The next day, Yao Tao went back to wholesale another truckload, this time snacks and fruit.
All kinds of preserved fruit: dried plums, candied fruit, various dried fruit snacks.
All sorts of junk-food puffed snacks: potato chips, shrimp chips, squid rings, popcorn.
Various dried nuts: almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, macadamias, badam nuts, broad beans, peas.
Dried meat and fish: jerky, meat floss, fish slices, shredded squid.
She didn’t skip the instant drink mixes either. Besides all kinds of bean powder, lotus root starch, milk powder, and sesame paste for breakfast, she also bought plenty of single-serving instant milk tea cups.
Passing the alcohol shelf, she paused for a moment before grabbing several cases of red and white wine.
She wasn’t much of a drinker, but sipping from a wine glass while standing atop a mutated tree admiring the apocalyptic scenery seemed like it would make for decent entertainment.
So she went and picked out an assortment of crystal wine glasses, along with some uniquely shaped mugs, bowls, chopsticks, and salad bowls. Nice tableware made eating feel better.
She got a dozen or so boxes of every kind of fruit, and after paying the deposit under the enthusiastic gaze of several store owners, she left the wholesale market.
Finally, she went to a nearby hardware store. Here she only bought a handful of things: a waterproof backpack, a hard hat, a fire shovel, a firefighting pickaxe, a headlamp, a waterproof tent, a nail gun, and several coils of safety rope.
She was preparing for the free-for-all looting that would follow the apocalypse.
Once the apocalypse began, it would take people a long time to realize they should be stockpiling, and what they’d fight over would be food supplies. The hardware wholesale district would see much less competition, so she planned to start there first.
Her phone rang again.
Zhu Hua.
Over the past few days, Zhu Hua had sent her countless texts and called many times; she’d answered none of them and replied to none of them.
She hadn’t been staying at home these past few days. Zhu Hua had gone to her apartment and found no one there, then gone to her workplace, where her boss told him Yao Tao had taken leave and wouldn’t be coming in for a while.
Zhu Hua was baffled.
Just because he hadn’t gone with her to the hospital that one day, was she throwing a tantrum and going dark on him?
At first he hadn’t thought much of it. Girls, you know, a little coaxing and she’d be fine.
But over a dozen days had passed, and Yao Tao had never once replied to his texts.
Zhu Hua was starting to lose his patience.
If it weren’t for the task his third uncle had given him, to date Yao Tao, he wouldn’t have looked twice at a woman like her. Not only did she come from a poor family, her own health was bad too, she’d had surgery, and no one was even sure how many years she had left… He couldn’t understand why his third uncle insisted he be with her.
Once, thoroughly fed up with Yao Tao, he’d complained to his third uncle, only to get a furious tongue-lashing in return, his uncle telling him he couldn’t get anything right, couldn’t even manage to keep one woman in line.
Those words had stung Zhu Hua.
His third uncle held an official government post and had real say within the family, even his own father listened to his third uncle.
Being looked down on by his uncle left a knot of anger burning in his chest.
It was just a woman, wasn’t it?
Watch him handle her.
And yet… Yao Tao had ignored him for over ten days straight.
Zhu Hua irritably dialed Yao Tao’s number over and over.
She hadn’t blocked him, she simply wasn’t picking up.
Zhu Hua checked her social media, but her feed hadn’t been updated in fifteen days, and even her old posts had all been deleted.
Zhu Hua: ???
What was going on?
She’d wiped her whole feed?
Something must have happened that he didn’t know about.
Could Yao Tao have cheated on him?
That was the first thought that crossed his mind.
Yes, that had to be it.
That little tramp, I haven’t even said I’m sick of you yet, and you dare to cheat on me first… just wait till I deal with you…
After work, he stormed over to Yao Tao’s apartment, fuming.
They usually met up outside on dates, he looked down on her cramped forty-square-meter apartment, felt stifled just being inside it. He’d never once set foot through her door; even when he walked her home, he only ever saw her to the entrance downstairs.
Yao Tao had thought he was simply being a gentleman. In fact, he just despised how small and shabby her place was.
Zhu Hua knocked for a good long while, but no one answered.
“Yao Tao, are you home?” he shouted through the door.
After a while, a neighbor’s door opened, and she glared at him fiercely. “What’s with all the knocking? You’re going to knock the plaster right off the wall and into my cooking pot.”
Zhu Hua hurriedly asked, “Excuse me… do you know if Yao Tao is home?”
“She hasn’t been back in days,” the neighbor answered testily.
Zhu Hua stood dumbfounded in front of Yao Tao’s door, at a loss.
Just a few days ago, his third uncle had told him to “warm things up” with Yao Tao lately, saying it would benefit the family.
It seemed he’d botched things…
What was he going to do, his third uncle would surely give him an earful.
He wandered around like a headless fly searching for Yao Tao, with no idea that at this very moment she was lying leisurely on a hotel bed, going over the supplies stockpiled in her space.
“Five more shipments haven’t been delivered yet, and I’m still short on hygiene products and some dairy items,” she said to herself, crossing something off in the little notebook she carried with her.
Besides milk powder and yogurt, she’d also ordered plenty of cheese and condensed milk-type items.
All kinds of chocolate too, dark chocolate, nut chocolate, milk chocolate, chocolate spread, she’d gotten some of those as well.
A stylish life needed a little sweetness from chocolate, after all.
Yao Tao rolled over on the bed, propped her chin on both hands, and swung her feet rhythmically.
She’d bought all kinds of seasonings and sauces too, but every time she thought about it afterward, she’d remember something else she was missing.
Nothing to be done about it, she just didn’t have much money, and later on she’d be counting on free-for-all looting anyway.
In the blink of an eye, half a month passed.
At last, the day the apocalypse arrived had come.
Yao Tao got up early, left the hotel for a morning jog, and breathed in, for the last time, the ordinary morning air thick with exhaust and smog.
The people in the city bustled about as usual, just like any other day.
No one knew that on this very day, the world would be turned completely upside down.
At a breakfast stall, Yao Tao had a bowl of tofu pudding, a piece of fried red-bean cake, and a youtiao fried dough stick.
Today would be a busy day, she needed to eat something rich and hearty.
After breakfast, she checked out of the hotel and left, the waterproof backpack on her shoulders.
At 9:30 a.m., she arrived once more at the hardware wholesale district.
After surveying her surroundings, she headed up to the rooftop platform of a building across the street.
Standing atop the roof looking down at the ground, Yao Tao kept her eyes fixed on the time.
At 9:45, a sudden commotion broke out below.
Here it comes!
Yao Tao calmly put on her mask, tied herself securely to the platform railing with a safety rope, and strapped on her hard hat.
The plants in the green belt suddenly began twitching, drawing quite a crowd of onlookers.
“Look over there, what’s moving?”
“A snake?”
“Whoa, that’s creepy.”
“The tree roots over here are moving too.”
“Don’t get too close, there’s something in the dirt…”
Just as people were murmuring among themselves, the plants in the green belt suddenly surged in size, branches that had been slender and weak just seconds ago swelled to the thickness of an adult’s thigh within moments.
“Aaaah… a monster!”
“How are plants coming alive?”
“Run!”
The plants in the green belt grew at a speed visible to the naked eye, their thick roots bursting from the soil and reaching outward. To anchor their now-massive stalks, the root systems grew just as wildly, wrapping around nearby buildings.
Some buildings were flipped over entirely by the sheer force of the plants bursting from the ground; some were pierced clean through by the plants’ outstretched branches; others were lifted right off their foundations, hoisted into the air like toy blocks.
The building Yao Tao was standing on began to tilt.
Windows shattered one after another, and even household plants began to mutate, spider plants, cacti, lucky bamboo… all joining the ranks of the city’s destruction.