In the evening, Yang Mei made a WeChat video call to her maternal grandmother and Yang Xia.

“Qingqing just came back and bought us clothes and dinner! You don’t have to worry!” Yang Xia said.

Through the video, Yang Mei saw several gift bags on the bed. The brands of those clothes weren’t cheap! The three thousand yuan she gave Qingqing was probably only enough to buy one piece of clothing.

There was also hot porridge and take-out xiaolongbao on the table.

The two chatted for a while, and Yang Mei closed the WeChat video.

“What time is it? Why isn’t dinner ready yet? Do you want to starve this old woman to death?” A robust old lady said.

This woman wearing a cheongsam and with permed curly hair was Yang Mei’s mother-in-law, a genuine Shanghai woman.

“It’s not my mom; she came with my sister. We chatted for a few words. I’ll go make dinner now.”

Yang Mei put on her apron and went into the kitchen to prepare dinner, feeling more and more aggrieved.

She had been taking care of her mother-in-law in this family for over ten years, and when her own mother came, she couldn’t even take care of her.

Soon, she had prepared several side dishes.

Lin Zhen also came back in the evening.

The dishes on the table were exquisite and delicious, but someone was still dissatisfied.

“This meat is a bit tough,” the mother-in-law frowned and complained, spitting a piece of meat out of her mouth.

Lin Zhen, upon hearing this, angrily said, “Cook the meat softer next time! Don’t you know Mom’s teeth aren’t good?”

Yang Xia swallowed a breath and, thinking of the three thousand yuan she had transferred to Xia Qing, said, “I’m out of money this month. Transfer me some household expenses.”

Upon hearing this, Lin Zhen angrily threw his chopsticks and said:

“Out of money? Out of money again? I give you ten thousand yuan a month! How did it disappear in just a few days?”

“My mom and my sister came, and I transferred them a thousand yuan.”

She didn’t dare say it was three thousand yuan!

“Didn’t the hotel already get booked for them? What do they need money for?”

“You just had to call them over for the engagement banquet tomorrow night!”

Yang Mei suppressed her anger, but still gently said, “It’s my son’s engagement; how can I not invite my family?”

“What’s the point of them coming? Buying them round-trip tickets and booking a hotel costs tens of thousands of yuan. Don’t you know how hard I’ve worked to earn money these past few years?”

“Son’s engagement, wedding! The bride price, the house, the car, which one isn’t reliant on me?”

“And our daughter Nuan Nuan wouldn’t attend university properly and insisted on becoming a star! She hasn’t even debuted yet!”

Yang Mei felt less confident after being criticized. She was eating their food, after all.

“Stop arguing! It’s giving me a headache! I told you long ago not to marry a country woman! Too much trouble and too many poor relatives!”

Yang Mei’s face was extremely ugly. Looking at the exquisite dishes on the table, she suddenly felt a little dizzy.

For so many years, she had diligently taken care of the two children, served her father-in-law, and after his death, she served her mother-in-law.

Today, she picked up her sister and saw that her sister was living happily in the countryside. Her brother-in-law called her twice along the way.

She suddenly made a decision and said, “Then I’ll go out and find a job in the future. As for Mom, if it doesn’t work out, hire a nanny to take care of her.”

Yang Xia put down her chopsticks, went straight into the room, and locked the door.

She called her son, but was afraid of making him worry. She couldn’t get through to her daughter.

So, she called Yang Xia, and there was some noise on the other end.

“We’re at the Oriental Pearl Tower! Qingqing brought us here for a boat ride!”

The signal was a little bad with the roaring sound in her ear.

“This boat and this tower are so big! This building is so tall!” Yang Xia said excitedly.

Yang Mei saw them on a tour boat in the video, with the Shanghai Tower opposite them.

She had never been there properly.

After hanging up the phone, Lin Zhen knocked on the door outside, his attitude unusually softened.

“Isn’t it just a thousand yuan? It’s harder and more tiring to go out and find a job. What can you do at your age?”

“I’ll transfer 2000 yuan to you. Take good care of Mom at home!”

“I have something at the company, so I’ll leave first.”

Yang Mei looked at her phone. Lin Zhen had transferred 2000 yuan to her.

Hiring a nanny, especially one to take care of the elderly, would cost at least ten to twenty thousand yuan a month. Who could tolerate her mother-in-law’s temper?

Xia Qing took her maternal grandmother and Yang Xia for a walk around Shanghai. They went back to sleep after that.

She wasn’t sleepy at all and was still very energetic, looking at her bracelet, which showed she had walked twenty thousand steps today.

Her physique had really improved after absorbing the crystal bead!

She bought a lot of Shanghai’s signature xiaolongbao and soup dumplings and put them all into her space.

Buying a large quantity of supplies would be too conspicuous, but buying small batches was still possible.

Su Yu had cleared all the zombies around the villa area.

“As expected of a villa, the interior decoration here is really comfortable!!”

“Brother Yu, this mural on the wall looks quite valuable, right?”

“Brother Yu, I think this porcelain dish is also quite valuable!”

“Just keep them all!” Su Yu shook his head helplessly. These past few days, Wang Qiang had wanted to pack anything valuable he saw and take it back.

Su Yu entered the space and saw that half of the cabinet was empty, so he filled it up again. Not only that, but he also packed a set of lyrics.

He remembered that Xia Qing wanted novels, and these lyrics should also be useful to her!

Su Yu took out the steaming xiaolongbao. Xia Qing had bought ten baskets.

He and Wang Qiang each took five baskets. He was afraid of getting burned, so he waited a bit before eating.

Where could Wang Qiang wait? He swallowed one whole, nearly burning his mouth, but he couldn’t bear to spit the xiaolongbao out.

These past few days, following Brother Yu, he had truly been eating his fill every meal, and he felt that his strength had increased a lot.

Wang Qiang mumbled, “Good, delicious!”

“This generator is fixed. The power is okay! Just not very big.”

“Let’s just make do for now! In a few days, everyone will migrate over here.”

“Better to build a railing and wall—then it’ll be much safer.”

In the afternoon, they returned to the base, which now clearly bore signs of a struggle.

Li Yao, relieved to see Su Yu return, exclaimed, “Yu-ge, you’re finally back! These dozen or so people must have heard somewhere that we have food here—they came to rob us!”

Li Yao had injured his head, and several of the others suffered wounds of varying degrees.

“The leader—the evolver—was captured by us. This group is simply no match for us.”

The dozen or so people who had burst in looked dismal; they hadn’t eaten in ages, were weak, and yet still tried to seize their food!

“Don’t kill us! We just want to eat something! We really can’t go on living!”

“Don’t—don’t eat us!”

Some of them had become so frightened that they even began exhibiting signs of panic.

The leader evolver was brought over.

Su Yu examined him and asked, “Where did you come from?”

“Wushan City.”

Su Yu frowned slightly; that place was about a hundred to two hundred kilometers away.

“We fled all the way here, only to find that every place is the same—plants withered, no food, and cities infested with zombies.”

“We originally had over a hundred people, but now there are only about a dozen or so who made it here with me!”

“We barely escaped with our lives from another group—those people specialize in hunting living humans! They eat people!”

At these words, everyone’s scalp prickled; although they had heard of cannibalism, they had never witnessed it firsthand.

“Don’t eat me! Don’t eat me!”
Among the captured dozen or so, those words frightened some so much that they nearly wet their pants, and a pungent odor filled the air.

Su Yu and the others took a few steps back.

“How did you find your way here?”

“We overheard someone saying that valuable items could be exchanged for food, so we followed those people here!”

Originally, they thought it was a lie—but once they actually saw the food, these people couldn’t help but rush over and grab it frantically.