Xu Hao's message detonated across the group."¥2,000 for a pack of instant noodles? Did I hear that right?""Don't pump prices like this! I'm freaking out." Some typed, some sent shaky voice notes.
People hadn't given up hope. Every morning they woke expecting the snow to stop, the sun to come back, life to resume. Xie Limei's post and Xu Hao's buyout at insane prices tapped something raw inside everyone.
"Stop joking—¥2,000 for noodles? Are we already at the end of the world?" one snide message read. "It's just heavy snow. Not a zombie siege—calm down!"
Zhang Yi only smiled. Zombies might be scary, he thought, but you could still fight zombies. Nature like this? You were tiny and meaningless.
Xu Hao tried to act cool. "I'm rich—peace of mind costs money. Want to sell? PM me. Don't want to? Fine." The arrogance was a mask; the price told the truth. He was scared.
The math was ugly and simple. Xu Hao had cash. Xie Limei had less, and a nine-month-old baby. Who would sell to the crying mother for half the price when a show-off was throwing down double? Private messages flew. Deals were made. People calculated days of rice per yuan and chose survival over sentiment.
Xie Limei's voice in the group went raw. "Please, my baby is nine months old—no food, no milk. We'll die!" The chat went quiet. Selfishness isn't born; it's revealed. Whoever answered a moral call risked being taken advantage of forever.
Zhang Yi remembered Xie Limei from his past life—playing meek to milk sympathy. She'd survived before. He didn't trust sudden saintliness. A flash of recognition crossed his face. Saints in doomsday often carried black hollows underneath the pink paint.
He stayed silent. Survival was private now. He had no duty to strangers.
Still, someone's pity stirred the place. Uncle You, the old security guard, softened and gave food. Xie Limei thanked him like salvation. Small lights mattered.
Through his CCTV Zhang watched Xu Hao buying packs from neighbors—modest hauls, enough for him and his girlfriend for weeks. Money still bought heat. For now.
Zhang sneered. This was the last trick money could pull in this disaster. Soon enough, money would be paper again; stalls would trade on scarcity, not on currency. Many would rue selling their last ration.
Xu Hao set a precedent: price discovery became a contagion. The building's norm shifted overnight. Where once people traded favors, now they guarded every sachet. Sharing cooled into calcified selfishness. Even close friends found reasons to refuse a loan of food.
On the tenth day the truth took a harder shape. Fang Yuqing and Lin Caining, once picky and pretty, were nearly out. The fancy takeout and Zhou Peng's desperate deliveries were almost gone. At this rate they had a week—maybe less.
They sat wrapped in quilts, pale and small on a too-large sofa. A single pack of compressed biscuits sat cracked on the coffee table like a relic. Lin Caining picked at crumbs and said quietly, "Yuqing, that's our last pack."
Fang Yuqing's eyes pinched with hunger. She'd never touched coarse food before. Now she ate it clean, licking crumbs from the floor without shame. Pride melts fast when your stomach is hollow.
The building had turned into a market, and the market was honest: hunger sets the price.