Chapter 30

The group from Jixiang Jiayuan, led by Zhou Wang and his people, was already at the front, but they hadn't managed to solve the problem—the employees inside the Buyduoduo supermarket refused to open the door.

"We're closed! We told you we're closed! Not happy about it? Go complain to the government! The news already said nobody has to work!"

"There's not a single grain of rice left in our homes! If you don't open up, what are we supposed to eat?"

"That's not our problem! Figure it out yourselves!"

"We've got elderly and kids to feed! Have you got any conscience at all?"

Li Jiangbing and his men brandished their weapons, shouting as they shoved their way forward behind Jiang Cheng.

The Jixiang Jiayuan folks did step aside, but some grumbled: "Yesterday when the people from Youth Apartments came, they opened up. Why won't they open for us today?"

Zhou Wang and the others at the very front turned around at the sound of voices, and their faces lit up when they saw them: "Xiao Jiang! You guys came too!"

Someone immediately started complaining to Jiang Cheng: "The supermarket folks won't open the door!"

As if Jiang Cheng were some sort of leader of Jixiang Jiayuan.

Li Jiangbing found it downright ridiculous.

The people turned and cleared a path, and Jiang Cheng could now see directly through the glass door to the supermarket staff inside.

They were all holding weapons now too—neat, brand-new iron hammers, clearly fresh from the shelves.

Jiang Cheng walked up to the glass door. "What's going on?"

She recognized the man shouting from inside the glass door—the same brave soul who had ridden his motorcycle through a street full of zombies just to get to work.

From the looks of it, he hadn't gone home since yesterday.

The staff living in the supermarket dormitory were all lower-level employees, and he seemed to be the only supervisor. Yesterday those employees had listened to him quite a bit.

She remembered this young supervisor, and he remembered her too.

"Oh, it's you," the young supervisor said. "We're closed today. No business."

He held the hammer against his chest, his gaze locking with Jiang Cheng's.

Earlier, she'd heard him—he'd said the government had announced a shutdown of work and business.

That was true enough, no denying it.

But as she met his eyes, she saw something else in them.

Yesterday, before leaving, Jiang Cheng had reminded him to keep enough supplies for his own people too.

He'd taken that to heart.

But back then, everyone was only buying out of unease and immediate need. No one had expected that after a whole night, the rescue they'd hoped for wouldn't come, and the government would instead tell everyone to fend for themselves.

That meant the residents would have to survive on their own for much longer, with no support.

Supplies had become even more important.

It was clear this man had fully grasped the situation and thought it through.

The faint glint in his eyes plainly told Jiang Cheng the real reason he wouldn't open the door: he wanted to protect—or rather, hoard—the remaining supplies in the supermarket.

Given the current state of things, the store wouldn't be getting any restock either. Whoever held the supplies would be the one to last longer.

If this had been yesterday, Jiang Cheng might even have supported him. Because yesterday she too was still gauging things and hoping for rescue. But today, the situation was clearly worse than expected, and what he was doing now put him in direct conflict with her interests.

"That's not going to work," she said. "Everyone needs supplies. A lot of folks in Jixiang Jiayuan have no food left at home. You saw the news—there's no rescue coming. People have to go out and stock up themselves, or they won't survive."

The young supervisor waved his hand dismissively. "That's not something I can handle. We're just a supermarket—a private business. It's not our responsibility. We don't have enough staff, and you people are disorderly. Our higher-ups told us not to open. If I opened and something went wrong, who's going to take responsibility?"

This was the same man who'd braved a zombie-filled street just to clock in. His employee mindset was truly intact, still talking about "who takes responsibility" at a time like this.

Jiang Cheng couldn't help but smile.

She hadn't smiled in front of anyone these past few days. This was the first time.

Outside the glass, in the sunlight, the girl's smile revealed a row of snowy-white, even teeth.

The young supervisor was taken aback for a moment.

Then the girl took a step back.

"Back up," Jiang Cheng said.

The ones packed at the front were all core members from the two residential complexes. The Youth Apartments people were already used to following Jiang Cheng's lead, and the Jixiang Jiayuan folks had seen today just how much weight her words carried. At her command, everyone at the front instinctively took a step back.

Trouble? What kind of "trouble" could there be? Locking out a crowd of people who had no food left—and expecting nothing to happen? That was the real trouble.

Jiang Cheng swung her fire axe.

A deafening crash—cracks spread across the glass door like a spider's web!

The young supervisor's pupils shrank. He shouted in alarm: "What are you doing?! What are you doing?!"

Jiang Cheng acted as if she hadn't heard. A second swing—the web expanded, and small fragments of broken glass tumbled down.

On the third swing, a second axe joined hers on the tempered glass.

Li Jiangbing's axe.

Right behind him came crowbars, hammers, kitchen knives, frying pans, baseball bats... all kinds of weapons rained down on the glass, producing a chaotic, ear-splitting clamor!

Some were from Youth Apartments, some from Jixiang Jiayuan.

Law-abiding citizens, no matter how many of them gather, will never have a second person make a move until someone makes the first one.

But once the first move is made, the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth will follow right along.

Jiang Cheng was the one who broke that ice.

The supermarket had two glass doors at the entrance. Only the first door had a floor lock on it.

They were tempered glass, but with so many people working together, it broke quickly. Li Jiangbing delivered a heavy kick, snapping the crack-riddled glass—still clinging together like broken bones connected by sinew—right off the frame.

The young supervisor shouted curses: "You're all insane! This is illegal!"

At the same time, he called to his staff: "Stop them! Stop them! Don't let them in!"

He and the supermarket employees stretched out their arms, trying to block the crowd.

It was like a mantis trying to stop a chariot—utterly futile. Li Jiangbing alone could push two of them aside with ease.

He was big, but he had a little sense to him. When he shoved, he grabbed the front of their clothes so they wouldn't actually fall to the ground. Otherwise, with all those people surging in behind him, they'd get trampled.

That would be real "trouble."

Only the outer door had been locked. The employees were pushed aside by the influx of people, pressed against either side of the small space between the outer and inner doors, their faces pale as they watched the unstoppable crowd.

Some were simply shoved right through the inner door.

People flooded in with a roar.

The young supervisor got squeezed against the side of the small vestibule between the two doors, his face a bitter grey as he watched the tide of people surge past him. Every single one of them was rushing, terrified of falling behind and missing out on the goods.

The girl with the axe had the weapon slung over her shoulder, pulling her handcart behind her. As she walked in, she glanced sideways at him.

Just yesterday she'd seemed like such a kind young woman—he'd even been grateful to her. Who would've thought he'd misjudged her so completely.

The young supervisor seethed with resentment.

One of the employees whispered to him: "Brother Dong, what do we do now?"

What else could they do? The supervisor, surnamed Dong, ground out between clenched teeth: "Let it go cold!"

There was no stopping it now—even more people flooded in, forcing them to shrink back again, terrified of being trampled in the crush.

Fortunately, one of the employees muttered quietly, “Good thing we moved some stuff into the dorms.”

The day before, thanks to Jiang Cheng’s warning, he’d told the staff to haul grain, canned goods, bottled water, and other essentials into the dormitory. The rooms were now packed to the ceiling.

Thank goodness they’d taken that step. No slacking off.

Actually, when he thought about it, they owed that girl a thank-you.

Sigh.

Yesterday, people from the Youth Apartments had still shopped in an orderly fashion—hurried, sure, but still like a normal supermarket run: grab your items, queue up, pay, leave.

Today, it was complete chaos.

For starters, the main grain shelves were empty. Supervisor Dong had taken his people the day before to strip the place, and he had no intention of opening for business today—no restocking at all. So people stormed straight into the warehouse, hauling things out directly.

Li Jiangbing and Song Jingshuo had known from the moment Jiang Cheng smashed that glass door that the broken order wouldn’t stop at just one door.

But the loss of control still exceeded what they’d expected.

The elderly weren’t as disciplined as the younger crowd. The store employees, still dazed from the break-in, hadn’t manned the registers. So the word “shop” had devolved into just “take.”

Some old folks even abandoned their little hand-pulled carts and shoved fully loaded shopping carts straight out the door.

Once one person did it, everyone followed suit.

The Jixiang Jiayuan residents had set the example, and though the Youth Apartments folks were a bit more civil, they caved after a moment’s hesitation. After all, there was no one at the cashiers.

“Brother Dong, is this okay?” one employee asked.

A few people had actually thought about manning the registers—they’d done it yesterday. But Brother Dong had told them not to.

Brother Dong let out a low chuckle. “If everyone paid up honestly, we’d be on the hook for that broken glass. But...”

But if this became a full-scale group looting, that glass door would be nothing. There was no way a handful of them could have stopped a crime of this collective scale. They could wipe their hands clean of any responsibility.

The more chaotic it got, the less blame fell on them. Let it be.

The shopping carts certainly had more capacity.

Jiang Cheng tucked her hand-pulled cart under a shopping cart and loaded everything she needed into it.

When Li Jiangbing saw her again, he was speechless: “Cat food again?”

Because ever since she’d made that unforgettable first impression two nights ago, she’d always struck him as calm and rational.

But every time it came to that cat of hers, she suddenly seemed to have nothing to do with words like “calm” or “rational.” She was actually wasting precious cart space on cat food.

He’d seen her grab a bag of cat food yesterday too. A bag of cat food took up even more room than a bag of rice.

“Me first, then the cat,” Jiang Cheng said, patting the satchel at her waist. “I don’t eat much anyway, and besides, this time it’s mostly human food, right?”

A dark, lumpy shape in the satchel suddenly blinked open two green eyes, making Li Jiangbing jump. “You brought it? I thought you left it at home today.”

Fair enough—Jiang Cheng doted on her cat way too much, but she had indeed prioritized her own needs yesterday. Today, her cart was mostly rice and canned goods. Not like those crazy foreign movies, at least.

When the shopping cart was full, Jiang Cheng pulled the hand-cart out from underneath and kept loading. She found some plastic rope at the service desk and tied the hand-cart to the shopping cart.

As she knelt down to tie the rope, she couldn’t help thinking how pathetic her carrying capacity was.

One person could only haul so much.

【If only I had storage space.】

Jiang Cheng froze.

What was that thought that had just flashed through her mind?

It felt like she’d said something in her own head, gone in a flash, and she couldn’t quite grasp what it had been.

Li Jiangbing called out, “You done yet?”

Jiang Cheng quickly finished the knot and stood up. “Done. Let’s go.”

Jiang Cheng and the others didn’t pay either. There was no one at the cash registers—nobody was paying. And everyone was just rolling the supermarket carts straight out the door.

It was a full-on robbery.

The store was in shambles, and from the direction of the warehouse, shouts and curses were still echoing.

Bad news: the rice was all gone.

Rice was the staple grain, the most important thing.

Because rice only needed water and heat—even if it didn’t cook into proper rice, it could become porridge. But flour? Half the people had no idea how to turn flour into food.

Yesterday, Jiang Cheng had said the Youth Apartments should stock up ahead of time, and that advice had fully paid off. The Youth Apartments residents had done two rounds of shopping and basically everyone had what they needed.

Not everyone from Jixiang Jiayuan, who’d only come today, got what they needed.

Song Jingshuo’s face was grim when they regrouped.

Jiang Cheng knew exactly what was on his mind.

The collapse of civilized order was terrifying.

What was even scarier was the snowball effect.