Chapter 92

Lin Tu looked across at the square-faced man holding a plainclothes police ID. Despite his ordinary jacket, he gave off an inexplicable pressure. She gave a slight shake of her head and addressed him by the name on the badge. "No, I haven't seen them, Officer Zhao Guanglai."

Even as she spoke, she couldn't help feeling a bit nervous—after all, those men's bodies were still lying in her Single-Use Backpack. But she couldn't tell the truth, because telling the truth would mean having to produce the real killer's body, which would likely make her look even more like a murderous maniac.

Lin Tu thought back carefully. She'd searched and cleaned up the traces in the mountain gully, but she wasn't a professional, and it was hard to guarantee she hadn't left any loose ends—especially in front of professional criminal investigators.

Zhao Guanglai said gravely, "A few days ago, this group went berserk as if possessed—murdering, robbing, committing every kind of atrocity. More than a dozen innocent people died at their hands. And the last time they were seen, they were tracking your whereabouts. Please take another look. Are you sure you don't recognize them?"

Lin Tu was certain. Before this group had come knocking on her door out of nowhere... "I really don't recognize them."

"Maybe they haven't arrived yet," Zhao Guanglai nodded.

"Could they have been stopped by that ground crack on the way?" the younger officer beside him guessed. "Otherwise, there's no reason we'd have tracked them here before they showed up."

The words "ground crack" made Lin Tu's eyelids twitch with a disaster-born instinct. "What ground crack?"

"You haven't heard? Quite a few people have disappeared into the ground cracks. In the past couple of days, our colleagues..." The young officer was about to continue when Zhao Guanglai cut him off.

"If it's just speculation, don't spread rumors to the public," Zhao Guanglai chided him softly. "When it comes to matters of life and death, we can't afford to let our guard down."

The young officer quickly said yes, and Lin Tu also played along, looking obedient, though her heart was churning.

"Their target is you, so they're bound to come. Even if they've been delayed on the road these past two days," Zhao Guanglai said after a moment's thought, then asked, "Miss Lin, would you be willing to move with us to a safer location in the nearby town? This place of yours..."

He looked at the desolate wilderness around them—just a single half-dilapidated house without even a wall around it—and his expression grew even more serious.

"A young woman living here alone is far too unsafe. If you're having financial difficulties, you can go to the relief station, or register for unemployment at the street office or community. I can see you're not exactly..."

Lin Tu hastily cut him off, afraid he might say something more. "Officer Zhao, I have no financial difficulties. This whole mountain is mine."

Officer Zhao: "..."

"And the house is only shabby on the outside. The structure, the locks—they're all in good condition," Lin Tu said. "Officer Zhao, how about this: at night, I'll stay home with the door locked and won't go out at all. During the day, I'll go to crowded places in town. If there's any danger, I'll call you immediately."

Zhao Guanglai still felt uneasy and tried to persuade her a bit more, but seeing that Lin Tu remained adamant, he had no choice but to relent. "Xiao Li, Xiao Guo, you two follow Miss Lin for now and keep her safe. I'll go to the local traffic management bureau to check the surveillance archives and see if they've been spotted around here recently."

"Miss Lin, we'll have to impose on you, but don't worry—it'll only be for a couple of days."

"You'll also need to come with us to pick up a tent later."

Lin Tu nearly wept with frustration—she really didn't need this! But since she couldn't tell the truth, and couldn't leave her own house, she had no choice but to go along with it to put this responsible officer's mind at ease.

"Actually, I happen to have a retired bunk bed," Lin Tu said with a smile. "If the two officers don't mind, you can make do with that. No need for a tent."

Xiao Li and Xiao Guo nodded and thanked her.

With two extra shadows tagging along, Lin Tu's freedom of movement was no longer what it used to be.

On the way to town in the police car, she used her phone to search for recent natural disasters, and the more she saw, the more alarming it became. Once in town, she used the excuse of needing the bathroom to duck into a public restroom and called her best friend.

"Zhou Yi," Lin Tu said without preamble, "have you been paying attention to the recent natural disasters?"

The voice on the other end sounded a bit weary. "How could I not? My place got shaken by a magnitude 4 earthquake last night. Luckily it wasn't too bad. But strange thing is, it shook the day before yesterday too, and today it shook again. Feels like..."

"Feels like the disasters are coming a bit too frequently?" Lin Tu said in a low voice.

How could they not be frequent? It was true that tens of thousands of earthquakes occurred around the world every day, but only about 1% could be felt by people. Even a few dozen severe earthquakes a year was considered a lot. Yet in the past three or four days alone, just within the country, there had been dozens of earthquakes across various regions. Not to mention the several ground cracks.

"What are you trying to say?" There was a rustling sound from Zhou Yi's end, as if she had sat up straight. Knowing Lin Tu as she did, Zhou Yi understood that the latter never spoke without purpose.

"How much money do you have right now?" Lin Tu asked.

"Liquid cash? Around a million or so."

"Listen to me. Take all of it and stock up on supplies," Lin Tu said. "Clothes for all four seasons—enough to account for temperatures dropping to minus thirty degrees. Stock up on clean drinking water and water purifiers. Stock up on rice, flour, oil, and grains. For staples, get things that last long—potatoes, sweet potatoes, taro. Or compressed biscuits, canned goods—things with long shelf lives. For vegetables, stock up on dried ones. For meat, cured and smoked meats—the longer they last, the more you should stock. Medicine too—stock as much as you can, especially alcohol. And if you can manage it, stock up on daily necessities—tissues, sanitary pads, facial cleanser, shampoo, things like that."

As a seasoned hoarder, Lin Tu rattled off the entire list of supplies without a single pause. It wasn't until she finished and Zhou Yi had been forced to absorb all that information that the latter finally reacted.

"What's going on?"

"What if I told you the end of the world is coming?" When the other party didn't answer, Lin Tu gave a bitter smile. "If you don't believe me, just treat it as a favor. I've got gold and gems worth around several million—close to ten million. I'll send them to you. Since you're in that business, hurry up and convert them into cash, then use all of it to stock up on the supplies I just listed. Do it discreetly, then find a truck to ship it all to my place. You know my address."

The voice on the other end was silent for a moment before asking a question: "Sixth grade, I got beaten and ran away from home. You took me in and fed me all your family's leftover rice, which got you beaten too. What day of the week was that?"

Lin Tu said with exasperation, "...The weekend! Because the next day was Monday and we had morning exercises. I couldn't run, and the teacher said I was slacking off and made me stand as punishment."

"You're not crazy. I believe you," Zhou Yi said decisively. "If the end of the world is really coming, you need to get the stuff shipped over fast. I'll convert all my liquid assets into cash too. Do you need guns? That's hard to get domestically—I'd have to go abroad to get them."

Lin Tu felt relieved. "I've got that covered. Just stock up on supplies. My situation here is inconvenient—I've got the police watching me..."

"The police? What..."

Zhou Yi was still talking when Xiao Li's voice came from outside. "Miss Lin! Are you okay? You haven't run into any danger, have you? Your zhajiang noodles are about to get all clumpy!"

"I'm coming out right now!" Lin Tu called back loudly, afraid the police might barge into the restroom to check whether she'd been taken hostage by a criminal suspect—what a mess! Lin Tu said helplessly into the phone, "I'm fine. But you make sure to stay discreet and be careful. From my experience, natural disasters are terrifying, but the human heart is no less so."

After hanging up, Lin Tu finally felt a bit more at ease.

Zhou Yi was unreliable on a daily basis, but she could still be counted on when it mattered. With the police watching her, Lin Tu couldn't do large-scale stockpiling herself, but Zhou Yi had the ability and the opportunity.

Now she could finally enjoy her meal in peace. Lin Tu wolfed down a big bowl of zhajiang noodles, then treated herself to the wontons, braised pig trotters, and spicy sour noodles she'd been craving. The two police officers watched in stunned amazement—now they believed Lin Tu wasn't living in that shabby house because she was poor. A poor person couldn't afford to eat like that.

Noticing the officers' surprise and realizing she couldn't pack a dozen portions to take home and hoard, Lin Tu felt utterly despondent.

She casually bought a crispy pancake, then went into the market and asked around until she found someone who could build chicken coops. From this person, Lin Tu got the phone numbers of people who could build pigeon coops, duck coops, goose coops, cattle sheds, sheep pens, and pigsties.

Several of them were still outside the city. If they were to come, it would take until tomorrow, the day after, or even the day after that just for them to arrive. Lin Tu hadn't been in a hurry—she hadn't even planned to raise pigs, cattle, or sheep this soon—but with the sudden surge in disasters and signs of the apocalypse, she had no choice but to speed things up.

Lin Tu paid extra for travel expenses and finally arranged for a large group of people to gather at her doorstep tomorrow morning to build the shelters.

After contacting them one by one, Lin Tu took a cab to a livestock market dozens of kilometers away, where farming, forestry, animal husbandry, and fisheries were all covered.

Lin Tu went to the fish sellers and asked around until she found someone who could dig fish ponds. She discussed it with the worker on the spot and arranged to dig two fish ponds, each two meters deep and a hundred square meters in area. Because time was tight, Lin Tu raised the price to thirty thousand yuan, and they agreed to come survey the site this afternoon, start digging tomorrow, have the ponds excavated and filled with water by the day after, and be ready for use the day after that.

Hearing that Lin Tu was still a complete novice, the man kindly gave her some fish farming tips—for example, that black carp, grass carp, silver carp, and bream could be raised together. You could feed grass to herbivorous fish, and their manure would fertilize the water to feed the silver carp.

When he heard she also planned to raise cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, and geese, the man was initially a bit worried. But when he learned she owned an entire mountain, he couldn't help but give her a thumbs up—

Raising chickens, ducks, pigs, and fish together was a recognized high-efficiency, multi-tiered farming model. Raise chickens and pigs in the woods, fish in the water, ducks and geese on the water's surface. Feed the chickens and ducks with feed, the pigs with leaves and chicken manure, and the fish with duck manure. This reduced livestock waste, improved soil quality, and promoted the growth of trees, grass, and crops, all while ensuring grazing for cattle and sheep.

The only problem was that while this ecological model was good, there was a lot to learn. What feed to use, how to build the coops? Doing it well wasn't easy!

Selecting breeds and seedlings would have to wait until tomorrow morning. Lin Tu stayed busy until the afternoon, and after eating, she went to a bookstore and bought some specialized books before finally heading home. But she still didn't rest. She gathered all the gold and jewelry she'd hoarded—these things were worthless in disaster worlds, so she'd made a point of collecting some every time. What she'd told Zhou Yi about nearly ten million wasn't an exaggeration.

She threw everything into her Single-Use Backpack, went out again, and shipped the backpack to Zhou Yi's location—if Zhou Yi ran into trouble while stocking up, this backpack could come in handy, Lin Tu hoped.

Having made the two officers run around with her all day, Lin Tu felt a bit apologetic. She took the initiative to set up the bunk bed and put it in one of the rooms that might have been a bit drafty, then returned to her own room.

—Should she... Lin Tu thought, dump those burly men's bodies somewhere farther away to divert the police's attention?

Or... Lin Tu took out one of the burly men's phones, turned it on, and imitating his tone, sent a message to the contact named "Mom": "Hurry up and call the police for me! I fell into a hole in the ground!"

As for why he was only sending this message now, or whether there was even a signal underground... Lin Tu felt those logical loopholes no longer mattered. With the disasters happening, the police would soon be too busy to pay attention to a criminal suspect who'd been inactive for so long.

Sorry, officers, Lin Tu repented in her heart. Time is tight and the task is heavy—she had to hurry and stock up on supplies. She didn't have time to waste with the police.

As night fell, Lin Tu used the Illusion Key and selected the next disaster—[Kingdom of Plague]

In her dream, she saw a massive cruise ship cutting through the fog, sailing toward her. And on that cruise ship, she saw passengers at the top levels on both sides, gaunt and sallow from hunger, hiding in shipping containers to escape the blazing sun, while the lower levels...

Lin Tu jolted awake from her dream—the stench of rot, a massive tail, and red, diseased eyes.