After leaving the psychiatric hospital, Su Jin raised his head and squinted at the sun.
He had met the client and talked things through. Much of his tension had faded, but his mind was still shrouded in uncertainty and weighed down with frustration.
Who knew whether this alien sun would give me a tumor?
Whatever!
As things stood, I had completely lost contact with the company. Unless I finished the task they had forced on me, there was no way home!
Even if a tumor killed me, that would be ten-odd years down the line. Right now, I had to prepare in advance.
Taking out the notes and map Fu Qingdai had given him, Su Jin read as he headed out.
Under the gate guard's wide-eyed stare, he strode brazenly out of the psychiatric hospital.
At the roadside, Su Jin stopped and looked into the distance.
According to the map, Fu Qingdai lived in a residential compound called Talents Residential Compound, about nine kilometers from the psychiatric hospital.
There were taxis on the street that could take him there.
But heading to Talents Residential Compound to rent a place was not his highest priority yet. There was more important information he needed to investigate first.
After checking the map against his surroundings for a while, Su Jin headed to the right.
Two or three steps later, he seemed to remember something... He took a length of cord from his briefcase, tied one end to its handle, and secured the other firmly around his wrist.
Only after covering it with his trench coat did he continue onward.
This place had an underdeveloped economy and weak law enforcement. If some motorcycle snatcher took my bag, I'd have nowhere to turn.
Even in broad daylight, I'd better take every precaution.
His next destination was a large nearby produce market.
How different the local food was from Earth's, and whether he could eat it, remained unknown.
For now, it was best to eat what he had brought, buy some everyday ingredients at the market, and take them back to test in small amounts overnight.
Inside the market, Su Jin looked around as he walked.
The market itself was quite ordinary, with few surprises.
But the assortment of vegetables and fruit left him momentarily dazed.
The good news was that many of the vegetables looked familiar, though there were also some he had never seen before.
Radishes with strange markings, enormous single-leaf vegetables, and red vines...
As he moved between the stalls, Su Jin secretly plucked vegetable leaves with one hand, collecting them as he went. Occasionally, he stopped and made a show of chatting to learn what the vegetables were called.
I'd just grab a few bits to take back for testing. Until I knew the food was safe, I couldn't waste a single cent.
Besides, plant-based foods were not his main target. Meat was.
If knowledge from Earth still applied, then common sense suggested ranking unfamiliar foods by safety.
Roughly speaking, it should be meat ≥ seeds > plants.
Generally, the muscle and fat of large meat-producing animals did not contain toxins.
Large animals tended to rely on their physical strength to survive, while creatures with poorer physical survival capabilities generally needed to evolve special mechanisms that used toxins to protect themselves.
Besides, once the apocalypse arrived, most cold-storage facilities would hold meat. It was high in calories and comparatively safe to eat even when spoiled, making it a reliable, well-rounded food source.
Still, testing the safety of vegetables was very necessary.
The key was to indirectly verify the safety of processed supermarket foods.
After making a circuit of the vegetable section, he reached the meat and seafood section ahead.
Seeing the little pink lights hanging over rows of butcher stalls, Su Jin was struck speechless.
Who would have thought... even in another world, meat sellers used the same trick.
Shine a light on it, and the meat looked better.
Still, looking at the large cuts of lean and fatty meat on sale, along with the head of a fierce animal resembling a bull...
He could make a rough assessment of how safe the meat was. This was a good sign.
He had stolen a few handfuls of wilted vegetable leaves to take back for testing, and the meat seemed fine. Now only seafood remained.
The seafood section was filled with rows of adjoining fish tanks.
Su Jin stopped in front of one tank to examine it.
There was quite a mix of fish inside, but overall, they looked fairly ordinary, like typical river fish.
As he watched, Su Jin's gaze suddenly froze!
An enormous gray fish twisted around to face him, pressing its huge mouth against the glass.
When he got a clear look at the gray fish, Su Jin shuddered all over!
"What the-this fish...?!"
Flatface risked his life infiltrating an alien seafood market-live footage from the scene.
An alien giant carp!
It had a mouth like a human's, packed with teeth. Worse, the mouth was vertical. It was terrifying... Something about it felt deeply wrong!
"Hey, young man, I've seen you looking for a while. Want a fish? They're all fresh." The woman running the stall came around from behind him with a friendly smile. "We'll scale it and knock out its teeth for free."
"Huh?! No, thanks..."
Su Jin swallowed, waved her off, and walked away.
After making a circuit of the market, Su Jin let out a long breath.
The food seemed reasonably reliable for now, but he could not let his guard down. He still needed to run the proper tests.
He looked around, then Su Jin set off again.
After a hundred or so paces, he entered a pharmacy.
Two assistants stood behind the counter, chatting idly. Neither seemed interested in attending to him.
After pausing by the entrance for a few seconds, Su Jin walked toward the supplement section.
He scanned the shelves twice, then picked up the most prominently displayed bottle of multinutrient supplements.
Taking out the Centrum he had ordered for delivery earlier, he began carefully comparing the two.
When he learned that the company was about to teleport him away, besides buying a large quantity of food from the supermarket, the things he had bought most were cigarettes and multinutrient supplements.
Ten large bottles of Centrum vitamins.
His thinking at the time had been simple. If he really was sent somewhere unfamiliar...
Food would obviously be a problem, but another issue would be just as serious... vitamins and various trace elements.
He enjoyed working out and had done a fair amount of research on nutrition.
A prolonged deficiency in trace elements would affect physical performance within a month.
The effects would be especially pronounced under heavy physical exertion and stress.
If the deficiency continued, bodily functions would suffer damage, and illness would naturally follow.
Reduced physical function and illness could both be fatal if things went badly.
After comparing the two bottles of supplements, Su Jin felt much less tense.
Most of their nutritional ingredients matched. Even the unfamiliar ones looked vaguely recognizable; after all, he was no professional.
Similar species, the same nutrients. It looked like the food was ninety percent guaranteed to be safe, even without testing it myself...
Putting the supplements back, Su Jin turned and left the pharmacy.
He had seen most of what he wanted to see. There was one more stop, where he would buy a few things, then head straight to Talents Residential Compound to rent a place.
A video store.
There was one right along the street, less than two kilometers from the market.
Standing at the entrance to the video store, Su Jin was swept by a deep sense of nostalgia.
Through the glass window, he could see walls covered in movie cases, along with discs in flimsy paper sleeves.
How alike these two worlds were...
He could not help remembering renting Lam Ching-ying movies as a child. Those had probably been the most carefree days of his childhood.
After lingering over the memory for a moment, Su Jin pushed open the door. Seeing the owner right behind the counter, he got straight to the point.
"Do you have any disaster movies?"
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