“It’s raining,” Chi Zheng said suddenly.
Lin Xia paused, tilting his head to listen, and found that the pitter-patter of rain was indeed coming from outside the window.
He didn’t know when the rain had started, but in just a short moment, it had grown incredibly heavy, clattering loudly against the warehouse roof.
Lin Xia knit his brows slightly.
Rain was definitely a disadvantage for them, as it would severely hinder their escape speed. The Alliance government had already suspended essential services in the Fourth District. The entire city of Greenbay was completely cut off from water, electricity, and the network, making it unsafe to drive out.
However, it was merely an inconvenience, not to the point where they couldn’t leave.
Although the Fourth District was heavily polluted, its climate was usually quite mild—not cold in the winter, not hot in the summer, and floods were rare. This rain would probably stop very soon.
“Let’s go to the first-floor warehouse to gather food first,” he suggested.
Chi Zheng nodded and began to ponder what they should grab in a moment.
When the two walked down to the first floor, they discovered there were already people inside. Chen Song’s team was gathered together eating a late-night snack. Because the rain was too loud, no one had noticed their arrival, and they were still happily slurping down instant noodles.
As Lin Xia stepped into the storage room, the yellow-haired youth almost jumped out of his skin.
“You guys…”
“Hello there, we’re just looking for some food,” Lin Xia greeted him politely.
The yellow-haired youth swallowed a mouthful of noodles and soup. “Oh, oh, hello.” He scratched his head, suddenly remembering something. “Don’t take the frozen goods. The warehouse is out of power right now, and it’ll take a long time to thaw.”
“Alright.”
Once Lin Xia and Chi Zheng walked into the fresh food section, the yellow-haired youth plopped right back down in front of the hotpot and pursed his lips. “Where did those two pop up from?”
“We combed through the entire warehouse just now and didn’t see a single trace of a human. Could it be they just went outside?”
“Impossible!” Chen Mei shook her head. “It’s pouring outside, and I don’t see any water stains on them.”
“Playing ghost…” Monkey muttered a complaint but said nothing more.
Previously, they had all fainted together. When they woke up, the warehouse was entirely quiet. At first, everyone was quite pleased.
The competitors were gone, the mutated creatures were all dead, and the warehouse was packed with plenty of daily supplies—enough to sustain them for a while. Wasn’t this much more comfortable than fighting and scrambling outside?!
Thus, they unanimously decided to lock the iron door to the third-floor rooftop and use this warehouse as a temporary base to take a short rest.
On one hand, it was because it started raining outside, and on the other hand, they intended to hone their special abilities.
But as they stayed, everyone began to notice some anomalies.
For instance, Chen Song’s ability began to degrade after the aurora erupted. Not only did the temperature of his flames drop, but he couldn’t even maintain his original burning area. Moreover, every time he unleashed it, he would lapse into a strange drowsiness and total exhaustion, as if he had been drained completely.
His younger sister, Chen Mei, was not doing any better. She was a water-attribute ability user. After the aurora, she had started to be able to freeze a thumb-thick stream of water into ice, which was originally a very good sign.
Lately, however, her freezing speed had begun to slow down for some reason. At first, she could maintain the thickness of a thumb, but now it was only the size of a needle tip, proving more difficult each time.
So when Chen Song saw Chi Zheng and Lin Xia, for a split second, he really wanted to chat with the two.
Everyone had experienced the grand aurora outburst. It was impossible for that tall kid to be unaffected. Perhaps they could exchange information and find the cause of the ability degradation together.
But would he be willing to share?
Chen Song hesitated for a moment and decided to bring it up when the two came over to borrow fire.
It was raining outside, and the water and power were cut inside the warehouse. If they wanted a hot meal, they could only come to his sister and him; they could help boil water or start a fire.
In the end, those two just exchanged glances with them and then walked past as if no one were there, pushing a massive flatbed cart loaded with goods.
They just walked away?!
The five of them were sitting in a circle around that large pot of steaming instant noodles packed with sliced meat and vegetables—had those two not seen it?!
“Are they stupid?” Monkey rolled his eyes as he drank the noodle soup. “What’s the point of taking so much rice, flour, and oil? You can’t chew them raw. Now that the water and power are cut, do they honestly think that putting rice into an electric cooker will make food come out on its own? Where is the electricity coming from?”
“Maybe one of them has an electric-attribute ability,” the yellow-haired youth speculated wildly. “An electric ability user can supply power just by gripping a plug, exactly like how our Boss Song can burn water to cook instant noodles.”
“Impossible,” Chang Xinxin shook her head. “Appliances require stable voltage. The high-voltage electricity unleashed by an electric ability user would directly burn the appliance out; it can’t possibly be used to cook rice.”
“I actually think that one of those two might be a fire ability user as well, and capable of stably triggering high-temperature flames for a long time. Otherwise, what use would they have for those hotpot soup bases?”
Chen Mei blanked out, her mouth falling open.
She wanted to say that her brother, Chen Song, was the strongest among fire ability users, and even he couldn’t fire up a hotpot for everyone right now, so how could those two kids possibly manage it?
But she remembered her brother’s warning not to expose the degradation of their abilities. Thus, she swallowed her words to counter Chang Xinxin, silently lowering her head to eat her noodles.
The atmosphere lapsed into awkwardness for a moment.
Anxious at heart, Chen Song used smoking as an excuse, stood up, and walked outside.
He walked out with a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it. Instead, he stood in front of the cold storage room on the basement level, staring blankly at the iron door.
Lin Xia and Chi Zheng were indeed eating hotpot, using the gas stove inside the food stall cart. The two sat across from each other at the table. Various ingredients bubbled and boiled in the pot, wafting a fresh, savory aroma as steam rose. For a while, only the sounds of swallowing and chewing echoed inside the cart.
Lin Xia was truly starving.
From the moment his food stall cart awakened until now, he had hardly eaten a proper meal. Before, he had merely scraped by on the road to the warehouse, and once he arrived, he was busy gathering ingredients to upgrade the cart. Afterwards, he had fought his way into the Black Fog Farm, where his entire mind was focused on the diners violently eating people, leaving him absolutely no time to notice whether his stomach was empty.
Fortunately, all the quests had been completed successfully. With his mind relaxed, his stomach rumbled like a drum.
The two gorged themselves wildly, feeling as if they had come back to life. Only then were they in the mood to discuss the new quests.
“It’s split into two types: Regular Quests and Challenge Quests,” Lin Xia shared the task panel with Chi Zheng.
“Regular Quests are relatively simple, but the rewards basically only cover the daily rent of the food stall cart. The benefit is that they can be performed once a day.”
“Challenge Quests are distributed randomly. There’s a chance to obtain functional modules and home products, and the specific rewards depend on the task difficulty.”
“If we want to overall improve the level, functions, and attributes of the food stall cart, we can only do it through Upgrade Quests, like this wading module…” Lin Xia pointed at the gray button on the gear lever.
“This counts as a functional improvement and requires an Upgrade Quest. However, the rewards for Upgrade Quests seem to be fixed. Next time we upgrade, we can only pick between speed and wading for the functional option. If there isn’t a feature we particularly like, we can also choose not to accept the Red Quest.”
“If we don’t take the Red Quest, we won’t be teleported to Black Fog Farm. If we fail, as long as we escape in time, it won’t affect the distribution of the previous quest rewards, but there will be a fine—usually twice the previous reward, so we have to be extremely careful.”
“Challenge Quests cannot be manually refreshed, but they can be manually abandoned. Once abandoned, we have to accept a 240-hour cooldown, but it will automatically update every 72 hours, so we still need to consider carefully before accepting a quest.”
“Today’s Regular Quest is to top up 100 units of energy, and the reward is 1 liter of drinking water and 1 catty each of random vegetables and fruits. Topping up over 150 units of energy can grant an extra lucky draw opportunity, though it won’t increase the rewards for drinking water and food.”
“However, the rewarded fruits and vegetables can be stored in the refrigerator and accessed at any time within 3 months, so we don’t have to worry about not finishing them or them spoiling. The prize pool for the lucky draw tickets changes monthly. This month it’s household appliances, which seems like a pretty good deal.”
Lin Xia flipped through the descriptions of the rewards. “How about we save up the lucky draw tickets? I see that a ten-pull grants a free bonus draw, which is more cost-effective than single draws.”
Chi Zheng could no longer hear what Lin Xia was saying.
Within his vision, there were only Lin Xia’s bright, shining eyes and those soft lips that kept opening and closing.
They look very delicious…
His throat bobbed. He swallowed his saliva subconsciously, feeling a strange stream of heat surging within his body.
This was a new condition that appeared after the aurora erupted, and he hadn’t figured out the cause yet.
“Chi Xiaozheng? Chi Zheng, are you listening?”
“Yeah.” The man lowered his eyelids rapidly, not daring to look Lin Xia in the eye. “I… then I’ll go get some more crystal cores back…”
He unconsciously softened and lowered his voice, instinctively trying to please the other. “Lucky draw, this month’s prize pool is household appliances. Electrical appliances are all valuable.”
Hearing him say this, Lin Xia felt a bit embarrassed instead.
It was true that he wanted to draw appliances! But where did he have the ability to gather crystal cores? In the end, it still required Chi Xiaozheng to do the hard labor.
After some thought, he made up his mind. “Then you teach me how to fight.”
“No need, you stay in—”
“I need to! You can’t be the only one doing dangerous things.”
“And if I kill them with my own hands, I can spend money to let the food stall cart process them in batches, which is much more convenient than you picking them up one by one.”
Faced with Lin Xia’s persistence, Chi Zheng opened his mouth. His first thought was that he couldn’t make the other angry.
If he didn’t agree, Xiaxia would be unhappy, and he would be unhappy too.
Chi Zheng didn’t like that feeling.
He liked Lin Xia being happy, joyful, satisfied, sweet, and fragrant…
Moreover, this sudden fainting spell had also given him a strong sense of crisis—he was not omnipotent yet. Even if he wanted to accompany Lin Xia forever, even if he followed him step by step to guard and watch him, he still couldn’t prevent accidents from happening.
If they were teleported to that Black Fog Farm again, Lin Xia at least needed the ability to save his own life and hold out until he crawled back from the abyss.
So, he did need to teach him how to fight—in the way of humans.
Thinking of this, Chi Zheng nodded and agreed.
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