Chapter 51: Gathering and Separation (Part 3)
The moment Song Yuqing’s boots hit the floorboards of God’s Supermarket, Gaha’s voice violently erupted as she screamed toward the second floor.
“Gah-hah-ha!” Attention, living humans! Form a disciplined line immediately to shake hands and bid farewell to the boss!
On her cue, the group came rushing down the spiral staircase, instantly swarming Song Yuqing. Startled by the sudden commotion, the mutant pigeons that had calmly drifted out of her spatial corridor panicked, frantically flapping their wings as they scattered toward the retail shelves—instantly painting the pristine displays white with fresh droppings. If Song Yuqing hadn’t already been closely acquainted with Nanjiao, Chen She, and the Xie brothers, she would have immediately materialized a heavy kitchen knife to defend her territory. The raw kinetic energy they radiated felt less like a friendly send-off and more like a bandit vanguard preparing to execute a highway robbery.
The suffocating scent of the avian fleet was far too much for Little Meat Bun to handle. Aggressively fighting down his primal, flesh-eating instincts, the giant panda let out a series of heavy snorts, bolted straight out the front doors, and scrambled up into the high canopy of the white tallow tree.
Out of sight, out of mind. Out of smell, out of mind. He was fiercely determined to never distress his manager with another predatory relapse.
While the bear fled the flock, Nanjiao operated on a completely different frequency. He was practically vibrating with excitement, hovering around Song Yuqing as he waited to audit the birds. In the brief block of time they had spent inside her spatial vault, the once-unruly pigeons had undergone a total behavioral metamorphosis, appearing remarkably docile and disciplined.
“Come along, little bird! Let’s get to work!” Nanjiao cooed, extending a long vine tendril to playfully tease one of the birds. The pigeon merely blinked, completely ignoring his hand.
“Haha,” Liu Xiaona snickered dryly. You absolute idiot.
“Manager Song! My prosthetic! Where is it?!” Xie Hao bellowed, completely unable to contain his impatience a second longer.
“Relax, I always honor my corporate invoices,” Song Yuqing smiled, materializing a sleek, rectangular case from her vault. Xie Hao practically snatched the container out of her grip, roughly tearing through the high-end packaging.
The absolute millisecond his eyes locked onto the hardware, he fell completely in love. The cybernetic limb was forged from a high-strength, feather-light industrial alloy, featuring a flawless, micro-frosted silver finish that radiated a cool, austere, and intensely menacing aesthetic.
“Wow. You lucked out, cousin. The second you anchor that terminal, you’re officially a mechanical juggernaut,” Xie Zetian murmured, reaching out an envious hand to trace the metallic casing. Xie Hao violently slapped his fingers away.
“Don’t touch the merchandise! It’s strictly mine!”
He carefully aligned the interface with his stump, and to the absolute amazement of the room, the prosthetic seamlessly fit against his torso. He initially assumed Song Yuqing had ordered a custom bespoke mold from her supplier, but watching the connection, the mounting collar automatically shifted its geometry, perfectly calibrating its grip based on the subtle contour variations of his residual tissue and the firing of his muscle fibers.
The onlookers stood entirely paralyzed. What tier of high-end alien technology is this?
“How does the calibration feel? Talk to us!”
Xie Hao split his face into a massive grin. There wasn’t a single shred of foreign-body friction or neural lag! He cautiously flexed his fingers, testing a series of basic handshakes before smoothly raising his forearm. Every rotation was incredibly fluid, mimicking organic bone and muscle flawlessly. Throwing caution to the wind, he executed a rapid, high-velocity punch. As his fist cut through the air, a ring of dim blue smart-sensor LED indicators embedded across the cybernetic joints flashed in perfect, rhythmic synchronization with his kinetic movement.
Nearby, Chen She scooped up the heavy cardboard box Xie Hao had callously discarded onto the floorboards, pulling out a thick, fist-sized instruction manual. He began reading through the technical schematics with immense relish. The operational specifications of this cybernetic limb were truly staggering. The footnotes explicitly stated: Equipped with structural adaptation matrices. Capable of executing seamless fluid transformations based on real-time environmental variables and tactical combat demands, perfectly optimizing to the user’s active intent.
“Brother Xie Hao, you just secured an absolute fortune!” the boy cheered.
“Be advised, you will require extensive conditioning drills to fully dominate that hardware’s processing capacity,” Song Yuqing noted.
“Consider it done! I’ll train every hour!” Xie Hao cried, tears of pure, unadulterated joy streaming down his face as he passionately kissed his new silver forearm.
Song Yuqing winced slightly. “Please don’t do that. It’s going to be incredibly awkward to wrap up this farewell if you dissolve into a total sobbing mess.”
“Manager Song, hear me loud and clear,” Xie Hao choked out, his voice thick with emotion. “If your establishment ever faces a security crisis down the line, I will gladly march through fire and water to flatten your enemies. No questions asked.”
“Pah, pah, pah! Keep your dark omens to yourself! What classification of crisis could possibly breach our manager’s domain?!” Liu Xiaona huffed, aggressively stamping her boot. Even so, her eyes kept darting back to the silver arm; she was deeply envious of the transformable cybernetic hardware.
“Man… maybe I should just manually hack my own left hand off right now so you can dispense a matching unit for me,” Xie Zetian grumbled, his core completely sour with jealousy.
“Hey, Chen She, flip through the database pages again. Does the manual specify whether the internal cells require an external electrical charge?” Song Yuqing asked, completely blanking Xie Zetian’s remarks. She privately felt the former dictator’s cognitive functions were remarkably low. How on earth had a guy with that baseline intelligence managed to found a major stronghold like Base No. 27?
Chen She intensely scanned the fine print, isolating the relevant data buried within a block of ant-sized text. “Found it. The internal battery core is engineered to passively absorb ambient kinetic energy from wind currents, water friction, or solar radiation. A standard five-minute exposure cycle yields exactly thirty days of continuous operational standby power.”
“Thank you, my absolute savior! My beautiful, golden-hearted provider!” Xie Hao cheered, lunging forward to throw his arms around Song Yuqing, but she instantly put her hands up, pushing his heavy frame away in deep disgust.
“Keep your distance, and save your praise. Your invoice was cleared standardly; you paid your dues in zombie carcasses.”
Song Yuqing had already run the backend ledger. Throughout his entire stay at God’s Supermarket, Xie Hao had maintained a rigorous, daily routine of clearing walkers from the perimeter blocks. The manual labor hadn’t just sharpened his physical reflexes and expanded his core earth attributes; he had systematically deposited a massive, continuous volume of raw carcasses into her processing gate. His credit balance was more than substantial enough to comfortably clear the margins for his survival rations, the cybernetic arm, and his daily coffee consumption. In reality, Song Yuqing had walked away with a massive profit; the prosthetic limb had cost her a fraction of her accumulated store points in the parallel timeline.
Xie Hao remained completely obsessed with his new arm, adjusting the settings as he stepped out of the lane, clearing the floor for their next departing traveler: Chen She.
The teenager had originally breached her perimeter flanked by a small squad of low-tier adult psychics, and today, he was shepherding those exact same men back out into the frontier. Chen She explicitly remembered his dark days moving concrete bricks under the blistering heat at Base No. 27; it was Liu Xiaona, Sister Qin, and Song Yuqing who had stretched out a hand to lift him out of the mud. Being deeply introverted, he felt far too embarrassed to articulate any cheesy, emotional speeches. He simply stepped forward, offering Liu Xiaona and the store manager a pair of tight, lingering hugs.
“Brother Liu, guard your flank! Sister Song, keep the shop secure! We will cross paths again down the road if our luck holds out!”
“Make sure you consume double portions on the trail and pack some actual mass onto your frame,” Song Yuqing smiled. She reached behind the primary cashier counter, dragging out a massive, heavily reinforced tactical rucksack that was stuffed to the seams with premium survival rations.
“Wait, Manager Song! I already processed a substantial volume of trail boxes through the gate earlier!”
“You are mandated to accept this crate. Consider it a private, corporate departure gift from myself and your big brother Liu,” Liu Xiaona interrupted. Keeping his expression stern to hide his emotion, the driver snatched the heavy rucksack and carefully strapped it onto the boy’s shoulders. Chen She truly proved his background as a seasoned martial artist and industrial laborer; despite the staggering weight of the supplies slamming onto his spine, his posture remained perfectly straight, his back refusing to bend a single millimeter.
“Uh… wait a minute. Do the rest of us secure a matching corporate care package?” the middle-aged psychic standing behind the boy asked, his eyes widening greedily.
“Absolutely not,” Song Yuqing replied with merciless bluntness.
“And what about my logistics loadout?” Nanjiao prompted, leaning his lanky frame over the counter.
“Your fleet of pigeons is processed, along with these units,” Song Yuqing noted. She focused her spatial corridor, violently materializing the fifteen automated distribution gates directly onto the floorboards, completely unconcerned with whether the heavy steel frames shattered on impact.
“Whoa, take it easy with the hardware! Those are delicate network hubs! It’s going to ruin the deployment if the internal circuits are compromised!”
“Gah-ha! Gah-ha, gah-hah-ha, gah-ha!” Gaha hissed from the corner, leveling a sharp, unamused glare at the programmer. Who exactly are you calling clumsy, tech geek? Besides, our backend infrastructure is reinforced to withstand military-grade concussive force. Shush!
Nanjiao let out a long, defeated sigh.
Song Yuqing crossed her arms, surveying his gear. “You have fifteen massive automated iron gates and an entire flock of mutant birds to transport across a thousand miles of arctic wasteland. How exactly do you plan to haul that density of physical weight out of this town?”
“Please. My botanical manipulation isn’t just for growing salad greens,” Nanjiao smirked.
To the absolute astonishment of the entire room, the programmer focused his core energy, forcing a bizarre, transparent plant structure that looked remarkably identical to a heavy industrial hydrogen balloon to sprout straight out of his palm. Having drained three full cups of specialty cappuccino over the past shift, his flora manipulation had undergone a massive, structural modification.
Flashing a proud smile, Nanjiao carefully tore a small, microscopic aperture into the surface of the translucent membrane. He gently guided the edge of the floating bulb to touch the nearest pigeon, then tapped it against the heavy frame of the security gates. The absolute second the plant tissue made contact, the targets violently shrunk in scale, their entire physical mass siphoned cleanly inside the core of the bulb.
Once the entire shipment was securely loaded, Nanjiao utilized a series of thin vines to tightly constrict and seal the edges of the transparent capsule, hoisting the model-sized bulb in his hand.
“Wow. You can essentially leverage that trait to mimic a spatial void,” Song Yuqing noted, shifting her gaze back to the massive, oversized backpack strapped to his shoulders, suddenly realizing his physical luggage was entirely redundant.
“Negative, negative. It’s far too hazardous to rely on this method for bulk survival supplies,” Nanjiao countered, shaking his head. “Deploying a glowing, anomalous floating bulb in public during an apocalypse is basically putting a massive neon target on your back for scavengers to rob you.”
Song Yuqing rolled her eyes hard. The guy literally shrank fifteen massive iron gates into a tiny, palm-sized miniature replica like a child’s desk model. Any passing mercenary would simply assume he was playing with a toy; not a single soul in the waste would ever guess that a multi-million credit logistics grid was nested inside.
In truth, Nanjiao was simply far too embarrassed to disclose the glaring structural flaw of his new botanical capsule: the cellular modification he had coded into the plant was highly unstable. After a set chronological window elapsed, the containment field would completely fail, forcing the items trapped inside to violently snap back to their original physical dimensions while the transparent bulb expanded exponentially. If the timer ran out while he was navigating a tight highway bottleneck, he would instantly find himself converted into a highly conspicuous, deeply eccentric weirdo pinned down beneath fifteen massive iron security doors.
