Cooking Gourmet Meals in the Apocalypse

Chapter 25: Chapter 25: The Difference With and Without a Space

For Chen Xing, helping Song Yiguo was definitely in her best interest.

All she had to do was call his assistant.

An hour later, Chen Xing parted ways with Song Yiguo and his group.

After shaking off the zombies staring at her from outside the building, she set her sights on a Mercedes-Benz dealership.

Peering through the window, she could see a phone on the service desk.

The door was ajar, which saved her a lot of trouble.

With no zombies in sight, she picked up the phone and dialed.

She had an astonishing memory, able to memorize things like phone numbers with just a single glance.

The line was picked up after a single ring.

Chen Xing reported in a robotic tone, ”I’ve found Song Yiguo. He’s on the top floor of a building in Hualai City. He’s injured, but his life isn’t in immediate danger. A leg injury makes it difficult for him to walk.”

The assistant could finally breathe a sigh of relief. ”Really? That’s wonderful! Thank you so much, Miss Chen Xing! However... the helicopter will take five hours to arrive at the earliest, and that’s assuming there are no complications. In the meantime, I’ll have to trouble you to take good care of our young master.”

”Ugh!” ’Well, she was the one who wanted to put Song Yiguo in her debt.’ ”Fine!”

She looked around the dealership’s showroom, found a few sets of car keys, and tried them one by one.

One set of keys belonged to a black luxury van.

She’d seen them in videos. Before the apocalypse, this type of vehicle was the exclusive ride of A-list celebrities, so she could only imagine how comfortable it was.

’Collect!’

The showroom was now empty. With five hours to kill, there was still a lot she could do.

Chen Xing had a destination in mind: the wholesale agricultural market, not too far from her current location.

The market was divided into four sections, each with its own separate building.

The ground floors were all uniform, filled almost exclusively with restaurants.

The second floor and above were dedicated to agricultural goods. You could find any kind of produce imaginable, from the common to the high-end.

Right now, everyone’s attention was focused on supermarkets, so this place had clearly been overlooked. Its remote location meant there weren’t even many zombies around.

While it was still safe outside, Chen Xing started with the storefronts on the ground floor, clearing out the restaurants first.

Because they were all small, individual shops, clearing them out was tedious and time-consuming.

A full sweep of the ground floor took an hour.

Afterwards, she picked one of the main buildings and went inside.

It was dark inside. Aside from a few scattered messes, the piles of produce seemed virtually untouched.

Since she had to clear four buildings, she couldn’t afford to dally and moved with incredible speed.

Soon, she had cleared two buildings and was moving on to the third.

A skywalk connected the top floors of the third and fourth buildings.

’Perfect,’ Chen Xing thought. It would save her from being exposed outside.

She cleared the second floor, then the third... Just as she was about to take the stairs to the fourth floor, she heard the roar of motorcycles.

It wasn’t just one bike; it sounded like an entire motorcade.

Chen Xing immediately ran to the fourth floor and peered out a half-open window toward the center of the complex. She saw a dozen or so flashy motorcycles, a few SUVs, and, bringing up the rear, two large trucks.

They were all dressed in matching leather jackets and pants, each with a thumb-thick iron chain hanging from their waist.

They also wore heavy, smoky makeup, and their hair was spiked up in all sorts of styles.

They seemed to have no fear of the zombies, judging by the deafening noise they made that echoed through the area.

Chen Xing was no stranger to this sort of getup.

In the apocalypse, there were plenty of groups dressed like this. Nine times out of ten, they were death-defying desperadoes.

It was just a little strange for a crew dedicated to murder and plunder to have formed so early into the apocalypse.

The leader was a man well over 1.9 meters tall, with an imposing physique and rugged features. He exuded an intimidating aura even when standing still.

After dismounting, he slung the assault rifle in his hand over his shoulder and bellowed, ”Brothers... this place looks pretty good... Go on... Clean it out for me!” As he spoke, he pulled the slender woman following close behind him into his arms.

Chen Xing was speechless. ’That rifle looks a lot like the ones the military lost.’

She didn’t have much time, so she paid them no mind and continued gathering supplies.

When she was more than halfway done with the fifth floor, she heard footsteps inside her building.

Chen Xing ignored them. She silently finished collecting everything and immediately ran toward the skywalk leading to the fourth building.

Footsteps echoed from below in the fourth building as well, and someone shouted excitedly, ”Boss... there’s still stuff here...!”

’Now it’s a race to see who’s faster!’

Chen Xing kept an ear out for any movements below, her hands never stopping as she collected the supplies.

Soon, she reached the third floor. The people downstairs, however, still seemed to be hauling things out of the ground floor.

’This was the difference between having a spatial inventory and not.’

Chen Xing moved quickly. Just as she had almost finished clearing the third floor, she heard footsteps coming up from below.

”Why aren’t you moving stuff? What are you doing going up there?” one of his companions called out, annoyed.

”I’m just going to see what’s up there, I’ll be right back!” He seemed satisfied upon reaching the second floor, because he immediately started running up toward the third.

Chen Xing immediately dove under a shelving unit near the staircase.

The man who came up was in his thirties. His bow legs looked ridiculous in tight leather pants.

Seeing that the third floor was empty, he shouted down, ”Holy shit... Who the hell was so thorough? They cleared the whole place out!”

”You’re kidding, right? The upper floors are empty too?” The men downstairs had thought they’d finally found a real haul in this building, never expecting it was only what they’d found on the ground floor.

”I’m going to check the next floor...” The man turned to head for the stairs but stopped when he saw a small pile of tea leaves.

Chen Xing hadn’t bothered with the moldy tea leaves, so she’d just left them behind.

As the man walked over to the pile of tea, he glanced down and happened to spot Chen Xing hiding under the shelving unit.

Sensing no danger, the man’s lips curled into a grin. ”Well, you’re pretty good at hiding...” he said, his lecherous gaze lingering on Chen Xing’s delicate, oval face.

”What’d you say?” a voice called from downstairs.

The man licked his lips, greedily sizing Chen Xing up from head to toe, and opened his mouth to speak.

But before he could utter a sound, Chen Xing shot to her feet and slit his throat.

To keep him from making a sound as he fell, she grabbed his body to support it.

With the man taken care of, she immediately ran down to the second floor.

’It was a necessary risk.’ Besides, escaping from the second floor would be easy—it was a much shorter jump from the window.

She cleaned out the second floor. No one else came up; they probably never imagined their companion had been killed on one of the empty upper floors.

Once she was done, Chen Xing ran to a window.

Down in the small parking plaza, only the leader was still there, passionately kissing the woman.

Not far from them, a loaded truck was pulling forward to make way for an empty one.

Chen Xing didn’t hesitate. If they discovered someone had been killed upstairs, her escape would be much more difficult.

After jumping from the window, Chen Xing immediately sprinted toward the loaded truck.

The leader, lost in his kiss, naturally didn’t notice her.

”Quick, get her! She killed Dan’er!” Just as she was about to reach the truck, someone from an upper floor pointed at her and screamed.

The leader shoved the woman out of his arms and raised his rifle.

But Chen Xing was a step ahead of him. She yanked the driver out of the cab, jumped in, and floored the accelerator, tearing away.

A whole gang of them, robbed by a single young woman?

The leader straddled his motorcycle and gave chase.