BuyMore was a large warehouse-style supermarket, the biggest one in the new economic development zone where the youth apartments were located. It was about eight or nine hundred meters from the apartment complex.
Given the number of people in the group, by the time the front of the line reached the supermarket, the rear was probably just exiting the compound gates.
Once they exited the East Gate of the compound, the first thing they encountered was a street running between two residential areas called Jixiang West Street. They would walk along Jixiang West Street for about two or three hundred meters, make a turn, then continue down the main road for another five or six hundred meters until they arrived.
The situation outside the compound was far worse than inside. As soon as the security guards opened the main gate, those at the front spotted infected wandering along Jixiang West Street.
Right away, an infected charged straight at them!
The people at the very front were the bravest. They had gained plenty of experience from the morning’s fighting, mastered the techniques for killing, and had the nerve to do it.
The group called them the “suicide squad.”
Neither Jiang Cheng nor Song Jingshuo had come up with that name. When they had put out the call for volunteers for the first formation, people had started joking around and the name stuck.
The response to the call had been enthusiastic, even.
Jiang Cheng truly felt fortunate to live in a community like this—mostly young people, generally well-educated.
Youth often comes with passion. And those with a good education tend to have a stronger sense of collectivism and discipline, making them easier to organize.
Jiang Cheng imagined that in an ordinary community—one where people had families, elderly parents, and young children—it would have been very difficult to mobilize so many people to act together.
As people age, they lose that fiery passion. When they have families, they become hesitant, overthinking every decision, afraid to charge forward.
Jiang Cheng was also near the front, just slightly behind the suicide squad.
There were many infected on the streets. In fact, anything still moving on the streets was infected. It had been Saturday yesterday, a cool summer evening. Too many people had been out.
A stumbling infected lurched toward her. Jiang Cheng swung her axe, slicing halfway through its neck. The head tilted at an odd angle, but because the neck was still partially attached, the infected staggered and then somehow got back up.
Li Jiangbing stepped in and finished the job with a swing of his axe, severing the rest of the neck. The body collapsed, and the head rolled back toward the crowd.
Jiang Cheng heard screams and retching from behind.
Compared to the massive number of residents, only a small fraction had actually come out to fight in the morning. More had trickled in later, but the majority had only come out after the mountain of burning bodies.
There was a big difference between seeing already-dead bodies lying motionless on the ground and watching a living “person” be decapitated right in front of you.
Some people needed time to adjust.
The suicide squad cleared the path ahead. When they got tired, they called for people behind them to step up and take their place.
Young people are easily fired up. Even those who had been tense and nauseated at first gradually adapted and started itching to join in.
By the time they reached the end of the street, the group at the very front had already been rotated out.
There were no living people on the main road either. Occasionally a car sped past, then the road fell silent again.
Several cars had crashed into the curb or into each other. Some were burned to blackened husks. Inside, you could still see charred skeletons sitting in the driver’s seats.
The sight filled everyone with a desolate, almost post-apocalyptic feeling.
Some infected were trapped inside cars. When they saw the massive column of residents, they began thrashing and roaring inside the vehicles, desperate to get out.
The infected felt no pain and had enhanced strength. Unable to figure out how to open the doors, they smashed their heads frantically against the windows until the glass shattered. But as soon as they poked their heads out, they were immediately crushed by the residents’ weapons.
The young residents of the youth apartment complex cleared a path all the way. By the time they reached BuyMore, even those who had been screaming and gagging at the start had mostly gotten used to it.
Partly it was because although there were many infected on the road, there were even more residents. It was a complete rout. Most of those at the front had also taken protective measures.
If one person struggled to react in time against an infected, a dozen others would already be swinging clubs, hammers, and kitchen knives at it.
Throughout the entire journey, Jiang Cheng didn’t hear of anyone getting injured.
An eight-hundred-meter walk felt like an army on the march.
When the group arrived at BuyMore’s entrance, they found the doors locked.
Everyone looked at each other. “What now?”
They all turned to look at Jiang Cheng. But this time, Song Jingshuo stepped forward first and said firmly, “Knock. See if anyone’s inside. If there is, get them to open the doors. If there isn’t, we break them down.”
The supermarket’s entrance doors were heavy glass. Heavy, yes, but still glass. With this many people, they could definitely break them. Some glanced at Jiang Cheng. Others started pounding on the doors. “Anyone there? Anyone there?”
A chorus of voices shouted, the sound reaching deep into the building.
Soon, a few people in supermarket uniforms timidly peered out.
The residents spotted them immediately. “There are people! There are people!”
“Open up! We want to buy things!”
“Open the door! We want to spend money!”
Seeing that everyone outside was clearly alive and not infected, the staff hurried over to unlock the floor bolts. “Is it safe out there?”
The doors opened, and everyone started asking, “Are you open?”
With customers already here, how could they not be open? The staff nodded, bewildered. “Y-yes, we’re open.”
The residents flooded inside. The startled staff scrambled out of the way.
Jiang Cheng didn’t go in immediately. She stepped aside and asked the staff, “Are you working normally today? Did you come from home?”
“Not me. I live in the dorms, right in this building.” The person she asked pointed to his colleague. “He came from home today. Rode his motorcycle all the way here, got chased the whole time. Dude’s a legend.”
Even Jiang Cheng was surprised. “You came from home?”
That man said irritably, “What else was I supposed to do? It’s not like I could just not come to work.”
His wife had taken their child to the grandparents’ house yesterday, so he had been home alone, drank some alcohol, and slept straight through until morning. He had missed the chaos of the night. When he woke up, the first wave was already over. The streets were quiet in the early morning—he had no idea what had happened.
It wasn’t until he left the house, got on his motorcycle, and started the engine—the sound drawing the infected—that he realized something was wrong. Relying entirely on the motorcycle’s agility and speed, he managed to shake off those inhuman things.
And he came to work.
A strange thought crossed Jiang Cheng’s mind: Why couldn’t you just not come to work?
Was work really more important than your life?
The word “work” had been lingering in her ears since morning. People kept asking, “Are we supposed to go to work tomorrow or not?”
During the day, with so many urgent and trivial matters demanding her attention, Jiang Cheng hadn’t had the mental space to think about it. But underneath it all, she had felt a persistent sense of strangeness.
Everyone seemed so fixated on “going to work.”
She wasn’t.
“Going to work” hadn’t even entered her consideration. From last night onward, the only things on her mind had been survival, safety, and staying alive.
It wasn’t that she didn’t understand their fixation. But she felt a strong sense of detachment. Like watching a play—she understood the characters and the plot, but there was a stage separating her from the actors.
Maybe it was because this wasn’t “Jiang Cheng.” This was “me.”
The thought flashed through her mind. Li Jiangbing called out to her, “Jiang Cheng, hurry up.”
Jiang Cheng said nothing more and followed the crowd into the supermarket.
Fortunately, the warehouse-style supermarket was huge. Even with one or two thousand people flooding in, it didn’t feel particularly crowded. Aside from the youth apartment residents, there were indeed no other customers.
The shopping carts here were also larger than usual. Li Jiangbing grabbed two carts—one for himself and one for Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng tucked her handcart under the supermarket cart. “Let’s go.”
They headed straight for the rice, flour, cooking oil, and grain section.
Many people had taken Jiang Cheng’s advice and made a beeline for the same area. The rice, flour, and oil section spanned two full aisles, yet it was still packed to the brim with residents.
Li Jiangbing tried to push his way in. Jiang Cheng pulled him back. “Follow me.”
She led him first to the canned goods section. “Get a small amount of fresh meat at most. Frozen meat is better. But my freezer isn’t very big, so it’s not worth it. Canned food doesn’t taste great, but it stores well.”
Li Jiangbing trusted her completely by now, and what she said made sense.
He had seen the situation firsthand on the way from the compound to BuyMore. The journey had gone smoothly because they had numbers—so many factors had aligned perfectly. Otherwise, why hadn’t any other compound organized a thousand-person expedition?
Without such a massive organized group, anyone trying to make that trip alone probably wouldn’t have made it.
The two of them headed to the canned goods section.
Spam, corned beef, braised pork, canned fish. Not particularly tasty, but traditional tin canning doesn’t require preservatives—it’s actually not that bad. In times like these, it was an excellent choice.
Then they went to the condiments section for salt and sugar. Fermented tofu and pickled vegetables—both great with rice.
Li Jiangbing was a little worried. “What if the rice runs out?”
“Don’t worry,” Jiang Cheng said. “A warehouse supermarket this big—our little compound isn’t going to deplete its stock.”
They also picked up sanitary pads, shampoo, soap, and other daily essentials.
Figuring they had just about enough, Jiang Cheng went directly to a supermarket employee. “Open up the warehouse for us. We came here for rice, flour, and oil. You’ve seen how many of us there are. The stuff on the shelves definitely won’t be enough.”
In just this short amount of time, the shelves for rice, flour, and oil were nearly empty.
Every single person had grabbed at least one bag of rice.
A large crowd of young people who rarely cooked at home stared at each other blankly:
“How long does a bag of rice last?”
“I don’t know. Let me call my mom and ask.”
“What if I don’t know how to cook rice?”
“Setting aside whether you can cook it—do you even have a rice cooker?”
“Oh no! I don’t! Where do they sell rice cookers? I need to go grab one!”
The situation with the supermarket employees was similar to Master Luo and his property management team. Some employees lived in dorms within the building—mostly stock clerks, security guards, and cashiers.
But the supervisors, administrators, and finance staff were all locals. Given the situation, most of them hadn’t shown up today. The only exception was that motorcycle-riding junior supervisor.
The remaining frontline employees had first worked together to take down their infected colleagues. Then, terrified, they hadn’t dared to open the doors or leave—until the youth apartment residents descended like a horde of bandits.
Seeing so many people, the leaderless supermarket employees actually found their footing.
This was just like a normal weekend—hordes of customers, busy work. There’s nothing quite like being busy to make you feel strangely at ease.
The moment Jiang Cheng approached an employee, they immediately cooperated and opened the warehouse.
Forklifts brought out pallets of rice, flour, and oil.
No need to even put them on the shelves. People swarmed directly to load them into their shopping carts.
With food in hand, fear faded from their hearts.
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