The old man urged Shen Ruoran to hurry up and take it; he had to move on to the next person. Everyone was still hungry and needed to eat as soon as possible.
Seeing that Shen Ruoran hadn’t reacted for a long while, the old man simply tossed the flatbread onto her lap. His voice was heavy and filled with resentment: “You won’t get a bitten flatbread every day. Things are fair here; we take turns.”
He then turned away to hand the remaining pieces to the others.
The others took their portions and immediately began stuffing them into their mouths. Those with strong self-control would save a little to eat in the afternoon. Those with weak self-control would finish it all at once in the morning and then endure their hunger until tomorrow.
While the others were preoccupied with their frantic eating, Shen Ruoran suppressed her disgust. Using her sleeve to avoid direct contact, she picked up the flatbread. She found a spot by a wall to block the view of others and secretly tucked the bread into her space. She would find an opportunity to give it to Huang Xiaoya later as a reward for her obedience.
She would never touch something that someone else had bitten.
A few minutes later, Shen Ruoran found an empty spot to sit and observe everyone’s movements.
To conserve their energy and reduce the feeling of hunger, the people on this floor either sat still or lay down where they were. The only exception was Cai Juanhua. The middle-aged woman seemed unable to tolerate a quiet atmosphere and kept finding topics to mutter about to herself.
Soon, her attention shifted to Shen Ruoran.
“Hey, newcomer, what kind of work did you do upstairs before?” Cai Juanhua shouted in her loud, grating voice as she walked over and sat down beside Shen Ruoran. She reached out a grimy, dark hand, attempting to stroke Shen Ruoran’s fair skin.
Shen Ruoran moved back two steps in discomfort, dodging the touch. She hadn’t forgotten how Cai Juanhua had humiliated her yesterday.
Frowning, she said, “Didn’t you say that those who work for the thugs are no good? So why should I tell you anything?”
Cai Juanhua chuckled a few times, not feeling embarrassed in the slightest. She smoothed things over for herself: “Oh, come now. You’ve come to the 14th floor to live with us, so we should know each other’s backgrounds, shouldn’t we? We have to get along in the future. You’re a young girl—be a bit more open-minded. You should share the things that need to be shared.”
Hearing these words made Shen Ruoran’s head buzz again. Despite her age, Cai Juanhua was quite skilled at being passive-aggressive. Although she spoke with a smile, she was actually accusing Shen Ruoran of being petty. If Shen Ruoran didn’t speak today, it would be framed as her not wanting to get along with the people on the 14th floor.
It was quite the accusation to levy.
Shen Ruoran gave a cold snort and walked behind a load-bearing wall to sit down, unwilling to look at Cai Juanhua’s petty, philistine face.
Resting her hands on her knees, she pondered her next move: should she continue her undercover mission, or simply take the boat and leave?
She had already collected over 700 pieces of men’s clothing from the 13th and 14th floors, which was enough for the future male employees of the building to purchase. As for women’s clothing, what she currently needed to stockpile in her space were clothes for the elderly and children; she already had plenty of sizes for adult women, regardless of their build.
The “All-Around Farmer,” Lai Yecheng…
Shen Ruoran repeated the name in her mind. She had already missed out on Lu Chuan, who was worth 500 wealth points. Moreover, over the past few days, the portraits of some industry leaders on her map had begun to darken one after another, and the numerical values above their heads had disappeared. They had likely met with misfortune and departed from this world entirely.
Lai Yecheng was still alive in this building. If she left now, she might not get another chance to see him.
She knew that the building could be upgraded, and that “special talents” held high-value chips that could accelerate the upgrade process.
Shen Ruoran decided to stay for three more days. Within that time, she was determined to find Lai Yecheng and take him with her. She wanted to see if she could use his 150 wealth points to achieve the first upgrade of the 31-story building.
“The flood seems to have reached the sixth floor…” Tu Zhouzhou’s face was pressed against the floor-to-ceiling glass window as he murmured vacantly.
Old Man Chen walked over, following his gaze downward. He let out a heavy, long sigh. “Is this old bag of bones really going to drown to death?”
More and more people walked to the window, gazing pessimistically at the pitch-black sky and the relentless, pouring rain.
Cai Juanhua knelt on the floor, slapping her thighs forcefully. She cursed and cried simultaneously, as if mourning a deceased loved one. She spoke in her hometown dialect, repeatedly chanting the same person’s name.
Resting alone on the other side, Shen Ruoran’s closed eyelashes flickered, but she did not get up to look out the window.
Another three hours passed. The screams from downstairs were loud enough to nearly burst one’s eardrums.
Tu Zhouzhou immediately thought of the worst possibility. He rushed to the window, his eyes dull and lifeless. “The… the 7th floor.”
Men and women alike collapsed onto the floor.
In the beginning, it took an average of 1.5 days for the flood to submerge one floor. Now, in just half a day, the 6th floor had been completely lost. By this calculation, the 14th floor would cease to exist by the day after tomorrow at the latest.
Huang Xiaoya held onto Liu Yun with both hands, frightened into tears by the atmosphere. To their right, Zhu Kai buried his head in his hands and wailed. A man in his 40s, he cried louder than anyone else.
When he was exhausted from crying, he crawled over to Old Man Chen and grabbed the old man’s lower leg pleadingly. “Old Chen, I beg you, save us. You must have a way, right?”
Old Man Chen sighed helplessly. Not daring to look Zhu Kai in the eye, he slowly bent down to pry away the fingers clutching him. With a hunched back, he walked step by step toward the wall. Facing the blank surface, he didn’t say a word.
The others on this floor, like Zhu Kai, were all staring at Old Man Chen. Their eyes were filled with sorrow and despair, placing their only hope on the eldest among them.
Shen Ruoran had long since realized that Old Man Chen’s identity was unusual. Including what Huang Xiaoya had said yesterday, it was clear that the old man carried a label in the minds of the thugs as someone who could not be offended.
Shen Ruoran felt that the story of this building might be more interesting than her previous transmigration experiences. It was worth digging deeper; she quite enjoyed listening to gossip.
She took the opportunity to chime in, “Why are you making things difficult for an old man? This building is a place where the weak are prey for the strong; strength is the only standard for survival.”
Someone immediately retorted, “What do you know, newcomer? Old Chen’s son works at the Capital Research Institute! If it weren’t for the equipment he sent, the people upstairs wouldn’t be sending white flatbreads down every day—they would have gone moldy long ago.”
Another item to stockpile.
Shen Ruoran added it to her list of supplies. Pretending to be curious, she continued to ask, “Then why is Old Chen squeezed in here on the 14th floor with us? What does that equipment do? The people upstairs must be eating better than us. Since it’s Old Chen’s equipment, why can’t the 14th floor use it for a while?”
Shen Ruoran threw out too many questions at once. The person who had retorted earlier began to stutter, afraid of saying the wrong thing and offending someone.
Seeing that he had inadvertently become the center of conversation, Old Man Chen took the chance to state his position. His voice was raspy with age and slow:
“My son is a researcher in the capital, but I am not.”
“The thugs’ wariness of me is limited. If the heavy rain doesn’t end, or if something happens to my son in the capital, then in their eyes, I am just a useless person. So, do not count on me to negotiate any conditions. This old man does not have that kind of power.”