“Do you know where there are fertilizer factories? If we get the fertilizer, you won’t have to worry about your rations for the next two months—I’ll lend you food.”
High-yield farmland cannot do without fertilizer and pesticides.
Xin Xiaoru, farming on her own, could get by with small-scale methods, using human or animal waste as fertilizer. But if she wanted to scale up, or, like at the Yicheng base, where land is scarce and people are numerous, yield per acre had to be guaranteed for millions to survive. There was no question: chemical fertilizer and pesticides were essential.
Now that they were in Zaoyue City, an agricultural town, bringing back as much fertilizer and pesticide as possible would be a huge help for farming.
The twelve locals perked up at her words, and the other locals started brainstorming. Exchanging ideas, combining their knowledge with the map displayed on the vehicle’s system, they identified the locations of three fertilizer factories and one pesticide warehouse, and immediately set off.
Xin Xiaoru, to save the RV’s stamina, alternated between flying and driving. Fortunately, the consumption over a few hours was manageable compared to the hundreds of stamina points gained from rescuing and relocating people.
As she traveled, she continued rescuing people. By the time they reached the first destination, her stamina had increased by over fifty points.
She was very satisfied.
At the first fertilizer factory, following directions from the farmers in the RV, Xin Xiaoru located pre-packaged fertilizer bags and loaded them one by one onto the vehicle according to type.
Everyone pitched in. After stacking five thousand pounds of fertilizer on the RV roof, they moved on to the next factory.
The second factory went smoothly as well. There were only a few zombies inside and a few hidden ordinary people.
Xin Xiaoru and her team killed the zombies and left the people’s rations untouched, only taking the fertilizer. The locals didn’t complain; they used the distraction of the zombies being temporarily drawn away by the vehicle to run to nearby supermarkets, grab some food, and bring it back to the factory.
The third fertilizer factory was more complicated. It was occupied by awakened people. And like Xin Xiaoru, they also intended to use the fertilizer for farming.
The factory was located in a remote rural area, surrounded by vast farmland.
The awakened occupants had put up a 500-meter radius warning line around the factory, stacking chest-high sandbag walls used for flood control to keep zombies away and to signal outsiders to stay away.
Xin Xiaoru didn’t want to start a conflict and reluctantly let it go.
But just as the RV turned to leave, a familiar, aged voice called out from inside: “Xiaoru? Xiaoru, is that you?!”
Looking toward the voice, she saw an elderly man with graying hair waving at her from a distance.
Xin Xiaoru’s eyes narrowed slightly.
It was… her adoptive grandfather?
Very quickly, the awakened people who had been on alert on the second floor of the factory jumped down, frowning as they asked, “Is she your relative?”
The old man hurriedly said, “Yes, yes, that’s my granddaughter, she’s a nurse. I didn’t expect she’d still be alive! Brother Li, you see, we still have sick people in our base. Why not take her in, give her a meal, and maybe she can help care for them?”
Li Dayuan’s eyes brightened slightly at the word “nurse,” but he didn’t immediately respond. Instead, he gave the old man a cryptic look, causing the man to shrink back, before he started walking toward the wall where the RV was parked.
The wall wasn’t high, and it didn’t block their line of sight. If someone tried to force their way through, the sandbags wouldn’t stop them.
Li Dayuan asked, “Is he your grandfather?”
Xin Xiaoru didn’t even glance at the rushing old man. Sitting in the driver’s seat, she said calmly, “No. My whole family is dead. I don’t know any grandfather. This factory has an owner, I won’t interfere. Goodbye.”
“Wait!” Li Dayuan hurriedly said. “We can talk this over.”
He could tell that she was probably related to the old man by blood but that the relationship was bad. Still, he wanted to understand the situation. “Excuse me… are you a nurse?”
Xin Xiaoru hummed noncommittally.
Li Dayuan said, “One of my brothers is sick, and we’d like you to take a look. Don’t worry, he’s either mutated with awakened abilities or simply seriously injured, not a zombie yet. I have no other options, and we can’t find any doctors or nurses. Could we ask for your help? We are willing to pay; whatever you need.”
He glanced at the RV roof piled high with fertilizer like a small mountain and said, “If my brother recovers, I’m willing to give 1,000 pounds of fertilizer. If not cured, 80 pounds as a hardship fee.”
Xin Xiaoru thought there was no harm in taking a look, but she insisted that they bring the patient onto the RV, inside the vehicle, she would be completely safe.
Li Dayuan hesitated but reluctantly agreed.
He called a few people over and carefully placed the unconscious patient onto a stretcher, walking slowly toward the RV.
Once inside, everyone froze.
They didn’t expect so many ordinary people inside, or that the space would be so large and cool!
“Put him on the bed,” Xin Xiaoru instructed, stepping aside to give room.
After expanding the RV, the furniture had enlarged as well. The bed was now two meters wide and three meters long, enough space for several people to roll around.
Xin Xiaoru carefully removed the patient’s clothes, cutting away any areas with blood clinging using sterilized scissors. It took her ten full minutes just to remove the clothing, and she was covered in sweat.
She then took out hemostatic and pain-relief medicine, forcing Li Dayuan to administer it: “I’m not an anesthetist and don’t know how to use anesthesia. When I clean and suture the wound, if he wakes up in pain, you explain things clearly to him and hold him still so he doesn’t move.”
“Got it!”
Li Dayuan saw how skilled she was, with all the tools at hand, and instantly let out a huge sigh of relief, he knew this time they had found the right person.
He watched over his brother and occasionally handed tools to Xin Xiaoru, while the people he brought along couldn’t help but examine the RV’s interior layout.
It was incredible, truly incredible!
From the outside, it looked like a standard, modest RV, but inside it was so spacious, with such high ceilings!
After a month or two of enduring the heat, it was their first time feeling air conditioning on such a hot day, and they all visibly relaxed.
Just as they were about to chat with the people inside the RV to gather some information, voices of argument came from the doorway.
“I’m a relative of the RV owner! Why shouldn’t I come in?!”
“Exactly! Don’t think you can be unreasonable just because there are more of you!”
“We’re from this base, and we’re Xin Xiaoru’s relatives, our people. Try touching us and see what happens!”
The residents of Zaoyue City, who had been blocking the entrance, hesitated.
Seizing the moment of hesitation, two men and a woman tried to force their way inside.
But just a step in, before Zhao Changyue could react, the scissors Xin Xiaoru had been using to debride the wound suddenly flew from her hand, shooting straight through the crowd toward the old man’s neck.
Everyone froze at this sudden turn of events.
The middle-aged man and woman behind the old man screamed, “Dad!”
A second later, there was no blood splatter, no accident.
The tip of the scissors hovered just above the loose skin of the old man’s neck, suspended in midair, without moving any closer.
For a moment, the middle-aged couple froze like chickens with their throats grabbed, cold sweat running down as they stared at the scene.
Xin Xiaoru said calmly, “Sterilize the scissors for me.”
Li Dayuan stared blankly for a long moment before realizing she was speaking to him. He quickly wiped away his non-existent cold sweat, fetched another pair of surgical scissors, clumsily re-sterilized them, and handed them to Xin Xiaoru.
Completely unfazed, she continued working with the new tool, carefully suturing all the damaged internal organs of the patient. Her hands were steady and her mind calm, and her composure quickly helped settle everyone else around her.
Zhao Changyue scowled, kicking the middle-aged couple out of the RV one by one, paying no mind to the terrified, frozen old man.
The old man seethed inwardly, wishing he could be kicked out too.
Facing the hovering scissors, he shakily inched backward.
But for every inch he moved, the scissors followed inch by inch; if he moved faster, the scissors mirrored his speed. What had originally been bloodless now drew a trickle of blood from the motion of his retreat.
The two men who had come in with Li Dayuan looked grim, wishing they could just gut him on the spot.
“Sorry, brother. We’ll kick him out later!” one of them said, smoothly pulling a pack of cigarettes from his bag and offering two to Zhao Changyue and He Guying in the co-driver seat.
Both of them refused.
Zhao Changyue said, “I don’t smoke,” and left it at that.
The main issue was that Xin Xiaoru hadn’t spoken about her family situation. Ever since they teamed up, the three of them had assumed they were all orphans, never delving into each other’s parents. Yet it turned out that Xin Xiaoru had no parents, but she did have a grandfather and other relatives.
They decided to wait and see how she would handle it after finishing her work.
Zhao Changyue and He Guying remained silent. The two men from the fertilizer factory were uneasy, fearing they’d offended her, but they didn’t want to force conversation and seem annoying. All they could do was put their hands together, touch their foreheads, and whisper apologetically with gestures, “Sorry.”
The patient’s injuries were severe. Xin Xiaoru spent two hours suturing the wounds, and by the time she finished, night had fallen.
The errands boys had already returned from the fertilizer factory with clean towels, ready to wrap the patient’s lower body after Xin Xiaoru bandaged him.
She stopped them from immediately moving the patient, despite their insistence: “He might have a high fever overnight. We need to keep him under observation. It’s hard to manage temperature outside, after all this treatment, I don’t want him to die from heat out there.”
Li Dayuan’s eyes flicked, and without another word, he went to stack the fertilizer on top of the RV.
Originally, the deal was 1,000 jin of fertilizer after curing the patient. Now he gave it early and even offered a small portion of his already scarce food to Xin Xiaoru and her companions. Obviously, he wanted to stay in her good graces.
After a moment’s thought, Xin Xiaoru led Li Dayuan and the other man to He Guying’s off-road RV in the pocket dimension to eat.
The pocket dimension was packed full of Xin Xiaoru’s supplies, almost completely filling the area outside the RV. However, at her request, the RV quietly heated water and released steam into the space, so when she led them inside, the guests only saw a lit RV in a dense black mist, nothing else.
Instantly, the RV seemed even more mysterious.
Li Dayuan, already wanting to make a good impression, felt even more compelled. At the dinner table, after a polite back-and-forth for a while, he cautiously asked, “Boss Xin, are you taking this fertilizer back to your own base?”