Chapter Thirty-Six: The Meaning of Survival

Aunt Mei stuffed two plates of dumplings into Mu Qingyu's arms: "Eat up, eat up, your eyes are practically popping out of your head." She said irritably, "If you can't cook, can't you just come eat at Aunt Mei's? At the very least, you can come over and ask Aunt Mei to cook for you."

Mu Qingyu accepted it without refusing, but she still said, "Aunt Mei, you've seen all the monsters around here, haven't you? Those are zombies. I went to the city yesterday, and there's no electricity in the city, and nobody cares anymore. These monsters are everywhere."

"From now on, I'm afraid you won't be able to buy anything even if you have money. I'll bring you two more packs of sausages later. You shouldn't go out for now. Let's see how things go once the situation stabilizes."

“Okay. We won’t go out. But don’t give me anything. This house and the food in it are yours anyway…” Aunt Mei said.

“No, those are already yours,” Mu Qingyu said firmly.

She gave Aunt Mei some more instructions before she and Mu Qingrong carried the dumplings back upstairs to the second floor.

"Sister, what will happen to Aunt Mei and the others? They're old and young." There's one with a leg disability and another who can't speak. Mu Qingrong was worried for them. Asking them to go out and kill zombies to collect supplies was a bit too much to ask.

"Let me think of a way." It wasn't that Mu Qingyu was unwilling to give them supplies, but she couldn't just give them away for free; supporting others like this would only lead to trouble. Didn't you see that even Mu Qingrong was dragged out by her to kill zombies?

There has to be a reason to give them supplies, otherwise they'll grow up to be ungrateful and turn out to be treacherous.

"How about we have Aunt Mei cook for us? We can exchange supplies for labor?" Mu Qingrong tilted her head, stuffing a dumpling into each cheek, and mumbled the suggestion.

Mu Qingyu found his expression quite amusing: "Didn't you say you'd cook from now on? You just said that yesterday, and you're already trying to slack off today?"

"No way! I really stayed up all night last night researching recipes. If I hadn't been in such a rush this morning, I would have made them for you!" Mu Qingrong said loudly, swallowing her dumplings with effort. The dumplings were so delicious; it felt like eating Aunt Fang's cooking again!

Mu Qingyu slowly put the dumplings into her mouth and chewed them slowly: "Lunch is taken care of, dinner is up to you!"

Mu Qingrong immediately became very confident.

After the apocalypse, this hot dumpling meal at noon was the most comforting meal the siblings had ever had.

The little puppy she had rescued was whimpering nearby; it was too small to eat meat yet. Mu Qingrong returned to her room and took out several pet bottles and bags of pet goat milk powder.

"Sister, how did you get all these things?" Mu Qingrong asked in surprise. Why did he feel that his sister's room was like a treasure chest?

Since arriving at Building 3, the only place Mu Qingrong hadn't been was his sister's room. Out of respect, he had never gone in, not even during the few days Mu Qingyu was away.

He was ugly before, and I didn't know how to raise such a small dog, but now there's no problem.

“Your sister has a lot of stuff. You take good care of it, I don’t know how to raise a dog. You’ll have to raise your own dog,” Mu Qingyu said.

"Okay!" Mu Qingrong quickly finished her dumplings in a few bites and happily went to make milk powder for the dog.

Mu Qingyu shook her head and chuckled, too lazy to bother with them anymore. Actually, whether the puppy could guard the house when it grew up was irrelevant, as long as her brother was happy. The prerequisite was—the dog shouldn't cause trouble! In the apocalypse, a dog barking randomly could be quite deadly.

Inside Building 4.

Aunt Mei and Xiao Ai returned to the second floor, where Xiao Mo was sitting in a wheelchair looking out the window toward the side door.

Aunt Mei sighed softly, "Xiao Mo, you were right again. Xiao Yu wouldn't accept our dumplings for nothing. She..."

Xiao Mo said that the apocalypse has begun, and from now on, they and Mu Qingyu and her brother will be two separate households. Mu Qingyu will take care of them, but they will never be able to live together as a family.

Xiao Mo also said that the outside world is in chaos, filled with man-eating monsters. Resources will become scarce in the future, and they need to find a way to become independent, otherwise they will be abandoned by the world and by Mu Qingyu sooner or later.

For some reason, Aunt Mei felt a little sad when she heard Xiao Mo say that. In her eyes, Xiao Mo, Xiao Ai, and Xiao Yu were all children from the orphanage, and she shouldn't have treated them differently.

However, the side gate in the courtyard that could only be opened in one direction, and Xiaoyu's insistence on returning the sausages to her, all proved that Xiaomo was right.

“There’s nothing to be sad about,” Xiao Mo turned her wheelchair to face Aunt Mei. “What she owed you, or rather what she owed the orphanage, she has already repaid with this house and all the supplies in that room. She doesn’t owe me or Sister Xiao Ai, and she didn’t have to care about our lives anyway.”

His eyes were dark and cold, but when he looked at Aunt Mei and Xiao Ai, a rare tenderness appeared: "Although I can't walk, I'm not completely incapable of supporting you. Besides, we have a room full of supplies that can give us a long period of time to recover and grow."

Building No. 3.

After having dinner and resting for more than an hour, Mu Qingyu and her brother went out again.

Before leaving, I settled the dog down and delivered two bags of cured meat and a bag of vegetable seeds to Aunt Mei next door. I also told Aunt Mei that the kitchen windowsill and the sunroom on the third floor were good places to grow them, and that they would have fresh vegetables to eat in the next few months.

They continued their sweep through the village, starting from where they left off in the morning and moving onward. They searched over a dozen houses throughout the afternoon, finding no survivors, except for one house with zombies, inhabited by an elderly woman who had stayed behind.

Mu Qingrong looked quite distressed, but she was much better than when she looked pale in the morning. The afternoon's harvest wasn't as much as in the morning, but it was still considerable. The things she collected throughout the day had almost filled Mu Qingyu's 5-cubic-meter space.

"Sister, is there any room left in your storage space?" Mu Qingrong asked her on the way back.

Mu Qingyu nodded: "It's still possible."

"Then don't take your things out for now. Just keep them on your person, at least some supplies. That way, you'll have something to rely on no matter where you go. And if we accidentally get separated, you'll have supplies on you too," Mu Qingrong said.

"Aren't you going to share the supplies with me?" Mu Qingyu asked with a smile. "We found these together, and you were the one who killed all the zombies."

"What's there to divide? What's mine is yours, isn't it?" Mu Qingrong laughed, then looked back at Mu Qingyu and suddenly changed the subject: "Sister, you should smile more. You look much prettier when you smile than that Mu Xiaoxiao. You never used to smile much."

"I don't know why, but I've never gotten along with Mu Xiaoxiao since we were little. I used to think a lot about how I could have a sister like that. I wish my sister was someone else. But I never expected that she really isn't my sister."

"Sister, you're my sister, that's so wonderful!" The boy's smile was pure, clear, and bright.