Chapter 147: The Stench

The first floor was the snack section. Coming out of the staff entrance, rows of shelves filled with all kinds of goods came into view.

“Wow!”

Everyone became excited. Having not been to a supermarket for half a year, everyone was almost forgetting what a supermarket looked like. Now, eyes full of shelves stocked with snacks and more, everyone cheered and rushed in, grabbing whatever they liked from the snack shelves.

Zhou Liming had been a member of the X Squadron just half a month ago, with plenty of food and clothes, and patrolling Xiang A City all day long. He didn’t find these things particularly fresh or exciting.

But Wang Lei and the others were different. They had not come into contact with such items for half a year. They grabbed bags of snacks, tore them open, and stuffed them into their mouths. In just half a year, the packaged snacks on these shelves had not been affected much and were still within their shelf life.

Wang Ruijin also wanted to act like them, but he held back. He laughed and scolded, “Are you starving ghosts reincarnated?”

Tang Rui slung his gun on his back, took off his large travel bag, and grabbed some beef jerky. He said, “The children in the Settlement were watching us leave with eager eyes. It wouldn’t be right to return without bringing them some gifts.” He took not only beef jerky but also a few packs of peas and sunflower seeds.

Wang Ruijin didn’t object, letting them mess around for a few minutes before saying, “Let’s focus on the important stuff. Let’s go to the second floor.”

The second floor was the food section, where the supermarket’s meat, vegetables, salt, oil, sauce, and vinegar were located.

Compared to the first floor, the second floor made everyone want to vomit. Climbing to the second floor from the broken-down elevator, a foul stench hit them in the face, making everyone feel almost suffocated. This smell, mixed with decay, under the conditions of no air circulation on this floor, was simply a disaster.

“Ugh!” Zhou Liming covered his nose, feeling nauseous, and cursed, “What the hell is going on? Why does it smell so bad?”

Wang Ruijin frowned and said, “This is the stench coming from rotting meat.” As a doctor, he was more sensitive to these smells and had a higher tolerance. He tore off a piece of cloth, covered his nose, and walked in. In fact, he had already guessed why it smelled so bad.

Let’s not forget that this was the food section of a supermarket. It contained not only meat but also bread, live fish, chilled meat, and dumplings, among other things.

For a supermarket, the afternoon was exactly the time when fresh meat was placed on the counters for sale to people after work, to be used for dinner. But when the Fierce Beasts arrived, it was also in the afternoon. While people were fleeing, who cared about the fresh meat on the counters? They didn’t care about anything, knowing only to take valuable items and rush away from there.

With no one there and it being June, the weather was stifling. Although there was central air conditioning in the supermarket, the meat began to spoil and stink after just a few days.

After half a year, the meat had long rotted and turned black, breeding masses of flesh flies, which then melted into disgusting puddles covering the meat counters. Without nutrition, these flesh flies died, further worsening the smell in the supermarket. In the process, due to the city losing power, the frozen meat products also rotted and stank.

The fish in the pools, surviving only on clear water, couldn’t live long. After dying of starvation, their corpses floated on the surface, rotting and stinking…

Bread was slightly better; at least the smell it emitted wasn’t too bad, though many had become dry and hard. However, items like frozen dumplings were certainly rotten and smelly.

The loss of power caused the air circulation system to stop working, making the air here stagnant. Mixed with all these odors, could you expect the air to be normal? To put it mildly, the air here was unbreathable. One breath of foul air could cause suffocation.

The arrival of the group seemed to break the silence here.

Squeaking sounds erupted as groups of rats scurried everywhere, making the entire second floor almost a paradise for rats.

Everything Wang Ruijin had guessed was correct. After walking around the second floor, he returned with a pale face. The air here made him suffocate, and he could barely breathe. The harsh environment shattered his expectation of finding cured meat. The large number of rats had swept away the cured meat and other dry goods. Even vacuum-packed meats couldn’t escape their plunder, leaving almost nothing behind.

Descending to the first floor, although the air was somewhat murky, it was like heaven compared to the second floor.

Wang Ruijin took more than ten deep breaths of air before finally recovering his senses. He shook his head and said, “It’s too smelly, almost like a pile of rotting dead bodies.”

In fact, everyone was still shaken. The feeling of being unable to breathe was even more frightening than facing a Fierce Beast.

Wang Lei asked, “If there’s no meat, what do we do?”

Wang Ruijin couldn’t come up with a plan for a moment. The situation on the second floor completely disrupted his schedule. Tang Rui and the others were even more at a loss. After hesitating for a moment, Tang Rui pointed to the shelves on the first floor and said, “There are a lot of meat snacks here. We can just bring them back. It’s better than returning empty-handed.”

This was indeed a last-resort plan. Having something was better than having nothing.

Seeing their state, Zhou Liming shook his head. Did they think only supermarkets had meat? Their thinking was too narrow. In the city, if talking about grain, there was no need to worry for one or two years because there were many grains that could be preserved for one or two years in warehouses, shops, supermarkets, or private homes.

Take cured meat, for example. After half a year, it could still be eaten. Many families and salt and oil shops still sold it. People would always hang these in ventilated places. Unless there was an accident, there should still be some, though it would take a bit more time to find them.

Seeing that Wang Ruijin was hesitating, Zhou Liming thought for a moment and then proposed this solution.

Wang Ruijin’s eyes lit up, and he said happily, “Why didn’t I think of that? Even if some families didn’t have it, many dry food shops would. Given their conditions and ventilation, they could definitely preserve them.” He checked the time and saw it was already afternoon. Without hesitation, he said, “The market is not far ahead. Let’s go.”

The group had each taken some snacks in the snack section before leaving the supermarket.

Li An, who was responsible for guard duty outside, saw Wang Ruijin and the others coming out so quickly and asked curiously, “Did it work?”

Wang Ruijin shook his head and explained, “We don’t have much time. If we don’t hurry, we might not make it back to the Settlement by night.”

The Xijia Market was about 50 to 60 meters north of the supermarket. It was built with collective funds from Xijia Village and was very large.

Similarly, the Xijia Market also smelled bad, but it was within the bearable range because the ventilation here was very good. All around the market were various shops, with dry food shops being particularly numerous, all with their doors wide open. The source of the foul smell was the meat stalls and places selling live chickens, etc.

Because this area was large and the terrain was open, guard duty had lost its meaning. So Li An simply grabbed a bag and followed the group.

As Zhou Liming had said, the dry food shops contained items like fresh dried goods and cured meat that had not been destroyed. Moreover, dry food shops had more than just these; dried mushrooms, etc., also made Wang Ruijin rub his hands in excitement. He said, “Let’s pick the meat first. If there’s space in the bags, we’ll get some other dry goods.” He grabbed a bag of shrimp that hadn’t spoiled yet and stuffed it into his backpack.

For people who had eaten almost nothing but fish for half a year, these dry goods were hugely attractive. They all cheered and rushed into the dry food shops.

Zhou Liming still maintained a somewhat fearless demeanor, finding it somewhat amusing to watch them. But to avoid standing out too much, he casually put some dry goods into his own backpack. In a short while, his backpack was full. Looking at Wang Lei and the others, whose backpacks were full and who were still frantically stuffing bags, Zhou Liming felt a bit depressed. How would they carry all this back?

In fact, everyone’s movements were very fast. In just about ten minutes, they reluctantly left the dry food shops.

Not daring to linger, the group, carrying large and small bags, headed back through the alleyways under the leadership of Wang Ruijin.

Following behind, Zhou Liming had just rounded a corner in an alley when he sensed a fierce aura nearby. “Damn it, I knew things wouldn’t be this smooth. Even if a Fierce Beast’s sensing ability is weaker than mine, it couldn’t fail to notice us.”

Zhou Liming’s sensing ability was superior to that of the Fierce Beast appearing here, so Zhou Liming had detected it first, while the beast had not yet noticed the group. But the situation was not very optimistic because this Fierce Beast was moving in their direction. Within one or two minutes, it would definitely discover them.

“Everyone stop. There’s a situation,” Zhou Liming called out. Then he ducked under the eaves of a protruding residential building along the alley and said, “Come over here.” This method wasn’t very effective, but currently, it was the only way. Zhou Liming could only hope that this Fierce Beast, like the ones he was familiar with, had a blind spot.

Wang Ruijin and the others were startled when they heard Zhou Liming say there was a situation.

Li An immediately got into character, concentrating his hearing to confirm if there were any abnormal sounds coming.

Zhou Liming whispered, “It’s useless. You can’t detect it yet. Come over quickly. It will encompass us in its sensing range soon.”

Although he didn’t quite believe it, in such matters, it was better to believe it exists than not. So Li An didn’t hesitate. He followed Wang Ruijin and the others to lean close to Zhou Liming, staring intently at the surroundings while concentrating his mental power to the highest degree.

After a moment, Li An’s face changed dramatically because he finally detected the strange noise, and it was much closer to them than he had realized.