Chapter 41

Chapter 41

Qi Mo wasn’t entirely sure how large mutated insects or beasts could grow.

After all, he’d died just seven months into the apocalypse, so he had no knowledge of what came after.

By the time he died, though, the insects had indeed mutated—so had the beasts and plants. Everything had turned hostile. Humans had been dethroned from the top of the food chain.

According to some, all life forms had begun evolving in the harsh environment.

Qi Mo had witnessed the early stages, but unfortunately, his spatial ability awakened too late for him to gather many supplies.

Thinking about the supplies now stored in his spatial inventory, Qi Mo felt a surge of satisfaction.

The conversation meandered through different topics…

Huo Xiaoyu mentioned that many villagers had returned today, looking wretched—parched, starving, some suffering from heat exhaustion, others robbed and killed, never to return home.

Qi Mo didn’t know whose family they belonged to.

He wasn’t familiar with many villagers—only a few, and even those he’d only recently become acquainted with.

Hearing that some in the village had died, the group fell quiet.

Suddenly, shouts came from outside. Qi Mo looked out; Huo Huakang grew excited, Huo Xiaoyu stood up, and Aunt Wang actually ran out excitedly.

Soon, five or six people leaning on each other emerged in the lanterns’ dim glow.

“Who’s back?” Qi Mo asked, eyeing the strangers. They didn’t look like the Elder Clan Leader’s sons.

Huo Xiaoyu explained, “My brother—my brother’s back.”

“That’s not your brother, is it? I think I know your brother—he doesn’t look like this,” Qi Mo said, puzzled.

Huo Xiaoyu looked at the newcomers. “That’s my brother’s wife’s neighbor. They grew up together.”

“So not only did the neighbor tag along, but they’re childhood friends too?” Qi Mo widened his eyes.

This might lead to trouble.

Hearing this, Huo Xiaoyu nearly laughed through tears. “They’re too familiar—nothing ever came of it. Otherwise, where would that leave my brother?”

With that, Huo Xiaoyu hurried over and scooped up the two-year-old child from the man’s arms.

Qi Mo observed the newcomers. The unfamiliar man at the front had blood on his forehead, holding a beautiful two-year-old girl in one arm and a cold steel rod in the other. He looked intimidating—cold, his eyes still blazing with battle fury.

Then Qi Mo spotted Huo Xiaoyu’s brother.

While most villagers were only vaguely familiar to him, he recognized Huo Xiaoyu’s brother, Huo Liangya.

He looked equally worse for wear—his lips cracked, his arm wrapped in cloth, likely cut in a fight.

He was being held by a woman, his wife—small-framed, delicate, and cute.

Behind them were two people around fifty, likely Huo Liangya’s in-laws, who didn’t look much better, their faces pale.

Wang Miaomiao, seeing her son injured so badly he could barely walk without support, saw stars.

"Liangya, you alright? Your forehead’s burning," Wang Miaomiao fretted.

Wang Xiaoqi quickly explained, "Mom, Liangya has a fever—maybe an infection. Do we have any anti-inflammatory or fever meds at home?"

Qi Mo watched the group scrambling around in a panic.

"First, give them some cool boiled water with a pinch of salt to replenish fluids. Then cook some porridge and disinfect their wounds," Qi Mo instructed.

Huo Xiaoyu was just as flustered, unsure what to do first.

"Give me the baby first so you can settle your family," Qi Mo said, reaching out.

Before he could take the child, Baby Yan in the stroller started wailing like he owned Daddy all to himself.

Huo Jingxuan watched the chubby baby cry and thought, *This kid’s barely a few months old and already hogging his dad.*

But Huo Jingxuan let it slide. He took the little girl into his arms instead.

Seeing how out of it she was, he immediately checked her forehead—it was scorching.

"She might have a fever. Auntie Wang, got any boiled water, a thermometer, or fever meds?" Huo Jingxuan asked.

Hearing this, Qi Mo added, "It’s not cold enough out for a cold. Could be heatstroke. Check her temp first. Does our village have a doctor? Whip up some mint tea to cool her off."

"Oh right! I’ve got some kids’ fever patches at home. Want me to grab ’em?" Qi Mo offered.

Wang Miaomiao replied, "Xiaoyu, go with Momo to get them. No need for thanks, Momo—just holler if you need us."

Huo Jingxuan backed away with the girl, keeping distance from the crying baby.

He wasn’t sure if she had a cold, and since kids have weaker immune systems, he didn’t wanna risk passing anything on.

"Jingtan, you handle it. Xiaoyu, help disinfect the wounds—got antiseptic at home? If not, grab some alcohol from mine. Hurry, get the anti-inflammatory and fever meds fast," Huo Jingxuan directed the chaotic household of the clan leader.

The village chief cut in, "I’ve got fever meds. I’ll go get ’em."

Qi Mo pushed the crying baby back home, with Huo Jingtan following behind.

As Qi Mo hurried ahead, Huo Jingtan quietly said, "You got enough meds stocked at home? Don’t hand it all out. You still have one little one, and I heard you’re expecting another. Meds might be hard to come by later."

These days, being too nice can backfire—people'll take advantage.

Qi Mo turned back and smiled at Huo Jingtan.

"Huo Jingtan, quit smiling at me like that. I might mess up. Who doesn’t like a pretty face?"

"It’s fine. The fever patches are from a while back. Their expiration date is coming up soon anyway—they’re gonna go bad soon if we don’t use ’em."

True. Last time, the baby came home too excited, kept fussing, and caught a fever.

Huo Liangzhou bought a ton of medicine then, including those fever patches.

The local pharmacy wasn’t honest—most meds only had a few months left before expiring.

Probably until the end of July.

They wouldn’t last much longer anyway. Besides, he had plenty of medicine stored away—enough for him and the baby for life.

When Qi Mo arrived home, Huo Jingtan looked surprised at the yard full of wine jars. "Momo, why’d you buy so many wine jars?"

Dragging the cart closer to the living room, Qi Mo headed to the kitchen, grabbing some medicine as he explained, “My water cellar is right next to the house. I’m worried someone might drill into it—then where would I get water? Better to store a little now, just in case.”

Huo Jingtan responded, “You think it’ll go that far?”

Without power, and with communication and transport disrupted, chaos was bound to happen in such a densely populated city.

The mess wouldn’t last forever. Once things settled and order was restored, life would go back to normal. Stocking up on food made sense, but water shortages probably wouldn’t be that bad.

Even if they did run low on water during the summer, it wouldn’t be that extreme—autumn rains would take care of it.

“It will,” Qi Mo insisted. “The government’s going to downplay things to keep people calm. So better safe than sorry. Worst case, we waste it—it’s only a bit of time lost. But if there really is a shortage, this could save our lives.” He pulled out the cooling patches from the medicine box.

Then he dug around some more—there was a bottle of infant fever medicine and a box of anti-inflammatory pills.

They were close to expiring, but not yet past their shelf life. No point letting them go to waste.

“Here, take these. They’re still good—use them while you can,” Qi Mo said.

Huo Jingtan took the medicine. “Alright. Take care of yourself. Stay away from crowds. The kid’s immune system’s still weak, and we don’t know what diseases the villagers might bring back.”

Qi Mo nodded. “Gotcha. Go on, then.”

Huo Jingtan hurried back to the Elder’s house with the medicine.

Among the group who had just returned, Huo Liangya finally felt a bit better after drinking a large bowl of saltwater mix.

He turned and said, “Grandpa, Mom, Dad—Qin Lan’s staying here. If it weren’t for him, we might not have made it back.”

Qin Lan couldn’t budge—he was completely drained. Hiking 200-plus kilometers to reach the village had taken them three days.

Their supplies were looted, and they almost got killed.

Wang Xiaoqi nearly got snatched too.

Qin Lan hadn’t planned on coming to the village. He was from the city, with no family left there.

But when he ran into Wang Xiaoqi’s family being robbed on his way back from scrounging for food, they decided together: finding anything edible in the city was hopeless. So Qin Lan packed up and followed them here.

“Good, good. You’re welcome to stay. We’ve got potatoes to spare, so don’t worry about food,” Wang Miaomiao said warmly, watching the young man her son and daughter-in-law brought home, and her daughter tending to his wounds.

A future son-in-law might be in the making.

Her normally loud and energetic daughter was talking all quiet-like around this guy.

Huo Jingtan handed over the medicine. “Fever patches—good for another month. Should Uncle Liangya use one?”

Wang Xiaoqi immediately replied, “I’ll wash the little one’s face and stick one on.”

Stuff you put on the skin was safer. The child’s temperature was 38°C—manageable. If the patch brought it down, they could skip the oral meds.

The Elder’s house was a madhouse for a bit.

Making porridge, crashing, cleaning up…

After three days under the blazing sun, they all smelled ripe.

After returning home, Qi Mo didn’t go out again. He poured all the water from the wine jars into the dimensional pond.

It wasn’t like it would overflow anyway—if he left it like this, the water would just evaporate in the end.

The water used to rinse the wine jars wasn’t dirty either.

For household water use, maybe he ought to grow some vegetables at home.

He didn’t have the skills to set up a fully enclosed grow room, but back in his previous life, some households had workarounds for growing certain vegetables.

He refilled the wine jars with water and dug cisterns for water storage.

Qi Mo pulled the small pig from the brine and hung it under the smoking rack.

After sun-drying it tomorrow, it could be smoked. Once cured, he’d seal it in jars and move it to the basement for storage.

As long as it didn’t go bad, that was all that mattered.

Qi Mo thought about getting some sweet potatoes—they’d yield edible greens for months.

Then he could plant cucumbers or cherry tomatoes, which would need large bottles—five-gallon ones—to keep moisture from evaporating too quickly.

As Qi Mo mulled this over, Huo Liangzhou was already on the move.

At the Huo family’s security compound,

the top floor was topped with a glass enclosure, then sealed tight—doorframes were lined with rubber.

“Seal it up tight—no leaks. We’ll convert the top ten floors into sealed grow rooms,” Huo Liangzhou told his inner circle.

These were all trusted men. Besides building cisterns for the city,

Huo Liangzhou was also digging cisterns at the security base.

Meanwhile, the water towers from the villa were drained and moved here—the compound would become the Huos’ new HQ.

The base had fifteen floors, spanning over 20,000 square feet.

Over a hundred loyal men were bunked on the first through fifth floors.

But with the current heatwave, most preferred staying in the basement—it was cooler.

Wu Di looked at the CEO: “Water’s gonna be tight.”

Huo Liangzhou replied, “Set up a closed-loop water system indoors. Water will be extremely valuable in the future—we can’t afford to waste any.”

“So we won’t add much. Every grow room has to be sealed tight,” Huo Liangzhou added.

Huo Liangchuan set off alone with a backpack. Bringing others might upset Momo. He couldn’t figure out what was wrong with his older brother—couldn’t even hold onto his wife! That useless…

Food was probably running short back home too. It’d be best to bring Momo and his little nephew back—staying with his brother wasn’t safe.

Refilling the jars took him over an hour.

Once filled, he stored them all in his space, then moved them to the basement.

Looking at the fifty wine jars down there—each holding fifty pounds. Fifty pounds’d last ten days or so. That should be enough.

Tomorrow, he’d cap the jars with oilpaper.

Qi Mo carried Baby Yan and the kitten Snowball up to the third floor for a bath.

They had to make it look like their household was conserving water. Everything had to look justified.

The mayor gazed at the weather outside during the meeting.

"The water level at Dongshan Reservoir is dropping rapidly and is nearing the warning line. We’ve built twenty water cellars, but they need at least three more days to store water properly, or they might get damaged," said the town’s utilities director.

The mayor spoke up, "We need to speed up. The water cellars are nowhere near enough. Our town has a population of 100,000, not to mention the villages below. We can’t just write them off—Taohua Town has 150,000 to 160,000 people. We can’t let them die of thirst."

"About fifty more are being built," added a worker in charge of construction.

The mayor frowned. "We need at least another hundred. Get the villagers involved."

"Offer 1,000 catties worth of food vouchers for each completed water cellar. Many will be willing to work overtime. We must build more cellars before the reservoir dries up. The days ahead may be tough," the mayor said.

The orders from above had the mayor shaking.

In just a few days, things were falling apart everywhere.

What the future held, the mayor couldn’t say.

Turning, the mayor looked at Huang Ming. "Any progress on that mystery creature?"

Huang Ming shook his head. "No surveillance, no footage. It’s hard to track. We haven’t even found animal footprints."

"Keep your guard up," the mayor sighed.

They'd always had top-down guidance before. But since the blackout, the central government had ordered them to take full responsibility for their jurisdiction.

Do well, and rewards would follow.

Fail, and he might get torn limb from limb first.

The neighboring mayor already got half his throat slit.

Qi Mo was dead tired that day.

He was out as soon as he hit the bed.

Baby Yan had cried the whole way, worried someone would steal his daddy.

As soon as he lay down, he rolled close to his daddy and dragged the kitten over, cuddling up in his arms.

In the middle of the night, Snowball’s ears flicked—something had roused her.

The awakened kitten slipped out of the room and let loose two unearthly yowls toward the mountains...

It sounded nothing like a cat—more like a monstrous beast.

The noises in the mountains cut off.

Snowball washed her face, licked her tiny paws, and slipped back into the bedroom. Before she could settle down, the chubby toddler was already awake, searching for her.

"Snowball, dude, this ain't cutting it. You're a big nine-month-old now—you gotta sleep on your own."

Unfortunately, Baby Yan barely grasped his daddy’s words, let alone feline language.

He did whatever he wanted, acting however he liked.

Deep in the mountains, the pig farmer shook in his second-floor bedroom.

The pigs? Whatever happened to them happened.