Chapter 20: Snacks

The fleeing crowds were divided into several groups.

Those with cars were already hundreds of kilometers away, while those who were unattached and energetic should have been nearing Yuyao City. Having walked for half a day, they had only traveled a little over ten kilometers. The refugees stranded in the dangerous Hemudu Town were all families dragging their children along. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to hurry, but after walking all day, how much strength did city dwellers have left to keep moving forward?

Among the millions of refugees, over a million chose to spend the night in Hemudu Town.

How could the small Hemudu Town possibly accommodate so many people? Actually, starting from the Chejiu Village area, every spot where one could set foot was filled with people either sleeping or sitting.

Hemudu Town wasn’t actually very big; past the bridgehead, the road was packed with people moving along the country road toward the town center. On both sides of the country road were lush green fields, but at this moment, they were packed with people. Shouts and cries filled the air, and the vegetables in the fields became victims under people’s feet, trampled and mixed into the mud.

Zhou Liming knew that under these circumstances, hoping to lead this group of exhausted children to the town center was a bit of a fantasy. So, after discussing it with Dean Zhou, he found a less crowded field to settle down temporarily for now. Looking at the situation before them, expecting the government to distribute a quilt to everyone or assign proper beds had become a fantasy.

Fortunately, it was June, so spending a night out in the open wasn’t too inappropriate.

Any edible food in the fields had long since been picked clean. Under these circumstances, who cared whose field it was or whether they should pick it?

“Mister, the announcement just now said there was food to collect, didn’t it?”

The people who chose to stay here temporarily were almost all families; there were also a few households familiar with each other staying together, distributed in clusters. Zhou Liming’s eyesight was excellent; in the darkness, it was still no different from daytime, which surprised him—likely another result of his genes being modified. Looking out, it was all people; millions were spread out here, occupying at the very least the entire interior of Hemudu Town.

The person Zhou Liming asked was a family right beside him.

The man asked was nearly forty, looking up and gazing around. He was with his pregnant wife and a little girl of five or six, belonging to the group helplessly stuck at the tail end of the fleeing masses. Hearing Zhou Liming’s question, he looked at the composition of Zhou Liming’s group, shook his head, and sighed, “Food? Do you know how many people have fled here?”

Zhou Liming shook his head. The middle-aged man smiled bitterly and said, “There are at least hundreds of thousands, if not more. The food in Hemudu Town simply can’t support that many people. Moreover, in this emergency, even if the government wanted to mobilize food, with the situation so sudden, how could they bring it here immediately?”

What the man said wasn’t wrong. Asia’s coastline was too long; under the impact of the Fierce Beasts, the entire coast had long since fallen into chaos, and government orders simply couldn’t get through.

Usually, major highways would get congested at the drop of a hat, let alone now during the escape. The coastal highways had practically become seas of cars, blocked everywhere and paralyzed. Under these circumstances, even if the government gathered supplies, there was no way to transport them. Using the Air Force for transport was a good method, but how could they cover every spot along the entire coast?

Hearing what the man said, Zhou Liming was also dumbfounded and said, “No food? The children, what will the children do?”

“Just go hungry. Let’s hope the situation improves tomorrow.” He shook his head helplessly, comforting his daughter and wife.

An Xiaowei stripped some leaves from a nearby tree and laid them on the ground for the children to sleep on. The children, having walked all day without eating anything, fell into a deep sleep. Dean Zhou sat blankly on the side, looking at the children’s flushed faces and sighing constantly.

The old Zhou Liming would definitely have been helpless. But the Fierce Beast Gene had somewhat influenced his personality, making him much more decisive. He said, “Dean, you take care of things here. I’ll go see if I can get some food. Zheng Le and the others haven’t eaten all day. If they don’t eat something soon…”

He said goodbye to Dean Zhou and An Xiaowei, who told him to be careful, then returned to the country road, squeezing into the crowd where one could barely take a step.

Prompted by the notice at the bridgehead, everyone thought the town was distributing food, and having been hungry for half the day, they desperately squeezed forward. But there were too many people; the more they squeezed, the more chaotic and motionless it became. Curses rose and fell, making it louder than a vegetable market. Only now did people realize they had been too panicked earlier and hadn’t brought any food at all.

Zhou Liming wasn’t as dull and introverted as before, just following the flow of the crowd. His two powerful arms constantly pushed aside the people blocking his way. Often, people only felt an irresistible force hit them before they were pushed aside or pulled back to create a gap.

“Damn it, who’s pulling me?”

The hot-tempered ones cursed out loud, but by the time they reacted, Zhou Liming had already squeezed past. They could only curse; how could they catch up to Zhou Liming?

It took half an hour to finally squeeze onto the streets of Hemudu Town. Here, it was similarly packed with people, and the goods in the shops were running low.

“Why don’t you go rob a bank?”

When Zhou Liming squeezed in front of a small grocery store, a man’s sharp voice rang out. He almost shouted, “Are you kidding me? One egg yolk pie for 500 yuan? Have you never seen money in your life?” The price had suddenly increased 5000 times; it was hard for anyone to accept. Added to that was the panic and exhaustion of the day; everyone was filled with anger.

The shopkeeper in the small grocery store was a fat man with a pockmarked face. He seemed to have long been used to this kind of shouting. He snorted coldly through his nose, slapped the counter forcefully, and said, “Buy it or get out. If you don’t have money, get the hell out of here. Plenty of people want to buy. Can’t you see there’s only this much left?”

“You… you…” The man was so angry he couldn’t speak, but his hesitation was immediately pushed aside by a man holding a briefcase next to him. The man quickly took out over a dozen stacks of money with the seals still intact from his briefcase and said, “I’ll take it all. Just give me whatever, as long as it’s edible.”

The fat man nimbly took the money placed on the counter, looked provocatively at the man from before, and said, “Learn from this. That’s what you call charisma. That’s a successful person, someone who does big things.”

The people next to them who originally wanted to buy had just been indignant at the fat man for profiteering from the disaster. But the person who suddenly appeared startled them. Looking at the money on the counter, there was at least over a hundred thousand, yet it was thrown out without blinking an eye. And what he bought was just a big bag of egg yolk pies, a few bottles of eight-treasure porridge, and a box of instant noodles.

Snacks that wouldn’t even cost a hundred yuan in normal times had actually appreciated several thousand times; many people still couldn’t believe it. More than that, they lamented that there were indeed many rich people. They used to hear about some people spending two or three hundred thousand on a meal or over a million on a banquet, not believing it at the time, but now everyone who saw this scene believed it.

There were plenty of rich people in Zhe-B City; tens or hundreds of thousands meant nothing. Some smart people who figured it out suddenly rushed toward the fat man, handing over their money one after another.

“Give me 20 egg yolk pies!”

“I want two packs of instant noodles…”

“Give me 10 sausages!”

“…”

What was money at this moment? If they were too late, they couldn’t buy anything even with money, and would just have to go hungry. Tomorrow? What about tomorrow? Who knew what tomorrow would look like? Looking at the number of people here, and with more people joining the fleeing army from all directions, no one could know what the future held.

Moreover, for those with tens of millions in their bank accounts, this was just small change. Money could be earned again if lost, but if a person was gone, there was nothing left.

Perhaps this madness seemed silly, snatching things that had risen several thousand times in price, but when facing hunger and starvation, what good was having more money?

Standing to the side witnessing this buying frenzy, Zhou Liming was stunned to hear that an egg yolk pie cost 500 yuan and had risen to 800 yuan in moments.

The world was starting to go crazy.