006 Her ”Borrowing Arrows with a Straw Boat.”
Her blood seemed to rush instantly to her head, every cell trembling with excitement: “Who did you just say? Shen Jin?!”
Keke eagerly jumped in to answer, her eyes full of admiration and regret: “That’s right! The only Eighth-rank Ability User among the bases north of the river. What a pity—Heaven envies genius! They say he’s also devilishly handsome, so gorgeous it’s deadly.”
Lin Feng, full of righteous indignation, sneered: “Women have no brains. Shen Jin is nothing but a vicious dog raised by the Shen family. Do you need me to remind you how many evil deeds he’s done for them? He got hit by superpower backlash—serves him right!”
“Um, is the Shen family you’re talking about the Shen Corporation that was in the tech industry before the Post-apocalyptic Era?” Shen Wuqiao’s voice trembled.
Keke frowned and complained: ”That’s right. It’s no secret. By the third year of the apocalypse, the Shen family had a monopoly on Anti-pollution Medicine—one of the three great families. Wicked capitalists.”
Sister Lan took a sip of water and recalled calmly: “Shen Jin also has a younger brother. During last year’s great Beast Tide, I saw him once from a distance. Equally gifted, but supposedly a monster with a human face and a beast’s heart—a necrophiliac pervert.”
Shen Wuqiao leaned against the window, her heart pounding, her breathing hot and rapid, hot liquid blurring her vision.
Whatever the truth was, at least her eldest and second brothers were still alive.
“Boss, why are you crying? Oh right, we still don’t know your name!” Keke asked curiously.
Shen Wuqiao hurriedly pulled out a tissue to wipe her tears and sniffled: “My surname is Shen… I mean, Lu.”
The squad members stared blankly at her, their eyes each filled with complicated emotions.
“Boss Shen, if you’re done with that tissue, can I have it?” Tie Niu’s hulking frame came over, shoving the others aside.
Shen Wuqiao was slightly taken aback, then remembered the matter at hand. Now that she had confirmed her brothers were alive, she had to find a way to see them.
She had heard that Light-Chasing Base was about three hundred li away. Without a Supernatural Ability, if she went there herself, she’d die a thousand times on the road.
So the only option was to make them come to her. Her brothers’ reputations weren’t good, so she couldn’t reveal her identity or seek help from others, lest she invite more trouble.
The best way was to grow the shop big enough that the Shen family would surely notice her soon.
“Tie Niu, Sister Lan, if you’re short on Crystal Cores or supplies, we could make a deal,” she proposed seriously.
Sister Lan was intrigued: “What kind of deal?”
Shen Wuqiao picked up the pistol left behind by the Marauder. “Do you have bullets? I just got this gun and want to stock up on armor-piercing rounds. I’ll trade supplies for them.”
Tie Niu glanced at the gun in her hand and nodded excitedly: “10mm Auto—yes! I’ll bring some tomorrow!”
“Also, if there are women’s clothes at your base, you could get a few sets for me.”
Although she could find such things in the ruined city center herself, she didn’t dare gamble on her luck.
“Sure, I’ll find some for you,” Sister Lan agreed readily.
“But Boss Shen, I have to warn you—the man you just killed was a lackey of a mid-level manager at Radiance Base. You’re likely in for trouble.”
Shen Wuqiao sighed silently: “Thanks for the warning. I’ll be careful.”
After the rush of customers passed, she counted her gains on her fingers twice: 284 Junior Crystal Cores—2,840 points.
Do another round of business tonight, go out scavenging once more tomorrow, and reaching L2 should be no problem.
As for self-defense, she weighed the custom fully automatic machine pistol that had been delivered right to her door. Unloaded, without the magazine, it was a good deal lighter than a Glock 18, and with the suppressor attached, the shift in weight distribution forward was minimal—even a woman could control it with steady hands.
She was clumsy at everything else, never lifted a finger for chores, couldn’t tell one grain from another—eighteen years of drifting aimlessly. She truly had no other skills, except one: her aim was dead accurate.
That was thanks to her time at the Shen household, when she often tagged along with her eldest and second brothers to the shooting range for target practice.
She’d always figured she’d never use it in her lifetime, never even touch a real gun. Who knew she’d actually put this skill to use in the Post-apocalyptic Era.
That night, the incandescent lamp above the convenience store lit up automatically, its light falling on the sign and the small patch of open ground in front of the shop.
Every time she thought of the person who had died outside during the day, her heart quailed. If she could, she’d honestly love to haul the whole convenience store somewhere else.
How long would these anxious days last? If only her brothers and her parents were still here.
She opened a deluxe self-heating hot pot. The system sold it for 4 low-tier crystals—half again as expensive as self-heating rice—but the ingredients were genuinely generous.
The spicy, steaming aroma drifted out of the store. In the darkness, two pairs of sinister eyes locked dead onto the figure beneath the incandescent light.
【Detection: Store is locked under hostile fire. Corresponding Protective Shield activated.】
Shen Wuqiao had a lotus root slice drenched in chili oil in her mouth. The moment she looked up, she saw a stream of bullets raining toward her like a dense downpour.
“Rat-tat-tat—”
A hundred meters away, two heavy machine guns, under the direction of a one-eyed man, unleashed a frenzied barrage on the convenience store.
“Hmph, so the store has some tricks up its sleeve? So what? As long as I stay far away, I can still shred this lousy shop and everyone in it into a honeycomb.”
“Brother Long, something’s wrong. We’ve poured 300 rounds into it in a minute—how is that lousy store completely untouched?” One of the underlings rubbed his narrow, slitted eyes.
“There’s… there’s some kind of silver-glowing shield outside. It swallowed up all our bullets.”
“Switch to armor-piercing rounds, damn it!!” The one-eyed man clenched a cigarette between his teeth, the flesh of his brutal face twitching.
The first belt of ammunition emptied, and they loaded armor-piercing rounds with even greater stopping power.
Shen Wuqiao finished her lotus root slices and picked up a piece of duck blood with her chopsticks. Looking at the shell casings scattered all over the ground at her storefront, only one thought filled her mind:
Could these things be exchanged with the system too?
One belt of armor-piercing rounds later, the Protective Shield didn’t have so much as a scratch, but the one-eyed man’s heavy machine guns had overheated and stopped firing.
“Damn it~ We underestimated her. Fall back. Find a few High-rank Ability Users and come flatten this lousy store!”
The troublemakers left for now, and Shen Wuqiao immediately went out to collect the shell casings.
【Detected Host has picked up 500 ordinary shell casings and 333 armor-piercing shell casings. Reward: 10 ordinary heavy machine gun belts and 8 armor-piercing belts.】
Haha, so this is what they meant by “borrowing arrows with a straw boat”?
【The Host’s convenience store does not currently qualify to sell ammunition. Listing permissions will unlock at L5. For now, personal use only.】
Fine, no selling then. At least she had them in her pocket—no worries there.
Early the next morning, Sister Lan’s squad brought the bullets Shen Wuqiao needed—100 rounds in total, all tungsten-steel-core armor-piercing rounds.
“Use them freely. We saved them up ourselves.”
“By market rates, one tungsten steel armor-piercing round equals eight Junior Crystal Cores, so 100 rounds comes to eight hundred Crystal Cores. You can pre-deposit 8,000 points at my shop and pay for purchases from your balance.”
“Or, if you decide what you need, you can just take it all at once. If you don’t find what you want today, come back this afternoon—new stock arrives in the afternoon.”
Sister Lan smiled calmly. “We trust Boss Shen won’t run off with our money. Let’s pre-deposit! After all, carrying off too many supplies at once would draw too much attention.”
Keke stepped forward, acting cute and coquettish. “Pretty boss, how about an orange soda first?”
Shen Wuqiao agreed readily. “Sure, but I’m keeping the bottle for recycling.”
“OK…”
After finishing the morning rush, she grabbed her gun, closed the shop, and headed out. Today’s destination was another section of the base’s garbage mountain.
Light-Chasing Base, Core District—
The sound of high heels clacked out a crisp staccato on the steel plates. A woman in a black combat outfit with a high ponytail had cool, sharp eyes and a valiant bearing.
“A convenience store with its own defensive shield. Interesting. I’ll go check it out myself.”
Lu Xiao crossed his long legs and leaned against a corridor pillar, arms folded, his silver earring reflecting a cold, dark gleam.
“Lu Qingxue, this time don’t go making others clean up your mess again. Wipe it up yourself, and do it properly.”
Lu Qingxue stopped in her tracks and turned to stare at the man’s temperatureless smile, a nameless fury rising in her heart.
“Lu Xiao, even if we aren’t blood siblings, I’ve still called you ‘brother’ for twenty years. What makes Shen Wuqiao better than me? All of you, every single one of you, treasure a dead woman like she’s precious…”