Before departing, the teammates from the Imperial Capital boarded the plane for one last farewell. They even created a new WeChat group called Sheep Herding Group (11 members), agreeing to post updates whenever they spotted a fat sheep or new opportunities.
Monkey and Monk stayed behind at the Tupo Tianji Hospital due to their serious injuries. Thankfully, Monk's life was saved, though he was still unconscious. As for Hao Yunlai, he was carried back onto the plane and sent home to Wu City. They'd already consulted several doctors over the past two days, but none could do anything. Everyone said Hao Yunlai's brain cells were unresponsive, that he'd become a vegetable. Maybe it really was time to try Jing Shu's method.
She figured she'd have to study that crimson liquid properly. Hao Yunlai's luck wasn't like Su Mali's. His ability to dodge danger always came at a cost, while Su Mali was truly blessed by the heavens. She lived in a constant state of fortune, and anyone who tried to harm her usually ended up dead. Thinking about it now, Su Mali was terrifying.
Before Tank got off the plane, Jing Shu forced a basket of fresh eggs from Xiao Dou into his arms, telling him he'd receive another batch every three months—along with a Lion Head goose—as a guarantor's fee.
Since Tank was the guarantor for both parties, he'd be held accountable if anything went wrong, so it was only fair he got some benefits in return.
"I'll take the eggs, but I don't need the goose," he said. "The Starve-No-More Food Regulation Bureau already promised to cover my sister's meals, thank goodness. My bottomless-pit of a sister finally has a solution. I'm honestly relieved to leave Da Hua and Gou Dan with you. Oh, and I heard our captain's unit wanted to send you their dog, Er Gouzi, but the captain refused to be a guarantor, so it fell through."
"Hmm? Er Gouzi? What's that?" Jing Shu asked.
Tank opened his mouth, but one sharp glare from Zhen Nantian shut him up immediately. He bolted with the basket of eggs. Zhen Nantian cleared his throat and said, "The batch of seeds you sent to the Imperial Capital's been received. I already warned them the seeds were exposed to radiation and some might mutate. If they want to fix it, they'll have to come to you. But for now, they're unwilling to pay your price, so they've hired a few labs to seek sponsorship and handle it themselves."
"That's fine," Jing Shu said casually. "The compensation I got from them is already generous. If they can fix it, great. If not, they'll come to me eventually."
To her, being able to help preserve global seed samples for the nation was already an honor. Besides, the government had given her plenty of contribution points, which she could later exchange for private cargo rights when traveling abroad. That was enough for her.
But to use her Spirit Spring water—produced only one drop per day—to purify radiated seeds for free? Not happening. Especially when the other side didn't even acknowledge what she was doing. Even if she told them she'd solved the radiation problem, they wouldn't appreciate it until they hit a wall themselves. Only then would they understand her value.
Giving help when it's truly needed always mattered more than showing off when things were easy. When they finally couldn't solve it and came to her, any request she made would seem perfectly reasonable, even generous. That would be the real contribution.
Doing it now would only make people think she was being greedy.
Zhen Nantian nodded, narrowing his eyes. His lips twitched as if he wanted to ask about that bloody night when she smuggled supplies and killed those men, but in the end, he just sighed and got off the plane.
The plane took off again.
The Wu City team had taken heavy losses. Hao Yunlai lay unconscious in the cabin, Monkey remained in the Imperial Capital for treatment, and now the massive private jet only had Jing Shu and Yang Yang aboard. They were eating spicy lamb spine hotpot, slurping marrow from the bones.
"Don't waste that marrow," Jing Shu reminded him. "We can grind it into bone powder and reuse it later."
Yang Yang nodded, scooping out the last bit of marrow with practiced ease. He'd learned by now that with Jing Shu, nothing went to waste.
Da Hua and Gou Dan were unusually quiet. They'd been pecked bloody by Xiao Dou earlier for disobedience and now looked pitiful. Jing Shu didn't bother comforting them. A few days of Spirit Spring diluted water would heal them up anyway. The rules in her house had to be enforced.
"You really don't want to move up to S-rank?" Yang Yang asked, poking another bone with his chopsticks. "You'd get national privileges, you know. Directly under Imperial Capital authority. No other organization can touch you. Basically, S-ranks can do whatever they want. There are barely a dozen of them in the whole country."
"No thanks," Jing Shu said calmly. "Maybe if things ever get truly dangerous, I'll consider it. But not now."
The Imperial Capital might be powerful, but it wasn't easy to cozy up to.
"In that case, I can't tell you what you were curious about," Yang Yang said with a sly grin.
...
April 4, 2025. Friday. Qingming Festival.
Wu City's temperature dropped to minus six degrees Celsius.
If it weren't a national holiday, the city's canteens wouldn't have opened their all-you-can-eat buffets for 2 virtual coins. Most people had even forgotten what Qingming was.
The last buffet day had been three months ago, on New Year's Eve. That showed just how rare these events were now. People lined up outside the disaster shelter canteens a day early just to get in. As for tomb sweeping, most just whispered a few words of remembrance. What else could they do? Take a road trip like in the old days when tolls were free?
Even if they wanted to burn paper offerings, there wasn't any paper left. People were wiping their asses with stones now, and fire? Good luck finding a lighter or match these days.
All the buffet prices had gone up. Back in the first year of the apocalypse, it only cost 0.3 coins for an unlimited meal—complete with those tasty maggot dishes. At least that was real meat. How nostalgic, those crispy salt-and-pepper maggots. Now, everything had changed. The cold alone made it impossible to raise even a single larva.
Technically, the buffets were still "unlimited," but with food so scarce, there were new restrictions: each person got fifteen minutes to eat as much as they could, then had to leave for the next group.
On good days, the menu included mushrooms. Usually, it was red nematode patties so hard they could break teeth. People still choked trying to swallow them in time. Several deaths had already occurred that day.
The corpses were dragged away, and the half-chewed patties covered in saliva were snatched up within seconds. In moments, the dead man's clothes and shoes were stripped too. Civil workers hauled the bodies away, vanishing into the crowd. No one cared. Only a few people muttered,
"With how cold it is, why bother hauling them off? Just bury them on the spot. Isn't that easier? Doesn't that save fuel?"
"Who cares," someone replied. "We're barely eating. Maybe they're hauling bodies back to render corpse oil for frying. Those new fried red nematode patties taste pretty damn good."
"You're disgusting. I just lost my appetite."
"Move! Move!"
"Who the hell's shoving? You almost crushed me!"