“Xiang Ge, you’re bleeding!”
Seeing the injury on Xiang Ge’s arm, Shao Ya immediately told Shao Wan to throw the medical kit from the pickup’s back seat and began bandaging her wound.
Her newly bought gray combat uniform was torn open where it had been slashed.
Xiang Ge felt no pain at the moment.
She felt heartache.
That was money.
Fortunately, the wound wasn’t deep—she had dodged in time and only suffered a flesh wound.
Shao Ya’s bandaging technique was very skilled. Soon, she tied a white knot around Xiang Ge’s arm.
“Thank you,” Shao Ya said seriously. If Xiang Ge hadn’t pulled her away, the one hit by the giant lizard’s tail would have been her.
At that moment, it wouldn’t have been just an arm injury.
“It’s nothing.”
To Xiang Ge, this level of injury was insignificant.
The pickup drove for a long distance before stopping behind a hillside.
This was the midpoint between the orchard and the base.
Night had fallen.
They gathered firewood, lit a bonfire, and began to replenish their energy.
After the intense escape, everyone had a better appetite. Half of Xiang Ge’s seasoning bottle was already gone.
Although they all still felt lingering fear, there was no heaviness or despair.
In the wasteland world, everyone danced with death every day—danger was normal.
“What should we do? Go back?” Shao Ya asked Shen Cheng.
“That giant lizard isn’t dead. It will most likely return to the orchard,” Shen Cheng said firmly after watching everything through the rearview mirror.
“But… all the medium-radiation fruits were already harvested. If they’re all eaten by mutated beasts, we can’t afford the loss,” Shao Wan bit her lip.
In the underground city’s rules, if a harvesting mission failed, it was simply marked as a failure and the employer would send others.
They would only lose future opportunities.
But if the loss was caused by their own mistake—like abandoning already-harvested goods due to inability to handle mutated beasts—then they had to pay for it themselves.
And they definitely couldn’t afford that.
Their team was very poor. They had already spent a lot of energy coins on mechanical birds. If they ended up making no profit and still had to compensate, they would be ruined.
They might even be hunted down by the underground city.
The situation was so passive that they had no other choice.
But returning to the orchard meant facing the giant lizard again—and that seemed like a death sentence.
No one knew how badly it was injured.
Shen Cheng fell into silence.
Xiang Ge was also thinking.
She calculated in her mind: 300 jin of medium-radiation fruit—split among five people—that was 60 jin each.
Converted into credits, that was…
She didn’t need to continue calculating.
She couldn’t afford it either.
The five of them exchanged glances and gave bitter smiles.
After 72 hours of hard work, they might end up in debt.
Where was the logic in that?
Night had fully fallen. Everyone was physically and mentally exhausted from both work and escape.
“Let’s rest first. We can discuss it tomorrow morning,” Xiang Ge suggested.
No one objected.
After setting up a watch rotation, they all fell into uneasy rest.
Xiang Ge still took her sleeping bag to the truck bed. She needed rest so she could fight properly tomorrow.
In her view, there was no need for discussion.
Whether it was for the uncollected fruit, the purification points from the giant beast, or revenge for her injury—this mutated beast was something she would definitely kill.
The night sky was full of stars. The wasteland night wasn’t truly dark; the stars lit up the land like dim lanterns—beautiful, though no one had the mood to appreciate it.
The next morning, Xiang Ge woke at exactly 5:30 a.m.
She deliberately woke early so they could settle things quickly and return to submit the mission.
But when she got down from the truck, she realized her teammates were gone.
She immediately checked her backpack.
No signs of tampering.
Opening the back of the truck, she found the low-radiation fruits still there—but all their weapons were gone.
Huh?
Being abandoned after a team mission was common enough.
But being abandoned while your teammates leave behind the vehicle and valuables? That was beyond her understanding.
After drinking two nutrient solutions, Xiang Ge decided to proceed as planned and head to the orchard alone.
She figured they had most likely gone back for the fruit.
But how were they going to carry it without a vehicle?
She couldn’t make sense of it.
Maybe she had spent too long in the apocalypse and couldn’t adapt to wasteland logic anymore.
Her arm had stopped bleeding and felt fine after some movement.
She changed out of the damaged uniform into a spare combat suit.
She silently vowed to be more careful this time—if this outfit got ruined too, she really had nothing left to wear.
She got into the driver’s seat, tossed her backpack aside, stepped on the accelerator, and set off.
The veteran driver floored it through the empty wasteland.
A journey that normally took an hour and a half took her just forty minutes.
She parked the pickup at a convenient escape point outside the orchard, adjusted her weapon, and went in on foot.
Her mental perception spread to its maximum range—countless life signals flooded in.
And the strongest signal was still at the center of the orchard.
Meanwhile, near the giant lizard, her four teammates were whispering.
“The lizard can barely open its eyes—it looks like both eyes are blind. Sister Xiang Ge and Shao Ya really injured it yesterday,” Shao Wan said after observing.
“Strike while it’s weak,” Shao Ya said firmly.
“If we hadn’t lost all those medium-radiation fruits into the collapsed pit under it, we wouldn’t have to fight it again. It feels like it was waiting for us,” Shen Cheng frowned.
“We had no choice but to come back. We couldn’t afford the loss,” Shao Wan said helplessly. “Sister Xiang Ge has the purification fruit—she could easily sell it to cover the damages. We’re not the same.”
“Yeah… if Xiang Ge hadn’t warned us yesterday, we’d all be dead already. We owe her our lives. If we kill the lizard later, we must take her share back too,” Shao Ya said, already sharpening her blade.
“She’s injured too,” Ye Zheng added flatly.