Chapter 119: Discovering an Underground Shopping Street

All the small stones were gathered together, waiting for Pang Ziyuan to come and crush them into dust with his mechanical arm.

Then, they would mix the cement.

By noon, Xu Xuejiao had climbed up again, carrying a large bag of expired biscuits and canned yellow peaches, which she distributed to everyone.

She looked in surprise at the ruins, which were now much cleaner.

“All those little stones have been cleared away?”

Pang Zhenggong nodded.

The remaining large stones were pried up with a jack.

Then Pang Ziyuan would come over and smash them one by one.

He said, “We spent the whole morning and didn’t find a single useful supply.”

“But that’s fine. Once we’ve cleared this whole area, we’ll know for sure there’s nothing left to scavenge here.”

Because there was rubble everywhere, ruins everywhere.

So when they searched one area, they’d toss the trash and stones into another.

Then the next day, when they searched that other area, they’d toss the trash and stones back to the original spot.

Eventually, everyone got confused. No one knew which places had been searched and which hadn’t.

In the wasteland, everywhere looked the same—broken, dilapidated, ruined.

Ordinary people didn’t have any positioning devices. They just searched here and there based on gut feeling.

The more they searched, the messier things got. The messier it got, the hungrier they became.

Sometimes they’d even lose their sense of direction, searching the same area over and over again.

So in the end, everyone came to a consensus: there was no food left in the safe zone; it had all been scavenged clean.

Xu Xuejiao nodded. Since Pang Zhenggong had already reported to Yue Bai, she had no objections to his scavenging plan.

Yue Bai never asked what these burdens managed to find each day.

She wasn’t like other teams, where if the scavengers didn’t meet their quota, they’d get beaten.

Previously, any supplies scavenged would be handed to Shi Yue Bai, and only then would she give out a little food.

But now, these expired foods were tossed to Captain Qiao like garbage by Shi Yue Bai.

She didn’t even want to exchange them for other supplies.

To Shi Yue Bai, as long as these people didn’t laze around and just waited under the tarp for her to throw them expired food, that was good enough.

After everyone finished eating, Pang Zhenggong did something unprecedented—he gave the 29 “burdens” a full hour to rest.

Everyone sat on the ruins, full and drowsy.

Some even fell asleep.

After an hour, Pang Zhenggong called everyone back to work, and it was as if they’d been injected with energy.

Even the elderly, who had been listless in the morning, seemed much stronger.

After clearing away the small stones in the morning, they used the jack in the afternoon to pry up the large rocks.

Seven adult men helped with the jack.

As soon as they pried up the first big stone, someone shouted in excitement,

“There’s something here!”

“It’s a cardboard box—let’s see what’s inside!”

A few of the elderly scrambled under the stone, dragging out the box. Looking down, they saw more boxes underneath.

“Get a few more people, let’s lift the stone a bit higher.”

Pang Zhenggong pointed at a few elderly nearby and two pregnant women.

They hurried over and used their shoulders to prop up the big stone.

The people under the stone kept lifting out boxes, until finally a hole was revealed.

“Looks like a shopping mall?”

Someone lay at the edge of the hole and peered down.

Usually, there would be some street-level shops near the visitor center.

Pang Zhenggong told the people below to climb back up.

“Let’s get everyone together and completely lift this big stone away.”

Everyone came to help.

Inside the Shi family’s tent, Shi Yue Bai was channeling the last bit of energy into the spirit-gathering array, keeping her weight at 694 jin.

Second Sister-in-law Shi hurried over.

“Yue Bai, there’s a commotion out back—they seem to have found an underground shopping street.”

Shi Yue Bai gave a casual “Oh,” and instantly teleported from Second Sister-in-law’s side to the roof of the visitor center.

“I’ll go take a look.”

She looked into the distance at the thirty people straining and grunting as they heaved at the stone.

Shi Yue Bai raised her hand and cast seven Strength Spells on the seven most awkward-looking helpers.

Her power was limited, but she was curious to see what the underground shopping street looked like.

Soon, with everyone’s combined effort, the jack, and the Strength Spells, the big stone was completely lifted away.

A narrow hole was revealed.

Pang Zhenggong instinctively wanted to jump down.

He paused, remembering his current weight of 250 jin.

With such a narrow opening, there was no way someone his size could fit.

But near the hole, they found more cardboard boxes.

Some boxes had been crushed out of shape by the rubble, revealing cartoon dolls inside.

All kinds of plush toys and rag dolls.

“This must be the second floor of a shop, used as a storeroom.”

Pang Zhenggong took out a snake-eye detector. He believed if there really was an underground shopping street below, there should be even more supplies.

According to his scan, the entire underground shopping street had collapsed.

The second-floor storeroom was pressed down by huge stones.

But as long as they could dig out the shopping street, they’d surely find a lot of supplies.

By dusk, Pang Zhenggong led the group to move all the boxes near the hole up to the surface.

There were more than thirty large boxes in total.

They carried the boxes to the front of the ditch and opened them.

The first thing they pulled out was a Mickey Mouse doll over a meter tall.

The Mickey doll was wrapped in a plastic bag.

At first, Pang Zhenggong wanted to throw it away, but Shi Yue Bai, sitting by the ditch, said,

“Let me pick out a few of these dolls for my kids.”

She saw that the dolls were all quite big and brand new.

A doll over a meter tall would be nice for Shi Yaoyao and Shi Xiangrui to sleep with.

Shi Yaoyao grabbed Xiao Jiao’s hand and happily crossed the ditch on the cloud ladder. Da Jiao couldn’t help but poke her head out of the ditch to pick out a doll too.

No child dislikes dolls—unless, of course, they prefer Ultraman.

Shi Yue Bai looked at the smaller dolls being pulled out of the boxes and instructed Xu Xuejiao,

“Give these little ones to the kids in our group.”

“They can use them as pillows.”

No one cared for those deformed children; no one looked after their food, drink, or hygiene.

They lay on their tarps—no beds, no pillows, no parental care.

Xu Xuejiao’s eyes turned red. She nodded.

She took Pang Ziyuan with her to hand out the dolls to the children.

Though the dolls couldn’t be eaten or drunk, they were cute and soft.

Some children, receiving such a soft and adorable doll for the first time, hugged it tightly and burst into tears.

It was probably the only bit of happiness they’d ever known.

Shi Yue Bai listened to the chorus of children’s cries from across the ditch.

She rubbed her ears.

Seeing that it was getting dark, and that the burdens hadn’t found any food today,

she prepared to teleport to Xiao Lingye’s team again to lose some weight.

Behind her, Nong Yasi shouted, “Yue Bai, salt! There’s salt!”

Dozens of boxes of salt.

Bought 20 little fish—several already died."