Chapter 70

Seeing Pulusi dead, Lin Tu finally let out a breath of relief.

"What the hell happened here..." Cheese stared at the bloody scene in front of the door, somewhat taken aback.

Blood pooled on the ground, bodies strewn everywhere. Four had their throats slit, two had their heads blown open, two had been shot through the chest, and two more were barely clinging to life, practically dead already. If not for their uniforms, it would be hard to imagine that not long ago they had been swaggering through the streets, shouting, "I'll kill you, you stinking rat!"

"Lin Tu? Are you okay!" David scanned the pitch-black interior of the bookstore nervously.

Seeing nothing amiss, Lin Tu stepped out from behind the bookshelf. "I'm fine."

The gold-rimmed glasses on her nose and the cotton coat on her back were inevitably splattered with blood, but judging by the intact state of both, she truly was completely unharmed.

"This is..." Carrot stepped over a stiff arm, gave it a disdainful kick, and looked at Lin Tu.

"This is the newcomer I brought along, Lin Tu," David said quickly. "Lin Tu, this is..." He lowered his voice. "Carrot and Cheese."

Lin Tu didn't quite catch that. "What?"

David was about to repeat himself when Carrot cut him off. "We're with the Rebel Army. I'm Carrot—you can call me Carrot. This is Yougan—call him Cheese."

Hearing the words "Rebel Army," Lin Tu glanced at David. Only when she saw his expression turn slightly awkward did she feel at ease.

"You did all this? Your knife work is precise, and your shooting too," Carrot praised. "One military merit per government soldier killed, five for a minor officer. You've earned yourself fifteen merits."

"This one's yours." Lin Tu pointed at Pulusi.

"If you hadn't shattered his helmet visor with that shot, I'd probably still be hiding in a corner waiting for a chance to escape." Carrot chuckled. "Exceptional courage, confident nerve—you've earned those five merits fair and square."

The thinly veiled recruitment effort prompted David to shoot Lin Tu a look. Lin Tu fell into a brief contemplation... Joining the Rebel Army seemed like a decent option, but she didn't know much about them, and with Carrot and Cheese both wearing such fierce expressions, she hesitated... In any case, it was something that required further thought.

"I'll just take what I've earned." Lin Tu said modestly.

"Oh, stop being so polite! You have no idea how much stuff one merit can buy!" Cheese said with the air of a bosom buddy. "One merit's worth is enough to feed you for a week—fifteen merits will feed you for fifteen weeks! That is... seven times fifteen days... eighty... no, ninety..."

His atrocious arithmetic made Lin Tu wince. "One hundred and five days."

That number stung a little, but she was a woman who could rely on a mountain of supplies for her meals, so the pain passed quickly.

Carrot looked Lin Tu up and down, smiled, and crouched down to collect the identity tags from the ground.

"Can I come with you?" Luo Te asked. Having been tied to this affair, he could no longer survive in government territory. His face pale with desperation, he couldn't understand why Lin Tu had declined Carrot's offer.

"If I remember correctly, you were just about to give up me and my brother's names." Carrot's tone toward Luo Te was far less friendly.

"That's not it!" Luo Te rushed to explain. "If I hadn't said anything, he would have gone after my son! I only gave them our nicknames, and that's all I ever would have said—no matter how hard they pressed, I wouldn't have revealed more. And I steered the conversation toward Boluo; sure enough, that man's attention shifted..."

"Yes, and if he hadn't stalled for time, we'd have had a hard time drawing them away," David added in Luo Te's defense.

"Fine." Carrot accepted the out.

"Then shall we head out now?" Luo Te asked anxiously.

"Aren't we still collecting supplies?" Lin Tu interjected. Her cotton coat was stained with blood, and if she didn't find another one, tomorrow it wouldn't just be her—even Ju Yi wouldn't be able to leave her blanket.

"Collect supplies? After all this?" Cheese stared with wide eyes.

Lin Tu nodded matter-of-factly. "They're all dead, so no one will know we were here tonight. But tomorrow's a different story. The government army was already spoiling for war, and this incident will only put them on higher alert. After today, we might never get another chance to come here."

Carrot finished gathering the identity tags and tossed most of them to Lin Tu. "She's got a point. We continue tonight."

Cheese was left speechless.

"Go pack up your things while we gather supplies," Lin Tu said to Luo Te. He thanked her profusely, agreed on a time, and with a worried expression, trotted off into the silent street.

"You two head to the scrapyard. Cheese and I still have things to do." Carrot said.

They were with the Rebel Army, so they hadn't come here just to scavenge survival supplies. But that had nothing to do with ordinary civilians. Of the remaining three, one had his leg shot through and stayed behind to wait for Luo Te's return.

In the end, only four people headed to the scrapyard. As they parted ways, David said, "I bring greetings from Grandma Doro. She wants to know how her son Rui Si is doing. And of course, I'm worried too. Rui Si hasn't sent word home in days—everyone at the shelter is concerned about him."

That familiar half-smile crept back onto Carrot's face. "Rui Si? He's not dead yet, but he will be soon. I'd advise you to mind your own business on this one. You just heard it yourselves—war is coming. As for Rui Si... tsk, he's not the kind of brother you'd trust with your back."

"And your shelter needs to stop trying to play both sides. There's only one way left for you to survive the war. As for what that way is..." He wasn't looking at David, but at Lin Tu. "You know what I mean. I have a feeling I'll be seeing you at headquarters. When you come, don't forget to mention that I'm your reference."

.

After parting ways with Carrot, David's mood visibly darkened.

Of the six people who had been captured earlier, all except Luo Te were from the same shelter. Two had died in the chaos, one had his leg shot out, and the remaining two weren't exactly in high spirits either.

The group walked in silence the whole way.

"Your eyebrows are about to crush a fly to death." Lin Tu, trailing behind David, climbed nimbly over a wall before speaking in a low voice.

"I'm worried about Rui Si." David said mournfully. "We've already lost one. We can't afford to lose another. We have to find a way to save him."

"Then we'd better collect as many supplies as we can. Who knows—maybe there's still a chance. Did you see the look on those two rebels' faces when they talked about supplies? You think they're some kind of paragons of honesty?"

With that, the four finally arrived at the scrapyard. It used to be a sports stadium, abandoned during the war and converted into a warehouse for refuse. What they called "refuse" was actually stuff that was temporarily useless for the war effort but might still serve a purpose someday. All of these "scraps" were piled here indiscriminately, forming endless hills—each one three or four people tall.

Pianos, curtain fabric, books, handicrafts, tennis rackets... and hidden among them, some scarce supplies that the government army couldn't be bothered to sort through, so they'd been left untouched.

Lin Tu dove in like a rat burrowing into a grain pile—she couldn't have been happier.

David, convinced by Lin Tu's reasoning, suddenly had his eyes gleaming at the pile of "junk" too—she was right! If he found enough valuable stuff to take back and grease the wheels with the Rebel Army, even if there was no guarantee of results, it beat doing nothing.

The two exchanged a look, instantly on the same page.

"Cigarettes and alcohol are the most valuable," David gave the newcomer a crash course. "They can get you most supplies at either army's quartermaster. Even half-smoked packs or half-drunk bottles are worth grabbing—those you can trade privately with soldiers. Next are salt, sugar, and medicine—valuable and easy to carry. Then warm clothes, shoes, socks, and blankets. Finally, canned goods, dry rations, clean water, and other basic survival supplies..."

Lin Tu was already a veteran survivalist, so she had a good handle on everything except for the fact that cigarettes and alcohol were so valuable.

"You really are a newcomer, huh. If you're ever unsure about something, feel free to ask us anytime," the other two said kindly as they searched nearby, not straying too far.

Lin Tu picked her own "trash pile" and got down to the real treasure hunt.

Half an hour flew by. David looked up to wipe the sweat from his brow, and his eyes went wide—he stared in disbelief at the ground beside Lin Tu.

There was a huge pile of stuff at her feet. A big handful of loose chocolates and compressed biscuits, a pouch of hemostatic powder patches, two and a half bottles of alcohol, a few batteries, a large packet of some unidentified seeds—and naturally, she hadn't missed the most valuable items either. Set aside on their own were three bottles of whiskey and an entire carton of cigarettes!

"Good lord!" David was so shocked he stopped moving. "Did you inherit a hunting dog's nose or what?"

The other two looked over as well, utterly incredulous—hadn't they just been told she was a newcomer? How was she finding more than everyone else combined?

Lin Tu glanced at David. At his feet sat a bottle and a half of liquor, two packs of cigarettes crushed flat and torn open just to get them out, plus some unlabeled medicine, iodine, and cotton balls—less than half of what she'd gathered. It was passable, barely. The other two were about the same.

"Where did you find the cigarettes?" Lin Tu walked over, and following David's direction, wrapped her arms around the piano pinning the carton down. She effortlessly lifted half the broken instrument and set it aside, revealing a cheap carton of cigarettes beneath, along with some other odds and ends.

Perhaps it was how effortlessly she'd lifted the piano that made David inexplicably walk over and try to lift it himself—but he felt as though his arms were wrapped around a mountain.

No wonder she'd gathered so much stuff. With strength like that, she could strip the entire scrapyard bare if she wanted.

David was shocked. David was confounded. David was overjoyed.

"This is great! I'll be your assistant—we can search even faster!"

Another half hour passed.

Lin Tu wiped the thin sweat from her forehead, feeling her body already overheating beneath the cotton coat. David was no better off—seeing Lin Tu finally stop to rest, he plopped down on the ground, panting heavily.

The effort was grueling, but the results were satisfying.

Working together, they'd gone through an entire mountain of junk, pulling out enough useful supplies to form a small hill of their own. Besides the large quantity of cigarettes and alcohol, they'd found a perfectly wrapped raschel blanket, white sugar, salt, canned goods, various medicines, and even a box or two of coal.

The important thing was that these items were all in good condition—they didn't look like junk ripped out from under pianos or bed frames, so they'd fetch a higher price.

The only letdown: no cotton coats or pants.

Even so, it was an unprecedented haul for David. Look at the other two—they could only watch in amazement as Lin Tu moved mountains like an indefatigable ox, and David scurried around like a hamster stuffing every good find into his stash, a mountain steadily growing at his feet. Then they'd look at their own pitiful piles, remember how they'd offered to help the "newcomer" Lin Tu, and felt like hugging their poor, pitiful selves.

"Converted into supplies, this is enough to feed us for three months." David counted the haul as though he felt no fatigue at all, clutching that raschel blanket and refusing to let go. "Now we've got a lead on Rui Si's situation too."

"There's still an hour." Lin Tu checked the time and decided to make a trip to the resource point marked on the [Spy Computer].

She hadn't known before, but after learning the details, she realized the two resource points on the [Spy Computer] were one to the south and one to the north—one in government territory, one in rebel territory. The rebel one might still be accessible, but the government one... after slipping in at midnight and killing over a dozen people, coming back for a second visit wouldn't be easy.

"We've collected plenty. My stomach's feeling a bit off," Lin Tu said. "I noticed a restroom sign over there when we climbed the wall, and I've been meaning to go. I'll step out for a bit."

It wasn't that she didn't want to tell the truth—but she'd already "lost her memory," and suddenly knowing where the government army's supplies were hidden would be far too suspicious.

David had no reason to doubt her; an upset stomach was only human. Out here in sub-zero temperatures, squatting down in the open was a death sentence. The men would've just made do by relieving themselves right in the scrapyard, but since Lin Tu was a woman, going to an actual restroom was definitely better.

"Be careful," David cautioned. "If you run into a patrol, just run—don't worry about us."

Given what he'd just seen of Lin Tu's abilities, he had no doubt she could get away.

"I'm going for a big one. If I'm not back in an hour, don't wait for me either." Lin Tu said it with a completely straight face, then turned and left the scrapyard.

David figured that with a claim like that, she'd be gone at least half an hour.

To his surprise, she wasn't even gone twenty minutes before she was back.