Chapter 86: A Bountiful Harvest at the Garment Factory

Afraid someone might come after her again, Su Miao quickened her pace.

Crowded places were far too frightening.

As it turned out, her guess was exactly right.

Not long after she left, several more people gave chase, but when they saw the three corpses on the ground, they immediately turned back the way they had come.

From the scene, it was obvious the three had been killed almost instantly.

So ruthless.

No one they could possibly afford to provoke.

Half an hour later, Su Miao found an area of higher ground.

There was a large tree nearby, and there did not seem to be any mutant remains around it. It ought to be safe enough.

Out of caution, Su Miao spread out her right hand and conjured a small blue fireball, drawing it close to the tree. "Hey. You won't run off or eat people, will you?"

The tree gave no reaction.

Su Miao let out a breath of relief and, as usual, scattered a few dry stones to serve as a base.

After leveling the ground a little, she set up the tent and waterproof mat, then poured a ring of highly toxic hallucinogenic potion around the perimeter. The temporary camp was ready.

"I'm running low on potion..."

Looking at the remaining supply of highly toxic hallucinogenic potion, Su Miao felt a little worried.

It was one of the indispensable potions for surviving outdoors.

Su Miao checked her magic space. There were still some beautiful mushrooms left inside, and some poisonous herbs as well, but there was no environment here suitable for brewing highly toxic hallucinogenic potion.

"I'll have to find somewhere I can stay for a while and brew some at random."

After putting away the remaining potion, Su Miao conjured a ball of water to wash her hands, then pulled out a loaf of bread and started eating.

This was by the roadside; she would make do.

Just before sleeping, Su Miao remembered another very important matter.

She took out three alarm clocks and set them for 4:15 a.m., to prevent anyone passing along the road at dawn from spotting her tent.

After doing all that, Su Miao fell into a deep sleep inside the tent.

According to the information Qin Longzhang had provided, there was order inside the shelter, but outside it, order had already ceased to exist. She had to be careful, and then more careful still.

At dawn, the alarm rang.

Su Miao opened her eyes at once.

Outside, a fine, drizzling rain had begun to fall. The moment she opened the tent flap, a wave of cold air rushed in.

"So cold!"

Su Miao looked at the thermometer. The temperature here was 8 degrees Celsius.

And this was only November 6, 2123.

Still, remembering the heavy rains before the downpour had begun, Su Miao suspected the weather might bring snow early, and perhaps snow had already fallen several times in the north.

Su Miao immediately closed the tent again and put on some extra clothes before stepping outside.

"Something feels off."

She looked left and right, always sensing that something about the surroundings was wrong.

Then Su Miao noticed the enormous tree pit beside the tent, and her freshly warmed body could not help trembling.

Damn it.

This tree had become a spirit too!

No need to look. It had clearly uprooted itself and fled in the night.

It was fortunate the tree had done so without making a sound.

If it had been waiting to attack while she slept, how terrifying would that have been?

Su Miao checked the area around the camp and found that where she had poured the highly toxic hallucinogenic potion, the grass and shrubs had withered, rotted, and charred. That must have been the main reason the tree had not dared to attack her.

Today she absolutely had to find time to brew a batch of highly toxic hallucinogenic potion, even if it was only a semi-finished one.

Su Miao quickly tidied up and continued along the road.

After nearly two hours, she came upon a stretch of factories.

Steelworks, photovoltaic plants, heavy machinery factories, electronics factories, garment factories...

Most of them had been half-submerged in water, left to the wind and rain, with floodwaters ravaging them. It looked as though no one had come here for a very long time.

Seeing that there was no one on either side of the road, Su Miao took out her inflatable boat and decided to go over and see if there was anything useful.

She first went to the office area of the steelworks, where the inside was in utter disarray.

Someone had clearly been here before to ransack the place. Anything that could be taken had already been taken.

Things that could not be taken, like computers, had been smashed to pieces.

The people who had searched for supplies must have had very bad tempers.

Even the manager's office had been set on fire and burned black.

Su Miao went back out and found the steelworks archive room. Inside, there appeared to be quite a few books and technical drawings.

After thinking it over, she took all of them. Even if she had no use for them in the future, she could always give them to the state.

Leaving the office building, Su Miao entered the factory grounds and saw many large machines.

These machines were all bolted to the floor.

To take them away, she would have had to unscrew every fastening bolt one by one.

Su Miao did not have that kind of time, and most of the machines were submerged in water anyway, so bringing them back would have been pointless.

She went straight to the warehouses and discovered that the iron doors of several of them had long since been smashed open.

That saved her the trouble of opening them herself.

Inside the warehouses were nearly 20,000 tons of steel ingots and more than 3,000 tons of forged steel parts. Su Miao raised a hand and swept all of the ingots and parts into her magic space.

Once she mastered Fireball Spell more thoroughly, she could melt these ingots down and make herself a house with a pure steel structure.

When camping outdoors, a steel house would definitely be safer than an ordinary tent.

After leaving the steelworks, Su Miao went to the electronics factory.

As usual, she searched the office area and found quite a lot of paper documents, which she took in one go.

In the research and development room, she saw computers scattered all over the place, so she also took all the main units there into her magic space. There could easily be something important stored inside.

Then she went to the warehouse and rescued all the finished products and parts that had not been soaked in water, sweeping them into her magic space.

By the time she reached the photovoltaic plant, Su Miao was already far more practiced from the first two outings.

Paper documents from the archive room, USB drives, safes, computer towers from the research room, USB drives - she took them all into her magic space first.

When she entered the photovoltaic plant warehouse, Su Miao felt as though her horizons had opened.

Here, in addition to large quantities of ordinary civilian LED lights and the like, there were also many magnificent crystal chandeliers.

Such lighting fixtures were generally only seen in luxury hotels, lavish clubs, the opulent villas and estates of the wealthy, or Middle Eastern palaces. They were not something one could easily encounter elsewhere.

The lowest price tag on them was more than two hundred thousand, and some were over fifty million.

Was this daylight robbery?

Su Miao stepped closer to check the order form and discovered it was for a Middle Eastern royal order. That made sense, then.

She stored all those light fixtures in her magic space.

They would come in handy later.

"These wooden crates can be used as firewood."

After all the fixtures were stored away, Su Miao noticed the wooden crates used specifically for holding the lamps.

She had previously blown up a tree to gather timber, so these ready-made pieces of wood were certainly worth taking.

Twenty minutes later, Su Miao had collected all the crates.

"From now on, anything made of wood goes into storage."

Su Miao clenched a fist, left the photovoltaic plant, and headed for the garment factory.

First came the office building area, where she collected paper documents, computer towers, and then various wooden tables and cabinets - anything that could be burned, she took.

Then Su Miao entered the production workshops.

The moment she stepped inside, her eyes lit up.

Even though the entire workshop looked dark and grim, there was light in her eyes.

She saw many adorable JK uniforms, Lolita dresses, hanfu robes, and all sorts of other clothing.

Although quite a number had been soaked by the flood and were no longer wearable, many more had been stored up high and had escaped the filthy water.

Su Miao took all of those JK uniforms, Lolita dresses, and beautiful hanfu robes.

In the apocalypse, these would become rare luxuries.

She could also give some clothes to Xia Xiaoan.

In the future, once she reached Shelter No. 1, anything that did not fit her size or that she did not like could be exchanged for materials to brew magic potions.

Yes, and everything else she collected could also be traded for potion-making materials.

That way, without ever leaving the safe zone, she could obtain a huge amount of potion ingredients. Wonderful.

Still, Su Miao noticed that there were very few down jackets left in the storage area. It seemed people had already been here and taken away quite a lot of them.

After all, winter was just around the corner.

After looting several production workshops, Su Miao went to the warehouse.

There, she unexpectedly found six large shipping containers filled with clothes, each sealed with export labels and extremely well waterproofed.

Written on them were words like "Lolita," "JK Uniforms," "Sweaters," "Down Jackets," "Women's Coats," and "Wedding Dresses."

Su Miao raised a hand and stored all six large containers in her magic space.

She would open them later, like blind boxes.

Then she found quite a number of well-preserved little dresses, JK uniforms, tops, jackets, jeans, skirts, and more in the warehouse.

She did not let a single item escape her grasp.

Unfortunately, the down jackets, sweaters, and similar things had been almost entirely cleared out by those who came before her.

Still, that did not matter. She had bought many of them before the apocalypse began.

Hm?

Just as she was preparing to leave, a large safe that looked like a refrigerator caught Su Miao's attention.

The safe bore signs of being pried open, much like the shipping containers.

Su Miao spread out her hand, conjured a small blue fireball, and carefully moved it to the lock. In an instant, she melted the safe's lock away.

When she opened it, Su Miao's expression grew a little strange.

Inside were twenty gowns made from exceptionally luxurious materials, each one appearing exceedingly lavish.

She picked up the instruction sheet inside the safe. The listed prices ranged from three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand, and some were as high as two million.

"All of them are mine now!"

Su Miao gathered the dresses into her magic space.

After leaving the garment factory, Su Miao saw that it was almost four in the afternoon.

She glanced toward the factories farther away. Those places were almost completely submerged, with no remaining value to loot.

On top of that, the rain had begun to intensify again.

Su Miao immediately drove the inflatable boat diagonally back toward the road, put it away, and continued forward with her silver umbrella.

It was time to find a place to camp for the night.

This time, she absolutely had to avoid places with large trees.

Su Miao was lucky. After walking for a while, she found an abandoned three-story building by the roadside.

The place must have been uninhabited even before the apocalypse began.

Inside was a mess, and a thick layer of dust had settled everywhere.

Su Miao went up to the second floor and found a place that was at least somewhat clean.

From the ashes left on the concrete floor, it looked as though fleeing refugees had passed through here not long ago and done a quick cleanup.

To make it even cleaner, Su Miao conjured a large ball of water and washed the entire room, then threw in a large fireball to dry it quickly.

"Much more comfortable like this."

Looking at the much cleaner room, Su Miao felt very pleased.

She set up her tent inside, then sprinkled some highly toxic hallucinogenic potion at the windows and at the doorway.

"Should I make beef hot pot?"

Su Miao thought about it, then temporarily squashed the idea.

The key thing right now was to have more highly toxic hallucinogenic potion.

Since conditions were insufficient, this time Su Miao found a few bricks and stones, set up a large pot, poured in a great deal of stored tap water, and added plenty of beautiful mushrooms and poisonous herbs.

Then she took out some charcoal and coal, doused them with a little diesel, and lit them to start the brew.

About twenty minutes later, the pot of mushroom-and-herb soup began to boil.

A rich fragrance rose into the air, intoxicatingly sweet.

"Almost there."

Su Miao poured her remaining highly toxic hallucinogenic potion into the pot.

Because she was not using the magic circle specially designed for brewing potions this time, Su Miao was not worried about any poisonous gas drifting out, so she did not need to wear a gas mask.

This was a somewhat clever way of brewing potions.

The highly toxic potion made this way might lose a little of its potency, but it was more than sufficient for Su Miao.

Perhaps these beautiful mushrooms were simply too fresh.

Merely smelling the fragrance, Su Miao felt that the cake she had eaten for dinner was nowhere near enough.

If it had not been poisonous, she truly would have wanted to scoop up a bowl and take just a tiny sip.

...

"Brother, look. There's fire in that house. Someone's inside!"

"Damn! Smells so good!"

"What the hell is the person living inside eating? It smells amazing. Is that meat?"

"Brother, should we go over and see who it is?"

"I am fucking starving just from smelling it!"

"One of us should go take a look first. If there are lots of people, we'll try to beg for a portion. If there's only one, we'll rob them."

A group of six quickly approached the three-story building.

One of them, unusually agile, moved almost silently up to the second floor and peered inside.

At first he thought he must have seen wrong, but after looking again, he was certain.

His face lit up with wild joy as he rushed back downstairs.

"Brother, there's only one young and beautiful girl inside. Crazy beautiful - even more beautiful than a fairy!"

"A girl prettier than a fairy? And alone?"

The leader, a young man, asked.

"Yes, brother. Don't believe me? Go look for yourself. It's only her!"

"Boss, we haven't had any meat for days. This is a gift from heaven! We can rob her food and then, heh heh heh..."

"Go on, go on. Don't grin like that, it's disgusting."

The young leader looked around and said, "Check the area. See if there are any traces of other people. What if she has teammates?"

"Boss, brilliant as always!"

The brothers flattered him, then immediately set out to search the surroundings in the dark, confirming that there were no signs of anyone else nearby.

"Boss, confirmed. It's just her. No problem!"

"Boss, I didn't find anyone either."

The young man at the front looked at the firelight on the second floor and smiled. "Good. When the time comes, you all listen to me. Be polite. Let us fill our stomachs first, then do the other things. Understand?"

"If you get too eager and make her tip the pot over, then none of us gets to eat, and we'll all still be starving."

The brothers nodded repeatedly. "Boss, we understand. Please, you go first!"

The young man smiled, waved a hand, and led his five brothers up to the second floor.