Zhou Wang and a few others from Jixiang Jiayuan were already up ahead, but they hadn’t been able to resolve the issue—the employees inside Duoduo Supermarket refused to open the doors.
“We’re closed! We told you, we’re closed! If you don’t like it, take it up with the government! The news said we don’t have to work!”
“We don’t have any rice left at home. What are we supposed to eat if you don’t open?”
“That’s not our problem! Figure it out yourselves!”
“We have children and elderly at home! Do you have any conscience at all?”
Li Jiangbing and the others brandished their weapons, shouting as they followed Jiang Cheng to push their way to the front.
The Jixiang Jiayuan people did make way, but some grumbled, “The Youth Apartment people came yesterday and they opened for them. Why won’t they open for us today?”
Zhou Wang and the others at the front turned around at the noise. Seeing them, they looked pleasantly surprised. “Xiao Jiang! You guys came too!”
Someone immediately started complaining to Jiang Cheng: “The supermarket people won’t open the doors!”
As if Jiang Cheng were some kind of leader for Jixiang Jiayuan.
Li Jiangbing found it hilarious.
These people stepped aside, clearing the doorway, and Jiang Cheng could see directly through the glass doors to the supermarket employees inside.
They were all holding weapons now. Neat, brand-new iron hammers—clearly taken straight from the shelves as new merchandise.
Jiang Cheng walked up to the glass door. “What’s going on?”
She recognized the person shouting from behind the glass door—it was the brave man who had ridden his motorcycle through the zombie-filled streets to get to work.
It looked like he hadn’t gone home again yesterday.
The ones staying in the supermarket dormitory were all lower-level employees. He seemed to be the only supervisor, and yesterday the other employees had mostly listened to him.
She remembered this junior supervisor, and he remembered her.
“It’s you,” the junior supervisor said. “We’re closed today. No business.”
He held his hammer against his chest, his gaze meeting Jiang Cheng’s.
Earlier, Jiang Cheng had heard him say that the government had announced a work stoppage and business closure.
That was indeed true.
But as Jiang Cheng looked into his eyes, she saw something else.
Yesterday, before she left, she had reminded him to set aside enough supplies for his own group as well.
He had taken her advice.
But back then, everyone had been shopping out of unease and immediate necessity. No one had imagined that after a whole night, the expected rescue still wouldn’t have arrived, and the government would be telling everyone to rely on themselves.
That meant residents would have to support themselves for even longer without any outside help.
Supplies had become even more critical.
Clearly, this man had fully assessed the situation and realized this.
The faint glint in his eyes told Jiang Cheng plainly: the real reason he wouldn’t open the doors was that he wanted to protect—or rather, hoard—the remaining supplies inside the supermarket.
Given the current circumstances, the supermarket wasn’t getting any new stock either. Whoever held the supplies would last longer.
If this were yesterday, Jiang Cheng might have even supported him. Because yesterday, she too had been assessing the situation and hoping for rescue. But today, the situation was clearly more severe than expected, and what he was doing now conflicted with her interests.
“This isn’t going to work,” she said. “Everyone needs supplies. Many of those Jixiang Jiayuan households have no food left. You’ve seen the news—there’s no rescue to count on. People have to come out and buy things themselves, restock their supplies, or they won’t survive.”
The junior supervisor waved his hand dismissively. “That’s not my problem. We’re just a supermarket—a private business. We don’t have any responsibility here. We don’t have enough staff right now, and you people are too chaotic. The higher-ups told us not to open. If I open the doors and something happens, who’s responsible?”
Truly the kind of person who would brave a zombie-filled street to get to work. He was still talking about “who’s responsible” in a situation like this.
Jiang Cheng couldn’t help but smile.
In recent days, she hadn’t smiled at all in front of outsiders. This was the first time.
Outside the glass door, under the sunlight, the girl smiled, revealing her white, even teeth.
The junior supervisor was momentarily stunned.
Then the girl took a step back.
“Step back,” Jiang Cheng said.
The people crowded at the front were all key members of the two complexes. The Youth Apartment people were already accustomed to following Jiang Cheng’s instructions. The Jixiang Jiayuan people had also witnessed the weight of Jiang Cheng’s words that morning. Hearing this, everyone in front instinctively stepped back.
An “incident”? What did that mean? Keeping so many people without food locked out—did he really expect things to go smoothly?
Jiang Cheng swung her fire axe.
A loud crash, and the glass door was covered in a spiderweb of cracks!
The junior supervisor’s pupils contracted sharply. He shouted, “What are you doing? What are you doing?!”
Jiang Cheng acted as if she didn’t hear him. Her second axe strike widened the web, and small pieces of broken glass fell.
On the third strike, two axes hit the tempered glass at the same time.
The second axe belonged to Li Jiangbing.
Immediately after, iron crowbars, hammers, kitchen knives, frying pans, baseball bats—all kinds of weapons struck the glass, creating a chaotic, deafening noise!
Some from Youth Apartment, some from Jixiang Jiayuan.
Even when law-abiding citizens gather in large numbers, if no one makes the first move, no one ever makes the second.
But as soon as the first person acts, the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth quickly follow.
Jiang Cheng was that icebreaker.
The supermarket entrance had two glass doors. Only the outer door had a ground lock.
Even though it was tempered glass, many hands made light work, and they soon smashed it. Li Jiangbing kicked the door with his big foot, snapping the cracked, still-connected glass off its frame.
The junior supervisor shouted curses: “Are you crazy?! This is illegal!”
At the same time, he called to his employees: “Stop them! Stop them! Don’t let them in!”
He and the supermarket employees stretched out their arms, trying to block the crowd.
It was like a mantis trying to stop a chariot—utterly futile. Li Jiangbing alone could push two of them aside.
Despite his large size, he was quite clever. When he pushed, he grabbed the person by the chest so they wouldn’t actually fall to the ground. Otherwise, with so many people surging in behind him, they’d get trampled to death.
Now that would be a real “incident.”
Only the outer door had been locked. The supermarket employees were either pushed to the sides of the small space between the outer and inner doors, watching the unstoppable crowd with pale faces, or simply shoved through the inner door.
People poured in with a roar.
The junior supervisor was pushed to the side of that small space, his face ashen, watching the tide of people flood inside. Everyone hurried, afraid that if they lagged behind, others would grab everything first.
The girl with the axe—carrying it on her shoulder, pulling her handcart—glanced at him as she walked in.
Yesterday, she had seemed like a kind-hearted girl. He had even felt grateful to her. Who would have thought he had completely misjudged her?
The junior supervisor seethed with resentment.
An employee asked him quietly, “Brother Dong, what do we do?”
What could they do? The junior supervisor, surnamed Dong, squeezed out his reply through gritted teeth: “Nothing!”
There was no stopping this now. Even more people were flooding in. They had to shrink back further, terrified of being pushed, falling, and getting trampled to death.
Fortunately, the employee said quietly, “At least we moved some stuff to the dorm.”
Yesterday, after Jiang Cheng’s reminder, Dong had directed the employees to move food, canned goods, bottled water, and some daily necessities into the dormitory. It was piled high.
Thank goodness they had taken that step and hadn’t been lazy.
Come to think of it, they still had that girl’s reminder to thank for it.
Sigh.
Yesterday, the Youth Apartment supply run had been orderly. Even though it was rushed, they had still shopped like before—grabbed items, queued up, paid, and left.
But today, it was complete chaos.
First, the main food shelves were empty. After Dong and his team had moved supplies yesterday, they hadn’t planned to open for business today at all, so they never restocked. As a result, people rushed straight into the warehouse and started hauling things out directly.
Li Jiangbing and Song Jingshuo knew from the moment Jiang Cheng led the charge in smashing the glass door that the broken order wouldn’t stop with just that one door.
But the loss of control still exceeded their expectations.
The elderly weren’t as civic-minded as the younger people. The supermarket employees, still dazed from the door being broken down, hadn’t thought to staff the checkout counters.
So “shopping” lost the “paying” part.
Some elderly people even abandoned their handcarts, grabbed fully loaded supermarket shopping carts, and rushed straight out.
As soon as one person did it, others followed.
The Jixiang Jiayuan people set the example. The Youth Apartment young people, though a bit more principled, hesitated for a moment and then accepted it. After all, there was no one at the checkout.
“Brother Dong, is this okay?” an employee asked.
Someone had actually thought to man the checkout earlier—they had done it yesterday. But Dong stopped them.
Dong snorted. “If everyone honestly paid, we’d probably end up taking the blame for that broken door. But…”
But if this was large-scale gang robbery, that broken glass door would become a minor issue. There was no way the few of them could stop a collective crime of this magnitude. That would absolve them of responsibility.
The more chaotic it was, the less responsibility they bore. So be it.
Supermarket shopping carts did have a much larger capacity.
Jiang Cheng shoved her handcart under a shopping cart and loaded everything she needed into the shopping cart.
When Li Jiangbing saw her again, he was particularly speechless: “Buying cat food again?”
Ever since the unforgettable first impression she had given him the night before last, she had always struck him as calm and rational.
But when it came to her cat, she suddenly seemed anything but calm or rational. She was using cat food to crowd out the limited space in her shopping cart.
He had seen her grab a bag of cat food yesterday. One bag of cat food took up even more space than a bag of rice.
“Me first, then the cat,” Jiang Cheng said, patting the crossbody bag at her waist. “I don’t eat much anyway. Besides, this time, human food is still the bulk of it, isn’t it?”
Inside that crossbody bag, a dark lump suddenly opened two green eyes, startling Li Jiangbing: “You brought it? I thought you left it at home today.”
He had a point. Although Jiang Cheng seemed overly attached to her cat, she had still prioritized buying what she needed yesterday. Today, her shopping cart was filled mostly with rice and canned goods. She wasn’t as crazy as those people in foreign movies.
After filling the shopping cart, Jiang Cheng pulled her handcart out from underneath and kept loading. Then she found some plastic rope at the service desk and tied the handcart to the shopping cart.
As she crouched down to tie the rope, she genuinely felt how weak an individual’s carrying capacity was.
A person could only carry so much.
[If only I had a storage space.]
Jiang Cheng froze.
What was that thought that had just flashed through her mind?
It was like she had said something to herself—here one moment, gone the next—and she couldn’t quite recall what.
Li Jiangbing called out, “Are you done yet?”
Jiang Cheng quickly tied the last knot and stood up. “Done. Let’s go.”
Jiang Cheng and the others didn’t pay either. There was no one at the checkout. No one paid. And everyone just pushed their supermarket shopping carts straight out.
It was a full-blown looting spree.
The supermarket was a mess. From the warehouse, shouting and cursing could still be heard.
It was bad. The rice was all gone.
That was the most essential staple food.
Rice only needed to be boiled with water—even if you couldn’t make it into proper rice, you could make congee. But flour? Many people had no idea how to turn flour into food.
Yesterday, Jiang Cheng had said that Youth Apartment needed to get ahead on supplies. That statement had now fully proven its value. The Youth Apartment people, through two supply runs, had mostly gotten what they needed.
Not everyone from Jixiang Jiayuan who came today managed to get what they needed.
When Song Jingshuo regrouped with them, his expression was very grim.
Jiang Cheng understood what he was thinking.
The collapse of civilized social order was a terrifying thing.
Even more terrifying was the snowball effect.
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