Chapter 39: The Team’s Outrage

A new day began, and the women of the Shi family resumed another day of hard labor.

They moved stones from behind the tarp to the front, all under Shi Yuebai’s not-so-professional direction.

Nong Yasi sorted out some smaller stones and mixed them by hand with cement. Together with the larger rocks, they built up their wall.

Between two curved rubble walls, Shi Yuebai deliberately left a doorway.

It was big—big enough to fit her own hefty body through.

At the moment, Shi Yuebai couldn’t find a door large enough to fit into the wall, so she had Second Sister-in-law Shi find two large bedsheets to make a double curtain for the entrance.

This move nearly made the other survivors watching them from nearby teams laugh their teeth out.

These old, weak, sick, and disabled women of the Shi family really were simple-minded fools.

What kind of defense could two bedsheets possibly provide? At best, it was just for psychological comfort.

More and more people mocked the Shi family for wasting their efforts.

Among them, some less noticeable voices occasionally wondered aloud,

“What are those idiots from the Shi family doing? We can’t even see their tarp anymore.”

Indeed, Shi Yuebai had worked hard to build a rubble wall, but she never expected it to actually provide any real defense.

She just didn’t like having everything her family did watched by others, coming and going.

That was all.

After the wall was up, Shi Yuebai had Nong Yasi and Second Sister-in-law Shi move Shi Yaoyao’s desk outside.

“The light is better out here. Yaoyao, you’ll do your writing outside from now on.”

She gave instructions while checking Yaoyao’s homework.

At first, Yaoyao couldn’t even write the character for “sky” (天) properly—sometimes adding an extra stroke, sometimes missing one.

Sometimes, halfway through, she’d just start scribbling nonsense, making it impossible to tell what she was writing.

Let alone more complicated characters like “earth” (地).

The first day she tried writing “earth,” who knew what she was actually writing.

But after a few days, Yaoyao’s “sky” character gradually became quite neat.

Her “earth” character also started to take shape—you could just about tell what it was.

On the third day, Shi Yuebai asked Yaoyao to write “person” (人).

That one was simple, and Yaoyao wrote it beautifully.

After that, “you” (你), “me” (我), and “he” (他)—her progress was clear.

From the start, you could tell they were actual characters.

Nong Yasi leaned over, smiling,

“Yaoyao is actually really great. Her handwriting is getting better and better.”

Most of the time, Shi Yuebai set Yaoyao’s study plan.

But the one who taught her to write, hand over hand, was Nong Yasi.

Nong Yasi was a top student herself, with beautiful handwriting.

She even held Yaoyao to the standards of her own calligraphy teacher.

Shi Yuebai nodded, pointing at one of the strokes as she discussed it with Nong Yasi,

“Look, the brushwork is really coming through.”

Second Sister-in-law Shi, who was blind, sat quietly nearby, listening in.

As she listened, her face was full of excitement.

Everyone said her daughter was mentally disabled.

Even she had believed it.

But who could have guessed that in just a few days, her daughter could already write six characters—

“Sky, earth, person, you, me, he.”

Second Sister-in-law Shi repeated the words to herself, eyes welling up.

“This is wonderful. My Yaoyao is wonderful.”

Tears streamed down her face, black and yellow.

Her eyes itched, and she lowered her head to rub them with her hand.

Shi Yuebai stopped her, “Second Sister-in-law, don’t use dirty hands to wipe your eyes. There’s a clean towel over there.”

Last time, when they went scavenging with Yi Zhe, Yaoyao had found a brand new, boxed metal rack.

Assembled, it became a metal clothes rack, complete with casters at the bottom.

The moment it was put together, Shi Yuebai brought out several new towels.

Everyone in the Shi family got their own towel—no sharing allowed.

At first, Nong Yasi thought it was a hassle.

Who would be so particular in the wasteland?

But when she saw they had a whole pool of zero-radiation clean water, she understood.

With such a big pool of clean water, after moving rocks all day, they could even swim in it.

So, having their own towel, and washing up every morning with clean water, seemed only natural.

Nong Yasi got up and led Second Sister-in-law Shi to the rack.

“Second Sister-in-law, this is your towel. The clean water is here.”

Next to the rack was a large tank, found among the ruins while moving stones.

It looked like it had once been used for ornamental fish at the riverside amusement park before the apocalypse.

Shi Yuebai placed it next to the rack and filled it with water.

This clean water was reserved for everyone to wash up in the mornings and for washing hands during the day.

Second Sister-in-law Shi used a small plastic basin to scoop up some water from the tank.

She bent over to wash her eyes with the clean water.

When she straightened up, for a moment, her vision turned gray and black.

“Yuebai…”

Second Sister-in-law Shi panicked.

This gray-black was different from the total darkness she was used to.

She didn’t know what was happening—was her brain disease getting worse?

Out of habit, she called Shi Yuebai’s name, completely flustered.

Shi Yuebai quickly rolled over on her cart to her side.

“What’s wrong?”

Standing by the basin, Second Sister-in-law Shi shook her head.

“I… I think I’m fine now.”

It was just for a moment—the color in front of her eyes changed.

Very quickly, her vision returned to pitch black.

She relaxed and changed the subject.

“Yuebai, what should I do with this basin of water?”

Shi Yuebai looked down at the water Second Sister-in-law Shi had used to wash her eyes.

Once clear, it was now black and yellow.

“Pour it out—dump it in the potato patch.”

Shi Yuebai let Second Sister-in-law Shi handle it herself.

She turned to Nong Yasi,

“The wall needs to be higher. Make it as high as you can.”

After all, if there was one thing they had plenty of, it was useless rocks.

Just then, a group of people crowded outside the bedsheet “door” in the wall.

“Shi Yuebai, you have mercenaries backing you, you’re not short of food or water, while we’re all starving!”

“Food is getting harder and harder to find. Other teams don’t have so many burdens, so they find food faster than we do.”

“You have food—why don’t you share it with everyone?”

The bedsheet curtain was lifted, and Second Sister-in-law Shi hurried out, feeling her way.

“Yuebai, what do we do?”

In the wasteland, people could still find food, but they couldn’t afford to relax.

Especially now, when the Shi family was made up entirely of women and children, none of them able to put up a fight.

It was no surprise that they had sparked the team’s outrage.

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