Zhang Cuiliu was startled by Xin Xiaoru’s decisiveness, but still instinctively dropped to her knees, performing the exaggerated, old‑school gestures of pleading for mercy.
Xin Xiaoru wasn’t a soft‑hearted person. Seeing her insist on kneeling, she just stared coldly.
“I really didn’t know the water inside was limited,” Zhang Cuiliu begged. “Boss, please give me a chance! I swear I won’t try to get the water again! Really! I swear!”
“It’s not about the water,” Xin Xiaoru said lightly, her fingers tracing the RV’s turntable. “I just can’t stand it. Using someone else’s goodwill to stir up trouble while keeping yourself perfectly hidden, what were you thinking?”
Zhang Cuiliu’s face flushed bright red, whether from shame, anger, or heat, no one could tell. “I wasn’t! I was just scared. How could an old woman like me fight two big men? Not running would’ve just gotten me caught up and beaten anyway.”
“Oh.” Xin Xiaoru said. “Get on the vehicle.”
Zhang Cuiliu tried to argue further, but her husband, seizing the chance, had already slipped away behind the crowd, out of view. No one noticed, except Xin Xiaoru.
Xin Xiaoru said, “Grab Wu Guiquan behind the tent. Whoever catches him gets a pound of sweet potatoes.”
Everyone, who had just been tense and anxious with their own thoughts, immediately reacted and turned to chase.
Behind the tent was a long downhill slope. Wu Guiquan, though middle-aged, was a strong man and running downhill, gaining great speed. For a moment, the whole group behind him couldn’t catch up.
Xin Xiaoru didn’t bother assigning anyone to watch Zhang Cuiliu. She went straight back to the pocket dimension, took a hand‑crossbow and a whip from the warehouse full of weapons, returned to the RV, and opened the window.
“System, help me aim.”
A transparent beam with faint golden threads lit up. If one looked closely, they could see that this power was the same as the one that had previously prevented fights inside the RV hotel.
It could stop others from fighting, and it could also assist Xin Xiaoru in moving things. Just like before, when she had used it to control a scalpel to threaten the fertilizer factory’s old man, it could provide appropriate assistance at her command.
Xin Xiaoru adjusted the crossbow in the RV, slowly aligning it with the RV’s lift-off and Wu Guiquan’s running path. The bolt shot precisely to the ground right in front of his foot.
He couldn’t stop in time, tripped over it, his toes tingled, his lower leg scraped against the bolt, his balance lost, and he fell hard to the ground, tumbling several times down the slope.
The people behind quickly caught him, pinning him down, and reported to Xin Xiaoru.
Xin Xiaoru, one hand holding the crossbow, the other the whip, stepped down from the RV.
A wave of heat hit her, dispersing the cool air left by the air-conditioned vehicle.
Xin Xiaoru pulled the bolt out of the ground. Still usable. She blew the dust off it, put it back into the crossbow’s storage slot, and said to the few people holding the man down, “Each of you will get a pound of potatoes. I’ll distribute them later. This man has eaten quite a bit of grain over these past days. I was originally going to let it go, but clearly he doesn’t think so. Since that’s the case, he’ll work enough before he leaves.”
She handed the whip to one of the men who had an ingratiating look on his face. “You’ll be in charge of supervising him. Make him clear all the weeds from the remaining 140 mu of wasteland in Youzhuang within one day. If he can’t finish, beat him. No food, only water. When the work is done, I’ll throw him down the mountain.”
Wu Guiquan stared at her in disbelief and opened his mouth to spew abuse.
The man who took the whip reacted quickly, clamping a hand over Wu Guiquan’s mouth. “Don’t worry, boss. I’ll get it done!”
Xin Xiaoru continued, “The farmland belonging to Wu Guiquan and Zhang Cuiliu will be jointly taken over and farmed by the few of you. From the harvest of this batch of grain on those four mu, I’ll take forty percent. The remaining sixty percent, you can discuss among yourselves how to divide it according to each person’s contribution.”
The land had already passed the stage of centralized fertilization and sowing. Now it only required daily watering, controlling ground temperature, and checking for pests and diseases. The workload wasn’t heavy, just wait for the final harvest.
The few of them were overjoyed and thanked her repeatedly.
Xin Xiaoru waved her hand dismissively.
Taking this opportunity, she restated the rules of Youzhuang in a firm voice: “The wasteland was found by me. If anyone wants to farm here but refuses to follow the rules, I’ll throw them out immediately. Likewise, if someone doesn’t want to stay here, you can say so directly. Once you’ve repaid the grain you owe me, I’ll find a relatively safe village nearby and drop you off.
“But if you leave Youzhuang and then try to farm nearby, and still run back to Youzhuang whenever there’s danger, I’ll make sure you die in front of the zombies. Is that clear?”
Everyone nodded repeatedly.
Only a few people exchanged glances, hesitation on their faces. Xin Xiaoru looked at them a few times, matched them to the five or six three‑star satisfaction ratings in her mind, and added, “My ability lets me see your satisfaction levels. If you’re not happy living here and are only staying reluctantly, I’ll also send you away after you’ve repaid the grain you owe.”
In the end, Zhang Cuiliu was unwilling to leave Wu Guiquan. She worked alongside him pulling weeds, exhausted and overheated, laboring nonstop for the entire day and only finishing around three or four in the morning.
They were so tired they could barely speak. After getting into the RV and cooling off for a while, an uncontrollable sense of panic rose in their hearts.
The RV lifted into the air, the once‑peaceful farmstead growing farther and farther away.
When the farmstead disappeared from view, they understood that today’s exhaustion was probably only the beginning of their days to come.
Even Wu Guiquan, scheming, sharp‑tongued, and never one to speak decently, couldn’t help but imitate his wife and kneel down at this moment, even seeming to want to pin all the blame on her and save himself.
However, Xin Xiaoru gave no response at all.
She reclined in a seat set at a steep angle, turning up the density of the mist inside the vehicle and almost maxing it out. Wu Guiquan and Zhang Cuiliu could see nothing at all, inside or out, only the warm yellow lights, diffused through the surrounding fog, gave them the faintest sense of reality.
After an hour of flying and driving in turns, Xin Xiaoru brought the RV down to land.
The mist dispersed, the door opened, and outside lay a village with a small number of zombies wandering about.
How long had it been since they’d last seen zombies? It felt like a lifetime ago…
An invisible force pushed them out. From now on, they would have to survive entirely on their own…
After dealing with this, Xin Xiaoru prepared to head to Yicheng Base to pick up He Guying and the others.
But just as she turned around, she remembered something: the RV and the extra-dimensional hotel shared water and electricity. As long as the RV had water, the hotel would also receive plenty of it.
Then if the RV flew to a place with water and continuously drew it in, wouldn’t the extra-dimensional hotel be able to produce a steady, endless supply of water?!
She had actually fallen into a mental trap before, focusing solely on using the RV itself to fetch water. But the RV was, in essence, the very water-transfer pipeline the base needed!
The pent-up gloom of many days instantly lifted. Xin Xiaoru rushed back to the base, woke He Guying and Zhao Changyue, who had already slept once in the ability-users’ communal barracks, and after a brief discussion, took a short nap in the RV. At daybreak, she eagerly went to find the base leadership to discuss diverting water.
The base leaders were ecstatic. They immediately summoned the meteorological analysis team and, combining weather data with geographic maps, analyzed all the regions in Huaguo where heavy rainfall might occur.
Rivers, lakes, and seas evaporate vast amounts of water vapor every day. That water couldn’t simply vanish into nothing. If Yicheng and the surrounding vast areas were suffering drought, then somewhere else there must be torrential rain!
The experts identified the areas most likely to experience heavy rainfall, listing several target locations from nearest to farthest. Xin Xiaoru now had a plan, she even thought that if all else failed, she could just go to the seaside and draw seawater! She refused to believe the sea itself could be dried up by the sun!
Everyone sprang into action.
The base sent people with Xin Xiaoru to Youzhuang to connect pipelines. As long as the extra-dimensional hotel had water pipes, even ones connected directly to its walls, the system could control the flow of water. Thus, massive pipes with a diameter of one meter were connected straight into the walls inside the extra-dimensional hotel.
Able-bodied workers began building the pipeline day and night, eager to lay the entire stretch of dozens of kilometers between Youzhuang and Yicheng as quickly as possible.
When the gloomy, anxious residents of the city heard the news, they didn’t even need the base to mobilize them. They volunteered en masse to help with construction; no amount of heat or sun could stop them.
Their enthusiasm shocked even the people farming in Youzhuang.
Only then did many of them belatedly realize that life in Youzhuang was truly far better than outside… Even though in another three or four months they would have to pay hefty rent, nearly equivalent to the yield of one out of two mu of land, at the end of the day, all they needed to worry about was farming, not droughts, not zombies, not living one day at a time with no certainty of tomorrow.
The people who came from Yicheng saw how relaxed and carefree life was in Youzhuang, with everyone just farming, and they were practically green with envy!
After chatting for a while, they discovered, somebody was actually causing trouble? Some people were dissatisfied and wanted to go out and farm on their own?
Really?!
That made them absolutely delighted!
Some people, with less-than-honest intentions, started boasting about the outside environment: “Sure, there’s drought, but now that the pipeline is connected, isn’t that solved? Water and land, you can farm yourself, no taxes, no rent, how great is that~”
“Yes, better to just work for yourself.”
“I envy those who can leave in the RV. Farming on your own is so good, nothing to worry about, and no losses.”
“If you can go out, just go when the boss is in a good mood.” After all, if you don’t go, how will they free up space for us?
People tend to believe what they want to believe. Out of the forty-plus residents in Youzhuang, gradually seven of them started getting tempted.
The rent was too expensive. Once this batch of crops was harvested, they could make up for the back rent and food debt from the past few months, and whatever was left over would be more than enough to eat well for a while.
The boss said they could be moved to a safer place, where they could farm whatever they grew and eat it themselves, wouldn’t that be perfect?
A few people quietly discussed this.
However, most of the Youzhuang residents just looked at them coldly, as if they were fools. The citizens from Yicheng Base, despite trying to calculate things like an abacus, still couldn’t figure it out.
If it were really that great, and the Yicheng Base didn’t restrict them from going out, why wouldn’t these people leave?
This was the apocalypse, a world overrun by zombies. They weren’t just enjoying life lazily in Youzhuang; they were dreaming unrealistically!
At this time, Xin Xiaoru, He Guying, and Zhao Changyue, already on the road, had no idea about any of this.
The three of them were busy traveling, saving people along the way, and earning stamina points. At the same time, Xin Xiaoru was calculating when the RV could be upgraded next.
Originally, relying only on He Guying and Zhao Changyue, the RV could reach Lv4 on the 11th.6.
But midway, a new resident joined, bringing 500,000 in cash, the only new person who immediately paid rent and maintained a five-star rating. This sped up the completion of the mission.
Xin Xiaoru: “The RV should be able to upgrade around October 24th.”
At the same time, stamina points were skyrocketing. Almost every time someone was rescued in a critical situation, she would automatically get a five-star rating from that person, and five minutes after picking them up, she would earn 1 popularity point.
Now, popularity points were increasing by hundreds per day. On only the second day of departure, the daily growth had already reached around a thousand points.
Humans need water, without it, they’ll die of thirst. Zombies don’t.
Wherever Xin Xiaoru went, zombies were everywhere. Sometimes the team deliberately fought some special-power zombies to harvest larger, more powerful crystal cores. Even when encountering small groups of zombies, they would go down to collect the heads.
Having the RV made evacuations convenient, so overall it wasn’t too dangerous. But when facing long-range attack zombies or control-type ability zombies, the RV was vulnerable, and evacuations of both the vehicle and people could be hindered. On the third day of travel, they ran into a particularly tricky plant-type ability zombie.
It might already have been at third-tier level. Swinging its vines, it knocked over two people at once, and even tore the RV apart!!!
The system had to expend a full 1,000 stamina points just to barely repair it. Then it spent another 200 stamina to activate a short-term speed boost, violently tearing through the vine cage, ramming the plant-type ability zombie, and crushing it so it couldn’t reform. Only then could Zhao Changyue seize the crystal core and finish off the enemy completely.
After that encounter, He Guying and Zhao Changyue were injured, and everyone’s bodies ached.
Xin Xiaoru, hiding inside the RV, wasn’t physically hurt, but her mental state took a severe hit.
1,200 stamina points… 1,200!!!
And the crossbow bolts she had shot out but hadn’t dared to retrieve, each one lost for good!
Such a huge loss!
Xin Xiaoru nearly lost her composure.
Fortunately, encounters with third-tier zombies like this were rare events. Otherwise, she couldn’t handle such massive daily stamina consumption.
This also made her painfully aware that even with seven or eight thousand stamina points, it still wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.
For her, stamina was like money. While others relied on physical strength in fights, she relied on “spending” it, she had to keep “earning” enough to spend freely in battle!
As a result, her frequency of rescuing people increased. Especially on the fifth day, when passing a large city, her daily popularity growth skyrocketed to an astonishing 2,351 points!
Xin Xiaoru breathed a sigh of relief and felt even more motivated.
October 21st, Rencheng.
That day in Rencheng, it was pouring heavy rain.
Yet even this amount of rainfall was relatively light compared to the previous ten days.
The entire city had become a vast expanse of water. Villas and single-story houses, along with all the buildings beneath them, were completely submerged. Only third floors or higher, or even fourth floors, offered solid ground.
However, many supermarkets and warehouses were only single-story or had just one or two floors. Survivors could no longer find food and were forced to live off the supplies they had looted during the initial emergency.
Song Weiyu was in the same situation.
But her supplies weren’t looted, they were bought at the very beginning of the apocalypse by her parents, who were supermarket managers, and saved for her.
Later, when both parents fell ill with a fever, they went outside and told her that no matter what, she must never open the door, even if they knocked, she couldn’t look.
A day later, the seven-year-old Song Weiyu stood on a stool, peering through the peephole, and saw her parents’ eyes completely black as they frantically pounded on the door.
She cried bitterly but refused to open it. Still, she mutated.
Fortunately, she didn’t become a zombie, she mutated into an ability user, a water-type.
She experimented on her own, learning to control raindrops, puddles, and even suddenly sensing the moisture inside zombies’ bodies. Suppressing her fear, she explored instinctively.
Months passed in the blink of an eye. She could already drain the water from a zombie’s skull, killing it in the process.
Outside the door were layers of shriveled-headed zombies stacked atop one another. Among them were her parents.
She had personally killed them.
And at that time, she was only seven years old.
The hallway reeked of stench, and the water flooding downstairs carried filth and trash from across the city. Song Weiyu swallowed the damp, moldy flour, her family’s last bit of food, and stood at the window, dazed.
“Sorry, Mom, I wanted to save my food, but I couldn’t help it. I’m so hungry… really, too hungry.”
The ears of her toy rabbit had been torn, leaving a hole, something she had unconsciously done while trying to suppress her hunger.
It wasn’t that no one had loudly asked if there were any survivors or ability users. But her parents had said, whoever knocks, she must not answer.
Under the dark, heavy sky, a warm yellow RV flew steadily through the pouring rain.
The RV seemed to notice something and headed straight for the eighth floor of an apartment building.
The driver-side window was partially shaded by a small rain awning. A woman’s well-toned arm stretched out of the window and tapped on the girl’s window. “Little one, do you want to come with us?”
In that moment, Song Weiyu couldn’t help but think of her mother’s warning, not to respond to anyone knocking. But what about someone tapping the window?
Her gaze was vacant, and she nodded dully.
From Xin Xiaoru’s perspective, though, she nodded very quickly, very forcefully, so eagerly that she couldn’t wait for the RV to align with the door. The moment the RV shifted slightly, she thought it was leaving and, with inhuman speed, leapt onto the driver-side window, small body plunging into Xin Xiaoru’s arms, drenched through, soaking the entire cabin.
Xin Xiaoru paused briefly, closed the window, and let the RV continue moving. Co-pilot He Guying went to find other people who needed rescuing, while Xin Xiaoru carried the little girl to the bathroom, asking her what she wanted and letting her wash with hot water.
The child was still very young; her body and spirit seemed fragile. Xin Xiaoru didn’t immediately ask where she planned to go, instead changing her into her own long coat to wear like a dress and giving her a big bowl of rice to eat, before asking about her situation.
But after washing, eating, and drinking, the little girl immediately curled up in Xin Xiaoru’s arms and fell asleep.