When it was almost dawn, Cheng Suming appeared in front of Si Nan and his men with his troops.
The leader of the troops was Yan Hongyi. In the middle of the night, Cheng Suming, who had rushed to Jushi Town, knocked on his door. After hearing what Cheng Suming said, he reported the situation to the military headquarters without hesitation and brought five large army trucks.
Among these five military trucks, one was carrying a crane, an excavator, some large lifting equipment, cutting tools, etc., and the other four military trucks were carrying a company of soldiers.
Now Yan Hongyi is leading the team to cut, lift, excavate and clean up the ruined shopping mall that contains supplies.
The group of people who died, Brother Zhang, and another group of accomplices wanted to stop the killing, but they were suppressed and tied up by Yan Hongyi's soldiers armed with live ammunition.
At this moment, Cheng Su Mingming looked at the injured Si Nan with a worried expression. The wounds on her head and legs had been treated and were covered with gauze, so the extent of the injuries could not be seen.
The person who promised him that she would protect him last night was injured today. He took a few deep breaths, suppressed the restlessness in his heart bit by bit, stretched out his white and slender fingers, touched Si Nan's pale cheek, and asked in a hoarse voice: "Is the wound deep? Has it been disinfected?"
"Not deep, it's all disinfected." Si Nan rubbed his warm palm guiltily. His big watery eyes didn't dare to look at him directly. He looked around and praised: "I knew the military would listen to you. With so many military trucks and so many soldiers, we are sure to catch this big fish today."
Cheng Suming said nothing, his eyes were as sharp as torches, staring straight at Si Nan.
His face was stern, his lips were tightly pursed, and he looked like he was angry. Si Nan tactfully withdrew his gaze and hooked his finger at him, "Come here."
Cheng Suming leaned over to her with a cold face. She kissed him on the face and coaxed him softly: "Don't be angry. There are so many people watching. I just got some minor injuries. It's not a big deal. The most important thing now is to move the supplies and explain to Yan Hongyi that I fired the gun and where it came from."
There were some people watching the fun around, such as Sheng Youqing, who had no eyesight at all, standing ten steps away from them, looking at them with a pout.
Then there were three or four new recruits who had never been in a relationship, standing twenty meters away, looking at them furtively with shining eyes.
Cheng Suming looked at the tactless people with cold eyes. Sheng Youqing and the new recruits felt their scalps tingling when they saw his gaze. Knowing that he was unhappy, they turned their heads away.
He then lowered his eyes and looked at Si Nan and said, "I will explain the gun matter to Yan Hongyi. Don't go anywhere in the next few days. Just stay by my side and recover from your injuries."
Si Nan wanted to say, she was only slightly injured, why should she take care of herself, but when he saw Cheng Suming's depressed look, he decided not to say anything, because he might tie her to him with a rope and not allow her to go anywhere.
Why is this man so clingy to her?
Si Nan leaned in Cheng Suming's arms half complaining and half sweetly, like a little child, watching with great interest the excavators and cranes clearing various thick and heavy building materials.
Two hours later, all the heavy stones, walls, steel bars, cement, etc. on the ruins were cleared aside, revealing bags of rice and flour, boxes of canned food, various biscuits, candies and other food buried under the ruins.
The soldiers were all stunned. "There's so much food! We must have dug up a granary! Oh my god, look at those stacked bags of rice and flour, they must weigh at least tens of thousands of tons, right? And there are boxes and boxes of canned food, are they still edible? Have they been soaked in water or leaked and expired?"
They rushed down in a swarm to dig out supplies, and when they dug out a box of canned luncheon meat, the first thing they did was to check whether the cans were leaking.
Yan Hongyi stood beside the excavated ruins pit and looked at the soldiers below and said, "Open a can and try the taste."
A soldier with a crew cut immediately wiped his black and gray hands and pried open a can with a military dagger. A familiar aroma of luncheon meat filled the air.
He cut a piece with a military dagger and put it into his mouth, chewing it carefully. The meat was tender and not too salty or bland, just the taste of the luncheon meat he remembered.
The soldier with a crew cut had his eyes sparkling: "Captain, it's not expired!"
Yan Hongyi nodded: "Move everything into the truck."
"Excuse me, I want this box of canned luncheon meat." As soon as he finished speaking, a pair of slender arms took the box of canned meat from the soldier's hands and placed it on a tricycle not far from the ruins.
Cheng Suming looked back at Yan Hongyi and said, "We agreed before we came here that my relatives and I will take the supplies first, and your troops will take the rest. My wife likes to eat meat, so you can take as many cans of meat as you can get."
Si Nan, who was standing beside him: ...
She said this as if she was a flesh worm and would feel uncomfortable if she didn't eat a meal.
She said weakly: "Actually, I can't eat that much. I'll take five boxes at most. If there are canned foods with other flavors, I'll take something else..."
The new recruits were obviously relieved. There were too few meat dishes these days. Although their unit had been distributing canned food several times a month, they always distributed one or two flavors, which would make them sick of after eating them for a long time. They all wanted to try canned luncheon meat with a different flavor.
Seeing Cheng Suming pursed his lips again and said nothing, Si Nan whispered to him, "Our tricycle is so small that we can't carry too much food. Instead of asking for more canned meat, we might as well change it up a bit. Then, whether we eat it ourselves, sell it, or exchange it for other supplies, it will be easier to sell. Taking out canned meat every time will make people suspicious."
She just saw other soldiers carefully turning over the can boxes, which mostly contained aluminum cans with many flavors. In addition to canned luncheon meat, there were also canned dace with black beans, canned hairtail, braised pork, pork intestines, braised beef with tomatoes, octopus and other canned meats and seafood, as well as many canned fruits such as sweet corn kernels, yellow peaches, apples, pineapples, apricots, etc. The varieties were really diverse.
According to another group of gangsters who were kidnapped, there were so many foods. Most of them were robbed from others in the two years after the apocalypse and stockpiled in this shopping mall. A small part of them were food that the mall already had.
Before the earthquake, this mall was the base of this gang of gangsters. There were nearly 500 people inside, making them the bullies of Killeen County. The people of Killeen County were very afraid of them.
After the earthquake, half of them died, while the other half survived and guarded the supplies.
On the third day after the earthquake, Shishan sent an army to Keeling County for rescue. They lied that all the people nearby had been rescued and remained entrenched nearby.
After the army left here on the twentieth day after the earthquake, they sent more than half of their people out to look for equipment that could move those tons of building materials.
Their progress was not smooth. The people they sent out either disappeared without a trace, or were so bold as to rob other people's supplies and were reported to the Shishan military. They were then surrounded, intercepted and captured by the military and taken to Shishan.
The only ones who had news and found the equipment would take at least three days to return. Unexpectedly, Cheng Yaojin, one of Si Nan's five men, showed up halfway and shattered their hopes of transferring supplies.
Before Yan Hongyi came to Jilin County, he promised to let Cheng Suming and his team take enough supplies, but only enough to fill their tricycles and no more.
He spent a lot of effort to convince his superiors in the military and mobilized so many military trucks overnight. How would he explain to his superiors if he didn't load much supplies back?
So when Cheng Suming, Yang Wentao, Sheng Youqing and others went down to the pit to move supplies, Yan Hongyi stared at them with sharp eyes, and Si Nan couldn't go down and sneak into the space at all.
Fortunately, the Shishan military has come up with a points system in the past two days. One point can be exchanged for one kilogram of rice. The monthly rent for a small studio house ranges from 30 to 50 points, and the rent for a medium-sized or above house ranges from 60 to 100 points. Villas and mansions require more than 200 points.
For jobs in the base, such as hard labor like moving bricks, a whole day's work can earn 5 points, easier work can earn 2-3 points, government departments and technical jobs can earn between 8-20 points, and scarce professional talents can earn more than 30 points.
In other words, Cheng Suming and his team discovered such a large amount of food, which, if converted into points, could be exchanged for at least 40,000 to 50,000 points.
Of course, not all of these points will be distributed, because the army is the one that does the most work, and they are just tipping off, so half of the points will be exchanged for them and then divided equally among their three families.
With this conversion, each of their families will have at least 7,000 points. This amount of points is enough for them to pay rent for three to five years and have no worries about food and clothing without having to work.
Si Nan is not a greedy person. With so many points, she can exchange for anything she wants. There is no need to make those soldiers unhappy for a little can of meat.
Cheng Suming knew this and looked at her helplessly, "As long as you are happy."
He turned around and, with the help of the soldiers, he and Yang Wentao and Sheng Youqing, brother and sister, moved many 100-pound bags of rice and flour and boxes of different canned food to their respective three vehicles.
They piled up into a small hill and flattened the tires. Then they used hemp ropes to tie up the hill layer by layer.
Finally, Cheng Suming asked Yan Hongyi to send people to load all the relatively intact wardrobes, tables, chairs, beds and other household items that they had seen nearby onto a large truck and help transport them back to Jushi Town.
Yan Hongyi was speechless as he looked at the three tricycles piled up like a small mountain. However, he was able to find so much food and capture nearly 50 bandits to serve as free laborers. He also made a great contribution. He said nothing and called a few strong soldiers, "You guys go with Doctor Cheng and help them push the tricycles back to Shishan."
When the six soldiers struggled to help Si Nan and his five companions get the tricycle back to Jushi Town, the five trucks led by Yan Hongyi had already returned to Jushi Town for a long time. They were now in the square in front of the government building, unloading grain into the military granary behind the government building.
The people in the town had already known that the army was able to find so many supplies this time. They were discovered by the foreign survivor Dr. Cheng and his wife and his relatives and friends who had just arrived in the town.
Many people were envious when they saw the soldiers helping them push tricycles filled with food towards their homes.
"They are so lucky. They just went out to look for supplies and found so much food. They even asked the army to move it. Look at the army that just came back with three trucks full of food. I guess we will give them a lot of points, right?"
"Do you really think they have such good luck? We have searched all the towns around here. If there are really so many supplies, will it be their turn?"
"I heard that they found the robbers' hideout in Killeen County and killed a lot of robbers before they found the food. They have the courage to fight those robbers. It's useless for you to just envy them."
"Doctors still kill people?"
"If they don't kill people, they are just saving people. Who can survive until now is a good person? Doctors, especially surgeons, must first understand the human skeleton, tissue and nerves before they can perform surgery, right? If they want to kill people, they must know which part of the body will be fatal! I guess that doctor is more cruel than those soldiers in the army when it comes to killing people!"
"Oh, please stop talking. It makes me feel numb. It ruins the image of doctors as angels in white in my mind. I won't dare to face those doctors directly in the future."
"What's the big deal? Look, they brought back so much food and accumulated a lot of points with the military. I don't know how many people will target them and how many people will fall into their hands."
Not far away, a large group of survivors were lining up in two long lines to register their identities in front of the government building.
One of the dishevelled women at the back of the line heard this and turned curiously to look at Cheng Suming and his group who were pushing a tricycle on another uphill road.
When she saw Si Nan's face, her expression suddenly changed and she hurriedly turned her head to block the view of the man in front of her.
"What's wrong?" Zou Shichu, who was still handsome no matter how dirty his face and body were, looked down at Jiang Feifei's face, which was so dirty that it had scabbed into black mud, and asked with a hint of disgust in his eyes.
Jiang Feifei was a little scared of him now, and whispered, "I, I seem to be blinded by the wind and sand."
Zou Shichu said "oh" and turned around to continue queuing without saying anything.
Jiang Feifei was filled with disappointment. When she was still the daughter of the Jiang family, Zou Shichu always cared for her and spoke sweet words to her. Whenever she was injured, he would nervously treat her wound and even take her to the hospital for treatment with great fanfare.
If it was in the past, when she said that the wind and sand blinded her eyes, he would have nervously blown the sand away from her eyes and asked her if she felt uncomfortable, but now...
Ever since her father died unexpectedly in a hailstorm, her and Zou Shichu's status has changed dramatically.
In the past, she was full of vigor and vitality, and took advantage of her family's wealth and power to do all kinds of things to trouble Zou Shichu. He always satisfied her with a smile, never lost his temper, and tolerated her unreasonable behavior, which made her become complacent for a while and think that he really loved her.
But since her father died, she and her mother had their property seized by her father's mistress and her son, together with other members of the Jiang family. After they were driven out of the Jiang family, Zou Shichu treated her very differently. He no longer coaxed her or gave in to her in everything. He often had a cold face and was critical of her. He disliked her for being unable to do anything and only holding him back. He wanted to break up with her and go find Sinan.
In order to prove herself and prevent him from going back to Si Nan and bringing shame to herself who once took pleasure in snatching Si Nan's man, she put aside her airs as a young lady who had never done housework for the past year and a half, and learned how to wash clothes, cook, sweep and mop the floor. She did everything to please him, but in return he became more and more indifferent and disgusted with her.
Now, she had finally brought her mother to the foot of the stone mountain to seek the protection of the military, and unexpectedly saw Si Nan was also here, as clean and beautiful as ever, and still next to the tricycle with so much food, the object of people's talk. Jiang Feifei knew without thinking that Si Nan was living a better life than her.
The jealousy, anger, and unwillingness in her heart eventually turned into panic. She must not let Zou Shichu know about Si Nan's existence, let alone let him meet Si Nan. Otherwise, with Zou Shichu's character of abandoning her after having sex with him, she would be abandoned by him sooner or later!
After Cheng Suming and his companions pushed the heavy tricycle back home, Si Nan immediately took out a box of canned fruit and stuffed the cans into the hands of the six soldiers who had helped them along the way: "Thank you for your hard work. You can take these cans back and eat them. Don't be polite."
There will be no big problem if humans do not eat meat for a long time, but if they lack vitamins for a long time, the body will develop a variety of problems. Therefore, canned fruit is far more valuable than canned meat.
The six soldiers hurriedly evaded the question, saying, "Mrs. Cheng, we are following orders. It's not hard work. We can't take your things."
"I'll give it to you, so just accept it. Even if you don't want to eat it, you can take it back to your family and let them have a taste." Si Nan put the canned food into their military uniform pockets: "You have been on missions outside and rarely go home. Bring something back, your family will definitely be happy."
The six soldiers hesitated for a moment, and finally said thank you solemnly to Sinan. Each of them carried five or six heavy cans of food, and instead of returning to the team, they went to the military family garrison area at the foot of the Dashi Mountain.
After the earthquake, almost all soldiers were ordered to go out for rescue missions at the first opportunity. They had no time to take care of the safety of their families and were unable to know the situation of their families.
Before the earthquake, many families of soldiers lived in temporary shelters arranged by the government, and a small number of them moved with the troops to live in the military families' quarters at military garrisons.
During the earthquake, many families of soldiers were buried in the rubble. Due to their duties, those soldiers were unable to rush back to save their relatives and friends in time.
When they completed their mission and wanted to go back to look for their relatives, many of them had already died.
That kind of heart-wrenching pain is a sad memory that most soldiers dare not recall.
However, the soldiers at the Shishan Military Base were lucky. Their families had been following the Shishan Military since the hailstorm and had been living in the Shishan Military Base built halfway up the Dashishan Mountain.
It was not until almost half a month after the earthquake that aftershocks became less frequent and the Shishan military allowed the families to live in the temporary military dependents accommodation area built at the foot of the mountain.
Naturally, the families of soldiers received more supplies than ordinary people, but the food and drinks they received were just the same. The six soldiers had been out on missions recently and seldom returned to the family quarters to visit their families. They had more canned fruits in their hands, which were common before the apocalypse but rare after the apocalypse. They couldn't wait to return to their respective "homes" and share them with their relatives.
"Youqing, Sinan, you're back. Did anything happen on the way? I've boiled some hot water for you. Go take a shower first."
Sheng's mother had heard from her next-door neighbors about an army that brought back three large truckloads of supplies. She guessed that Sheng Youqing and the others would be back soon, so she set up a large iron pot in the yard, boiled a large pot of hot water, and told Sheng Youqing and the others to take a bath first.
Cheng Suming had long ago warned Sheng Youqing and others not to tell others that Si Nan had a gun, so as not to arouse suspicion and panic.
At the same time, he found Yan Hongyi and told Yan Hongyi that the gun was the one he had seized when he killed the gangsters who came to rob his house during the period when the water level was rising.
He always carried a gun with him for self-defense. Yesterday, he gave the gun to Si Nan because he was going back to report the news and was worried about her safety.
He said this with no other intention but to tell Yan Hongyi clearly that he would not hand over the gun to the military, nor would he use the gun to kill people indiscriminately.
In fact, today, when the apocalypse has arrived, ordinary people’s knives and guns are no longer under state control as they were before the apocalypse, and many people hide weapons for self-protection.
Generally speaking, as long as someone does not actively attack others or commit a crime, the Shishan military will not intervene. However, if they know that someone is privately storing firearms, that is another matter.
Generally speaking, after learning that ordinary people have guns, the military will persuade those who hide guns to hand them over, or review the identity background of the gun holders and allow them to join the militia patrol team.
However, Cheng Suming is a surgeon by profession, and he will definitely join the Shishan Base Hospital as a doctor in the near future. It is understandable that he has a gun and wants to protect the safety of himself, his wife and relatives.
After much consideration, Yan Hongyi finally decided to keep the matter secret for him. Correspondingly, Yang Wentao and Sheng Youqing, brother and sister, also had to keep it secret at this time.
After two days of hard work, Si Nan was covered in sweat. Since there was hot water available, she didn't hesitate to thank Sheng's mother and asked Cheng Su Ming to go next door and fetch two buckets of hot water back to their house. The two of them took a comfortable hot bath in the bathroom.
After taking a shower, Cheng Suming carried Si Nan to the empty room on the second floor and asked her to take out the bed and various household items from the space. He then wiped the items clean and put them in place one by one.
Si Nan sat on the bed and watched him busying himself. "Is it really okay for us to use these household items? What if Cheng Wei and her friends come upstairs to play and find out that these household items were moved from the Cheng family's annex?"
Cheng Suming stood on a chair, holding a dark floral curtain in his hand, which he installed on the broken glass to block the wind. "Just tell them that this is the furniture we picked up, and it's refurbished to be the same as the furniture in the Cheng family's annex building."
"This explanation is so far-fetched."
"It's better than sleeping on a bed you just picked up. Do you want to sleep on a bed that has who knows how many germs on it?"
"......In no mood."
After Yan Hongyi's truck came back, he asked the soldiers to move all the wardrobes, beds and other things they had picked up and put them in front of the gate of their yard.
Before, Cheng Suming moved them all into the yard and told Cheng Wei and the others that he wanted to clean, dry, repair and repaint them before using them again, but in fact he planned to chop them all up and use them as firewood.
Cheng Suming hung the curtains, went back to get the medicine and reapplied it to Si Nan, turned off the flashlight, went to bed, held her in his arms and said, "Don't wander around these two days. Tomorrow I will go to the military statistics department and exchange the points for rent, bricks, glass, cement and other supplies. We will try to build all the greenhouses you want before prices go up."
Si Nan curled up in his warm embrace, smelling the pleasant smell on his body, and asked softly: "How long do you plan to exchange the rent for?"
"Five years."
He and Sinan were not sure whether the natural disasters would stop in five years, or whether the houses would still be there. Renting the houses for five years was his longest-term plan.
"If I have any remaining points, I would like to rent two more houses. I don't have to pay rent for too long, just three to five months. When my uncle, aunt and their family come over, they will have a place to live."
"Okay, whatever you say." There are more and more survivors in Shishan these days, and the existing houses are decreasing. She wanted to reserve a house for her uncle and aunt, and Cheng Suming did not object.
Si Nan was very happy: "Okay, let's find the person in charge of the military housing management office tomorrow morning to handle this matter."
"I'm the one going, not you."
"Okay, okay, go ahead, let's go to bed."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
