Chapter 27: All Members Present
Late at night, the snoring of Little Meat Bun and Liu Xiaona echoed back and forth, weaving into a relentless symphony of fate that completely destroyed Song Yuqing’s chances of sleeping. Tossing and turning in a fit of irritation, she finally gritted her teeth and bolted upright, determined to march into their rooms and wake them up.
The moment she stepped out into the hallway, she found Gaha slumped on the floor boards, seriously tracking the noise by counting on her pale fingers exactly how many times the bear and the hunter snored.
“Gaha…” Gaha whispered, throwing her hands up in an expression of deep grievance. Those two were being so loud her eardrums were on the verge of snapping.
Song Yuqing nodded in silent solidarity. I feel you. I find them completely insufferable too!
She marched down the corridor and aggressively knocked on both doors, but the culprits were trapped so deep in their slumber that their brains automatically tuned out the structural thumping.
Helpless, Song Yuqing rubbed her temples. “Master Fu! Can you install some soundproofing for these rooms?!”
“Physically impossible at this stage,” the AI’s voice boomed ruthlessly through her mind. “Structural modifications are strictly locked until you successfully clear your operational targets for the current calendar month.”
Gaha shot Song Yuqing a look of profound, zombie sympathy. As a member of the undead, Gaha only slept for the simple joy of mimicking a human routine; but Song Yuqing was a fragile living creature who would literally perish if she didn’t get her rest.
“Gaha…” the zombie girl sighed, shaking her head as the loose tips of her fresh purple hair swayed against her shoulders.
“Tell you what, Gaha—let me braid your hair,” Song Yuqing suggested. She desperately needed a distraction to vent her frustration, otherwise she was going to violently break down their bedroom doors.
Obliding immediately, Gaha pulled up a wooden chair and sat flat on the seat, content to let her manager experiment with her head.
Song Yuqing retrieved a styling crochet hook and a handful of sturdy rubber bands. She systematically sectioned Gaha’s long hair into distinct quadrants, starting right at the roots of the first block. Using the crochet hook, she mechanically looped and tucked the strands, forcing the long locks to intertwine and bind tightly against each other.
“Gaha?” Gaha murmured softly. She could distinctively feel that the store manager was using her scalp to blow off some serious retail steam.
Under Song Yuqing’s intense magic hands, Gaha’s classic, straight horror-movie hair was completely transformed into a dense grid of thick dreadlocks.
“Perfect! From this second on, you are officially the most badass zombie in the wasteland!” Song Yuqing cheered, admiring her handiwork with immense satisfaction. This was her absolute dream aesthetic; if her own hair weren’t so thin, she would have rocked the exact same style long ago.
“Gaha…” Gaha muttered, gently touching the tight braids. Her scalp felt incredibly taut, as if her face were being pulled back. Being a zombie, she privately hoped the tension wouldn’t cause her hair to fall out, mostly because her dead cells were entirely incapable of growing it back.
By the time the final band was secured, the first rays of dawn were already breaking, and Song Yuqing collapsed into her bed, sleeping straight through until the late afternoon.
When she finally blinked her eyes open and walked out to the storefront, the main doors were already unlocked and wide open. Little Meat Bun and Liu Xiaona were sitting side-by-side near the counter, happily devouring a pair of vacuum-sealed bentos, while Gaha stood by the window, lazily sifting through the bamboo leaves as she lost herself in thought. Thanks to a full night of undisturbed rest and the nutrient-dense produce she had fed him, Liu Xiaona had made a staggering physical recovery, his sunburnt skin looking completely fresh and healthy.
Before the hunter could open his mouth to tease her with a comment like, “Wow, look who finally decided to join the living,” Song Yuqing beat him to the punch. She launched into a fierce, preemptive lecture, strictly ordering both him and the bear to gain full control over their respiratory volume moving forward.
The room fell dead silent.
The burly man and the massive giant panda exchanged a highly embarrassed look.
“Look, how about we just stay awake until you fall asleep first?” Liu Xiaona suggested, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. “We’ll do our best to keep it down, I swear.”
Little Meat Bun scratched his ears in sheer confusion. Wait… how the hell am I supposed to modulate the acoustic decibels of my own snoring?
“Alright, that’s settled. Moving on to item number two,” Song Yuqing announced, her sharp gaze sweeping across her three unconventional employees. “I am officially initializing our long-term corporate division of labor.”
Hearing the formal tone, a wave of professional ease washed over the room.
Per her structural guidelines, Song Yuqing retained exclusive control over global procurement, customer dispute resolutions, and emergency protocols. Little Meat Bun was assigned to front-door security and public relations as the store mascot. Gaha was locked into interior maintenance and midnight perimeter patrols. As for Liu Xiaona, his profile was designated to front-desk reception, register transactions, stock presentation, and…
“Head chef?” Song Yuqing offered tentatively. She couldn’t very well let a mutant bear and a zombie handle the kitchen logistics, and she herself was strictly limited to boiling instant noodles. Since her vault was currently packed to the ceiling with premium raw meats and fresh underwater produce, it would be an absolute corporate tragedy not to utilize them for real meals.
Liu Xiaona proudly thumped his chest. “Say no more! Leave the galley to me! I swear to God I’ll cook you meals that will make your jaw drop!”
Don’t sleep on my utility, he thought. I can whip up a masterpiece in the kitchen!
Song Yuqing didn’t doubt his conviction, but Liu Xiaona still felt the need to clarify his background. He explained that having grown up in a crowded orphanage, he had eventually found work as a standard delivery driver before the world ended, operating out in the harsh elements. To ensure his orders were fulfilled on time when a local vendor was running behind schedule, he would routinely bypass the counter, squeeze himself directly into the restaurant’s kitchen, and cook the food himself. Over the years, the habit had naturally forced his culinary skills to blossom.
“Then I’ll be relying heavily on your talents,” Song Yuqing said. Hearing his background, her respect for the resourcefulness of the former driver shot up significantly.
“Gaha…” Gaha muttered, scratching her fresh dreadlocks as a sudden, fleeting memory fractured through her dead brain cells. In her past life, she had apparently worked as a low-tier kitchen assistant in a sprawling commercial restaurant, constantly being screamed at and ordered around by aggressive chefs.
Song Yuqing reached into her pocket and materialized four enhanced tomatoes, handing one to Gaha, one to Little Meat Bun, one to Liu Xiaona, and keeping the last for herself.
“This is a specialized, bio-engineered fruit designed to actively expand your superpower capacity,” she instructed. “Moving forward, every member of the staff gets a daily ration of one.”
“Are you serious? We get a luxury perk like this every day?!” Without a second of hesitation, Liu Xiaona tossed the entire tomato into his mouth, swallowing it even faster than the mutant giant panda.
Song Yuqing took a delicate bite of her own crop. The flesh was perfectly sweet, highlighting a sharp, refreshing touch of tartness that instantly revitalized her senses. Within seconds, she could feel a massive wave of raw energy surging through her core. Unlike the violent, searing internal heat that exploded in her veins whenever she absorbed a raw crystal core, the energy cultivated by the underwater tomato manifested like gentle, rhythmic ocean waves—surging forward one after another, building up a dense, layered reservoir of power with every rolling swell.
Gaha held her tomato up, cautiously sniffing the skin. She hadn’t consumed a single piece of organic matter since the day she turned.
“Go ahead. Take a bite,” Song Yuqing encouraged her softly, offering a reassuring nod.
Steeling her nerves, the zombie girl closed her graying eyes, opened her jaws wide, and sank her teeth into the fruit. An instant later, her long-dead taste buds violently snapped back to life.
“Gaha! Gaha!”
If her lacrimal glands hadn’t been permanently dried up by the virus, Gaha would have been weeping tears of pure joy right then and there.
—I am officially declaring that tomatoes are my absolute favorite fruit on earth! No, wait, favorite vegetable! Um… whatever it is, I love it!
Once the produce was cleared, Song Yuqing systematic unloaded a massive crate of supplies from her rectangular vault, working alongside Liu Xiaona to organize the inventory onto the displays. Little Meat Bun and Gaha eagerly stepped in to help, but having absolutely zero concept of professional merchandise presentation, they began placing items completely haphazardly, forcing the manager and the driver to go back and manually categorize every single box.
“No, look—you can’t just throw things onto the rack like that,” Liu Xiaona lectured gently, his hands moving with fluid efficiency. “You have to classify them by use, but you also have to calculate the visual color matching. See this? If you align them flat like that, the display loses all structural depth and fails to highlight the premium inventory items…”
He kept up a non-stop, expert commentary. Even though Song Yuqing’s parents had run a neighborhood convenience store for over two decades, their traditional methods didn’t hold a candle to the modern retail design logic Liu Xiaona had picked up from browsing commercial city chains during his delivery routes.
Realizing she was only getting in the way, Gaha let out a soft “Gaha,” grabbed Little Meat Bun by the paw, and dragged him out into the bamboo grove to play.
Little Meat Bun: I am an apex predator, lady. I am not playing tag with a zombie.
Beep-beep-beep-beep—!
A sharp, erratic barrage of car horns violently shattered the quiet of the lane.
A heavily modified, armored car came tearing through the mouth of the alley, its reinforced chassis violently scraping against the brick walls as it hurtled straight toward the entrance of God’s Supermarket.
“Gaha! Gaha!” Gaha shrieked in alarm, spinning on her heel and sprinting back onto the shop floor to alert the manager.
Little Meat Bun, who had been lazily lounge on the dirt, snapped into an upright, defensive posture, his muscles tensing.
Startled by the sudden commotion, Song Yuqing was dragged toward the threshold by Gaha. Liu Xiaona’s chest tightened in sudden panic; dropping the stock he was holding, he sprinted close behind them to guard the door.
Outside, the vibrant leaves of the supernatural bamboo grove began to rustle violently, as if caught in a sudden, high-pressure gale.
Song Yuqing watched in absolute disbelief as the armored vehicle ricocheted wildly between the low stone walls of the narrow lane. Despite its heavy steel plating and defensive bars, the vehicle looked exactly like a malfunctioning bumper car inside an amusement park.
“Gaha! Gaha!” Gaha’s eyes went completely wide with pure, manic excitement. This is better than a movie!
Suddenly, a massive, pressurized torrent of water materialized from the mouth of the alley, slamming violently into the side of the speeding car. Hit by the immense kinetic force, the armored vehicle lost its center of gravity, flipping sideways onto the asphalt with a deafening crash as its reinforced glass windows shattered into thousands of splinters.
A half-dozen armed mercenaries came sprinting into the lane from the main street, their eyes locked onto the wrecked chassis. An instant later, over a dozen rifles and shotguns came floating out of the car’s broken windows—seemingly manipulated by a gold-type psychic inside—and opened fire on the pursuers.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat—!
The explosive roar of gunfire was absolutely deafening, echoing off the brick walls.
“Get inside! Move!” Song Yuqing barked, and her three clerks instantly jumped back into the safe zone of God’s Supermarket.
As Liu Xiaona cleared the threshold, an odd sensation struck his mind. He had only been staying at God’s Supermarket for a single day, so why had his instinctual reaction been so incredibly timid? In the old world, whenever a violent faction dispute broke out, he would have proudly stood on the sidelines, dragging Sister Qin along as they casually judged who was right and who was wrong. Yet today, faced with an active firefight, his primary instinct was to run and hide…
No, he reasoned with himself, looking around at the quiet shop. This isn’t cowardice. This is called cherishing your life.
When you finally possess something truly precious to live for, throwing your life away in a pointless fight is an absolute sin.
