Thirty-One Days

It didn't take Chen Xu long to pick a restaurant at the intersection. It was on the first floor, so there were no stairs to climb, and its cold storage was large enough. Best of all, it had a Diesel Generator inside.

He was no stranger to Diesel Generators. Before he went to college, his parents had run a supermarket in the county. For a time, the county had been replacing its power lines, causing frequent outages, and the supermarket had used a Diesel Generator for electricity.

Once he got the power running, he raided more than a dozen nearby restaurants and hauled back all the meat he could find, stopping only when the cold storage could hold no more.

Even though the two of them could never finish that much meat in half a year, it was always better to be prepared.

"Right, I wonder how Luo Xiyun is doing."

As he fried a steak and calculated their food supplies, he remembered Luo Xiyun, who should have appeared long ago.

Going by the way this dream worked, the virtual Luo Xiyun had probably woken up at home, just like in reality. Since she still hadn't appeared, who knew where she had gone?

He had no idea where she lived. The city was so vast that finding one person would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

"The best way would be to make some noise and draw her over."

The aroma of the frying steak made him swallow. After working all morning, he was already starving.

His first day passed in the transportation of supplies.

That night, Chen Xu had just finished showering and sat in the restaurant's only Office, feeling a little guilty. Using bottled mineral water to shower was simply too wasteful.

"Can't be helped. The tap water's been cut off."

He couldn't help sighing. When he was the only person left in the world, surviving was far more difficult than he had imagined.

There was no food delivery, no tap water. He had to do everything himself.

Those things were bearable. What he found truly unbearable was the lack of internet! He couldn't go online, log into forums, watch videos, scroll Douyin, or follow webnovels... That was deadly. He didn't usually play games, and his phone didn't even have a matching game installed. All he could do was stare blankly at it.

There was a computer in the Office, but it was password-protected.

"I need to go to the company tomorrow and bring the computer back." Thinking that, he yawned and gradually drifted off to sleep amid the rumble of the Diesel Engine.

The next morning, the moment Chen Xu woke up, he felt sore from head to toe. Every inch of him hurt terribly.

"Damn."

He sucked in a breath and sat up. Every muscle in his body was aching and numb. That sensation was truly unbearable.

It had been a long time since he had done any physical labor, and he rarely exercised. After moving so much stuff yesterday, the consequences of overexertion had caught up with him.

"Is this really a dream?" For who knew how many times, he doubted whether all this was real.

It was hard to imagine that everything in this world, along with the vivid soreness, numbness, and pain in his body, had been simulated by a dream.

He took a deep breath and climbed out of bed.

"No matter what, I should stockpile more supplies."

That doubt gave him a profound Sense of Crisis. What if this wasn't a dream, but something that had actually happened? What if he really was the only person left in the world? To live better, he had to prepare in advance.

Enduring the aching pain in his muscles, he ate something, grabbed his tools, and headed out.

Besides food, there was something else that was extremely important: medicine. Medicine could save lives. Other supplies could wait, but he had to collect a batch of medicine first.

From that moment on, he felt that he could no longer treat all this entirely as a game. Instead, he began seriously considering how to survive in this apocalyptic world.

At seven in the morning, the sun had already risen.

Chen Xu woke up and stared at the poster of some female celebrity whose name he couldn't remember, pasted to the ceiling. Two seconds later, he fully came to, sat up, picked up a pen, and wrote the number "31" on the wall.

The entire wall was filled with numbers, from 1 to 30. It meant that he had been here for a full month.

He set down the pen, walked to the mirror, picked up a Razor, and carefully shaved away the stubble that had grown in.

Then he went into the washroom to brush his teeth and wash his face.

After freshening up, he left the Office.

There was a table by the corridor, with a Rice Cooker on it. When he lifted the lid, steaming porridge was inside.

He had put the rice in last night and set the timer. It had cooked automatically, so he could eat as soon as he got up. It was very convenient.

With some fried, salty, crispy peanuts, he finished half a pot of porridge. His stomach felt pleasantly warm.

After breakfast, he washed the pot and dishes and put everything away. He took out the Notebook he carried with him and flipped it open. It was filled with things he needed to do.

He scanned it quickly, picked up his pen, and circled two entries.

Diesel supply critically low.

Find vegetable seeds.

Then he closed the notebook, slipped it back into his pocket, gathered his things, and headed out.

Before leaving, he switched the power supply to the Battery Bank and shut down the Diesel Generator.

To extend the Diesel Generator's lifespan, he had assembled a Battery Bank as backup power. Whenever he went out, he used the Battery Bank to supply electricity.

"Nice weather."

As he walked out of the restaurant and looked at the clear sky, his mood seemed to brighten as well.

Two rows of vehicles were parked on the main road outside. There were luxury sports cars like Ferraris and Porsches, vans like Wulings, and even Isuzu Medium Trucks.

He entered a shop beside the road and pushed out a cart piled high with Oil Drums. Every storefront along this street had been converted into a Warehouse for storing various supplies.

Chen Xu pushed the cart to a blue Isuzu truck and loaded the Oil Drums aboard. After making several trips and filling more than half the cargo bed, he set off.

He started the vehicle and drove down the road to the right.

Over the past month, he had cleared the surrounding roads. It had been no small project. There were simply too many cars in this city, and on some of the more congested roads, the vehicles had blocked the way completely. It had taken him considerable effort to clear a path wide enough for a single vehicle.

"Gas stations are everywhere, so fuel isn't a concern. Vegetable seeds are the hard part to find. I'll check out that market first." He planned as he drove.

Modern city dwellers could hardly go a day without vegetables, but probably very few had ever grown them themselves. When he was in elementary school, he had helped his grandfather, who lived in the countryside, harvest rice. But he had never seen what vegetable seeds looked like.

He couldn't stand eating meat every day without vegetables.

Over the past month, the only things he could barely count as vegetables were potatoes, tomatoes, and bean sprouts. He was nearly sick of them.

He had never imagined that one day, he would crave leafy greens so desperately.

Half an hour later, Chen Xu parked several hundred meters from the market. This area hadn't been cleared yet, and the road was completely blocked by cars.

He picked up his tool bag, got out, and continued on foot.

A rotten stench drifted from the market in the distance. He took out a Gas Mask and put it on before daring to enter.

More than ten minutes later, he ran out as though fleeing for his life. The smell inside was horrifying. Even with a Gas Mask, it was almost unbearable. Everywhere, there were traces left behind by rotted vegetables and meat.

Back in the truck, he felt frustrated. "Do I really have to go out to the suburbs?"

There was hardly any vegetable farming in modern big cities. Everything was transported in from the outskirts. He had found several Vegetable Bases in the suburbs on the map.

But even the nearest Vegetable Base was more than thirty kilometers away. Just clearing a route there was enough to make his scalp tingle at the thought.

In the end, he took out his Notebook and wrote down: Go to the Vegetable Base to look for seeds. He would leave that task for later.

Next, he went to the nearest gas station and filled every Oil Drum.

Each iron Oil Drum held around thirty liters. Once filled, it weighed nearly fifty kilograms. He had brought fifty empty drums in total. Filling them all and carrying them onto the truck took more than two hours and left him exhausted.

A month ago, he would never have been able to do such work. Carrying just a few drums would have broken his back. Only a month of heavy physical labor every day had built him up to this point.

After finishing, he took a reclining chair and a folding table from the truck, found a shady spot, and sat down. He pulled a tablet from his backpack, secured it on the table with a stand, then started a movie.

Leaning back in the chair, he unscrewed his Thermos and leisurely watched the movie while drinking tea.

After hard physical labor, he always rewarded himself this way.

Leisurely time always passed especially quickly. Before long, the movie was over.

Chen Xu checked the time. It was 11:40, almost time for lunch.

He dragged out a Gas Cylinder, gas stove, pots, bowls, and various utensils from the truck, then started cooking by the roadside. Every time he went out to work, he brought everything with him and cooked lunch outside so he wouldn't have to run back and forth and waste time.

Washing rice, cooking it, washing vegetables, chopping vegetables, putting them in the pan...

Before long, the meal was ready: two dishes, sliced potatoes stir-fried with beef and Stir-fried Garlic Sprouts with Cured Meat.

He sat in the middle of the road and finished his lunch.

After resting for half an hour, he dragged a folding bed from the truck and set it up in the shade. Wearing headphones, he listened to soothing instrumental music, put on an Eye Mask, and took a nap.

Chen Xu slept until he woke naturally. By the time he opened his eyes, it was already three o'clock. He stretched comfortably.

Ever since he had started working, he had rarely enjoyed such leisure. To earn money, he had lived like a tightly wound spring. Even on weekends, he could only catch his breath, never truly relax.

He packed everything up, loaded it back into the truck, started the engine, and set off again.

He drove all the way to the riverbank, parked the truck, and carried several Fishing Rods to the water. After finding a suitable spot and attaching bait, he cast them into the river one by one.

Then he secured the five Fishing Rods at intervals, moved over a stool, and sat beside them. Watching the floats bobbing on the river's surface, he waited quietly.