Chapter 163

“When someone asks you, ‘Am I pretty?’ they want to hear you praise them. The only correct answer is yes, you’re pretty.”

“When someone tells you that someone confessed to them and they don’t know what to do, they’re rubbing their romance in your face. The only correct response is to immediately express your envy, jealousy, and resentment so they can feel satisfied.”

“As for how you really feel or what you really think, that doesn’t matter,” Song Jingshuo patiently explained. “People have eyes and mirrors. They know perfectly well whether they’re pretty or not. And when someone confesses to them, no one knows better than they do whether they like that person or have feelings for them.”

“Everyone comes with a clear purpose. They’re expecting you to say what they want to hear. No one wants to hear the truth.”

Gao Yuxuan suddenly understood. “No wonder girls were always hitting me!”

It had taken him all these years.

He had finally solved one of life’s great mysteries.

Li Jiangbing was laughing so hard he was shaking.

“Don’t laugh.” Embarrassed and furious, Gao Yuxuan turned his fire on Li Jiangbing. “You’re not any better than me. You keep playing dumb in front of Su Yu. What, are you waiting for Su Yu to confess to you first? I’m telling you, Su Yu isn’t Zhang Lesi.”

Li Jiangbing immediately stopped laughing. “Don’t talk nonsense. Don’t go spreading rumors about a girl. Doesn’t that little girl have a reputation to protect?”

Gao Yuxuan refused to back down. “How am I spreading rumors? Everyone has eyes.”

You couldn’t hide who you favored.

You saved her the best seat in the car.

You helped her carry anything heavy.

Whenever something good came along or things were being handed out, she was the first person you thought of.

As long as it was within your power, you did whatever you could to make things easier for her.

Some things didn’t need to be said aloud. They showed in your actions.

The clearest sign was giving up benefits and power for someone else.

Yet precisely when Su Yu tried to show her feelings, he pretended not to notice, leaving her completely at a loss.

Even Song Jingshuo encouraged Li Jiangbing. “You said it yourself—Su Yu isn’t like Zhang Lesi. A girl like her will never take the first step. You have to pursue her.”

Li Jiangbing stared at the television screen. “Pursue her? You want me, a technical-school graduate, to pursue a woman with a master’s degree? Even if you gave me ten times the courage, I couldn’t do it. This relationship is impossible from the very beginning.”

The room suddenly fell silent for a moment. The only sounds were the little characters on the television firing bang bang bang and the villain shrieking in agony.

Song Jingshuo and Gao Yuxuan both froze for a beat.

They fought zombies every day and saw the same familiar faces every day. They had actually forgotten that, in normal society, they were all... very different from one another.

Gao Yuxuan pursed his lips, desperately trying to think of something to smooth things over. But no excuse came to him, so he could only look to Song Jingshuo for help.

Song Jingshuo said, “What use are degrees and money now?”

Exactly! It was still Old Song who knew what to say!

Gao Yuxuan quickly chimed in. “That’s right! Who cares about that anymore? If you ask me—”

“Don’t say anything. Just shut up,” Li Jiangbing said irritably.

“By your logic, that makes it even more impossible.”

“In a normal, peaceful time, someone like her would never have fallen for someone like me. So why does she like me now? Because things aren’t peaceful.”

“For her, this is a wealthy heiress fallen on hard times.”

“For me, it’s taking advantage of someone’s misfortune.”

“If I did something like that, my mother would beat me to death.”

“Bullshit.”

Li Jiangbing’s face was covered with a sheet mask. He kept his eyes on the television and refused to look at them.

Song Jingshuo and Gao Yuxuan couldn’t see what expression he was making.

Mr. Xu returned humming a little tune, a bag slung over his shoulder.

When he saw the employees, he handed over the bag. “Here. Take these and eat.”

Everyone cheered.

There were potato chips, chocolate, and drinks. They poured the two bottles of drinks into cups and divided them among themselves, each person getting only a sip.

But even that was satisfying.

Some of the other employees who had joined the teams had brought things back as well. Seeing Mr. Xu contribute everything he had brought, they took out their own goods and shared them too.

Wu Yan and Tao Xiaoxiao even brought out several enormous grapes, each one as big as an orange.

There were no grapes at Youth Apartment. They were a special feature of Auspicious Home. A resident on the first floor with a private courtyard had grown them there, with the help of Xue and Qian, the two wood-element ability users, who had accelerated their growth.

They could be forced to ripen and picked on the spot. The ones left unpicked still hung from the vines as tiny green beads and weren’t ready to eat yet. Even if someone wanted to steal them, there would be nothing to steal.

For now, they were an exclusive benefit of Auspicious Home, available only to original resident homeowners.

Sister Wu and Xiaoxiao held management positions, so their current benefits were equivalent to those of Auspicious Home homeowners.

Mr. Xu summed it up. “See? I told you not to become marginal members. Either go out on the front line or join management.”

Being on a team meant more than just earning a lot of performance points. There were all kinds of unseen benefits when they went outside as well. Anything collected collectively was managed and distributed as a group, but anything you scavenged yourself belonged to you. That was why everyone went out carrying two shoulder bags—they wanted to bring back as much as possible.

Mr. Xu hadn’t prepared anything on his first day and had been dragged along with the others, so he had picked up a bag on-site.

“Everyone’s had something to eat. Come on, let’s have a meeting.” Mr. Xu clapped his hands.

It was much like the work meetings at Youth Apartment. Everyone talked about which position they had taken, what they had done, whether it was tiring, how many performance points they had earned, whether there were any benefits, and so on.

Director Yu said, “The management here is pretty good, especially at Youth Apartment. I had time to talk with that Song Jingshuo today. Guess what company he used to work for? Shengda! He was the one who came up with the performance-point system.”

Shengda was a leading company in the financial industry. Anyone who could get into Shengda was an outstanding talent.

Mr. Xu suddenly understood. “No wonder.”

After some discussion, Mr. Xu said, “First of all, I think that although the temporary district government in the Technology New District is young, it’s heading in the right direction in every respect. It has room for continued development. We should settle down here for the long term.”

There wasn’t anywhere else they could go anyway.

“Second, we can’t split up. The company may be gone, but the more unfamiliar our surroundings become, the more important it is for us to stick together. No one can survive alone.”

Everyone nodded. In fact, several people even breathed sighs of relief.

What everyone was truly worried about was that Mr. Xu and Director Yu, as ability users, might abandon them.

There was already an indistinct line forming between ability users and ordinary people. The youthful, close-knit atmosphere at Youth Apartment had merely kept that line from becoming too obvious.

But no one in Mr. Xu’s company was stupid. They were all vaguely aware of it.

In the end, they reached a unanimous agreement.

The company might never return, but from now on, they were a family—a single household.

Everyone had to contribute to this “family” and do their part. Aside from the two people permanently assigned to cooking because they were good at it, everyone else should take positions and earn performance points whenever possible.

The cooks would be paid out of the group’s collective performance points.

Since Mr. Xu and Director Yu were ability users, and Big Sister Wu Yan and Little Sister Xiaoxiao had entered management and earned more than everyone else, those four would be exempt from household chores.

Everyone else would take turns handling chores such as cleaning.

A small group that was reasonably stable and united had taken shape.

In the future, as the number of refugees grew, more and more groups like this would emerge, brought together by blood, affection, or shared interests.

Just as Jiang Cheng had said:

No one could survive alone.

It took the Youth Apartment two days to get the large-scale cultivation plans sorted out, and Auntie Xue and Auntie Qian were finally able to relax and catch their breath.

When Auntie Xue saw that Song Jingshuo had cultivated several kinds of fruit seedlings but no grapes, she brought him a section of vine on the morning of September 7, complete with leaves and a cluster of unripe grapes.

“Take it home and plant it.”

Song Jingshuo thanked Auntie Xue and took the cutting home, planning to grow it in a pot first.

The people in the residential compound had helped him collect a great many flowerpots and foam boxes. His home was now packed with seedlings.

Only some of them had been selected for large-scale cultivation. Many others were simply being raised for now, to be dealt with if the need arose.

The agricultural researcher Zeng Qiang specialized in fertilizers.

Zeng Qiang complained that Song Jingshuo’s wood-type superpower had made his entire field useless.

For example, if fertilizer had not finished fermenting, it would normally scorch the roots and kill the plant. But with the support of a wood-type superpower, the plant would not die. It could forcibly absorb the nutrients and continue growing.

If that was the case, what did they need a scientific researcher specializing in fertilizer for?

Still, complaints were only complaints. Zeng Qiang continued to carefully prepare excellent potting soil for Song Jingshuo’s seedlings using whatever materials they could find.

With proper potting soil, Song Jingshuo no longer had to check the seedlings several times a day. He could simply leave them at home, and they would grow naturally without needing his attention.

They only had to grow strong and healthy by the time humanity needed them.

When Song Jingshuo received the grape cutting, he asked Zeng Qiang, “What kind of fertilizer should I use?”

“During the seedling stage, nitrogen fertilizer is the priority. Go back and look around. I remember there should still be some left.”

Song Jingshuo returned to his house and searched around. There were still several boxes of soil he had not used. After rummaging through them, he found a foam box marked “Nitrogen” in permanent marker. He poked a hole in the soil with his finger and planted the cutting inside.

There was no technique to it whatsoever.

No pruning, no angled cuts, no consideration of temperature or moisture—none of it.

He simply stuck it into the soil. Then he activated his superpower, and roots immediately sprouted, anchoring themselves firmly in the earth.

It would have been enough to make any agricultural researcher green with envy.

A tiny cluster of green grapes was still hanging from the vine. Song Jingshuo casually accelerated their growth, wanting to taste them.

Even he was beginning to get tired of eating strawberries. It was time for a change.

The little green grapes grew visibly larger.

Naturally, Song Jingshuo controlled the process so that only the grapes matured, preventing the vine itself from shooting upward.

But as he fed the vine his superpower, he sensed its powerful urge to spread.

It wanted to grow larger, to grow longer, to become thick and sturdy, to wind itself around something.

This was the first time Song Jingshuo had accelerated the growth of a climbing plant, and the experience was indeed fascinating.

The other vegetables were all focused on growing leaves and trying to flower.

A thought suddenly flashed through Song Jingshuo’s mind: What would happen if he used his superpower to accelerate the vine itself instead of the fruit?

Once the idea occurred to him, he could not resist trying it.

Song Jingshuo used his superpower to its absolute limit every day. When he grew tired, he rested; once he had recovered, he started again. From morning until night, with no days off.

But since his superpower, like Li Jiangbing’s, was noncombat-oriented, few people paid attention to just how powerful it really was.

Only Auntie Qian had remarked beside him the day before, “You make things grow so fast. It’s good to be young.”

Song Jingshuo’s thoughts shifted, and a surging tide of superpower rushed into the vine’s veins.

The vine instantly shot upward toward the ceiling!

It stopped there, needing no support. It tangled around itself, twisting into something like a pillar wedged between the foam box and the ceiling.

Proud. Forceful.

Completely different from those little green vegetables sprawled across the ground.

Song Jingshuo squatted on the floor with one hand braced against his knee.

He stared upward for a long while before finally reaching out to touch the vine...