Chapter 20: Look How Handsome Your Dad Was When He Was Young

Shi Yuebai glanced at the sly grins on that family’s faces.

She figured this family must have pegged her as the world’s number one fool.

They pushed over a hundred packs of diapers in one go.

Honestly, this family had probably just provided enough diapers for the Shi family’s unborn baby for its entire childhood.

Someone nearby couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Hey, how can you do that?”

“What you’re doing is straight-up cheating!”

Everyone knew food was scarce.

No one knew exactly how much food the Xiang City Mercenary Corps had left in those two big boxes for the Shi family, but what Shi Yuebai had put out on her stall was, at most, a couple hundred small bread rolls.

The Zhou family, in one shot, pushed over a hundred packs of diapers, which would take away half the bread rolls on the stall.

That would leave nothing for the rest of the people who wanted to trade for bread, right?

Second Sister-in-law Shi, who was dragging a carved pearwood cabinet, stopped in her tracks and turned her face, her eyes empty and hollow.

She called softly to the arguing crowd,

“Yuebai, Yuebai!”

She was worried the survivors would start fighting, which could lead to chaos.

Shi’s mother, with an iron chain around her wrist, was always thinking of running away.

She waddled around the edge of the crowd, dragging the chain, her belly huge.

But Shi Yuebai was too heavy; no matter how hard her mother tried to run, Shi Yuebai didn’t budge an inch.

Shi Yuebai just sat there on the flatbed cart, watching the survivors argue over her family’s bread.

She had no intention of stopping them.

The quarrel was over her bread, but so what?

It’s not like she forced the two families to fight here.

Second Sister-in-law Shi, not getting a response from Shi Yuebai, sensed that she didn’t care.

So she said nothing more, just continued dragging the pearwood cabinet, worry etched on her face.

“How are we out of line? Shi Yuebai hasn’t said anything—who are you to talk nonsense here?”

The Zhou family woman’s voice was loud and shrill.

The woman arguing with her, surnamed Zhong, immediately turned to Shi Yuebai and said,

“They’re treating you like an idiot, Shi Yuebai!”

“If it were me, I wouldn’t sell to them at all.”

Shi Yuebai kept her distance, watching the show while trading a few sets of children’s math workbooks with other survivors.

She found the math problems simple and interesting, so she tossed them to Shi Yaoyao.

The Zhou and Zhong families’ argument escalated until they started fighting.

It wasn’t just woman against woman—men fought men, then men fought women, and women fought men…

It was total chaos.

Anyone nearby could get caught up in it.

The onlookers tried to step back, only to realize that at some point, their calves had been tangled up in iron chains.

“Ah! What’s this?”

“Oh no, I’m going to fall—”

Several people tripped over the chains and fell, some even chipping their teeth.

Amid the chaos, Shi Yuebai couldn’t help but smile peacefully.

She slowly reeled in the iron chain in her hand, pulling her mother—who was running around with her big belly—back to her side.

“Mom, it’s not safe here. Stay away from these people.”

“If you get knocked over, they can’t afford to pay for it.”

“Let’s just pack up for today.”

Shi Yuebai had only planned to sell two hundred bread rolls, expecting it to take the whole morning.

The family could go scavenging in the afternoon.

But she hadn’t expected that after just half an hour, the teams would start fighting.

Business was impossible.

Better to go out scavenging as a family.

Even in her madness, Shi’s mother helped her daughter pack up the stall.

Outside the tarp, the fighters and the fallen finally calmed down.

Shi Yuebai was just about to lead her family out to scavenge when the Zhou family woman, hair a mess and face bruised, shamelessly came over.

“Yuebai, are you still trading bread for diapers?”

“Sure, but the price just went up!”

Since they thought she was a fool, Shi Yuebai decided to go big.

“Ten packs of diapers for one bread roll. Take it or leave it. If not, we’re heading out.”

“Friendly reminder: this is today’s price. Tomorrow, it might be different.”

The Zhou woman, fresh from a fight, didn’t even hesitate.

“Deal, deal! Let’s trade.”

After all, those diapers were as good as trash to her—better to trade them than not.

Shi Yuebai traded ten bread rolls for the Zhou family’s diapers.

She checked her haul: the diapers now formed a small mountain.

There were fifty packs of baby diapers—enough for the baby for now.

And fifty packs of adult pull-ups.

Those could be saved for her mother.

After giving birth, her mother would still have postpartum bleeding.

She was too unstable to care for herself, and Second Sister-in-law was blind, so she couldn’t help change her mother’s pants all the time.

They didn’t have the resources or enough clean clothes for that.

Pull-ups were the best solution.

So the Shi family’s group of old, weak, sick, disabled, and pregnant people, stumbling along, set out to scavenge again.

Along the way, a few bruised survivors from other teams watched them with schadenfreude.

Old, weak, sick, disabled, pregnant, plus a madwoman and a fool.

They’d basically collected all seven Dragon Balls of the wasteland.

The epitome of misery.

At nine in the morning, the sun still hadn’t fully risen.

The temperature wasn’t too high. Shi Yuebai directed Second Sister-in-law, who had Shi Yaoyao on her back and was pushing Shi Yuebai in the cart.

Shi Yuebai sat on the flatbed cart, holding the iron chain.

The other end was tied to her mother, who was always trying to run off.

“Yuebai, Yuebai, look!”

Shi’s mother had climbed up onto a pile of rubble, grinning as she pulled out a photo.

She waved a picture of a panda-faced meme and danced around, saying,

“This is your dad.”

“Look how handsome your dad was when he was young.”

Shi Yuebai: “…”

Passing by the collapsed house with the open-air toilet from yesterday, Shi Yaoyao, clutching a math workbook, lay on Second Sister-in-law’s back.

“Mama, I need to go to the bathroom!”

Second Sister-in-law stopped abruptly and looked back at her daughter.

Before she could react, Shi’s mother started up again,

“I need to go too! I need to go too!”

Last night, Shi Yuebai had left the bucket by the bridge pier and filled a big basin with clean water.

After the last incident, Second Sister-in-law seemed numb.

She didn’t say much this time, just washed four water bottles as instructed by Shi Yuebai.

Along the way, Shi Yaoyao and Shi’s mother had been drinking water nonstop.

The four bottles should have been emptied by now…

But maybe Second Sister-in-law had miscalculated, because Shi Yuebai had handed out water to both of them several more times while scavenging."