Among the eight awakened individuals gathered at the fertilizer factory, five had families, while the remaining three, including Li Dayuan and the patient, were alone.
The patient was still unconscious and couldn’t respond. Li Dayuan and another single woman didn’t hesitate and happily agreed to join the farm.
The woman’s name was Nan Shuisu, in her forties, energetic and sharp. Upon hearing they could go to the farm, she immediately asked, “Are we mainly going to farm, or mainly fight zombies?”
Xin Xiaoru asked, “What do you want to do?”
“Fight zombies,” the woman said frankly. “I used to work in the supply chain and never farmed before. I’m afraid I’d mess it up. If given a choice, I’d rather fight zombies.”
Li Dayuan nodded in agreement. “I’m about the same. I can fight zombies or do some equipment maintenance, but I’m not skilled at farming.”
Xin Xiaoru said, “Understood. You don’t need to farm. We’ll talk later about what you’ll do.”
The remaining five awakened individuals actually wanted to come to the farm and farm. But since they had families, they had to move together.
Xin Xiaoru learned a bit about their situation and rejected them.
One older man hurriedly said, “We don’t need you to feed us. Our supplies are enough to last for a while, and once we grow food, we won’t trouble you at all.”
“Precisely because you can be self-sufficient, I don’t need to take you in,” Xin Xiaoru said. “If you come to us, you have to pay rent.”
Currently, Xin Xiaoru had only 30 beds. After these people grow food, they would need to pay rent at the rate of 5 jin of grain per person per day.
The extra twelve people from Zaoyue City had no housing, so they could only build their own wooden huts, straw shelters, or sleep in tents, then farm for themselves. Once the RV is upgraded to Level 4, with a new 100-person hotel, they too would need to move in and pay rent like the earlier residents.
During this period, before the upgrade and extra beds, these additional people would pay 30 jin of grain per month as land rent. In return, Xin Xiaoru would try her best to watch over and protect them.
The situation for the awakened individuals and their families was different. They didn’t need Xin Xiaoru to care for them; their own family members could protect and look after each other. What they lacked was a safe farm and tools to reach their destination.
By bringing them to Youzhuang, Xin Xiaoru had essentially fulfilled their needs. Afterward, she would be useless to them.
Who would willingly pay protection fees when they’re already self-sufficient? Who actually thinks of themselves as a landlord?
Even if they didn’t realize it at first, over time they would start thinking and feeling suspicious.
Xin Xiaoru wanted people who could be on her side, not people who would build their own base right next to hers.
“You sixty-odd people definitely include some local farmers. Learn from them properly, farm diligently, and even if you don’t leave, you can at least eat enough,” Xin Xiaoru cut straight to the point. “Some people think they’re too old, some think they’re too young, some think they’re women, some consider themselves too refined, refuse to humbly learn farming skills, just eat when there’s food, and don’t feel the urgency to farm. This frustrates the people who have to go out, take risks, and do the work even more.”
Xin Xiaoru scanned the group. “People like that, I won’t take.”
The awakened individuals scowled and returned to the fertilizer factory to discuss it with their families.
By the next morning, only one awakened boy, led by his mother and grandmother, sincerely expressed his desire to join the farm and promised to farm seriously to pay rent.
The other awakened individuals didn’t come.
Obviously, those who didn’t come were unhappy with paying rent and with Xin Xiaoru’s strictness. The boy, however, was too young; even with his awakened abilities, he was still in the very early stage, unable to fight zombies or protect himself and his family. He needed to grow up in a safe place.
Xin Xiaoru looked at the 4-star satisfaction feedback on the indicator board from the three generations of the boy’s family and approved.
The patient had passed the most dangerous stage, and all the wounds were healing quickly.
Li Dayuan couldn’t wait for his brother to wake naturally, so he roughly shook him awake.
When the patient opened his eyes, Li Dayuan immediately explained about Xin Xiaoru and the farm.
“Do you want to join the farm with me? If yes, just say so and go back to sleep!”
With that vigorous shaking… Xin Xiaoru could tell he really wanted his brother to come to the farm.
Guan Naiqing, enduring intense pain, mumbled groggily, “I… guess I do…”
Bang.
He was roughly laid back on the bed. Li Dayuan said, “He’s willing!”
Xin Xiaoru replied, “…Fine.” This patient was still giving 5-star satisfaction, definitely impressive.
And so, Xin Xiaoru went out, returning home with a full vehicle of people, a roof full of fertilizer, and a trailer loaded with supplies.
As people who didn’t worry about food, clothing, or air conditioning, Xin Xiaoru, He Guying, and Zhao Changyue weren’t particularly eager to grab supplies. Sometimes, when passing by abandoned cans, they would deliberately leave them there for ordinary people to take, maybe someone could survive.
But Li Dayuan, Nan Suishu, and even the little boy Fangfang were extremely excited, itching to jump off the RV and clear out everything left in the roadside supermarket.
Seeing that Xin Xiaoru had no intention of raiding the supermarket, Li Dayuan was heartbroken and exclaimed, “If you don’t take it, these supplies won’t reach the survivors! They’ll only end up in the hands of even stronger awakened people!”
Xin Xiaoru understood. But what if those awakened people also had families or ordinary people they needed to protect?
She wasn’t refusing supplies, she just took them differently than others.
Others wanted cookies and canned food; she wanted baseball bats and shovels. Others wanted grain and vegetables; she wanted seeds and fertilizer. Others wanted sausages and ham; she wanted piglets and chicks.
The former can solve immediate problems; the latter ensures long-term survival.
Those fleeing for their lives don’t need the latter, and the strong don’t need to scramble for the former.
By the time they returned to Youzhuang, it was already evening. Xin Xiaoru helped everyone get settled.
The 30 people heading into the extra-dimensional inn were overjoyed, it was built right on a brick wall! Magical enough, and inside it was cool, with water, electricity, and food, it was wonderfully comfortable.
The extra 12 people and Fangfang’s family set up tents behind the brick wall temporarily.
The mountains were cooler than the city, but at night the temperature still reached 35–36°C. They didn’t want to be cramped in small spaces, so Xin Xiaoru set up a huge canopy overhead. On the ground, she laid picnic mats, moisture-proof mats, mats, and whatever she could find, letting everyone arrange them themselves.
There were plenty of mosquitoes in the mountains. Xin Xiaoru lit mosquito coils, but they weren’t very effective; the mosquitoes remained rampant.
Yet, whether from exhaustion or the psychological effect of the coils, people slept deeply despite bites and itching.
Xin Xiaoru took out a mosquito zapper and plugged it into the RV’s external socket. For a while, the dark mountain forest was lit only by the RV’s small night light and the faint glow of the zapper.
After expanding the RV to 50 square meters, it could sleep many people. Li Dayuan, Nan Suishu, little boy Fangfang, the patient Guan Naiqing, and He Guying and Zhao Changyue, all six, slept inside the RV. Xin Xiaoru went to the off-road RV in the extra-dimensional space.
Everyone slept very relaxed. The night was quiet and peaceful.
The next morning came early. When everyone woke up fully rested, the sky was already bright.
Xin Xiaoru and her group quickly washed up and went outside to formally assign tasks.
First was the farmland. Those with farming experience from the countryside could start immediately. Those without experience needed to learn from the elderly woman.
People could choose where to farm, but Xin Xiaoru advised not to go too far so they could watch out for each other.
Each person’s daily food was unlimited, they could eat as much as they wanted. Xin Xiaoru also had the large stock of fruits and vegetables previously collected, which wouldn’t spoil in the extra-dimensional space, and the same applied in the extra-dimensional inn.
Xin Xiaoru looked around and assigned the task of cooking large communal meals to the little old lady, Fangfang’s grandmother, and another elderly man.
It didn’t need to be meticulous, just cook everything like a simple stew, enough to fill people’s stomachs. These three were treated as Xin Xiaoru’s hired help: daily meals and lodging provided, but no wages. The lodging arrangement was a bit unusual—Xin Xiaoru would pay them 5 jin of grain per day as “wages” and then collect 5 jin per day as “rent,” which completed the task while also providing free labor. Although they worked without pay, they didn’t feel the pressure of farming for food; if they didn’t want to do it, others could handle it.
Ordinary people’s appetites weren’t as large as the awakened, so Xin Xiaoru allowed everyone to eat freely for four months. After four months, whether they grew rice, wheat, potatoes, or corn, there should be some harvest. At that point, she would calculate previous days’ meals: men would “repay” 1.5 jin of grain per day, women 1 jin per day, meaning each person would repay at most 180 jin of grain.
For those who stayed in the inn during the four months, Xin Xiaoru planned to “acknowledge” it lightly by charging 1 jin of grain per day as rent. This wouldn’t reach the RV inn’s official rates and wouldn’t complete the upgrade requirements, it was just to instill the idea of paying rent.
After four months, rent would be charged at the normal rate. Daily rent, whether 1,000 coins or 5 jin of grain, was very expensive: 150 jin per month, 900 jin for half a year.
If one mu of land could be planted twice a year without disease or disaster, yielding 1,000 jin each time, almost all of it would go toward rent. Eating would require farming an extra one or two mu. To have vegetables, they would need to plant them in the gaps between grain plantings, or dedicate half a plot to vegetables while the other half grew grain, ensuring a continuous supply of greens.
But in such harsh conditions, with such high rent, could people really give her a five-star satisfaction rating?
Right now, many people from Zaoyue City had narrowly escaped death, so the rent didn’t feel unreasonable. But what about six months or a year later?
Xin Xiaoru paused, questioning this.
She tapped her long fingers on the table, running several calculations in her mind.
“Ugh,” she muttered, “what a scammy system!”
The system silently stared at the sky, making no response.
Xin Xiaoru sighed: “Fine, we’ll take it as we go.”
She still had to arrange placements for the awakened.
The two teenagers who had previously set fires in the mountains were no longer assigned to farm. Instead, Xin Xiaoru sent them, along with the newly arrived awakened, on the RV to the Yicheng base for training and zombie-hunting missions.
Killing zombies could earn crystal cores, which increased their awakened levels. The faster they leveled up, the more their advantages snowballed. Just looking at He Guying and Zhao Changyue’s current level, they were already far ahead of everyone else.
Li Dayuan’s earth-type ability couldn’t form earth walls, but He Guying could now create ice walls ten meters wide and three meters thick. Two months ago, he could only produce small snowballs.
Training was useful, and frequently going out to kill zombies was also effective.
While Xin Xiaoru focused on upgrading the RV, He Guying and Zhao Changyue quietly kept improving. By early October, in the Yicheng base’s awakened rankings, they had surpassed more than 5,000 awakened individuals, breaking into the top ten.