004 Thirty-One Days

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It didn't take long for Chen Xu to choose a restaurant at the corner; it was on the first floor, so he wouldn't have to climb stairs, the freezer was big enough, and best of all, it even had a diesel generator.

He wasn't unfamiliar with diesel generators; before he went to college, his parents ran a supermarket in the county. For a while, when the county was changing power lines and had frequent outages, the supermarket used diesel generators for power.

After getting the power running, he scoured more than a dozen nearby restaurants, bringing back all the meat until the freezer couldn't hold any more.

Although, with just the two of them, they definitely couldn't consume all this meat in six months, there was no harm in being prepared.

"By the way, I wonder how Luo Xiyun is doing."

As he was frying a steak and calculating the amount of food, he thought of Luo Xiyun, who was originally supposed to have appeared by now.

According to the nature of this dream, this virtual Luo Xiyun might have awakened at home just like in reality. She hadn't shown up until now, and he had no idea where she had gone.

He didn't know where her home was; this city was so big that trying to find someone was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

"The best way would be to make a commotion and draw her over."

He smelled the aroma of the steak frying and couldn't help but swallow; after working all morning, he was starving.

The first day was spent hauling supplies.

At night, freshly showered, Chen Xu sat in the restaurant's only office, feeling a bit guilty about using bottled mineral water for a shower—it was such a waste.

"No choice, the tap water's stopped."

He couldn't help but sigh; when the world was left with just one person, surviving was much harder than he had imagined.

No take-out, no running water, everything had to be done by himself.

Those were tolerable enough—what was unbearable was that there was no internet!

He couldn't surf the web, log onto forums, watch videos, browse TikTok, or chase novels...that was deadly. He usually didn't play games; he didn't even have the simplest puzzle game on his phone, so he could only stare at his phone in a daze.

There was a computer in the office, but it was password protected.

"Tomorrow, I've got to go to the office and bring the computer back," he thought, yawning. As the sound of the diesel engine filled the air, he gradually drifted into slumber.

The next morning, when Chen Xu woke up, he felt sore all over, utterly uncomfortable.

"Damn it."

He sat up, inhaling sharply. Every muscle in his body was sore and numb, an achingly painful sensation, "This is really deadly."

He hadn't done physical labor in a long time, nor had he exercised much. After moving all those things yesterday, he was exhausted, and now the aftereffects were hitting.

"Is this really a dream?" He questioned the reality of this matter for the umpteenth time.

It was hard to imagine that everything in this world, along with the tangible soreness and numb pain in his body, was simulated within a dream.

He took a deep breath and climbed out of bed.

"No matter what, I'd better stockpile some more supplies."

That doubt gave him a deep sense of crisis. In case all this was not a dream but truly happening, with him being the only person left in the world, he had to be prepared to live better.

Despite the muscle soreness, he forced himself to eat something and then set out with tools.

Besides food, there was something else very important, and that was medicine. It's life-saving, and other supplies could be put off, but a stockpile of medicine must be gathered first.

From that moment, he realized he couldn't treat all of this entirely as a game. He began seriously thinking about how to survive in such a post-apocalyptic world.

At 7 a.m., the sun had already risen.

Chen Xu awoke, looking at a poster of an unremembered female celebrity on the ceiling. Two seconds later, he came to his senses, sat up, picked up a pen, and wrote the number "31" on the wall.

The entire wall was filled with numbers from 1 to 30, indicating he had been here for a full month.

He put down the pen, walked to the mirror, picked up the razor, and carefully shaved off the emerging stubble.

Then he headed to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and washed his face.

After freshening up, he left the office.

There was a table beside the corridor, and on it was a rice cooker. He lifted the lid to reveal steaming porridge inside.

This was rice put in last night, set on a timer to cook automatically; he could eat as soon as he got up, very convenient.

With savory, crispy fried peanuts, he finished half a pot of porridge, feeling a comforting warmth in his stomach.

After breakfast, he washed the pots and plates, put everything in place. Then he took out a small notebook he carried with him, opened it, and glanced through the list of pending tasks.

He glanced quickly, picked up a pen, and circled two items.

"Diesel stock running low."

"Look for vegetable seeds."

Then he closed the notebook, tucked it back into his pocket, gathered his belongings, and went out.

Before leaving, he switched the power supply to the battery bank and turned off the diesel generator.

To extend the life of the diesel generator, he had assembled a battery bank as a backup power supply; he used it for power when he left.

"The weather's nice."

He stepped out of the restaurant and, looking up at the clear sky, his mood seemed to brighten up as well.

Outside, the road was lined with two rows of cars, with luxury sports cars like Ferraris and Porsches, minibuses like Wulings, and mid-sized trucks like Isuzus.

He walked into a nearby store and pushed out a cart full of oil barrels. All the street-front shops along this road had been converted into warehouses by him to store various supplies.

Chen Xu pushed the cart to a blue Isuzu truck, loaded the barrels onto it, and after a few trips, he loaded half the truck before setting off.

He started the car and drove down the road on the right.

Over the past month, he had cleared out the surrounding roads—it wasn't a small project. This city had too many cars. Some of the more congested roads were completely blocked by vehicles, so it took him quite some effort to clear a road wide enough for one car to pass.

"Gas stations are everywhere—that's not a concern. But finding vegetable seeds is tricky. I'll check out the market first," he mused while driving.

In modern cities, people almost can't do without vegetables every day, but few may have actually planted vegetables. When he was in elementary school, he helped his grandfather in the countryside harvest rice, but he had never seen what vegetable seeds looked like.

Eating meat daily without any vegetables was unbearable too.

Over the past month, the closest things he could count as vegetables were potatoes, tomatoes, and bean sprouts, and he was almost sick of them.

He never imagined he would have such a yearning for leafy greens one day.

...

Half an hour later, Chen Xu parked his car several hundred meters away from the market; this area hadn't been cleared, and the road was choked with cars, making passage impossible.

He grabbed a tool bag and walked over.

From a distance, he could smell the rotting stench emanating from the market. Only after putting on a gas mask did he dare to enter.

Ten minutes later, he almost fled from the market. The stench inside was unbearable; even with the gas mask, it was hard to tolerate. Signs of rotted vegetables and meat were everywhere.

Back in his car, he was somewhat frustrated, "Do I really have to go to the outskirts to find some?"

In a modern big city, there wasn't much vegetable cultivation; it all came from the surrounding countryside. He had even found a few suburban vegetable bases on a map.

However, the nearest vegetable base was over thirty kilometers away. Clearing a road to reach it seemed like an intimidatingly daunting task, just imagining it made his scalp prickle.

Finally, he took out his handy notebook and noted down, "Go to a vegetable base to find seeds," leaving this task for another time.

Next, he went to the nearest gas station to fill up all the oil barrels.

The iron barrels had a capacity of about thirty liters each when full, weighing nearly fifty pounds. He had brought fifty empty barrels in total, and filling them all and loading them onto the truck took over two hours, exhausting him.

A month ago, he couldn't have handled such work; even moving a few barrels would have worn him out. It was only through performing a large amount of physical labor every day for the past month that he had built up his strength.

After the work was done, he unloaded a folding chair and table from the truck, found some shade, and sat down. Then he took a tablet from his backpack, set it up on the table, and began watching a movie.

He reclined in the chair, unscrewed a thermos, and leisurely sipped tea while watching the film.

After labor-intensive work, he always rewarded himself in this way.

Leisure time always passed quickly; the movie was over before he knew it.

Chen Xu glanced at the time, 11:40, nearly lunchtime.

He fetched a gas cylinder, a gas stove, and various cooking utensils from the truck, and began cooking by the roadside. Each time he went out to work, he brought these items along, cooking lunch outside to avoid running back and forth and wasting time.

Washing rice, cooking, cleaning vegetables, chopping, into the pot...

Within a short time, the meal was ready—two dishes, stir-fried sliced potatoes with beef and stir-fried cured pork with garlic sprouts.

He sat right in the middle of the road and finished his lunch.

After resting for half an hour, he pulled a folding bed from the truck, set it up in a shady spot, put on headphones to play soothing instrumental music, covered his eyes with a mask, and took a nap.

......

Chen Xu slept until he naturally woke up at 3 p.m. He stretched comfortably.

Ever since he started working, he rarely had such leisurely moments. To make money, he was like a tightly wound spring, even on weekends, it was just enough time for a breather—not truly relaxing.

He packed everything back into the truck, started the engine, and set off again.

He drove all the way to the riverside, parked the truck, and with several fishing rods in hand, walked to the riverbank. Finding a suitable spot, he set up the bait and cast each line into the water.

Then he spaced out the five rods at intervals and secured them. He brought over a chair and sat by the river, watching the bobbers float on the water, patiently waiting.

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