Chapter 84: Startled Awake

Chen Mu recited the External Duty Team's list again, and Chang Junyan was instantly dumbfounded.

I had thought he would be frightened and try to get out of it, but in the next instant he sprang up and said, 'So does that mean I can go out and see for myself?'

This left Chen Mu bewildered.

Is this even a good thing?

"You have some talent for defense; staying at home all the time is a waste. Go out and train—your ability might even break through."

"Okay."

Chang Junyan nodded, then, thinking like a normal person, asked, 'Will there be danger?'

Chen Mu smiled and said, 'Danger is certain, but unless we face enemies we cannot predict, there shouldn't be any problem; in fact, staying at home isn't completely safe either.'

After confirming the four‑member list of the External Duty Team, Chen Mu said, 'Now the problem is where we should go to find food. Most foodstuffs are concentrated in the cafeteria, and we don't even know if we can still get into that storage room we visited last time.'

"I don't advise you to go back there," Tang Jing said.

"But other places…"

"Our current food will eventually run out; sooner or later we all need to find a new way out, so perhaps we should adapt to the survival rules of the apocalypse ahead of time."

"What?"

"The original source of human food…"

"Hunting?"

"Exactly."

"So are we supposed to go back to the idea of eating ants and bugs?"

That remark made everyone feel uneasy.

"For now, this is a stage we must go through. Looking at human evolution, we originally survived by picking up leftovers other animals had eaten; as our numbers grew, that pattern could no longer meet our daily food needs, so we gradually evolved into hunting ourselves."

"This is an extremely lengthy stage; our ancestors lived by gathering wild fruits and hunting animals for hundreds of thousands of years before gradually developing herding and farming, leading up to the present."

"But eating animals and eating insects are two different matters." As a chef, Du Jia Jia will be the first to handle the ingredients; obviously, how to cook an earthworm is a serious question.

"All I can say is, you'll get used to it." Tang Jing spread her hands helplessly; clearly she herself doesn't want to accept this fact either.

"But we can't live on meat alone, can we?"

"If we ration the vegetable packs, they'll last about three months; I just hope we can come up with some other solution within that time."

"Are there any edible plants among the wild grasses?"

"Most plants contain only coarse fiber and hardly any nutrition. Some wild grasses have rhizomes and shoots rich in carbohydrates that are edible, but the problem is that what the school plants are mostly ornamental greenery; if we tried to eat them, there might really be nothing…"

"Succulents should be edible, right?" Zhu Hao asked.

"Exactly, I've heard many people eat cactus."

"There's some behind the teaching building."

Tang Jing laughed and said, "Indeed many succulents are edible, the most typical being ice grass; besides that, the others aren't much good."

"Things like stone lotus and cactus used to be touted as weight‑loss remedies, with effects such as lowering blood sugar, reducing cholesterol, and eliminating fat."

"Isn't that great?" Zhao Xiao Yan's eyes lit up.

"But we don't need to lose weight now; on the contrary, we need high‑calorie food. Of course I'm not saying those things contain no calories, but their cost‑to‑benefit ratio is too low—it would be a lot of effort to bring them back, and they wouldn't keep long unless we could haul back an entire pot of succulents."

"So does that mean we'll hardly be able to get vegetables from now on?"

"For the time being, it's indeed troublesome; by the school's scenic lake, wild water bamboo used to grow each year—a decent food source—but harvesting it is difficult, and the earliest we could get it would be autumn."

"Let's not think about those for now; I feel we should focus on hunting for the time being, with earthworms and ants as the main targets." Chen Mu interrupted the discussion about vegetables; obviously those ideas are still too far off.

Dong Junwei said, "Earthworms are actually not bad—high in protein, and if prepared the way Chen Mu previously suggested, they might be acceptable."

"What method?" Du Jia Jia asked curiously.

"Decompose them, then roast them into jerky—it's easy to store and won't evoke unpleasant associations."

"What about ants?"

"Ants might not be as good as earthworms." Chen Mu said; "When I dissected one outside last time, most of it was organs and intestines."

Tang Jing, however, shook her head and said, "Most of an ant's muscle is in its legs, which are very dense—actually they make quite good food."

Chen Mu blinked, then understood, nodding and saying, "So all we need to bring back next time are its six legs?"

"Well, after roasting, I'd estimate it could be like fried chicken legs, with even firmer meat." Tang Jing tossed out a joke.

"But how are we supposed to solve the staple food issue?" Dong Junwei asked.

"That really is a problem; carbohydrates are also important."

"We can only rely on luck." Chen Mu sighed: "I still plan to make another trip to the cafeteria."

"Yi Zhong's people…"

"It's precisely because of Yi Zhong." Chen Mu narrowed his eyes: "The location of Qingbei is unclear, but on the Yi Zhong side, He Ying has already scouted it out; I want to go take a look—on one hand to see if there's any other food, and on the other hand, it's also a case of knowing oneself and knowing the enemy."

From his tone, Dong Junwei sensed he was up to something and worriedly asked, "Isn't that too risky?"

Chen Mu chuckled, "Lately… I haven't had any major problems; I'll be very careful."

Since he said that, the others couldn't really object.

After a busy day, everyone was exhausted and went back to their rooms to rest early.

Sealing the door gaps will still take three or four days; only after it's finished will Chen Mu go outside. Although we still have about a month's food supply, we naturally ought to plan as early as possible, especially since not every outing guarantees a haul—we need to keep some leeway.

Chen Mu quickly fell asleep; his daytime consumption was mainly mental energy, so his need for sleep is greater than others', yet for some reason his sleep quality is high, and he actually sleeps less than other people—clearly his sleep is light, making him easy to startle awake at night.

This night was no exception.

In the middle of the night, Chen Mu was startled awake by some sounds again.

That's not surprising, since tiny flying insects or the like often bump around, making noise; they appear occasionally during the day too, but they're harmless to people and so small that even now they're hardly different from the sparrows of before.

However, tonight's sounds seemed somewhat different.

After being startled awake, Chen Mu maintained his original breathing rhythm, gently turning his body; he had originally been nearest the door, and through the gap in the plastic door, aided by moonlight, he finally made out the situation outside.

Those were a few furtive figures.