Rebirth: Leading Families to Survive in the Apocalypse

Chapter 387: Chapter 387: Selling Grain

The village, teeming with elderly and children, saw wisps of cooking smoke gradually rise from a courtyard.

From a distance, the sight of the smoke told everyone that it was time for dinner, and so groups of elders paired up or took by the hand children too small to walk alone and headed toward the courtyard.

“Old Man Li, are you just going to have some porridge? You haven’t collected your share of the coarse grain cornbread yet!”

One of the women serving meals spoke out.

But Old Man Li simply waved his hand and said, “No need, no need, save it for the young ones, I’m not hungry.”

There were many other seniors like Old Man Li who merely glanced at the place where the coarse grain cornbread was distributed and then squatted by the courtyard wall, beginning to drink their thin porridge.

“Ah!”

The woman serving meals wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes.

Everyone here knew that the shelter’s food supply was limited and that most of it had been obtained through life-threatening efforts by Xing Taian and his group of soldiers from before the Apocalypse. Seeing those elderly figures now reduced to skin and bones tugged painfully at her heart.

“Granny, let’s eat together,”

A little boy broke off a piece of the yellow cornbread and handed it to an old woman with white hair.

“Dear little Mark, you eat it. Granny is old and can’t eat much; I just like this porridge! You need to eat up and grow fast, so you can be as brave as those uncles,”

the elder said, gently stroking the boy’s hair.

The boy shook his head, breaking his half of the cornbread into smaller pieces and dropping them into the elder’s porridge.

“Now Granny can eat it,”

he said, satisfied, before starting to eat his own half of the cornbread.

…

Watching the scene in the courtyard, Su Jin, Lu Hao, and others finally realized just how difficult the food situation Xing Taian mentioned really was.

“This is heartbreaking,”

Lin Xiuyuan said with a bitter expression, relieved that Lin Yunguo and Li Xiuying hadn’t come out to witness this scene, otherwise, the two elders would definitely feel sad for a while.

“There are people worse off than them; we simply don’t know about them,” Su Jin said.

In her past life, she had seen many people starve to death and others who, due to hunger, couldn’t run away and ended up being devoured by zombies or mutant animals and plants. Those here who had encountered Xing Taian and his group were indeed very fortunate.

“But this place will not last forever,” Lu Hao said.

The elderly could only spend their final years here, and if the children were lucky enough to grow up, they would surely have to leave this place one after the other.

“It’s already very good like this,”

Su Jin said, feeling this was the best outcome possible.

They walked a little further, the village was too quiet; many of the elderly just sat quietly by their doors. It was the children, constantly running around laughing, who added a hint of vitality to the area.

Along the way, elderly and children often stopped to ask whether they had seen someone by a certain name outside.

They listened patiently, but those names, they had really never heard of.

Seeing everyone walk away disappointed, they also decided to head back. Before the Apocalypse, this place was probably just a small village—from one end to the other, it took only about fifteen minutes to walk through.

As they neared their dwelling, a gunshot rang out from the courtyard next door.

“Alas! Another one’s gone,”

a gaunt elderly person passing by Su Jin said, shaking their head.

“Sir, what happened?” Ren Yingjie couldn’t help but ask.

“That’s the team that goes out to exchange crystal cores for food. Almost every time they return, some of them have been eaten outside or turn into zombies right here,”

the old man said, looking towards Xing Taian’s courtyard with cloudy eyes, where the glint of tears could still be seen.

At that moment, Xing Taian also came out, his eyes red, with a handgun in his hand. He leaned powerlessly against the doorframe of the courtyard, noticing the group not far away.

“The bullets in this gun, we’ve always been reluctant to use them. I saved them for my brothers; to ultimately be killed by it is a kind of luxury,”

he said with a bitter smile.

Lu Hao went over and patted his shoulder, saying, “You’ve done what the vast majority couldn’t do; you’ve really done well.”

…

As night fell, Su Jin and Lu Hao surreptitiously sought out Xing Taian.

“Crystal cores?”

Xing Taian was a bit surprised. Could it be that these two wanted to borrow crystal cores from him?

“Yes, I am a Space Element Ability User. If you have enough crystal cores, you can buy grain from me. It should be more cost-effective than exchanging grain at the base,” Su Jin said.

“Really?! You have grain?”

Xing Taian excitedly stood up and asked the two of them.

“Yes, we’ve collected some before. It might go bad if we keep it too long, so we might as well exchange it for crystal cores,”

Lu Hao explained from the side.

Xing Taian did not doubt Lu Hao’s words; he had learned during their conversation that Lu Hao had also come from the military. He had an inexplicable sense of trust in the soldiers of his homeland.

“Good, we must exchange, we must buy!”

As soon as Xing Taian finished speaking, he was about to call someone in.

“There’s another issue, we don’t want to make a fuss about this,”

Su Jin looked at him as she spoke.

Xing Taian nodded and replied, “I understand, nobody would want others to know about this. I’m honored that you’re willing to sell to me.”

Xing Taian only called over the Space Element Ability User from his team and asked him to take out all the crystal cores from his space.

“All of them? Are you serious, Captain?”

The Space Element Ability User, Yan Gang, asked in surprise.

“Yes, get them all out first so I can see how much there is,”

Xing Taian said somewhat impatiently. They usually didn’t pay much attention to crystal cores. Apart from the mutated crystal cores that they would absorb themselves, a bunch of crystal cores could only be exchanged for a few pounds of grain at the base.

“Oh, okay,”

Yan Gang moved a few benches from the middle of the room and then took out several transparent storage boxes. The storage boxes were not small, and each was filled with crystal cores!

“How can there be so many?” Xing Taian was surprised himself.

Su Jin and Lu Hao were also stunned as they watched from the side.

They did not expect that Xing Taian’s team would have so many crystal cores! But what surprised them even more was that the team captain and even the leader of this shelter didn’t know how many crystal cores they really had.

“Yes, that’s the amount. Didn’t we have a small zombie tide outside before? We used traps and special abilities to kill a lot of zombies, didn’t we, Captain? Did you forget?”

Yan Gang’s tone made Xing Taian feel somewhat embarrassed, but he quickly changed the subject and asked Su Jin and Li Hao, “With so many crystal cores, how much grain can you give us?”

“…”

Su Jin indeed wanted to name a price, but with so many crystal cores, they didn’t know how much there was…

“This… we might need to count them first,” Lu Hao said.

“You tell me first, how much grain can one get for a given amount of crystal cores? The last time we exchanged at the base, it was 100 crystal cores for one pound of wheat,”

Xing Taian said, actually thinking to himself that even if the price quoted by these two was a bit more expensive than what they used to exchange for, it shouldn’t be that much more.

“100 crystal cores for one pound of wheat? Or wheat flour?”

Su Jin asked with an incredulous expression.

“Miss, here, this kind of wheat,”

Upon hearing this, Yan Gang took out a bag of unthreshed wheat kernels from his space and placed it in front of them.

“…”

What kind of ruthless base was this? How could they scam like this?

Su Jin looked at Lu Hao. According to the Heart Talk Store’s prices in S City base, 20 crystal cores could be exchanged for one pound of rice or flour. So now, at what price should she sell to be fair?

Also, were the Heart Talk Store’s prices set too low?