Chapter 159 — Nothing Goes Smoothly?
“Hot, hot… so good, so good…”
“Smells amazing! It’s unbelievably delicious!”
“Mhm! Mm!”
The group sat packed around the table, heads lowered as they devoured the mutton dumplings in huge mouthfuls.
There wasn’t much white flour left in the house anymore.
Not a single grain could be wasted.
Although they had planted wheat everywhere possible after harvesting the rice, it would still take months before any of it could be harvested.
Once tonight’s meal was finished, they would truly have no more white flour left at all.
And because of the zombie attacks, nobody even knew whether this batch of wheat would suffer delayed growth or reduced yields.
Who knew how long it would be before they could eat flour again?
“Slow down, the hotpot’s almost ready,” Xu Mei laughed as she carried over the final plate of dumplings.
“Hurry up and sit down to eat. I saved your share already, otherwise this bunch of food addicts would’ve stolen everything,” Song Lingling quickly pulled her into a seat.
Actually, they hadn’t cooked all the dumplings.
More than half had been frozen for later.
Tonight they also had hotpot, which could be eaten with rice.
Everyone was eating dumplings now mostly because they craved them so badly—and because eating dumplings on New Year’s Eve simply felt right.
After completely wiping out the dumplings, the large hotpot simmering in the center of the table was finally ready.
They cleared away the vinegar bowls, and the group—already stuffed with both rice and dumplings—still happily served themselves fresh bowls of white rice before digging into the hotpot.
At the very bottom of the pot was napa cabbage.
Layered above it were thick slices of roast duck, battered fried mutton, fried potatoes, fried frozen tofu, fried yam, fried mutton meatballs, along with mushrooms and vegetables harvested from home.
Everything simmered together in a huge steaming pot.
The pre-seasoned broth had absorbed all the rich flavors from the ingredients.
It paired perfectly with rice—both as side dishes and as soup poured over rice.
After the dumplings settled in their stomachs, everyone finally slowed down, chatting and laughing around the table.
“Since it’s New Year’s,” Song Lingling suddenly proposed while raising her hand, “why don’t we all make a wish?”
The room instantly quieted.
Only the bubbling hotpot continued noisily asserting its existence.
Luo Xun looked up and exchanged glances with Yan Fei before looking around the table.
Wang Duo suddenly raised the hand holding his chopsticks.
“I wish for my darling and me to stay loving forever and never separate!”
Everyone burst into laughter.
Zhang Su shot him an annoyed look while scooping a large spoonful of meat and vegetables from the communal pot into his own bowl.
“I just hope we can keep hunting stupid mutant animals every month and eat meat every single day.”
The mindset of a true foodie really was different from ordinary people.
Still…everyone secretly agreed with that wish.
As the one who suggested the game, Song Lingling also raised her hand.
“I hope our crops always have huge harvests! So much food that we can never finish it all and never worry about running out!”
Xu Mei smiled.
“In that case, wouldn’t it make more sense to wish for more apartments to grow vegetables in?”
“That works too! And it actually sounds achievable,” Song Lingling said while biting her chopsticks and looking toward Luo Xun.
“The base definitely has empty apartments now after what happened recently.”
As team captain, Luo Xun could only respond:
“Don’t worry. After these next couple days we’ll go look for suitable apartments.”
“And we lost quite a few solar panels too, so we need to figure out replacements.”
“Then I wish we can get more crystal cores and exchange them for more supplies!”
“Shouldn’t that be higher-level crystal cores? We already get tons of low-level ones.”
“Man… if only we had spatial storage,” Li Tie suddenly began fantasizing.
“Do you think there really aren’t any space-type ability users in the apocalypse?”
“Even if there are, they probably wouldn’t tell anyone,” someone replied.
“We haven’t heard of any until now. Anyone with that kind of ability would definitely hide it.”
Everyone continued chatting noisily until someone suddenly asked:
“Captain, what about you and Brother Yan? What wishes do you two have?”
Luo Xun froze slightly.
A wish?
He honestly couldn’t think of one.
In his previous life, his wishes had been simple:
A big house where he could grow lots of food.
Walls covered in solar panels.
Enough crops to feed himself.
And someone who could stay by his side for life.
In this lifetime…all those wishes had already come true.
Thinking of that, he turned to glance at Yan Fei beside him.
“I don’t really have any huge wishes anymore.”
“I just hope…”
“…the zombies stop besieging the base so often.”
Suddenly, Xu Mei sighed softly.
“If only the apocalypse could end…”
“No… I mean, if only there were no more zombies.”
The room fell silent once again.
Then Wu Xin, who had remained quiet the whole time, lowered his head and spoke softly:
“…If possible, I really want to go back home someday.”
Instantly, the cheerful atmosphere vanished.
An indescribable heaviness spread through the room.
The bubbling hotpot and cheerful comedy program from the radio suddenly felt painfully out of place.
After New Year’s Eve came Spring Festival.
On New Year’s Day, everyone took the leftovers and dumplings home to slowly finish over the next few meals.
By the second day of the New Year, life had already returned to normal.
They resumed tending their crops, repairing walls and damaged metal structures from the zombie bird attacks, and replacing or fixing various broken equipment.
Luo Xun made a detailed list of everything they needed to repair or purchase.
Several solar panels had been destroyed.
The remaining ones could barely maintain the household’s electrical needs.
Fortunately, their storage batteries had been nearly full beforehand, allowing them to survive this long.
But eventually they would need to replenish their energy supply somehow.
Beyond that, they also needed to quickly solve the problem of expanding their planting area by finding suitable empty apartments.
Actually, the second problem was the more troublesome one.
Their manpower was limited.
If they could find empty apartments in their own building and renovate those, it wouldn’t be too hard.
But the frustrating thing was—all the vacant apartments in their building seemed to have already been occupied.
Using apartments elsewhere as planting rooms was possible too, but then came the issue of guarding them.
If the distance was close, it might still work.
But if the apartments were too far away, what if someone targeted them?
Who would they send over?
The nerd squad simply didn’t have enough people.
Not enough to split off extra manpower for permanent guard duty.
Besides, everyone’s current apartments had already been renovated into extremely comfortable living spaces.
Who would willingly move out alone?
And on top of that shoulder responsibilities like farming, guarding the place, harvesting crops, and so on?
If people constantly came and went, the chances of exposing the secrets hidden inside their apartments would only increase.
In short—there were problems everywhere.
Still, worrying was one thing.
The things that needed checking still had to be checked.
After asking around, Luo Xun’s group discovered that the military logistics exchange was temporarily inaccessible.
Apparently it was “closed for the holiday.”
In reality, outsiders simply weren’t allowed into the military camp anymore.
Both Luo Xun and Yan Fei suspected this was related to the incident from a few days ago.
Since they couldn’t exchange for solar panels through the military, the two carried crystal cores and points to one of the military’s public exchange counters.
But after asking around—there were currently no solar panels available for exchange.
They were told they would likely have to wait until after the Lantern Festival.
Left with no other choice, the two went to the information office to ask whether they could rent more apartments.
The result?
Because the losses caused by the zombie bird attack still hadn’t been fully counted, nobody knew exactly how many empty apartments remained—or whether some of the previously vacant units had already been occupied during the chaos.
They would have to wait longer before receiving concrete information.
“Nothing’s going right right after New Year…” Luo Xun gritted his teeth while walking through the somewhat empty streets.
Not a single thing they came out to do today had succeeded.
Not.
One.
Thing.
Their luck today was unbelievably awful.
“Don’t stress too much. It’s only the second day of the New Year…” Yan Fei tried comforting him, though even he felt the attempt was fairly weak.
Still, it wouldn’t help if both of them got angry together.
If cursing could solve problems, he wouldn’t mind cursing nonstop for three days and nights—
as long as it got them what they needed.
Luo Xun took a deep breath.
“Let’s head back first.”
Then he suddenly remembered something.
Before quitting their jobs, Li Tie’s group seemed to have copied a massive amount of information from the base databases.
The question was—had they happened to grab anything useful?
The moment the two returned home, Luo Xun immediately rushed toward the apartment where Li Tie’s group was currently busy fertilizing crops.
“Didn’t you guys copy a huge amount of base information before quitting?”
Li Tie and the others froze before nodding.
“Yeah? Didn’t we already dump all the TV dramas and reality shows into the shared folder?”
Luo Xun shook his head.
“Not those. I mean other materials.”
“Like locations inside the city that might store solar panels.”
“Or places that probably use large amounts of solar panels!”
“Ah! Right!!”
The five instantly jumped up.
Each of them stared at the others with expressions of regret.
How had they not thought of that earlier?!
He Qiankun suddenly grinned mischievously.
“Well… maybe we can actually look that up.”
“Look it up? What do you mean?” Luo Xun’s eyes lit up immediately.
“When I copied those files earlier, I also stuffed several database packs into the hard drive. There are still tons of random files that haven’t been sorted yet.”
Then he proudly puffed out his belly.
“And before leaving, I left a backdoor in the base information system.”
“The network speed sucks now, but…”
“…I can still climb back in.”
“Fatty, that’s amazing!”
“You’re a genius!”
“Come on, let’s go check right now! If the data isn’t in the hard drive, we should hurry before someone discovers your backdoor!”
The five immediately slung arms over each other’s shoulders and rushed off impatiently.
Just as Luo Xun and the others were about to follow and watch the fun, Xu Mei blocked the three grown men—Luo Xun, Yan Fei, and Zhang Su—with a dark expression.
“If all of you run off, who’s going to spread the fertilizer?!”
“Let those five professionals handle the computer stuff.”
“As for you three—”
“Get back to work!”
Xu Mei…your queen aura is getting stronger and stronger.
Are you trying to steal Zhang Su’s character setting now?
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
