Chapter 146: The Shopfront Has Been Bought

Shi Yuebai looked Captain Qiao up and down.

“Buy a shopfront? Which one of us is supposed to go?”

With Captain Qiao’s infamous reputation, if he went to the big city to buy a shop, wouldn’t everyone keep a close eye on him?

People would probably suspect he was opening a human meat bun shop.

And as for Shi Yuebai? She was just a big lump of walking meat.

Even more likely to arouse suspicion.

Captain Qiao wore a bitter expression, squatting outside the Shi family’s courtyard wall.

He’d earned so many points, but had no way to spend them. He really didn’t know what to do.

At this moment, Mother Shi came out, carrying a plastic bag on her arm, walking with her back straight. Who knows where she’d scavenged a pair of high heels from.

She strutted out in the heels, wearing a pair of sunglasses she’d picked up somewhere.

“Baby, you want to do business? Our family isn’t good at much, but we do know how to run a business.”

“Tell Mom, what kind of business do you want to open with a shopfront? Use my card, we’ll pay in full.”

Shi Yuebai looked up, squeezing a smile onto her chubby face, and exaggeratedly exclaimed in delight,

“Wow, Mom, you’re the best!”

“It’s just buying a shopfront for my baby, no big deal.”

Mother Shi stepped forward and planted a kiss on Shi Yuebai’s cheek.

Shi Yuebai rubbed her brow and instructed Captain Qiao,

“Go to the front lines and find Huo Chenggui. Doesn’t he claim to be my third brother?”

“Have him accompany my mom to buy a shopfront.”

As for what to sell in the shop, Shi Yuebai had no idea.

Nothing she owned could be sold in large quantities right now.

Currently, the shopfronts in the big city were all converted from the original houses of people who lived in that area.

But there was still a lot of surplus.

Shi Yuebai had sent her paper airplane to scout the city—it was far less bustling and prosperous than she’d imagined.

When the apocalypse struck, most buildings collapsed.

The old city became a ruin.

The areas that didn’t collapse were mostly villages.

The self-built houses there were only two or three stories high.

These former suburbs were fenced in and ironically became the “big city” in the wasteland.

But the survivors who were fenced into the city didn’t live any better than others.

In fact, due to rigid class divisions, many people in the city lived in squalor.

There was no real upper class. If you had to name one, it would be the management.

But even the lower-level administrators lived tough lives.

Shi Yuebai’s paper airplane swooped over the city and saw many people teaming up at the gates to go scavenging.

There were scavenging teams inside the city too.

The only real difference for city survivors was that they had a house to sleep in at night and a wall for protection.

Otherwise, they were just like the survivors outside—still had to scavenge.

There were plenty of shopfronts for sale, and lots of empty two-story self-built houses.

But with such rigid class divisions, no one could afford to buy them.

To rent a house or shopfront in the city, you first needed the right to live there.

And to get that right, you had to buy it with points.

It wasn’t as expensive as three million, but it wasn’t cheap either.

Who knew if Xiao Lingye even had that many points in his account?

He might not lack food, but he needed points to buy water.

And now, Xiao Lingye didn’t even have food anymore.

Shi Yuebai had nothing but disdain for this so-called residency right.

She figured, as long as you had mercenaries, it didn’t matter where you lived.

The city didn’t even have as many walls as her place.

Captain Qiao quickly used the teleportation array to get to the front lines.

He brought Huo Chenggui back, who was still dazed and confused.

As soon as he stepped onto the “Tong” character frame, Huo Chenggui let out a series of exaggerated cries.

“Wow! Wow! Wow!”

Shi Yuebai ignored him and turned to the backyard vegetable patch.

Because they’d switched who was digging the trenches, the two muddle-headed pregnant women weren’t very skilled at the job.

They often needed Da Jiao and Xu Xuejiao to teach them.

If no one guided them, the two pregnant women would just keep digging straight ahead, never turning along the “Tong” character frame.

So what should have been a circular trench now had lots of little branches.

No big deal.

Shi Yuebai figured she could turn it into a maze, and set up some deadly traps inside.

Might as well make the best of a bad job.

As for the second wall, progress was much slower.

The nine disabled children couldn’t even keep up with the two pregnant women in the trench.

Mainly, these kids had almost zero ability to work.

Several of them just couldn’t learn, no matter how you taught them.

Except for the one with claw-like hands and a crooked mouth and eyes—he could pick up bricks and stack them.

The rest were still sitting, lying, or rolling around on the ground.

Da Jiao was at her wit’s end and had cried from frustration more than once.

Every time she caught Shi Yuebai’s cool, detached, and unhelpful gaze, Da Jiao could only wipe away her tears and keep teaching them over and over.

She knew she wasn’t very bright, but now she felt these younger kids were even less so.

Luckily, today, one of the kids who’d always just sat on the ground finally learned how to spread cement on bricks.

It was a simple task, but it took him days to learn.

So he just sat by the cement, spreading it over and over.

The claw-handed, paralyzed kid would take the cemented bricks and, with the help of a level, stack them up.

Progress picked up a bit.

And their workmanship was slowly improving too.

It was still pretty slow, but at least the second wall was moving forward.

Shi Yuebai wasn’t in a hurry.

Her first wall had been built by Ah Hong.

It wasn’t much better than what these disabled kids were doing.

“Fourth Sister, we bought the shopfront!”

Huo Chenggui, carrying Mother Shi on his back, returned from the city, covered in dust.

He had a Chanel bag hanging around his neck.

After setting Mother Shi down, Huo Chenggui explained,

“Mom passed by a stall selling bags and insisted this was a limited edition, so I spent 100 points to buy it.”

These things are cheap now.

In the wasteland, aside from water, food, and city housing, everything else is junk.

Shi Yuebai didn’t care about that. She watched as Mother Shi took the “limited edition Chanel” bag from Huo Chenggui’s neck.

With a graceful motion, she pulled out a property deed from the bag.

“Baby, your third brother has connections. Mom bought the shopfront for you.”

Shi Yuebai didn’t bother reminding her mother that she’d used her points.

“Thank you, Mom.”

Having mercenaries deal with the city management was still easier than sending ordinary people.

Plus, Huo Chenggui had a silver tongue—he slipped each person in the property office a pack of cigarettes.

A few words and some laughter later, the deal was done.

Shi Yuebai looked at the property deed in her hand. The shopfront actually had three floors, plus a basement of about a hundred square meters.

Outside, there was even a 400-square-meter courtyard.

Yesterday, I got rear-ended by a big truck on the highway.

Now the car doors won’t even lock.

Today I took the car in for repairs. The shop owner was nice enough to lend me his wife’s car for a few days."