004 had stirred up the interests of the Three Great Families.
When Shen Wuqiao was awakened by the first batch of customers of the morning, the lights in the convenience store had already switched off automatically.
From the first sale at dawn, she had earned 18 Crystal Cores, giving her +180 system points. For every 10,000 points accumulated, she would receive 0.1% of a Time Fragment.
Meanwhile, upgrading the window convenience store to an L2 Small Shop required two conditions: stocking at least 80 different types of goods, and accumulating 5,000 points.
If she wanted to upgrade to a safer, more concealed Spatial dimension, she would have to increase her workload. Today, besides running the store, she also needed to collect as much scrap as possible within one hour.
To be safe, she planned to set out at noon, doing business in the morning and afternoon.
The convenience store had only been open for a day, so not many people knew about it. Most of those who came were passing scavengers or pioneers.
But the advantage was that everything she sold was a rarity in the Post-apocalyptic Era, so nearly everyone passing by with Crystal Cores to their name would buy something in their astonishment.
By mid-morning, half of the two hundred bottles of mineral water were gone, and the biscuits and braised beef instant noodles had sold out.
Sister Lan’s four-person team arrived right at noon, just as she was preparing to close the store for an hour.
“Sorry, I stayed up too late and overslept this morning. Here’s the stuff you asked to be collected.”
Shen Wuqiao took the empty bottles and plastic packaging. “Thank you. You’ve come at just the right time—let me record your points.”
Keke stepped forward with her arms crossed. Even the two patches of freckles on her face couldn’t diminish her charm when she smiled.
“Boss, why do you want to collect this stuff? The factories in all the bases stopped production long ago—except for making insect biscuits, everything else relies on Ability Users.”
Shen Wuqiao tidied up the small table as she smiled back. “I just have a bit of a cleanliness obsession. I can’t stand seeing trash everywhere.”
“Someone in the apocalypse who still hasn’t kicked a rich-person habit like that must have quite the background. Boss, are you from one of the Three Great Families?” asked the burly man called Tie Niu bluntly.
Strength-type Ability Users carried an intimidating presence, but Shen Wuqiao saw no malice in his eyes, which put her somewhat at ease.
“The Three Great Families? Who are they?”
Seeing that the bewilderment in her eyes didn’t seem feigned, deep shock—even fear—erupted in each of their gazes.
“So you’re not from the Three Great Families? Then you dare to open a shop here?”
“Are the Three Great Families that bored? Would they really care about me running a little shop?” Shen Wuqiao, who knew nothing of the new order of the Post-apocalyptic Era, was genuinely confused.
Lin Feng leaned against the outer wall of the convenience store with his arms crossed, lips curling into a mocking smirk, but said nothing.
It was Keke who frowned, her eyes brimming with intense curiosity and nervousness.
“Where on earth are you from? You don’t even know the Three Great Families? They monopolize the three great survival resources of the apocalypse—medicine, food, and purified water. Your shop is directly snatching the interests of two of them!”
Shen Wuqiao seemed to understand, and she was indeed a little afraid. But if she didn’t open the store, she would surely die in the Post-apocalyptic Era.
With the store open, at least she had the system’s protection—a thread of hope for survival.
“Thank you for telling me all this. I understand now. I’ll deal with whatever comes! If you’re not buying anything, I need to close up and head out.”
“Boss, you’re closing at noon to go out? Aren’t you afraid someone will steal from your shop?” Sister Lan felt more and more that Shen Wuqiao was unfathomable—she was definitely not as simple as she appeared.
“Anyone who tries to steal from me can drop dead! I like going out at noon, because things tend to happen early in the morning or late in the evening…”
Today her target was the junkyard on the base’s outskirts, one kilometer north of her little shop. The distance wasn’t a problem—the problem was that zombies and Mutant Beasts might be lurking around there.
She had considered having scavengers collect garbage and trade it to her for points and supplies, but the system said no!
It had to be picked up by her personally, or by certified shop assistants she recruited later, for it to count.
Of course, the buy-then-recycle loophole could still be exploited.
She closed up the shop, grabbed a handy iron shovel, and set off.
The period of immunity to all physical damage only lasted one hour, so she ran at breakneck speed with the shovel on her shoulder.
It took her just six minutes to reach the garbage mountain two kilometers away. Thankfully, there were no zombies—only a few scavengers rummaging through the trash piles for useful supplies.
The stench here was overwhelming. Anyone who could still manage to survive elsewhere wouldn’t come here.
That actually put her more at ease. Not bothering to catch her breath, she stuffed strips of tissue into her nose and immediately started picking things up.
With limited time, she didn’t sort through anything—she simply collected all the recognizable plastic packaging, scrap industrial products, scrap metal, and the like.
The garbage mountain was mostly plastic packaging bags. Anything else with any remaining value had long since been picked clean by the scavengers.
“Big sis~ The stuff you’re picking up isn’t edible, you know!” A dirty, skin-and-bones little girl, wearing ill-fitting shoes full of holes, ran up to Shen Wuqiao and tugged at her pants.
Because she was so thin and frail, the girl’s eyes seemed especially large—though they were hollow and exhausted.
Shen Wuqiao’s heart clenched hard. In peacetime, if she’d seen a child like this, she would have pulled out money on the spot.
But now, she could barely keep herself afloat.
“Then what did you pick up?” Shen Wuqiao asked, staring at the little claws caked with black grime.
The girl glanced warily around, then pulled open a small cloth bag slung at her side to show her.
“I picked up cockroach cakes, and this meat bone—there’s still lots of meat on it! I can boil it when I get back and eat it.”
Shen Wuqiao looked at that pile of ‘food’ coated in filth and reeking of stench. What was the difference between this stuff and biochemical weapons?
The big bone did have quite a bit of meat on it—it looked like a pre-apocalyptic frozen pork leg bone. She’d seen a Mutated Pig once; it was built like an elephant.
The cockroach cakes even had bite marks in them. All of this had been thrown out from behind that tall base wall.
They would rather throw their leftovers into the garbage than give any of it to the people outside.
To them, the people out here probably didn’t even count as human anymore!
“Big sis, I have a spiky fruit here too. You can have it?” Seeing that Shen Wuqiao seemed sad, the girl pulled a half-rotted green spiky ball from the pocket on her other side.
Shen Wuqiao’s eyes suddenly lit up. “A cactus? This is a dying cactus—you don’t recognize it?”
The girl shook her head blankly.
Shen Wuqiao thought about it—the child in front of her was at most seven years old, born after the apocalypse. It wasn’t surprising that she didn’t recognize many things.
“You really want to give it to me?” she asked, bending down.
“Mm-hm. It’s rotten, though, and I don’t know if the spiky parts are edible?”
Shen Wuqiao took the rotten cactus, but a sharp spine pierced her fingertip, and a bead of blood welled up. She hissed softly at the pain.
“Sis, are you okay?”
Shen Wuqiao shook her head, then pulled out a pack of milk candies and handed it to her. “This can’t be eaten, but this can.”
When the little girl saw the brand-new, unopened pack of milk candies in her hands, her big eyes went wide.
“This is candy? Thank you, Sis~”
Shen Wuqiao patted her head and reminded her to hide the candy carefully. Just as she withdrew her hand and turned her head, she saw three Mutant Rats, each as big as a dog, crawling out of the garbage heap.
The Mutant Rats had large, pointed heads, with cloudy eyeballs bulging out, covered in a layer of grayish-white film.
The skin on their long, sharp snouts was cracked and curled back, and half of their faces were hairless from festering sores, smeared with blackened rotting flesh, through which their sharp teeth were clearly visible.
Shen Wuqiao gripped the shovel in her hands tightly, her heart pounding wildly. The moment her eyes met the Mutant Rat’s, her soul nearly left her body.
“Run—”