Dinner was over.

Zhuang Xiao continued practicing her archery outside. Today’s experience hunting mutated grasshoppers had utterly crushed her confidence.

Despite catching many, almost all were bagged through sheer brute force rather than by her sleeve darts. The darts had been terribly ineffective—every shot seemed to deliberately avoid the fat, bright green bugs like they were long-lost friends.

Her best shot had barely nicked one’s wing.

So now, Zhuang Xiao trained with extra focus.

One day, she would become a sharpshooter—that dream wasn’t out of reach.

Inside the house, Huo Xiao opened the sack and dumped out all the wheat ears.

They scattered across the floor, with a few still faintly green. If the weather hadn’t changed, the entire batch might’ve ripened to golden by now.

Under the lamplight, Huo Xiao casually sat cross-legged and began scanning each wheat ear that Zhuang Xiao had brought back.

That night, it was like Zhuang Xiao had been possessed by divine luck. Though most of her arrows still missed, three of them actually hit within three rings of the target—something that made her giddy with joy.

Focused effort paid off.

Happily, she returned to the house, eager to share her results with Huo Xiao.

But then she saw him stuffing handfuls of wheat grains into a sack, with only a few lonely kernels left on the table.

Wait… what?

She’d hauled back that entire sack, and those few grains were all that was edible?

Zhuang Xiao felt like someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over her head.

Ugh, she wanted to die.

She never wanted to go back to the wheat collection area again.

Maybe it was better to wait for autumn and go dig for sweet potatoes and regular potatoes.

She had picked up plenty of intel today, especially from the older folks chatting nearby. She learned that every autumn, the safe zone would organize collection trips for sweet potatoes, potatoes, and more.

Autumn was the harvest season—the most beloved time of year for people in the wasteland. Fruits and grains matured in abundance, offering more variety than any other time. It was also the time when people stocked up for the winter, which was too dangerous to go out in.

Huo Xiao, after sorting through all the grains, finally looked up and saw Zhuang Xiao’s pouty, devastated expression. He was momentarily puzzled.

“We did well today,” he said, then patted the sack. “All of this is edible. Once the house is rebuilt, we’ll sort everything by radiation level.”

He genuinely hadn’t expected Zhuang Xiao to bring back a full season’s worth of harvest in just one day.

Her luck was unbelievable.

Zhuang Xiao thought she was hallucinating. “What did you just say? The grains in the sack are all edible? Not just those few?” she asked, pointing at the glossy kernels on the table.

Huo Xiao: …

His watch hadn’t been muted. Didn’t she hear all the “beep beep” notifications? Most of them had said “edible.”

He’d assumed she knew.

He shook his head and patted the sack again. “These are the edible ones.”

Zhuang Xiao’s emotions rollercoastered from despair to elation. So her lucky streak hadn’t abandoned her—she was still that adorable little bringer of fortune!

That meant she could eat steamed buns, dumplings, and noodles again!

Huo Xiao noticed the strange changes on her face and quietly pushed the sack under the bed.

Suddenly, he heard her declare boldly, “Tomorrow morning I want crab congee with river shrimp!”

With food at home, there was no fear.

She was going back to the wheat collection area tomorrow!

As soon as her alarm rang the next morning, Zhuang Xiao sprang out of bed, grabbed her bag, splashed some water on her face, and headed out.

Oh, right—they didn’t have a front gate anymore, so she just walked out of the bedroom.

Not long after stepping out, she remembered something else.

Hiring people to build the house and buying materials… all required points.

Huo Xiao, that penniless man, probably didn’t have any left.

Zhuang Xiao checked her balance and immediately transferred some points to his account.

A new house, a new house… Her steps were noticeably lighter.

Since she hadn’t dawdled this morning, she arrived at North Plaza early while the crowd was still sparse.

She quickly found a spot and stood in line like a good citizen. Around her were others who, like her, had already gone to the wheat collection area once.

Listening closely, she heard them lamenting how poor their harvests had been yesterday. Their families were nearly starving, and they were hoping to find something today.

Basically, it was all just poor-mouthing.

So different from the world she used to live in.

Back in her apartment complex, the old ladies downstairs only liked to brag: my daughter’s so successful, my son makes so much money, look at my expensive gold necklace, this outfit cost a fortune…

Always showing off how rich and capable their families were.

But here? It was the opposite—everyone knew not to flaunt wealth in the wasteland.

What did that say? That the public order here wasn’t great.

Show off too much, and you might come home to find your house robbed.

“Move! Move it!”

Just as Zhuang Xiao was listening intently, a group of burly, fierce-looking men shoved their way up to the front of the line.

They’d just been cut.

No one in front dared say a word.

Were these the local gangsters?

Zhuang Xiao looked forward and saw one particularly muscular man laughing and chatting with someone from the security team—like they were old friends.

Yep. There were shadows even under the sun.

Not someone she could mess with. She was just a nobody.

She shrank back, ready to just stay quiet and keep listening to gossip, when suddenly that burly man turned around.

His face was rugged and bearded, his eyes fierce like a tiger. But what caught Zhuang Xiao’s attention was the scar stretching from his right temple across his eye, down his nose, and onto the left side of his face.

It was him!

The man who had thrown Huo Xiao down the cliff.

Huo Xiao had never spoken about it, so she wasn’t sure if he even knew who’d done it. From what she’d seen, he must have been unconscious at the time—otherwise, he’d have fought back instead of letting someone toss him like that.

Zhuang Xiao quickly raised her wristwatch and secretly snapped a photo of the man. Then she casually lowered her arm and blended back into the crowd to wait for the transport.

The horn blared.

The vehicle convoy slowly pulled into the plaza.

But this time, Zhuang Xiao wasn’t so lucky. Maybe because too many people had been added to the line by that burly guy.

Only a few people from her group managed to board the vehicle.

Even worse, two of them voluntarily gave up their seats to others.

That was…

As they walked past her, she heard them muttering that it was pointless to go anyway—anything you harvested might get robbed by that group.

Zhuang Xiao: …

So, was she just not fated to go to the wheat collection area today?