The lines for paying in credits and paying in food were separated, leaving Bai Yanjun with no choice but to head resignedly toward the food-payment queue.
On their walk back, Bai Yanjun had already handed his two leaves over to Lin Daiyu, so his back-basket now held only the single leaf he found in the morning and a single stalk of water bamboo found in the afternoon.
Shen Tangtang didn’t feel like exposing him. By all accounts, Bai Yanjun was traveling with them, and plenty of other scavengers pulled the same stunt—having the friend who paid credits for the bus ride carry the bulk of the haul while they carried a tiny fraction.
The mercenary team in charge of duties didn’t raise a fuss either, because riders paying with credits had a weight quota anyway: anything over 100 catties meant forfeiting half a catty for every extra catty, so either way, they turned a profit.
“Name and age?”
“Shen Tangtang, 17.”
“Alright, your name’s on the list. Put your sack on the scale… 36 catties… Good enough, get on board!”
The mercenary handling the registration and weighing handed Shen Tangtang’s sack back and waved her toward the transport.
“Lin Daiyu, 17.”
Lin Daiyu stepped up next, handing her sack over. The mercenary gave it a hoist and let out a chuckle.
He dropped it onto the scale.
“110 catties. That’s 10 catties over the limit, so we’re keeping 5 catties on our end. Alright, your name’s on the roster too, get on board!”
Grinning broadly, the mercenary pressed the freshly chopped leaves onto his wristband scanner.
[Scan result: Radiation level 38%, edible.]
The audio alert rang out loud and clear, instantly drawing the eyes of everyone nearby.
Shen Tangtang looked out the vehicle in confusion, only to see Lin Daiyu’s face drained of color.
Right now, Lin Daiyu wanted nothing more than to tear the mercenary outside into pieces. He was violating regulations; while everything still required a mandatory rescan, the audio alerts were supposed to be muted to protect every scavenger’s safety.
Shen Tangtang and Lin Daiyu quickly boarded the vehicle, while Bai Yanjun remained stuck waiting in the other queue.
Because Lin Daiyu’s haul had exceeded the weight limit, she had 5 catties of leaves sheared off the top.
Since Lin Daiyu and Bai Yanjun had assumed they wouldn’t go over, they hadn’t asked Shen Tangtang to help carry any, and now Lin Daiyu’s expression was utterly wretched.
There was no way those 5 catties were going to be deducted from Bai Yanjun’s two leaves—he had marked his portions beforehand and hadn’t once offered to pitch in for the weight penalty.
Shen Tangtang finally understood why Bai Yanjun had stuffed his own leaves right at the bottom of the pile earlier; he had been guarding against this exact scenario.
Sure enough, a protagonist at rock bottom would stop at nothing. She remembered that in the mid-to-late stages of the novel, the male lead turned out to be some kind of philanthropist, while the female lead became an absolute grain tycoon.
Feeling a twinge of sympathy but not knowing quite what to say, she just hugged her burlap sack inside the transport and turned her gaze toward the commotion outside.
Every single time they had to surrender a third of their harvest, it felt to the scavengers like flesh being carved right off their bodies.
It was one thing before you actually got your hands on food, but once you genuinely secured it, who on earth would resign themselves to giving away the food they’d risked their lives for? It was practically robbing them of their lives.
Outside the vehicle right now, an old man was throwing a massive tantrum, rolling on the ground and refusing to hand over his food, until the mercenary in charge waved a hand and two guards stepped up to haul him off to the side so he wouldn’t hold up the schedule.
Shen Tangtang quietly pulled her gaze back and looked at Lin Daiyu, whose eyes were cast downward. She leaned in close, proactively helping her shield her from the assessing stares of the people around them.
“Thanks, Tangtang.”
Lin Daiyu spoke in a tiny voice.
Her tone was raspy—it was painfully obvious she had been terrified just now.
“Don’t mention it.”
Shen Tangtang pulled her into a hug, keeping the food-filled sack sandwiched between them so no one else could eye it, and gently patted her shoulder in comfort.
Lin Daiyu might have had a few petty, self-serving thoughts of her own, but she had always treated her genuinely; there was no way she’d sit back and watch her best friend get bullied.
Now that she’d presumably seen right through Bai Yanjun’s true intentions, she probably wouldn’t end up suffering quite as miserably as she did in the original novel!
The transport vehicle packed in tighter and tighter before finally lurching into motion.
Accompanied by groaning, metal-fatigued screeches from its overladen frame, the bus rattled all the way back toward the safe zone.
With road conditions being what they were, people constantly shoved and squeezed against one another, keeping the journey rowdy and吵闹.
An older woman who had just been groped wasn’t about to take it lying down, planting a resounding slap right across the face of the man standing behind her. “Screw your mother, you dare pinch my ass?!”
“I didn’t! Why are you hitting people at random?!”
The man was furious and wronged; anyone would fly off the handle after getting slapped out of nowhere, let alone a grown man.
With that, the man slapped her right back, completely throwing out any chivalrous notion of never hitting a woman. “There’s your payback! With a figure like yours, I’d be disgusted even if I did touch you.”
“You—!”
The slapped woman dropped her sack and spun around, ready to immediately throw down.
“What’s all that yelling back there?!”
The mercenary stationed at the front roared, instantly silencing the entire vehicle.
The woman shot the man a vicious glare, snatched up her sack, and clamped her thighs tightly together.
A dark-faced old lady nearby clicked her tongue in disappointment; she had been hoping to swipe some food during the chaos, but it looked like she missed her window.
Shen Tangtang watched the scene with absolute calm. That older woman’s rear had actually been pinched by the old lady, meaning the guy behind her really had been framed.
She and Lin Daiyu clutched their food sacks tightly to their chests, ignoring the roving, predatory gazes lingering around them.
The rest of the trip went smoothly—likely due to a healthy fear of the mercenaries—and nobody else tried to stir up trouble.
Once off the bus, they spotted several orphanage camp directors organizing people up ahead.
Seeing Shen Tangtang and Lin Daiyu hauling their bulky burlap sacks over, Director Wang’s face wrinkled up into a wide, beaming smile.
“Tangtang, Daiyu, looks like you two had a pretty great haul today.”
“Morning, Director Wang. We didn’t get much, just a few leaves.” Lin Daiyu greeted her excitedly. Now that they were safely back inside the safe zone and free from prying eyes outside, her spirits lifted considerably.
Shen Tangtang ignored Director Wang’s measuring look, heaved her sack, grabbed Lin Daiyu, and marched straight to the back of the queue.
It was still a half-hour walk from here to the orphanage concentration camp, and if just the two of them walked past the shanty towns alone, they’d likely get jumped and robbed blind. Staying with the main group was definitely the safer bet.
“A few leaves is plenty. Look at some of the little brats—didn’t find a damn thing and just came back to freeload.”
Director Wang spat on the ground. If the upper management hadn’t prioritized the orphanage for the sake of the future and sent annual subsidies, the orphans sent out by the facility to forage wouldn’t even have generated enough to feed the younger kids left behind.
Shen Tangtang reined in her expression, tugged on Lin Daiyu—who looked like she wanted to talk back—and quickly found a spot to sit down.
The younger kids targeted by Director Wang’s veiled jabs shrank into themselves, as if making themselves smaller could help them dodge her disgust.
Another director glanced at the kids huddled in the corner and said to Director Wang, “Alright, pipe down. Is food really that easy to find?”
“I wasn’t talking to you, what are you getting worked up for?”
Director Wang rolled her eyes, her barrel-shaped waist swaying as she marched over toward a newly arrived transport.
That was the bus returning from the southern route, and several of the newly disembarked scavengers were dripping in fresh blood—it was clear they had run into mutant beasts.
“What happened here? Oh my god, that wound is brutal, can this guy even be saved?”
“So terrifying… he’s missing a whole arm!”