seemed she wasn’t going to be able to take advantage of Master Fu’s hospitality much longer today.
Once the farewells were finally concluded, Song Yuqing gathered her team and began the trek toward the city outskirts.
Because her bank account was completely zeroed out and they had a large group, hailing a cab was out of the question. They had to walk the entire distance.
She vaguely retraced the driving route Sister Qin had taken her on during her last visit to the sector.
Just as they arrived at a major fork in the road, a massive bolt of lightning suddenly struck from the sky directly ahead of them. The sheer volume of the blast made Song Yuqing and her staff scream in surprise, stumbling backward.
“You got a death wish?!” a voice bellowed from behind them, accompanied by the aggressive blaring of a rusty car horn.
