There were other items on the old man’s stall, but Mu Shan knew she couldn’t afford them, so she didn’t linger.
After getting a general sense of the market, Mu Shan found an empty spot and set up her own stall.
The hard currency players held now was food and medicine, with fresh food (vegetables, fruits, meat) being the most expensive—the very things she needed most.
She laid out four electric kettles, a hairdryer, several bottles of baijiu and packs of cigarettes, an iron-wired baseball bat, and a pile of assorted men’s and women’s winter clothes on her stall.
She herself sat on two cases of mineral water, with some carbonated drinks piled at her feet.
Mu Shan pulled out a sheet of A4 paper from the service window, wrote “Exchanging for any food and common medicine” on it, and stuck it in front of her stall.
Someone soon came to inquire about prices.
A middle-aged woman rummaged through the pile of clothes and finally selected two cotton-padded jackets and one woolen coat. “How about five sausages and a can of corn for these?”
“Sure.”
Mu Shan was easygoing. “I’ll throw in a nail clipper. Come back if you need anything else.”
The woman left happily.
Next, a teenage boy who looked like a high schooler picked out the baseball bat, swung it a couple times to test it, and readily traded two bottles of pear syrup lozenges for it.
Pear syrup lozenges could be dissolved in hot water as a drink and were great for the throat in dry seasons.
Mu Shan’s items weren’t hard currency, so she accepted all comers—even a bag of small dried fish would get someone an electric kettle.
The baijiu and cigarettes turned out to be surprisingly popular.
A rather elderly man bought them all out, handing her a box of cold medicine, a box of cefixime, and a box of ibuprofen—all common household remedies.
For such a generous customer, Mu Shan enthusiastically threw in two nail clippers.
After a while, once most of the clothes on her stall were sold, she went out again to restock.
What she called restocking was really just finding a secluded spot to secretly transfer supplies from her backpack inventory into her large backpack and carry them in.
The player trading center bustled with people coming and going. Weary-looking folks kept streaming in, some in especially pitiful shape, even bloodied.
Most players who had the spare capacity to trade were in decent condition. A small portion huddled in the corners of the trading hall, waiting for others to “hire” them and hand out some food. They were all gaunt and sallow, their faces numb and exhausted.
When Mu Shan went out to restock, she was stared at intently by such people.
They eyed her—a lone woman running a stall and raking in plenty of food and medicine—with greed flashing in their eyes.
But as soon as Mu Shan slightly revealed the bloodstained axe at her waist, those prying, covetous gazes vanished.
A little girl who could survive as a lone wolf in the apocalypse was no ordinary little girl.
Mu Shan waited another two hours or so in the hall. By then, it was past 4 p.m. She tallied her gains: two electric kettles left, one piece of clothing left, and the drinks and water untouched.
In exchange, she got heaps of quick foods: sausages, canned meat, canned corn, canned peaches, small dried fish, dried tofu, spicy enoki mushrooms, preserved vegetables, and more.
At least for a while, she had sides to go with her white rice.
She also traded for a small amount of common household medicine, but it was far from enough for wandering the apocalypse.
As evening fell, the crowd in the hall thinned out gradually. Many stall owners chose to pack up and head back to their safe houses—nights in the apocalypse were even more dangerous.
At that moment, a dusty man hurried into the hall. Seeing few people still selling things, he looked anxious and impatient.
He searched around and finally spotted the two cases of mineral water under Mu Shan’s butt.
The man rushed over, panting heavily. “Stall owner! I’ll take all these drinks and water. Do you have more stock?”
Mu Shan saw that the man’s head and face were wrapped in thick gauze, with dust-proof goggles on his head. His body jingled with all sorts of small tools, like he’d just returned from a desert expedition.
She thought for a moment and nodded. “Yes, about ten cases, in my car.”
The headscarf man quickly rummaged through his pockets and said awkwardly, “Well… I don’t have extra food or medicine. How about trading with items?”
He opened his hand: two cards in his left palm, and a deflated white balloon in his right.
【Gas Station Fuel Card x2 (Consumable)
Quality: Common
Description: Made by player [Industrial Blood]
Use: Can refuel any vehicle
Note: Each adds 50L】
【Confession Balloon (Auxiliary)
Quality: Common
Description: Byproduct of someone’s infatuation
Use: Blow up the balloon at the origin, release at destination; balloon returns to set origin ignoring suspended weight
Note: “Back to your side.”】
It was a somewhat niche flight item, naturally inferior to the earlier “Shield” Clow Card.
But drinking water was an abundant resource for her, so trading it for items was no loss.
‘Mu Shan: Huge profit.’
“Deal!” She happily pulled some out. “Here, two nail clippers for you.”
The headscarf man stared blankly at the nail clippers shoved into his hand for a moment.
The two of them went to the parking area one after the other to fetch the water.
Mu Shan noticed his chapped, peeling lips and sunburned skin. “May I ask why you need so much water?”
Everyone knew the tap water in safe houses could be boiled and drunk. Those less picky could even survive a few days on raw water in desperation.
The headscarf man glanced at her. Seeing the clean little girl looked like a newbie, he kindly shared a bit of info. “Under special circumstances, the safe house water supply stops.”
He said no more than that.
They reached the parking area, where many vehicles had already left. Mu Shan pretended to pull case after case of packaged drinking water from under the seat and the trunk. The headscarf man counted them and sighed in relief.
He pulled out some kind of spatial item, stored all the water, and hurried away.
Mu Shan silently watched the man’s back recede into the distance.
His profession was [Miner], and by his number, he was an old player around the same time as the old driver.
The smooth trading all afternoon had eased Mu Shan’s vigilance, but this brief exchange suddenly plunged her sense of security.
Under what circumstances would the safe house run out of water?
She hypothesized three possibilities.
First, players entered a drought-themed instance where water scarcity was the basic setup, overriding safe house priority, so the system cut off tap water by default.
Second, the current instance had no gold coin sources (i.e., zombies), so players couldn’t recharge water bills.
Third, due to some special reason, the safe house structure was damaged externally (destroyed, frozen), causing the tap water function to fail.
Just thinking about these possibilities gave Mu Shan a headache. She got into her car and carefully recalled her home reserves.
She still had plenty of bottled water from the hotel: at least 30 cases stuffed under the stairs (12 bottles per case), plus two large buckets of purified water. For safety, she had no intention of selling these.
As she drove out of the parking spot, Mu Shan’s eyes flicked sideways, and she sharply spotted a flash of green.
A woman in a straw hat and camouflage work clothes pulled a large plastic bag from her backpack and handed it to the man in front of her. They were trading.
That flash of green leaked from the plastic bag.
Three days into the apocalypse instance, Mu Shan had seen plenty of rotten vegetables and fruits. This was the first time she’d seen such vibrant, fresh green onions!
The man paid, bagged it up, and left happily.
Jian Lulu clapped her hands, pulled a cigarette from her pocket, lit it, and lazily held it in her mouth with both hands in her pockets, ready to leave.
A voice sounded behind her.
“Excuse me, do you have any extra vegetables?”
She turned and saw a slender female player who looked like a college student. The other’s clear eyes held pure innocence—a newbie who’d been in the instance no more than five days.
Jian Lulu removed the cigarette with one hand, her raspy voice flat. “You want to buy vegetables?”
Mu Shan had carefully observed her earlier. Player number 388661, ID Jian Lulu, profession [Agronomist].
Combined with the fresh vegetables she’d casually pulled out just now, she likely unlocked a planting-related profession.
Mu Shan nodded. “Yes.”
Jian Lulu waved her off. “This batch of vegetables sold out. Next batch needs three more days to mature.”
“No problem. Contact me anytime once they’re harvested.” Mu Shan gauged the other’s attitude—she seemed nonchalant, uninterested in small customers like her.
Probably because vegetables were in such high demand, with no worry about sales.
After a thought, Mu Shan probed, “Excuse me, do you need a zombie worker?”