Chapter 130: Calm Days
The day after the God’s Supermarket temporary search team was established, their operations officially began. Squads passed through the supermarket’s security gate, stepping into various parallel worlds. As for which team was sent to which specific dimension, no one knew; the destinations seemed entirely random.
However, Master Fu insisted that everything was determined by fate. What appeared to be a random draw was, in reality, the result of rigorous, unseen calculations.
For a while, Song Yuqing enjoyed a rare stretch of peace. Her only daily concern was figuring out how to continuously sell goods on credit to the supermarket’s rapidly growing neighborhood.
She often tried to pry information out of Master Fu regarding their existential situation, but whenever pressed, the system would conveniently drop offline for days at a time. Song Yuqing couldn’t help but suspect that Master Fu’s sudden reluctance to speak was due to Teacher Fu’s direct interference. After all, Teacher Fu had personally admitted to creating Master Fu’s programming.
Yet, deep down, Song Yuqing didn’t believe Master Fu was merely a cold, ordinary AI system. She could sense a distinct, underlying humanity in his words.
During this peaceful lull, Shen She converted the first floor of his new villa into a dedicated workshop, specializing in crafting acid-proof gear and various weapons. He no longer bothered with retail sales; instead, he supplied his inventory wholesale directly to God’s Supermarket in exchange for daily necessities, regular food, and the premium fruits and vegetables that enhanced superpowers.
The villa itself spanned four floors. The first floor served as the studio, the second was Shen She’s private residence, the third was allocated to Nanjiao and the Xie brothers, and the fourth was occupied by the elite experts from Base Zero. Shen She was busy hammering away at his tools all day, and his relentless work ethic seemed to rub off on his housemates. Nanjiao threw himself into researching how to restore network communications across the wasteland, while the experts buried themselves in studying the meteorite fragments.
The batch of fragments Zhang Yimiao had brought back had already been handed over to the research team. Combined with the fragments the experts had previously secured, the total came to exactly nine hundred pieces—no more, no less.
To keep the community sharp, Song Yuqing completely opened up the third floor of God’s Supermarket, allowing anyone to access the future-predicting cinema entirely free of charge. Recently, aside from occasional friendly sparring matches, the espers hadn’t seen any real combat. The mutant hordes were clustered far out in the wastes, temporarily out of reach and posing no immediate threat. Still, Song Yuqing refused to let her people grow complacent and helpless for when the zombies inevitably attacked. Watching even a few seconds of future footage would, at the very least, mentally prepare them for the deadly scenarios they might soon face.
The experts from Base Zero were by far the most diligent patrons of the theater. They meticulously pieced together fragmented glimpses of the future to gather intelligence on the meteorite anomalies.
According to the visions, if the meteorite fragments were fully assembled, something massive would trigger.
The exact nature of that event wasn’t explicitly clear in the footage, but after holding several intense strategy meetings, the experts managed to stitch together a general idea, giving them a theoretical framework for how to handle the impending crisis.
One afternoon, while Song Yuqing was auditing the store’s ledgers, the Xie brothers approached her, practically begging to be drafted into the temporary search team.
“Why?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
Xie Hao sighed dramatically. “We seriously have nothing to do all day.”
“I’ve even swallowed my pride and decided to bow down to you for a job,” Xie Zetian added with a heavy sigh.
Naturally, letting them backdoor their way into the official missing persons squad was out of the question, but Song Yuqing managed to find some busywork for the two of them. Since they were already living in Shen She’s villa, she suggested they act as his clerk assistants.
“Hmph! You’re just brushing us off with grunt work!” Xie Zetian grumbled, clearly dissatisfied.
Despite the complaints, the two brothers obediently sought out Shen She to offer their services. However, Shen She flat-out rejected them.
“I work alone. That is enough,” he stated coldly.
Xie Hao looked at the old man’s deadpan expression and offered a bitter smile. Just a few months ago, Shen She had been a literal child. Now, not only was he physically older than them, but his temper had grown infinitely worse. Dealing with him had surprisingly forced the hotheaded Xie brothers to restrain their own tempers.
Bored out of their minds, the Xie brothers took a stroll around the perimeter of God’s Supermarket, observing the bustling community. Everyone seemed to have found their own niche.
The Wood, Water, and Earth-type espers had teamed up to cultivate edible vegetables and fruits, while the Fire and Metal-types collaborated on constructing new housing. Even though Song Yuqing had provided them with spacious apartment blocks, the rapid influx of refugees meant living conditions were growing a bit cramped.
The Xie brothers had absolutely zero interest in farming or construction, but the observation sparked a brilliant idea.
They wanted to establish a neighborhood committee for God’s Community!
Currently, the supermarket was ringed by expanding concentric circles of apartment buildings; the rough blueprint of a genuine, functioning mini-city had already taken shape. As the population continued to swell, wouldn’t all sorts of trivial, day-to-day civil disputes inevitably arise?
When the Xie brothers pitched the idea to Song Yuqing, she was taken aback. She wasn’t surprised by the concept itself, but rather that they had come directly to her to seek official authorization.
Without anyone formally declaring it, it seemed the entire population had universally accepted her as the ultimate authority figure.
But in her own mind, she was still just the executive manager of a small convenience store.
“Hey, don’t be so modest,” Xie Hao urged. “Literally everyone out there is relying on credit from God’s Supermarket to survive!”
“Exactly,” Xie Zetian chimed in. “Call a town hall meeting and formally establish the God’s Community committee. Xie Hao and I will bust our backs acting as your loyal civil servants, helping you manage the logistics and solve disputes.”
“Yeah! That way, nobody can accuse us of being freeloaders at your supermarket!”
Song Yuqing reluctantly agreed, feeling the profound shift in her identity.
With nearly everyone relying on God’s Supermarket for housing and daily rations, her role as manager had evolved into something resembling absolute sovereign power. And with that power came an immense, heavy burden of responsibility.
“Who knows, Manager? Maybe our little God’s Community will eventually evolve into God’s City!” Liu Xiaona joked from the counter.
Is that really necessary? Song Yuqing had never harbored such grand ambitions. Yet, it felt as though an invisible hand was steadily pushing her further down this exact path.
The supermarket’s temporary search teams regularly returned from the parallel worlds, bringing back the survivors who had been devoured by Lin Han’s black hole. Naturally, these rescued individuals were seamlessly integrated into God’s Community.
Song Yuqing knew that having too many idle hands without a common enemy—like the zombie horde—to fight would inevitably breed unrest over time. She actively encouraged the residents to either return to their pre-apocalypse professions or utilize their unique superpowers to carve out new careers within the settlement.
At the very least, they were perfectly safe until the mutant legions finally arrived.
With the administrative backing of the Xie brothers, God’s Community began to steadily expand. Centered entirely around God’s Supermarket, the settlement soon dwarfed the peak population scale of their old Base 27.
The only glaring issue was that God’s Supermarket hadn’t functioned as a standard retail business in a long time. Even the front security gate had been entirely repurposed from a zombie-detection scanner into a multiversal transit portal.
“What are we supposed to do long-term, Master Fu?” Song Yuqing would ask during idle moments.
Master Fu, who had been uncharacteristically silent and restrained over the past few days, suddenly burst into a rare fit of laughter.
“Either march out there and fight the zombies, or just keep selling goods on credit.”
“But if I keep running the store purely on credit, what happens when I run out of system points to restock our supplies?”
Song Yuqing was genuinely terrified that the inevitable end would crash down on them sooner than anticipated. If God’s Supermarket’s inventory ran dry, the hundreds of people depending on her would starve to death in a matter of days. The horror of mass starvation would inevitably trigger the gruesome, desperate cannibalism that plagued the rest of the wasteland.
Song Yuqing didn’t want these peaceful, calm days to end prematurely.
