Chapter 529: Chapter 529

Lu Liu said earnestly, "Jing Shu, thank you for the eggs. Hong Bin said he has never tasted such delicious eggs... We men aren’t much for cooking, so we brought these to fill our stomachs. This is a palace dessert from the Imperial Capital, quite unique. Try this Fuling Cake... this honey cake is also quite good."

No wonder they never cook. Can pastries really be filling?

As he spoke, Lu Liu tossed a few to Yang Yang and Hao Yunlai.

Jing Shu’s eyes lit up; they looked truly delicious, and she had never tried these before. Especially in this apocalypse, wouldn’t it be a great regret in life if she didn’t try them?

After taking a small bite, Jing Shu could not stop. Oh my, how could these pastries be so delicious? The outer layer of the Fuling Cake was as thin as paper and as white as snow. It was filled with numerous nuts and a blend of Guihua and honey with Fuling. Sweet and fragrant, it melted immediately in her mouth, opening up a new realm of pastry appreciation for her.

The fat chicken clucked twice on the side. Hmph! She was just mad at me for eating someone else’s food, and now, in the blink of an eye, Master has finished someone else’s food too! No restraint at all! What was that human saying again... ’The magistrate is allowed to burn down houses, while the common people are forbidden to light their lamps!’

Jun Bao struggled to eat the Fuling Cake, fighting the urge to vomit as his stomach churned. This wasn’t the flavor he desired, sadly. He’d rarely had an appetite, and it turned out to be a mere illusion.

Lu Liu kept offering Jing Shu more: first pea cake, then sachima, then sticky rice rolls with red bean paste... Soon, Jing Shu had devoured all the pastries. She had eaten their entire dinner!

The stomachs of the two grown men began to grumble.

Jun Bao looked enviously at Jing Shu’s hearty appetite; he even envied the fat chicken for having such a good one. "People with good appetites are truly blessed," he remarked.

Might as well eat those unappetizing energy bars, Jun Bao found himself thinking.

"I haven’t touched this pot of rice yet. Do you want me to divide some for you?" Jing Shu asked quietly. She was well aware that accepting someone’s food made it hard to refuse them later.

Lu Liu nodded eagerly, like a chicken pecking at grain. Ah, she finally gets it!

Then, Lu Liu’s jaw almost dropped. Jun Bao ate a full bowl of rice, and Lu Liu himself wolfed down his own. It’s delicious, but not quite as good as what those hired chefs used to make, Lu Liu thought. Hmm, just a little bit off.

Jing Shu no longer needed to hide in her tent to eat. She picked up her pot and quickly finished its contents. Perhaps driven by hunger or influenced by her enthusiastic eating, everyone enjoyed the meal greatly. Jing Shu, however, wasn’t quite full and secretly had another meal later that night.

Jing Shu spent two hours in her tent practicing with the Magic Cube and then fell into a deep sleep. She was unaware that the minibus stopped twice during the night and was indifferent to whether the drivers were changed.

「In any case, she woke up the next morning.」

The minibus, despite its top-tier suspension, began to sway, indicating the road was rough. It was uncertain how far they had traveled during the night.

When Jing Shu got up, she found Jun Bao, sporting dark circles under his eyes, squatting over the fat chicken’s litter box. He was examining the quantity and color of its droppings.

Jing Shu was speechless. It wouldn’t be right to stop him from researching how to promote breeding, would it? If he really figures it out, I’ll be the one who benefits most.

Alright then. As long as he doesn’t drag the chicken into a lab for research, anything else is fine. Just looking now isn’t a problem; I can’t very well forbid him from examining chicken droppings. Besides, even taking a huge step back, what’s there to study about chicken droppings, really?

"Could you give me some of this manure?" Jun Bao asked.

Jing Shu promptly refused, "No, I’m saving it for fertilizer when I return."

Jun Bao looked even more disheartened and haggard.

"Why do you look so worn out? Didn’t sleep well?" Having shared a meal, she felt somewhat more familiar with her new team members, so Jing Shu skillfully changed the subject.

Lu Liu yawned and said, "Jun Bao had diarrhea twice last night. All the food he’d managed to eat came right out. Plus, it was cold outside, and he almost caught a cold." Get full chapters from 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝~𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖~𝕟𝕖𝕥

"Ah? Why were we fine then?" This certainly isn’t a problem with my food.

Jun Bao explained, "I haven’t eaten greasy food or this much meat in a long time. It upset my stomach."

"Greasy? That was a lot of meat?" Jing Shu exclaimed in surprise. Someone from his kind of background gets an upset stomach from a little meat? I’ve only read online about such things happening in Africa, where chronically malnourished people get diarrhea from eating too much fish or meat .

"It’s greasy for me; I usually eat energy bars," Jun Bao further explained.

"Then have some milk tea. It’s good for cutting grease and soothing the stomach," Jing Shu said, feeling somewhat embarrassed.

Jing Shu boiled a pot of water with brick tea. She mixed powdered milk, then poured the filtered tea into the milk, sprinkled in some salt, and added some milk skin from a can. Just like that, the Wu City specialty milk tea was ready.

"So this is milk tea?" Jun Bao, Lu Liu, and the others were very curious. After taking a sip, they let out sighs of comfort. The rich, milky flavor blended with the aroma of tea was perfect for a hot drink in the chilly weather.

Breakfast was simple. Each person had a bowl of milk tea with Grandma Jing’s fried dough twists. This obviously wasn’t enough for Jing Shu, so she also ate about ten boiled eggs and a few large flatbreads before feeling somewhat satisfied.

The journey was very smooth, smoother than Jing Shu had expected. But the smoother things went, the more unsettling it felt.

「It was only after arriving at the destination in the afternoon that Jing Shu’s heart still hadn’t settled.」

Hong Bin, who had been driving the minibus all day, finally succumbed to sleep. The minibus stopped in the quiet mountains. Lu Liu suggested they dress warmly and explore the surroundings, as the location coordinates they’d been tracking were from this vicinity a few days ago.

Jing Shu bundled herself up until only her eyes were visible, then pulled on her rubber shoes and got off the bus with the fat chicken.

"This is the Tianshan Mountain Range now! But just a few months ago, this was the Canal." Lu Liu rapidly sketched on a map with a pen. The minibus was equipped with a small satellite radar this time, which was also submitting the new map data.

"We’re deep in the mountain range now. I traveled here with my parents three or four years ago and spent a week in the Tianshan Mountain Range," Jing Shu said, shocked as she looked at the familiar scenery. "The entire Tianshan Mountain Range is thousands of kilometers long. It can’t have all shifted here, can it? If we go in, it’ll be hard to find our way out without navigation."

The drone, under Lu Liu’s control, circled the area for over ten minutes. Lu Liu’s face turned ashen.

"We have to leave immediately!" he declared. "We’re on winding mountain roads. Although most of the highways seem intact, we could still hit breaks in the road. Finding a new route would waste a lot of time. Most importantly, these mountain roads are too long. Given the situation, there’s no way the fleet could have passed through here."

That means we’ve missed the fleet.