The next morning, Shen Hanyin was awakened by Shen Suisui licking her face.
Suisui normally never disturbed her sleep, so something must have happened. The soundproofing on the reinforced door was a little too good, and she couldn’t hear anything from inside the bedroom.
Sure enough, as soon as she stepped out of the room, she heard the sound of someone pounding on the door.
Shen Hanyin wasn’t in a hurry.
She had put a lot of effort into reinforcing those doors. They could keep people occupied for quite a while.
After washing up, getting dressed, and calming Suisui down, she slung her Tang saber across her back and headed outside.
She unlocked and opened all three doors.
The sight that greeted her in the hallway made her raise an eyebrow.
There were at least a dozen people gathered outside.
A quick glance revealed that Li Yuan was among them. It looked like everyone in Building 9 had come except the residents of the tenth floor.
Did they think a person living alone would be easier to bully?
“What do you want?” she asked.
A woman immediately stepped forward.
“You injured my husband yesterday. Are you just going to pretend nothing happened?”
“That’s right,” another person chimed in. “Her husband can’t go out and look for food now. You’re basically trying to starve them to death.”
The others quickly joined in.
The man from the sixth floor suddenly pointed at the reinforced door.
“And what’s with this door you’ve installed? What exactly are you planning?”
The hallway grew increasingly noisy.
At that moment, Shen Hanyin noticed Luo Qi and Xu Chengyi walking over as well.
Now everyone from Building 9 was present.
“My wife is still lying in bed because of what you did,” another man shouted. “You owe us an explanation.”
“What kind of explanation do you want?” Shen Hanyin asked calmly.
“Hand over your food. We won’t be able to go outside for days. You think you can keep living comfortably while the rest of us suffer?”
“Fine,” Shen Hanyin replied. “Come here.”
The man hadn’t expected her to agree so easily.
He cautiously took a few steps forward before sensing something was wrong.
Just as he opened his mouth to speak, Shen Hanyin suddenly grabbed his collar and yanked him over.
Her Tang saber flashed from its sheath and pressed against his throat.
“Do you think I’d kill you?”
The man’s back slammed against the wall.
With a blade resting across his neck, his face instantly turned pale.
“You wouldn’t dare!”
Before Shen Hanyin could even react, his bravado completely collapsed.
“Don’t! Don’t! Help! Please don’t kill me!”
Shen Hanyin’s expression darkened.
She had prepared herself mentally countless times.
But she had never actually killed anyone.
Just imagining the blade slicing through clothing and flesh, imagining the vibration traveling through the hilt as steel scraped against bone, made her scalp tingle.
In the end, her fear won out.
She couldn’t do it.
Li Yuan immediately squeezed his way out of the crowd.
“Brother Shen Yan, let’s talk this out.”
Shen Hanyin maintained her altered voice.
“So you’re here to take my food too?”
“No, no,” Li Yuan said hurriedly. “We’re all residents of the same building. That’s a closer relationship than we have with outsiders. Put the knife away. It would be a shame to damage the harmony between neighbors.”
Shen Hanyin remained silent.
Li Yuan continued.
“I heard that during the flood, a lot of livestock got washed into the mountains outside the city. I came to ask if you’d like to cooperate with us. We can go together. Add the two brothers from the tenth floor, and we’ll have a decent team.”
He then looked toward Luo Qi.
“Brother, the country may have abandoned us, but we can’t abandon ourselves. There is strength in numbers. Livestock aren’t easy to catch, and the mountains are pretty far away. A larger group is safer too.”
Luo Qi narrowed his eyes.
“You’re sure there are animals there?”
“Absolutely. Plenty of people have already gone looking.”
“Hm. Then it’s worth discussing.”
He turned toward Shen Hanyin.
“Shen Yan, are you going?”
Shen Hanyin sighed softly.
The man who had been held at knifepoint immediately crouched down and carefully retreated into the crowd, terrified she might change her mind.
Seeing that, Shen Hanyin kicked him down the stairs.
He tumbled into the crowd, though fortunately someone caught him and he wasn’t injured.
Truthfully, she was angry.
Not at him.
At herself.
She had thought she was prepared.
She had believed she could do what was necessary.
Instead, she was still a coward.
“I’m going,” she answered.
If she refused to participate, she would probably become the target of everyone’s resentment again.
These people weren’t particularly dangerous individually, but they were as annoying as flies.
If they came knocking every day, it would become unbearable.
Traveling with them regularly would also save her the trouble of constantly pretending to search for food.
As long as she stayed vigilant, she should be fine.
Luo Qi quickly laid out a plan.
“If we actually catch anything, everything will be divided equally. The mountains are a long way from here, so we may need to stay overnight. Everyone should prepare accordingly.”
He checked the time.
“It’s eight-thirty now. If nobody objects, we’ll meet downstairs at nine and leave. If you’re not there by nine, we’ll assume you’re not coming.”
Without waiting for a response, he headed downstairs.
He was probably going home to gather supplies.
From hearing the news to making a decision had taken only a few minutes.
Shen Hanyin couldn’t help thinking that Luo Qi was either exceptionally talented or he had already known about the livestock and had been planning this all along.
Li Yuan had simply provided the perfect opportunity.
Back inside her apartment, Shen Hanyin sat down and stroked Suisui’s fur while reflecting on what had just happened.
Hesitation was dangerous.
If the disaster continued long enough, society might eventually descend into an era where people ate one another.
She couldn’t bring herself to become ruthless.
But she couldn’t afford to become a saint either.
After some thought, she came to a conclusion.
If she couldn’t bring herself to use a blade, perhaps she should use a gun instead.
All it took was pulling a trigger.
There would be distance.
Less blood.
Less direct contact.
Maybe then she wouldn’t hesitate so much.
After calming herself down, she prepared two days’ worth of cat food and water for Suisui.
She also left several hand warmers nearby.
Then she bundled herself up tightly, grabbed her backpack, thermos, bread, chocolate, heating patches, and Tang saber before heading downstairs.
She was the last person to arrive.
Apparently everyone else had packed in record time.
Nobody wanted to risk being left behind.
At exactly nine o’clock, they set off.
With no vehicles available, everyone traveled on foot.
The journey was quiet.
Their cooperation was built entirely on mutual benefit.
Most of them barely knew one another.
Some even held grudges against each other.
After more than three hours of walking, they finally left the city.
Shen Hanyin sighed inwardly.
Her spatial storage contained practically everything she could ever need.
Yet she still had to pretend to be an ordinary survivor and suffer through all of this.
She really was making things difficult for herself.
Someone in the group suggested taking a break.
“Ten minutes,” Luo Qi immediately decided.
They weren’t the only group searching the mountains for food.
The longer they delayed, the greater the chance they would return empty-handed.
An hour later, they reached the foot of the mountain.
The group spent another two hours searching without success.
Only Luo Qi and Xu Chengyi somehow managed to catch a wild chicken.
By then it was already past four in the afternoon.
Luo Qi suggested heading back down.
“The mountain is dangerous at night. It’s easy to get lost, and the weather is too cold. Let’s find a place at the foot of the mountain to spend the night and continue searching early tomorrow.”
Those who hadn’t found any food were unwilling to accept that.
“You two already caught something. We still have nothing. We’ve spent the entire day freezing and starving, and it isn’t even dark yet.”
“Then stay if you want,” Luo Qi replied. “We’re going down.”
“You were the one who brought us here! We helped you find food, and now you’re abandoning us?”
Luo Qi didn’t bother arguing.
He simply started walking downhill.
Naturally, Shen Hanyin had no intention of staying either.
Unlike everyone else, she wasn’t short on food.
As darkness gradually descended, the group following Luo Qi still hadn’t reached the bottom of the mountain.
Suddenly, they heard movement nearby.
Shen Hanyin looked toward the sound.
A cluster of black dots was moving through the distance.
They drew closer and closer.
Soon everyone could see clearly.
It was a flock of ducks.
The birds looked thin and underfed, but there were dozens of them.
Ducks could be easy to catch.
Or incredibly difficult.
It depended on the circumstances.
“Move carefully and surround them,” Luo Qi instructed.
The group slowly spread out and encircled the ducks.
The birds had probably been hungry for a long time.
They weren’t moving very fast.
Otherwise, with this group’s abilities, catching them might have been impossible.
What followed was complete chaos.
After a frantic struggle, aside from a few that escaped, they managed to capture twenty-one ducks.
Every single one ended up stuffed into someone’s sack.
The delay allowed the people who had earlier refused to leave the mountain to catch up with them.
They stood there awkwardly, saying nothing.
It turned out that Luo Qi’s decision to descend had been the correct one.
Along the way, they encountered three pigs.
All of them appeared fully grown.
As omnivores, pigs could eat almost anything.
The mountains still offered enough food to sustain them, but they were nothing like the well-fed livestock they had once been.
Everyone swung clubs and makeshift weapons for quite some time before finally subduing them.
Taking advantage of the fact that the pork hadn’t frozen solid yet, several people used boning knives to bleed the animals.
The rest of the butchering could wait until they reached the bottom of the mountain.
Even the pig’s blood couldn’t be wasted.
They collected it in plastic bags and planned to divide it equally later.
By now they were close to the foot of the mountain.
The group quickly dragged the pigs downhill.
Avoiding the other survivors nearby, they found an abandoned factory.
The building stood on higher ground and had escaped being frozen over.
After a brief discussion, everyone agreed to spend the night there.