Chapter 59: Northern Plateau

It's getting dark.

After nightfall, the town of Hexi was completely plunged into darkness, and only one out of ten street lamps on the road was on. Chen Fa said that this was to save electricity. Anyway, there was a curfew in the town and no one went out at night, so keeping one or two street lamps on a street was enough.

There are no tall buildings in the town. Shu Fu stood in front of the window of the second-floor room that Chen Fa had cleaned up for her. When she looked out through the reinforced glass window, she could only see a hazy black of varying shades, and this black was made even more blurred by the rain.

The darkness was not quiet. Apart from the noisy crackling sound of rain, there seemed to be some other movements.

She heard faint cries and some arguing, and she didn't know which small building nearby came from. In natural disasters, there will always be people with unstable emotions.

The residents of the town and the team members were very vigilant. Even if they turned on the lights at night, they would not turn on very bright lights, and every household had curtains drawn. I don't know if it was because they were afraid that it was too dark around and the little light in the house would attract flying insects and reptiles outside, or for some other reason, so they deliberately covered it up.

Shu Fu didn't turn on the lights either, simply because she was used to keeping a low profile and hiding. When in unfamiliar places, she would always deliberately avoid being in the light source in the dark.

Chen Fa should have fallen asleep. She was very busy all day. She had to go out on patrol in the morning and afternoon. If there was any trouble, the team members would come to her to resolve it.

In the morning, she watched her grandmother take medicine and go to sleep, and then she was busy cleaning up her room. At noon, a few team members that Shu Fu had met came over and said that the meal in the small restaurant was ready, and asked Chen Faxin if they wanted to go there to eat.

Chen Fa briefly told Shu Fu about the situation in the team when they were cleaning the room. The team was called Yang Can Team. Yang means sunshine, and they hoped it would not rain all the time and there would be more sunshine. Can not only means brilliant, but also because the captain's girlfriend was called Cheng Can.

The world is in a difficult situation now, and supplies are in short supply, so the team does not do good things or recruit idle people. After those who are capable join the team, they will also have corresponding tasks to complete every day. Those who are physically strong and know a little bit of boxing and kicking, some patrol, some go to guard the power plant in the mountains, and some go to the uninhabited houses in the block where the team belongs to continue to search for supplies.

Those who have some skills will repair and reinforce doors and windows, maintain water filtration machines, grow hydroponics indoors, raise a few chickens and ducks, and cook for the team members...

Team members can receive corresponding supplies and enjoy some preferential treatment, such as free but limited-portion meals, in addition to their hard work.

In addition to the team members, the team also has the family members of each team member - that is, non-team members, whether they are boyfriends, girlfriends, relatives or friends, as long as they are not team members, they cannot enjoy the benefits of the team members.

Therefore, team members either have to find a job for their family members within the team, or work harder themselves, get more supplies, and support their family members.

Chen Fa's situation belongs to the latter, but she is capable, smart, and daring enough to take action. Not long after joining the team, she was voted as the deputy captain. The material benefits she enjoys now are enough to support her and her grandmother.

Shu Fu didn't want to join the team, nor did she want to eat strangers' meals when supplies were scarce, and she didn't want to hang on Chen Fa to suck blood. She was about to say that she would take care of the meals, but Chen Fa held her down and told her teammates that this was her sister and also her family member. She would be responsible for her daily life and the meals would be fine as usual.

The team members all understood what "as usual" meant, which was that the three meals were the same as before, and they only received one serving.

Chen Fa was the deputy team leader, and there were always some smart members in the team who wanted to get close to her and build a good relationship with her, so they usually took care of things like getting three meals. Today was no different. After asking for details, one of them took out a three-layer round lunch box in a plastic bag from under his raincoat, carefully placed it on the table, and then left.

After everyone left, Chen Fa immediately took out the lunch boxes and opened them one by one. The first layer was three roasted potatoes, the second layer was half a box of boiled lettuce, and the third layer was three big, white and plump handmade steamed buns.

The food in Yang Can’s team was very vegetarian, so vegetarian that Shu Fu felt a little bit uncomfortable.

Chen Fa, however, seemed to be used to it. He walked into the kitchen with a normal expression and took out an electric rice cooker and three sets of bowls and chopsticks. After opening the rice cooker, he found hot rice porridge inside, which should be the special supply for Chen Fa's grandmother - the patients.

Then she took out a jar of assorted pickles from the refrigerator, and finally took out two cans from the cupboard.

One was spiced beef and the other was potato ribs. She opened the cans skillfully, poured the finished dishes into a bowl, and then put it in the microwave to heat it up.

In this way, a pitiful vegetarian meal immediately turned into four dishes and one staple food, including both meat and vegetarian food.

While Chen Fa was busy adding more dishes, Shu Fu said that she had food in her backpack. She also said that before entering the town, she had hidden some food that was not convenient to carry when she hid the inflatable boat bag, so she could completely solve her own meals.

She wanted to go upstairs to get her backpack, but Chen Fa pulled her back down the stairs.

"Stop it. I'm a deputy captain after all. I'm just giving you an extra portion of rations. You don't need to save it for me!" Chen Fa pulled her back to the dining table and asked her to eat first. He then served himself a bowl of rice porridge, took a large plate, put half a steamed bun, some boiled lettuce, some assorted pickles to go with the porridge, and finally two pieces of spiced beef, and went upstairs to deliver the meal to his grandmother.

Of course Shu Fu couldn't eat by herself first, so she waited for Chen Fa to come downstairs before having this simple lunch with her.

During lunch, Chen Fa told her that the food in the team was not that bad. There was Qinghe River next to Hexi Town, and no matter how scarce other supplies were, there would be no shortage of fish and meat.

The Malaysian team has two boats. The larger one is used by the team members themselves. As long as the wind and waves are not too strong and there is no extreme weather, they will go out to fish every day. The other smaller boat is rented to the team members and other residents in the responsible block. The fish caught can be exchanged for grocery stores or eaten by themselves.

The fish in the nearby waters are all very big. If there is really nothing to eat, residents can exchange various things for them and eat as much fish as they want.

Those gold items that seem useless in this town can be crossed through the flood area to Lucheng and exchanged for supplies there. The team there will collect these items.

Compared with Yang Can's team of outsiders, some residents here trust the Malaysian team more. When the two teams divided their neighborhoods, many people moved to the Malaysian team's neighborhoods, and gradually accepted and got used to this way of exchange.

Yang Can's team didn't have a boat, but the road was still clear when they evacuated from Lucheng, so they drove with a lot of supplies and also attracted some capable people to join.

For example, the waterfall power plant in the mountains had problems during an extreme natural disaster before. The power supply is intermittent and unstable, and there will be power outages if the electricity consumption exceeds a certain amount.

Later, the people in Yang Can's team found a way to repair it, so the power plant is now managed by Yang Can's people. If the Malaysian team wants to use electricity, they have to exchange it for other materials.

Some rice and flour, daily necessities, seeds for hydroponic vegetables, healthy live chickens and ducks, and fish are all among the exchangeable supplies.

In short, the two teams each have what the other needs, so after several conflicts, they can maintain the current relatively peaceful situation.

In today's Hexi town, fish is the least valuable. Because of the lack of safe drinking water, the cooking method is a bit simple. Fresh fish is mostly grilled or steamed. Sometimes there is too much fish to eat at home, so it is smoked with firewood to extend the shelf life...

When Chen Fa said this, he saw Shu Fu biting a steamed bun and looking at him hesitantly, so he knew that she had heard the point, so he continued: "Well, there is fish for lunch, but I told them that I am allergic to fish, so they always replace it with something else for me. You can say that I am hypocritical or that I am troublesome, anyway, after seeing the fish in the flood area gnawing..., I don't want to eat fish anymore.

Maybe one day in the future, when the world is in even more chaos and supplies are even more scarce, and I am about to starve to death, I will eat, but not now... Don't eat fish either. If you want to eat meat, I have a lot of canned food here, including canned luncheon meat. Although it's not that fresh, it's safe to eat anyway..."

A few days ago, I had a homemade grilled sea bass at the Drifting Island House: …

**

Shu Fu certainly understood what Chen Fa cared about, because she had cared about this too.

If there wasn't an automatic water fishing rod that could automatically screen the harvest and "disinfect with one click", she probably wouldn't eat it.

However, she always felt that the reason why Chen Fa cared so much about eating fish was not just because of this.

After all, in peacetime, some people eat piranhas and sharks. Many people even say that piranhas are high in protein and nutritional value, and praise their delicious meat...

Shu Fu reached out and closed the curtains, took out the lottery wheel in the dark, and started the lottery.

First turn, blue fourth prize: raft fence x 5

Second spin, red third prize: fruit gift pack x 10

Both were very tangible rewards. The raft fence was what she had wanted before, and fresh food like fruit was always better.

Because of the limited space on her bracelet, she has not yet received the fruit gift pack, so she doesn't know what fruits are in it, but she has never missed the red gift pack. She plans to deposit this prize in the lucky draw wheel, and wait until the fruit she has stockpiled in her space is almost used up, and then claim this prize.

She was quite satisfied with the prize, but not particularly satisfied. After all, she was not in the Drifting Island House now, and this town felt weird to her. At this stage, she had a higher need for a portable protective shield.

However, this prize is too difficult to win. It seems that she still needs to wash her hands carefully, apply fragrant hand cream, and pray devoutly before the next draw to increase her chances of luck!

This was Shu Fu's first night in the small town. The room was too small to set up the raft. Although there were only three people living in the small building: Chen Fa, Chen Fa's grandmother and herself, this was the first time in a long time that they had spent the night somewhere other than the drifting island house. As it was still early, she was a little insomniac.

The temperature at night dropped back to around 20 degrees. It was not very hot in the room, but still a bit stuffy and humid. The bedding was just changed by Chen Fa. It was hot now, so there was no need for a quilt. A blanket was enough.

Shu Fu couldn't sleep, so she sat up and leaned against the head of the bed. The floor lamp was a little far away and too bright, so she took out a small rechargeable table lamp from the space and placed it on the bed. Then she took out her notebook and pen and looked through the disaster outline she had recorded before.

As she checked, she took out a bottle of strawberry milk and drank it slowly. After checking, she circled the words "aquatic organism mutation".

This is the only disaster that has not happened so far. I am afraid that this strange disease is closely related to it.

Shu Fu turned to a new page and wrote down a few known points.

First, there must be someone sick in Yang Can's team, because Chen Fa said "the symptoms are similar", and there is probably more than one person, so Tang Ping boiled the medicine and sent it. But he seemed to be very afraid of this disease, and even had some paranoid suspicions. For example, Chen Fa's grandmother, who clearly had a cold, fever, and pneumonia, insisted that she take medicine on time just because the symptoms were similar.

Second, the network in Hexi Town has been down for quite some time, and the people here don’t know whether there are more patients outside. But when they cross the flooded area to exchange supplies, they never mention anything about the strange disease to those who are exchanging supplies, and they act very secretive. That’s why Yang Can’s team knows very little about the news of illness in the outside world.

Normally, curing illness and understanding the outside situation should be more important than keeping secrets, right?

Although Shu Fu was curious, Chen Fa must have her own considerations for not explaining it clearly at the moment, and she would not drag the other party to get to the bottom of it.

Anyway, she couldn't leave Hexi Town now, so she might as well make the best of it, lie down and wait for the next task to come.

It's just a pity that the secret of the space cannot be exposed, otherwise I could have given Chen Fa and her grandmother extra meals. When I lock the door and hide in the room to cook for myself like now, I feel a little sorry for Chen Fa...

But there is nothing we can do about it.

Shu Fu thought so in her heart, but her hands skillfully took out a bowl of washed cherries from the space and slowly ate them...

As she ate, she sighed in self-contempt. As expected, it is easy to go from frugality to luxury, but it is difficult to go from luxury to frugality...

Also, since I can’t sleep so early, why not put on some headphones and watch some variety shows?

**

Chen Fa's grandmother is called Chen Yuezhen. When she was a young art soldier, she also needed to do physical training every day. Even after she retired, she still kept the habit of daily physical training. So compared with her peers, she is very healthy.

According to Chen Fa, when she went back to her hometown during the university holidays, her grandmother would always find opportunities to attack her from time to time to test whether she had been lazy in Suicheng and whether she had persisted in daily physical training and self-defense exercises.

Although she was old, she was in good health. Therefore, even though she did not have the conditions to hang up an IV to reduce fever and inflammation, the appearance of Shu Fu's boxes of medicine allowed her to slowly recover her energy and spirit in four or five days.

Not only was she able to get out of bed, she also began to do simple physical exercises using the limited furniture and household items in the house.

When Shu Fu first passed by and saw Grandma Chen Fa doing squats with a towel above her head, she stood there for a full minute.

Chen Fa put his arm around Shu Fu's shoulders from behind and said, "She's very restrained to only do squats, which means her body hasn't fully recovered yet. Watch her more and you'll get used to it."

Shu Fu: ...

However, Chen Yuezhen's physical improvement was limited to this small building.

Whenever there was someone other than the three of them in the villa, Chen Yuezhen would go back to her room upstairs and lie back on the bed.

Tang Ping would come to deliver the medicine in person every other day. Chen Fa would still take it with gratitude on her face, and then pour it down the drain with a sullen face after he left. She would then wash the thermos cup, and when other team members brought her meals, she would ask them to take it back and return it to Tang Ping.

As for the other team members, even if Chen Yuezhen did not go back to her room to avoid her, they would not go upstairs rashly. After all, this was Deputy Captain Chen's residence. At most, they would ask about Chen Yuezhen's condition when they came over.

Chen Fa always speaks briefly and to the point.

There were also some relatively young team members who, after asking questions, grumbled privately, saying that frequent natural disasters were scary enough, and now so many people were sick, and there was no medicine, and once someone got sick it would be really hard to recover...

The person who was talking was quickly stopped by the other team members nearby. Before leaving, they looked back at Chen Fa several times, as if they were afraid that she would be angry.

The nights in the small town are always uneasy. The darkness is always accompanied by some crying and arguing sounds, which sometimes stop for a moment and sometimes continue for a long time.

On her fifth night in the small town, she was suddenly awakened in the middle of the night by a shrill scream coming from outside. The scream was drawn out and made Shu Fu feel a little creepy.

Because Chen Fa's building was close to the street outside, she couldn't tell whether the sound came from the street outside or from the homestay area where the team was staying.

She stood in front of the window and looked outside for a long time. She only vaguely noticed that the door of a small building in the homestay was opened. Several people ran out in the rain and entered another building. Then after a long time, those people came out again, and there seemed to be a few more people. She didn't know what they brought. They didn't return to the original small building, but turned a corner and went to the inside of the homestay area, and soon disappeared completely in the night rain.

Because there were only two street lights on the entire street, it was too dark outside, and no matter how hard Shu Fu tried, he could only see vague outlines.

But in Shu Fu's opinion, it is definitely not a trivial matter for someone to go in and out in the dark and rain in the middle of the night without sleeping.

She believed that everyone should have heard the noise outside, but not only did the people in the other small buildings nearby not come out, even Chen Fa and Chen Yuezhen, who were sleeping next to her, did not make any noise.

The next day, the team members who came to deliver breakfast did not look very well, with dark circles under their eyes, and looked like they had been sleepless for most of the night.

Looking at their expressions, it was obvious that they all knew what happened last night, but they kept silent about it. They just put down their meals and left, talking less than usual.

As Shu Fu watched the team members leave, Chen Fa patted her shoulder from behind and brought her back to her senses: "The town is not peaceful, especially after dark. This is why I told you not to go out after dark."

Shu Fu remembered that on her first day in town, Chen Fa had told her not to go out after dark.

However, she originally thought that it was because of a dispute between the two teams. Some problems that could not be solved during the day would be solved at night when the light was not good. But now she knew that the reason why Chen Fa asked her not to go out at night was not because of the Malaysian team.

Shu Fu didn't care about going out or not, but she felt embarrassed about eating and drinking at Chen Fa's place for several days in a row. She was so embarrassed that she felt guilty every night when she secretly had extra meals and snacks.

The situation in Hexi Town is completely different from that in Louyun City at that time. Order has collapsed and chaos is coming. At this stage, it is impossible for her to leave Chen Fa and live outside alone.

So she planned to go out during the day, using the excuse of "getting the supplies hidden when she came ashore" to prepare a waterproof travel bag with reasonable contents and add some snacks for Chen Fa and the others.

"You should keep your supplies to yourself. I have plenty of canned food here. It's enough for you to eat."

Shu Fu: ...

Can she say she doesn't want to eat canned food anymore?

At least she still had vacuum-packed braised beef, roast chicken, duck in soy sauce, steak, pizza... She could also put a small bottle of cooking oil in there, so she could slice up the steamed buns and potatoes, fry them, and process them. They would taste better than the raw, roasted, or boiled ones now...

Although she didn't say anything, her expression said it all.

"..." Chen Fa held her forehead with her hand. It was her "one-sided wish" after all. She stretched out her hand to pinch Shu Fu's face and said, "I don't have to patrol today. Let's go out tomorrow. When I patrol tomorrow, you can go out with me. I will take you to familiarize yourself with the road and recognize the boundary line between the two teams. Then you can go and get your things."

Shu Fu understood that Chen Fa was afraid that she would get lost, so he ran to the other party's territory again: "Then we will all go out tomorrow, what about your grandma?"

"It's okay. Just like before, I will lock the door when I go out, and she will stay in the room. We will be back at noon anyway."

Chen Fa was very serious about his work. Since he didn't have to patrol during the day, he took some time to draw a simple floor plan of Hexi Town, marking the location of their homestay and listing the dividing line between the two teams.

But there was no planning for the construction of the town, with many alleys and forks, and Chen Fa's painting skills were only so-so. The two of them sat at the table and studied it for a while, and finally decided to personally show the way how to safely leave and return to the town tomorrow.

Because of this incident, when a team member came to deliver lunch at noon, Chen Fa kept the other party for a moment and told him roughly about tomorrow's arrangements.

**

The next day, Shu Fu got up early on purpose. She had prepared a waterproof travel bag the night before. Today she only needed to go out of the town and find a suitable place near the water and pretend to take out the travel bag.

She changed into her going-out clothes and made all the necessary preparations. Just before leaving the house, her bracelet suddenly vibrated.

She immediately had a bad feeling.

Taking advantage of the time to go to the bathroom, she clicked on her bracelet to check and found that there was indeed a new task.

[Complete the check-in task of Building 4 of the Shanshui Homestay in Hexi Town within 24 hours to get a 10% progress bar for level 4 of the raft. (Current progress of level 4 of the raft: 25%)

Note: Failure to complete this task will deduct 20% of the progress bar. 】

Shu Fu: ...

Building 4 of Shanshuiju B&B in Hexi Town?

Isn’t that the building where Chen Fa lives now?

She has lived here for six or seven days!

What's the meaning?

Is the task delayed?