Soon, Chi Yuanshan and Song Yinghe arrived, flashlights in hand, searching for her.
After confirming several times that Chi Wan was unharmed, the two of them let out a heavy sigh of relief.
Song Yinghe poked Chi Wan on the forehead and chided, "I told you, a young lady like you has no business living on a mountain! You scared me to death!"
Chi Wan wheedled, grabbing Song Yinghe's hand and swinging it back and forth. "I'm fine, see? Your daughter is clever, you know. Otherwise, I never would have discovered what they were up to. Come on, let's go to the orchard and see what happened."
Summer days started early. Though it was only five-thirty, the sky was already growing bright as the family of three made their way to the orchard.
The orchard was indeed vast—nearly five acres. Just walking a single loop around it would take a considerable amount of time.
But the fruit hanging from the trees offered a sense of immense hope. Though not yet fully ripe, you could already imagine the joy of a bountiful harvest.
After a look around, they didn't find anything unusual with the fruit trees. But Chi Yuanshan didn't doubt Chi Wan's words. He sighed. "Only our Wanwan knows about plants, but she's still in school... It looks like we'll have to hire a professional to manage the orchard."
Chi Wan was studying botany at university and was only a freshman.
Song Yinghe also had a headache. "The ones who know this stuff best around here are probably Liu Dali and his crew. But after this, who would dare hire them for anything?"
Chi Yuanshan comforted her, "It's alright, it's alright. I'll go into the city today and at least hire someone to watch over the orchard."
As Chi Wan listened to her parents discuss, she crouched down to examine the soil under a tree and noticed it looked like it had been turned over.
She thought for a moment, then took a pair of gloves from her space and put them on. Only then did she take out a small trowel she carried with her and start to dig.
Seeing Chi Wan's actions, Chi Yuanshan and Song Yinghe stopped their conversation. They wanted to help her dig, but Chi Wan stopped them. "You don't have gloves, so don't touch anything yet. I'm afraid they might have poured something in here."
As she spoke, she dug away the soil, and a somewhat pungent smell slowly wafted out with her movements.
Beneath the surface soil, the color was much darker and slightly damp.
Chi Wan didn't dare to be careless. Holding her breath, she frowned as she filled a small bag halfway with the soil, tied it shut, and handed it to Chi Yuanshan. "Dad, take this to get tested while you're at it."
Chi Yuanshan stared at the bag of soil. For a long moment, he was silent, lost in thought.
Song Yinghe guessed what he was thinking and sighed. "Try not to take it too hard. People change."
Chi Wan roughly knew that Chi Yuanshan had originally contracted the orchard to Liu Dali out of their past friendship.
It was just that this friendship had been tainted by something else amidst the profits the orchard generated.
Having not slept all night, Chi Wan finally felt her exhaustion catching up and let out a yawn.
Chi Yuanshan snapped back to reality and led her down the mountain. "Our Wanwan is really all grown up, able to help Mom and Dad with such a big problem. Go on back and get some sleep. You can leave the rest to us."
Chi Wan didn't refuse. She was truly exhausted.
Before sleeping, she left a note inside her space, then flopped onto her bed and fell asleep.
「 * 」
Li Xingye returned to his small squad with the snacks and water.
Their base was already on its last legs, completely out of supplies. He had left what little they had behind and led his three brothers out to find food, fully prepared to die trying.
But Chi Wan's appearance had given him a profound sense of hope.
When he returned to the building where the others were temporarily holed up, the outside was eerily quiet. There wasn't even a guard at the door.
Thank goodness Li Xingye had cleared out the nearby zombies before he left. Otherwise, they wouldn't have even known danger was upon them.
Thinking about his brothers' condition before he left on his desperate search for food, Li Xingye's heart sank. He directly manipulated a tree vine to lift himself to the fourth floor.
In the room lay three men, all as thin as skeletons. Their faces were sallow, their lips chapped and dry, and their eyes were half-closed. They were barely breathing, more dead than alive.
One of them, a man with a thick beard, saw Li Xingye and struggled to open his eyes a little wider, a flicker of hope in his gaze.
Li Xingye didn't have time for anything else. He rushed forward and fed each of them a bottle of sugar water.
He had made the sugar water himself, using sugar from Chi Wan's space. After all, he couldn't get his hands on glucose on such short notice.
Fortunately, these men were superpower users, so their physical constitution was much better than that of ordinary people. More than starvation, it was dehydration that they couldn't endure.
After downing a bottle of sugar water, they could already sit up with some effort.
Halfway through, the bearded man subconsciously snatched the bottle and drained it in one go. He gasped for air, his face a mask of relief from his near-death experience. "Boss, I'm not dreaming, am I?"
Li Xingye didn't say a word. He just handed each of them a can of eight-treasure porridge.
Now, no one could think about anything else. God knows, something like eight-treasure porridge had vanished seven or eight years ago. If you brought it out now, it would cause all the survivors to fight to the death over it.
The bearded man, his eyes red, finished the porridge, then used a knife to cut the can open, licking clean even the residue stuck to the sides before he was satisfied.
The other two men did the same.
Having struggled in the apocalypse for so many years, no one knew better than them how precious food was.
With their stomachs full, the three men finally had the energy to ask the clearly revitalized Li Xingye, "Boss, where did you find all this stuff?"
The bearded man slapped his forehead. "Damn it, we should've saved some! Now we're back to not knowing where our next meal is coming from."
"If there's no next meal, there's no next meal. Even if I have to die, I'm content after a feast like this," the tall, thin man said with a sigh, rubbing his stomach.
In truth, after not eating for so long, suddenly consuming so much made everyone's stomach a bit uncomfortable. But only one thought was on all their minds: 'Even if I feel like throwing up, I have to grit my teeth and keep it down!'
These three were his brothers who had been through life and death with him for many years. Seeing their conditions visibly improve, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. He could no longer suppress the joy in his heart as he said, "From now on... maybe none of us will have to go hungry again!"
「 * 」
Chi Wan slept straight through until noon.
When she groggily woke up, the area in front of her family's old house was already in an uproar.
The village chief was blocking the doorway with a crowd of villagers. Liu Dali and his cronies seemed to be in a standoff with Chi Yuanshan and his wife. Behind the couple stood two people with an academic air about them, one old and one young, who were saying something.
As Chi Wan walked out, she heard Liu Dali shouting brazenly.
"Village Chief, you have to stand up for me! This Chi Yuanshan comes back and demands I return the orchard. I did it, and I didn't even ask for this year's fruit. And what do they do? Turn around and slander me! What, you think just because you're from the city you can come here and swindle us farmers?
"Let me tell you, don't think you can bully us just because we're not educated! If you don't apologize and compensate me, this isn't over!"
Chi Wan was dumbfounded. She never thought someone could be so utterly shameless.