Chapter 17 Eastern Dead Hunting Grounds
"You're the child who came to our town of Soren yesterday, right? I've heard about your story, it's so pitiful!" The woman's eyes showed sympathy as she took the biscuit from her.
The sweet aroma of baked goods, mixed with the rich scent of milk, wafted out, and the woman couldn't help but sniff.
"My God! I never thought I'd live to see real pastries!"
When I was a child, my grandfather told me that his grandmother was born 280 years ago, before the Withering Virus existed, and the people of the entire Flowing Star Galaxy lived a prosperous and comfortable life.
Because of its beautiful scenery, Silverwing Star has become a tourist destination, attracting many people from other planets who travel here in interstellar spaceships.
The travelers brought many things that were not found in their native lands, including pastries made from wheat flour.
Later, someone in our area bought a piece of land, built a farm, and specialized in growing wheat.
After the wheat cultivation was successful, someone learned how to make pastries from the Starry Sky website and sold them to the travelers.
Over time, the local residents also came to love the deliciousness of the pastries, and for a time the pastries sold very well, making those farmers and pastry shops rich!
But later, the withering virus spread, and no more travelers came. The income of local residents decreased significantly, the pastry business gradually declined, and the wheat farms were abandoned.
Local residents prefer to buy cheap nutritional supplements to fill their stomachs, and these supplements can be made by extracting from mutated beasts and mutated plants.
The pastry industry chain has almost been cut off. The only remaining small-scale farms and pastry chefs are kept by noblemen, and ordinary residents simply cannot afford to eat them.
In remote towns like ours, Solon, we not only have no way to buy pastries, but we can't even see them.
"Since you can produce a whole box of pastries, I guess you must be from a big city, right?"
Ah Chen didn't expect this female boss to be so talkative. He casually asked her a question, and she launched into such a long "reminiscences of the past".
"Auntie, may I ask your name?" Ah Chen quickly changed the subject.
“Just call me Aunt Shirley, that’s what all the young people in town call me,” Shirley replied with a smile.
“Aunt Shirley, how much is this worth?” Ah Chen asked again.
"I definitely have to buy this rare item. I need to let my granddaughter Annie try it!"
When she's old, she can proudly tell her grandchildren, "My grandmother spent a fortune to buy the only box of pastries in Soren town, and they tasted absolutely wonderful!" Aunt Shirley was so excited that she danced with joy.
Ah Chen: Auntie, you have quite the imagination!
"So, are you willing to spend a few contribution points to buy this box of pastries?" Ah Chen couldn't help but interrupt her enthusiasm.
"Oh? A few contribution points aren't enough to buy it! How about this, I'll give you 200 contribution points? But you have to sell me this beautiful pastry box as well," Aunt Shirley said with a pained expression.
"Deal! Thank you, Aunt Shirley!" Ah Chen quickly pressed his temples, brought up the virtual screen, and opened the payment page.
This is somewhat similar to the payment code on Earth in my previous life, but it's more complex; it's a cube composed of chaotic three-dimensional curves.
Aunt Shirley opened her virtual screen, brought up the payment page, scanned Ah Chen's QR code, entered the number 200, and pressed the confirmation button.
Ah Chen quickly received a text notification about his account balance, and upon checking it, he found he had 200 points.
Only now did he dare to be sure that the green pass was real and even had transfer and payment functions.
Great, it seems he won't have to worry about being an unregistered resident anymore.
Just as he was about to say goodbye and leave, he saw Aunt Shirley staring at him with bright eyes: "Child, tell your aunt in secret, where did you get this box of pastries?"
Ah Chen was extremely frustrated. He hadn't expected this aunt to be so curious. It seemed that if he didn't give her a clear explanation today, she definitely wouldn't let him off the hook.
Helpless, he had no choice but to follow up on the story he had made up when he used the hemostatic medicine to offset the rent, saying that it was the apothecary he used to serve, who had just concocted a new medicine that day and, in a moment of joy, had given him a box as a reward.
"Tsk tsk, as expected of the apothecary! With just a casual gesture, he can reward you with a box of real pastries!"
Sigh! Why didn't you continue doing such a good job?
But I bet you don't want to lose this job either. Big shots are all eccentric and hard to please!
So what are your plans for the future? I heard you have a contracted beast. If all else fails, you can join a hunting party and hunt exotic beasts in the nearby forest!
"You're young and can't do much, so you'll get fewer spoils, but you can at least get some nutritional supplements to keep you and your mother from going hungry."
Although Aunt Shirley was easily agitated and prone to nagging, she was a kind-hearted person.
Ah Chen took the opportunity to get information out of her and learned about the general situation of Silverwing Star.
It turns out that the people in these remote areas did not know about the slave trade. They only knew that the authorities had set up space quarantine stations to prevent aliens from bringing the virus into the country in order to prevent the Wither Virus from infecting them.
Meanwhile, checkpoints have been set up at the entrances of major cities, and anyone detected by electronic monitoring without a green pass will be subject to mandatory quarantine.
Even in remote towns, electronic surveillance cameras are installed at the intersections of main roads, and no one can escape quarantine, especially hunters returning from the Eastern Dead Hunting Grounds. Anyone who does not cooperate with quarantine is killed on the spot.
"What is the Walking Dead Hunting Ground?" Ah Chen asked, feigning curiosity.
"Sigh! You're young, no wonder your family never told you. Two hundred years ago, after the Wither Virus spread widely, there were so many dead people and monsters that there wasn't enough time to cremate them."
Then they all underwent a zombie transformation, stood up again, and became cannibalistic zombies.
Later, an SSS-level mental power master emerged who was able to control a large number of zombies and was revered by later generations as the Corpse Control Master.
Later, the authorities selected a sea area in the east, where most of the marine life had also been infected.
The authorities built a steel wall, several meters high, around that sea area, enclosing it.
Then, this Corpse Control Master led wave after wave of zombies into that sea area, imprisoning the vast majority of zombies on the entire planet inside, and then used the ultimate destructive weapon.
However, people later discovered that the zombies and infected sea monster zombies that were imprisoned in the sea were not wiped out as everyone expected. Some of them had devoured their own kind in advance and evolved from ordinary zombies into high-level zombies.
Those high-level undead had already developed a faint intelligence. When the devastating weapons were dropped into this sea area, they were willingly swallowed by the large sea beasts, which then propelled them into the deep sea, allowing them to escape this annihilation.
After that, they devoured more sea beasts and zombies brought by ocean currents from other sea areas, evolving into higher-level zombies.
These high-ranking zombies can command low-ranking zombies to hunt various sea beasts. After devouring their flesh and blood, their evolution speed will be accelerated.
Helpless, the authorities could only periodically send strong humans into that sea area to hunt down high-level zombies, in order to prevent them from evolving to the point where they could surpass human S-class powerhouses.
Over time, this sea area became known as the zombie hunting ground, and those hunters who entered to hunt zombies could obtain crystal cores from the heads of high-level zombies and exchange them for a lot of contribution points.
You need to earn enough contribution points to live in a big city.
Those of us whose physical abilities and superpowers are below level C can only live in remote towns far from big cities, relying on hunting low-level alien beasts and picking low-level alien plants to sell to nutrient processing plants in exchange for a small amount of contribution points to buy nutrient solutions to fill our stomachs.
Children raised on nutritional supplements generally have poor aptitude. Our town of Solon hasn't produced a single B-grade student in thirty years.
Aunt Shirley's words reassured Ah Chen somewhat; it seemed that at least he didn't have to worry about safety if he chose to settle in this small town.
But this choice has its advantages and disadvantages. In such a poor town, there isn't even a decent clinic. Who can he ask to treat his mother's illness?
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