Actually, Yao Tao hadn’t gone out of her way to come back and save Li Lin.
She’d found the exit and made it outside without any trouble.
Because the outside of the exit was screened by layers of plant leaves, no one had ever discovered it in her past life.
Once outside, Yao Tao spotted two pharmacies across the street.
The buildings had been badly damaged, and the survivors had all fled, medicine lay scattered on the ground, untouched by anyone.
Such a good chance to stockpile, how could she possibly pass it up?
Yao Tao immediately threw herself into a new round of free-for-all looting.
There were only two kinds of medicine that were actually useful once a human was infected by mutation: fever-reducers, and antihistamines.
She swept every bit of medicine into her space, intact or broken alike.
By the second year of the apocalypse, even broken or expired medicine would be nearly impossible to find.
Looking at the antihistamines in her hand, she suddenly thought of someone.
Like Li Lin, saved someone, only to be repaid with harm.
It was a doctor she’d met during her liver transplant, named Zhang Lifeng.
In her past life, in the first year of the apocalypse, that hospital had luckily remained mostly intact, and many infected patients had gone there seeking help.
Once, when Zhu Hua got infected, it was at that hospital that he’d been treated and cured.
But as the apocalyptic environment kept deteriorating, plenty of people with bad intentions started eyeing the hospital.
They’d form their own teams to seize supplies, and casualties were inevitable in the process.
At times like that, doctors and medicine became desperately needed.
So they’d raid the hospital for its medicine, and forcibly abduct doctors and nurses.
The last doctor left at the hospital who hadn’t been taken was Zhang Lifeng.
Because he’d studied martial arts and sanda, plenty of team members found him too much trouble to deal with.
Even after the hospital’s medicine supply was completely exhausted, Zhang Lifeng still refused to leave.
He guarded the hospital alone, all by himself, until near the end of the second year of the apocalypse, when a team leader brought his woman to see him.
The woman was in difficult labor.
He’d done everything he could, but in the end only managed to save the woman, the baby didn’t make it.
The team leader turned on him on the spot, hacking off one of Zhang Lifeng’s arms with a single blow.
As it turned out, all the team leader had ever wanted was the child, whether the woman lived or died meant nothing to him. In the apocalypse, as long as you had supplies in hand, you could have as many women as you wanted.
Later, Yao Tao heard that Zhang Lifeng had survived after all, and had kept treating people, until one time, trying to save a child, he died under a mutated animal’s fangs…
Zhu Hua had once mentioned Zhang Lifeng with a mocking tone, calling him an idiot.
At the time she hadn’t agreed with Zhu Hua’s view, but she hadn’t dared to argue either.
She’d stayed silent, her heart hard as iron, like most people in the apocalypse.
Lost in thought, she suddenly heard a loudspeaker blaring from the road, directing survivors toward a nearby temporary settlement.
She checked the time, already 4:30 in the afternoon.
She’d been gathering supplies all afternoon, and was starting to feel a little hungry.
She didn’t want to go to the temporary settlement, because that was where she’d run into Zhu Hua.
She didn’t want to see Zhu Hua right now.
She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hold back and would end up giving him the same slit-throat treatment.
Killing him now would be letting him off far too easily.
She wanted him to fully savor the “joys” of the apocalypse.
Without her space to rely on this time, she’d love to see where Zhu Hua’s confidence to build a team, and his supplies to feed his followers, would even come from.
The loudspeaker kept blaring, and more survivors kept appearing around her, heading toward the settlement.
“Hey, little girl, you’re going the wrong way, the settlement is back that direction,” a passerby reminded her.
“Oh, I’m waiting for someone first…” Yao Tao said, brushing him off.
Only then did the man walk away.
Taking the chance, Yao Tao slipped back to the entrance of the hardware wholesale district’s basement level and ducked inside.
To avoid unnecessary trouble, she’d wait until nightfall to make her next move.
Right now, the survivors hadn’t yet realized the apocalypse had truly begun, they thought this was just a natural disaster, and that everything would pass. Most people hadn’t even thought to gather supplies.
By tomorrow morning, once the sun rose, a second plant mutation would occur, more buildings would collapse, and searching for supplies would become far harder.
By the time survivors finally caught on and started scavenging to save themselves, more mutated creatures would have appeared alongside them.
By then, the risk of gathering supplies would be a hundred times greater than today.
Before moving at night, she needed to fill her stomach first.
Yao Tao spread out her picnic mat and sat down, hooked the breakfast machine up to the portable power bank, and made a bread, cheese, and ham sandwich.
She used a small knife to cut the pears into chunks and put them in the portable juicer to press out pear juice.
She took a sip and felt something was missing.
After a moment’s thought, she pulled a bottle of honey out of her backpack.
She drizzled some honey into the pear juice.
Mmm, that tasted really good!
By this point, Li Lin’s jaw had nearly dropped to the floor.
Am I hallucinating…
He touched his own forehead.
Yes, it must be the fever.
He was actually seeing Yao Tao making a sandwich and drinking pear juice.
The air was thick with the fresh scent of fruit, he’d never known a pear could smell this tempting.
The wheaty aroma of bread kept stirring his appetite too.
A hallucination, it had to be a hallucination!
Who would have an appetite for food after all that killing?
He should probably just lie down. Maybe sleeping it off would help.
He lay flat on his back, hands folded on his chest, and closed his eyes.
Yao Tao couldn’t care less what Li Lin thought after seeing all that.
He was running a high fever right now anyway, half out of his mind, seeing things was perfectly normal.
Besides, she had no intention of settling for a slapdash meal.
She’d nearly thrown up from all the crackers and instant noodles in her past life.
With her backpack blocking the view, Li Lin had no way of knowing how she’d pulled all these things out.
And even if push came to shove, if Li Lin dared to ask her about it, she’d dare to chop him up.
I didn’t save you so you could run your mouth asking all sorts of questions.
Fortunately, Li Lin knew how to behave, and quietly closed his eyes to rest. Before long, the medicine took effect and he fell asleep.
Yao Tao happily enjoyed her meal, all to herself.
The bread, heated by the breakfast machine, had a bit of crispness to its crust, and the cheese, melted from the heat, was rich and silky. She took a bite and pulled it into a long, stretching strand.
Paired with the ham, sweet and salty at once, the flavor was rich and full of layers.
Then a sip of sweet, clear pear-honey juice…
Ahh, perfect!
Yao Tao let out a satisfied sigh.
Only stockpiling and never enjoying yourself made you a complete fool.
With good food and good drink right there, why would anyone squeeze into a base and suffer alongside everyone else?
Besides, even if a base offered protection, the scheming and infighting among survivors never stopped for a moment.
Let your guard down even a little and someone would take you for a ride.
She made up her mind: in the year before the official ark bases arrived by sea, she’d build herself a comfortable “home.” Gather up plenty of supplies, and then just hole up and coast through the whole year.
Yao Tao ate and drank her fill, and didn’t leave any for Li Lin.
By the time Li Lin woke from his stupor, it was already eight in the evening, and Yao Tao was long gone.
But she had sealed the shop’s roller shutter tight, and no mutated rats could get in.
Li Lin fumbled for his flashlight, turned it on, and found a bottle of water and two boxes of medicine sitting on the ground.
He picked up the medicine and found it was exactly the kind he’d taken before.
He knew Yao Tao had left it for him.
He gave a bitter smile as he put the medicine away, sighing inwardly: she’d saved his life yet again.