At the Western restaurant, what was supposed to be a simple break turned into the three of them ordering more and more dishes to sample. In the end, they ate some there, had the rest packed up, and even placed orders for ten kinds of exceptionally delicious signature dishes.
Besides one thousand Spanish ham and cheese pizzas, they also ordered two thousand specialty roasted squabs, two thousand servings of foie gras chocolate pie, one thousand portions of confit truffle lamb chops, three thousand servings of pan-seared deep-sea cod, two thousand salmon cheese tarts, one thousand plates of tender-seared beef tongue, two thousand platters of cold-cut cheese and ham, four thousand crab tarts, and four thousand Australian Wagyu tomahawk steaks.
After placing the orders, Luo Jiu immediately sent the list to the group chat. Everyone could share it and mark things off at the same time, so that after stocking up on too much, they would not forget what they had and what they had not bought.
Cheng Yaoyao quickly sent a message. “We don’t need to stock up on this much steak, do we? We can buy a wok. I can cook it.”
Luo Jiu said, “What we lack right now isn’t money—it’s space. Cooking during the apocalypse will consume the fuel and water we’ve stored ourselves. It’s best not to cook if we can avoid it. We should stock up on more finished or semi-finished products that only need simple processing, or can be eaten as soon as they’re taken out. It’ll save us trouble.”
Cheng Yaoyao thought about it and realized Luo Jiu was right. If the situation became dire, with so many zombies around, even if everyone fought with both fists, they could not handle everything. Where would she find two free hands to cook?
With that thought, she had to get moving too and start preparing all the semi-finished foods she could make.
The chickens slaughtered that afternoon had all been plucked and cleaned until their skin looked golden. Their necks were hooked with iron hooks, and they hung in the courtyard to drain.
Wearing her reading glasses, Grandma sat beneath the sun and used tweezers to pull out the tiny down feathers left on the chickens, one by one.
“Grandma, they’ve gone out to buy things. The two of us are going to make five hundred pounds of sausages at home.”
Grandma looked up at once. “What? Five hundred pounds? We’d never finish that before it spoiled. We’d be eating it into the next life! You really dare to think of something like that. Crazy—make five hundred pounds? I’m not doing it with you.”
Cheng Yaoyao’s eyes shifted, and she improvised without hesitation. “Grandma, Luo Jiu said so. She said salt can resist germs, and eating more sausages is good for the body. She calculated it precisely, and five hundred pounds is the most suitable amount.”
Sun Feng’e let out an “ah.” The old woman had a strong bias in favor of top student Luo Jiu, and she murmured, “If that little girl said it, then it probably makes sense. She’s good at studying and reads a lot, so she knows more.”
“Exactly!” Cheng Yaoyao continued making things up. “Besides, if we don’t make them, they’ll buy them outside. Jialing has money, sure, but the things bought outside might not be as clean as what we make ourselves, right?”
Sun Feng’e curled her lip. “What good things could they possibly sell outside? They might be using dead-pig meat or meat from old sows. People could get sick from eating it. Don’t let them buy sausages outside. We’ll make them ourselves. Hurry and bring the meat over—I’ll wash it right now.”
Cheng Yaoyao put on an act and went upstairs for a lap, then took several large basins of pork belly with alternating layers of fat and lean meat out of her space.
The old lady had a strong sense of boundaries. Since moving into the villa, she had stayed either in her own room or in the shared areas on the first floor and never went upstairs. So whenever Cheng Yaoyao took things out of her space, she said she had gotten them from the storage room upstairs.
After several trips, ten large basins had been placed in the courtyard. They ran out of basins, so Cheng Yaoyao immediately began placing orders on her phone like crazy.
Two hundred each of bowls, plates, dishes, and cups. Five hundred pairs of chopsticks. One hundred stainless-steel basins and fifty solid-wood cutting boards. Fifty each of spoons, spatulas, and slotted spoons.
Twenty authentic Zhangqiu iron woks. Thirty frying pans. Ten electric griddles and twenty soup pots.
Fifty each of kitchen cleavers, boning knives, meat cleavers, and vegetable knives, along with thirty whetstones.
The household meat grinders were all too small and certainly could not meet the demands of the major project they would be undertaking over the next while, so they might as well buy commercial ones. They placed the order with a large local supermarket, which could deliver everything within an hour.
They ordered sausage-stuffing machines, bone crushers, bone saws, and meat grinders together—thirty of each. There was no need to worry about wearing them out.
Also, considering storage, organization, and hygiene after everything was prepared, she ordered fifty cases of plastic wrap and ten thousand food-storage bags. She also ordered two commercial sealing machines and eight thousand sealing bags.
Looking at the detailed order list Cheng Yaoyao had sent over, Luo Jiu suddenly realized a problem.
As a student, she did not use many things at school, so there were not many items she thought of while stocking up. Her perspective was greatly limited. They had to go somewhere with a wide variety of goods and a comprehensive selection of products before they could stock up on all the minor details.
“Let’s go to the supermarket!”
Donglai Supermarket was a nationally renowned large chain supermarket. It had everything one could need, and every shelf across its three floors was filled with products in a wide variety of styles.
Luo Jiu said, “We can’t miss a single section. We’ll look at the samples here and place the orders directly on our phones. The first floor is meat and vegetables, so we’ll start from… the second floor.”
The first section they reached was health supplements.
Feng Qi rubbed her nose. “Do we really need these?”
Luo Jiu picked up a bottle of liquid calcium and examined it. “We might not need them now, but we will more than ten years from now. If the apocalypse continues indefinitely, we’ll really need some health supplements by the time we reach middle and old age.”
Zhong Jialing’s face tightened. “That’s terrifying. I don’t even dare imagine what I’ll look like when I’m old.”
Luo Jiu smiled. “What’s there to fear? Everyone grows old. Even if we develop wrinkles and are no longer young, as long as we’re healthy, we can still live freely.
“Here—calcium tablets for middle-aged and elderly people. If we keep fighting zombies, our backs, legs, and arms will definitely hurt once we get older. Liquid calcium is absorbed a little more easily. One pill a day. For the five of us, that’s 1,825 pills a year.
“If we start taking calcium supplements at thirty-five and live to eighty, we’ll need about ___ pills.
“One bottle contains one hundred pills, so we’ll need approximately 822 bottles. Let’s order 900 bottles. Whoever’s in the most pain can take more.”
Zhong Jialing placed an order for one thousand bottles with a deeply troubled expression. She knew she was the most delicate of them all and could not stand having this ache or that pain. If it became too unbearable, she might as well stockpile calcium tablets and use them to commit suicide.
Two thousand bottles of fish oil. One thousand six hundred bags of calcium-fortified milk powder for middle-aged and elderly people. Nine hundred bottles of liver-protecting tablets. One thousand bottles each of vitamins A, B, C, D, and E.
Five hundred bottles of iron and qi supplements. Two thousand boxes of astragalus and donkey-hide gelatin oral liquid.
The more Zhong Jialing bought, the more worried she became. At last, she found a set of imported capsules containing youthful-state cellular mitochondria, claiming to preserve eternal youth. They cost more than two thousand yuan a box, but she gritted her teeth and ordered four thousand boxes.
Fifteen minutes later, the three of them had placed orders for everything in this section that they might possibly use. They had even bought six thousand boxes of menopause-delaying pills.
They were truly planning far ahead. Although survival in the apocalypse was difficult and every day could be their last, they had already taken life after menopause into consideration.
Feng Qi also ordered three thousand tubs of protein powder and one thousand bags of yak bone-strengthening powder. She did not seek beauty, only strength.
At the beverage section around the corner, they had already stocked up on water, so now they could stock up on other drinks to have alongside it later.
Milk was the main item: two thousand cases of whole milk, two thousand cases of yogurt, five hundred cases of oat-and-walnut milk, and five hundred cases of red-date milk.
One thousand five hundred cases of Wahaha AD Calcium Milk. One thousand cases of Wangzai Milk.
Three thousand bottles each of Red Bull, Wanglaoji, and MaiDong. Five thousand bottles of electrolyte water.
Six thousand bottles of orange juice. One thousand bottles each of coconut juice, seabuckthorn juice, and mulberry juice. One thousand cases of Coca-Cola. Two hundred cases of Pepsi.
One thousand bottles each of Sprite, 7UP, Mirinda, and Da Yao Jiabin.
“None of us really likes tea-flavored drinks. Let’s just buy some tea cakes instead. If we want tea, we can brew it fresh.”
Luo Jiu ordered five hundred cakes of Pu’er tea, two hundred pounds of Da Hong Pao, six hundred pounds of Tieguanyin, and two hundred pounds of jasmine tea. That would be more than enough, even if they drank a great deal.
Next came the household goods section, which took the most time. Zhong Jialing rubbed her sore neck. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
Luo Jiu pulled Feng Qi over to sit against a pillar and rest for a while. “How we live after the apocalypse begins will depend on whether the things we stock up on here are sufficient. Are you ready?”
Feng Qi gritted her teeth, stood up, rolled up her sleeves, and pulled up her arms. “Let’s do it!”