Lu Wei looked troubled. "Our team is going on a mission; it would be inconvenient to bring you along. Jia Min, you should just go back to training. Besides, didn’t your instructor tell you not to go on any missions outside for the time being?"
"But it won’t be dangerous if I go with you!" Feng Jiamin whined, trailing behind the three of them and getting on Gu Chen’s last nerve.
"Don’t you ever stop?" he snapped, turning his head. "Alright, alright, just hurry back. Stop following us."
Feng Jiamin stomped her foot. "Oh, I see. You’re pulling that sexist crap again, aren’t you? You just think that because I’m a girl, I’ll get in the way, right?"
"And don’t you forget, we grew up together. You can’t get rid of me!"
Gu Chen ignored her completely, grabbed Lu Wei, and walked away.
Feng Jiamin was left alone, stomping her foot and shouting in a fury, "Gu Chen! Lu Wei! Don’t even think you can ditch me! Golden City Base, right? I’m going, and that’s final!"
As the three of them walked toward their team’s courtyard, they could still hear Feng Jiamin’s indignant shouts in the distance.
Lu Wei glared at Zhai Ruobai. "Did you leak the news to her that we were back?"
A wronged expression appeared on Zhai Ruobai’s baby face. "She kept asking me about Chen."
"So she asks, and you just tell her?"
"I didn’t! Besides, everyone in the Capital knew we were back, right? How long could we have kept it a secret?"
"But you just ran your mouth and told her we were going to Golden City Base."
Zhai Ruobai’s eyebrows drooped. "If I didn’t say it, wouldn’t someone else have? Just now in the meeting room, Chen announced right in front of Secretary Chen and everyone else that he was going to Golden City."
"So damn annoying." Gu Chen’s face was grim.
"Let’s pack our things and leave as soon as possible."
’As for Feng Jiamin, her team still has training, don’t they? They won’t just let her leave whenever she pleases.’
"Hey guys, aren’t you going to stop by home?" Zhai Ruobai asked timidly.
Unsurprisingly, they both glared at him at the same time.
"You talk too much!"
"Go tell Fengzi and the others. Hurry."
...
"NO, NO, NO," Rob begged for mercy as the young woman dragged him up from the ground, his face bruised and swollen. "I already surrendered! You can’t attack me again."
The foreign captain’s face was purple with rage, his expression utterly foul. "Captain Zuo! What the hell do you think you’re doing?"
"Don’t forget, we are Superpower Users from the Country A branch of the Global Superpower Academy, sent here for a friendly exchange with your Country C."
"Furthermore, we’re long-term residents here and have made significant contributions to Country C. By any measure, we should be considered honored guests from afar, shouldn’t we? Captain Zuo, please ask your people not to be so disrespectful to mine."
"You’ve already knocked my teammate’s tooth out! Isn’t that enough?"
Zuo Li looked at him with a sweet smile. "Disrespectful? How are we being disrespectful? We’re not! Hey everyone, did any of you see our teammate Xiao Ning knock out Rob’s tooth?"
The crowd shook their heads in unison.
Even the onlooking survivors, united against a common foe, sided with Zuo Li and Xie Ning. "He probably knocked it out himself, didn’t he? Trying to pull a scam."
"How ridiculous. That turnip-head of yours is just unskilled, and he still has the nerve to cause a scene."
The foreign captain was so angry his fists clenched. "Captain Zuo, are you just going to let your subordinate behave like this? We lost, and we’ll honor the bet. We’ll let you enter the supermarket first to pick out supplies for half an hour."
"What do you mean, half an hour? Didn’t we agree on one hour?"
The foreign captain’s expression soured even further. "We’re exchange students from the Superpower Academy. Can’t you show us a little more courtesy?"
Xie Ning sized up the captain from Country A.
’People from the Superpower Academy?’
She hadn’t missed the word "Global."
’So, the Superpower Academy she’d encountered in her past life... its headquarters was likely abroad?’
’And it was founded by the joint effort of all humanity, to fight back against the apocalypse and carve out a path to survival?’
’Oh well. In her past life, she hadn’t even managed to become an official student, so of course she wouldn’t know any more details about the Superpower Academy.’
"We agreed on an hour, and not a minute less," Zuo Li said, waving a dismissive hand at the foreign captain. "I’m sure you people from Country A wouldn’t want to be known as the type to go back on your word, would you?"
"What does that mean?" The captain clearly didn’t understand her phrasing and turned to a translator beside him.
Zuo Li ignored him, running over to Xie Ning and pulling her along. "Xiao Ning, sis, take your people and go start picking. We already agreed with Wang Gangfei’s group. The winner gets to enter the supermarket and choose supplies first."
"You just focus on grabbing what you need. Big Sis here will take care of the zombies inside."
Xie Ning nodded, accepting Zuo Li’s favor.
Yu Tianfeng and Cres followed her. Through the supermarket’s glass doors, they could see a crowd of grotesque faces pressed against the glass.
Two Strength System Superpower Users lifted a large floor planter from nearby—its plant long since withered—and hurled it at the main entrance.
The planter crushed seven or eight zombies, and the rest began to surge out from the shattered doorway, scrambling over one another.
"You have fifty-eight minutes left," a bearded man from Country A said with a sneer, holding up a timer.
"Burn them!" At Zuo Li’s command, the handful of Fire Ability Users she’d brought with her unleashed a barrage of Fireballs, and raging flames immediately began to consume the pile of corpses.
Meanwhile, Xie Ning led Yu Tianfeng and Cres, slipping silently through a small side door.
The horde of zombies was drawn to the commotion at the main entrance, naturally ignoring the three of them.
The three of them once again draped themselves in the stinking clothes they had previously disdained, using them to mask their scent.
They dashed over to the produce section.
After a month, much of the produce was wilted and far from fresh.
’Looks like in the future, we’ll only be able to eat things grown by Wood Element Superpower Users,’ Xie Ning thought. It occurred to her that their team was missing a Wood Element user.
’Lu Wei’s Wood Element Ability is excellent.’
’I wonder if Gu Chen can charge power banks now?’
Xie Ning quickly shook her head, banishing the absurd thought from her mind.
’She had actually been daydreaming about recruiting those two for her team...’
’But having a teammate who could farm and another who could act as a charger... ahem, would indeed be very convenient.’
"Hey, woman, look. Should we take these self-heating rice noodles and hot pots? They’re not expired yet."
Xie Ning nodded. Right before their eyes, she took everything—shelves and all.
"Let’s check the refrigerated warehouses in the back."
’It’s simpler to just take the whole warehouse.’
"Let’s go!"
The three of them suppressed their presence, weaving through the aisles. Whenever they saw useful food supplies, Xie Ning would take more than half.
By the time Zuo Li and her people finished clearing out the zombies on the first floor, half an hour had passed.
Before the foreigners could even celebrate, they saw more than three hundred survivors from Country C gleefully rushing into the supermarket...