Seeing lody Sumrs approach, Officer Sean Pierce smiled and stood up to greet her. "Comrade Sumrs, what can I do for you?"
Officer Sean Pierce had a very good impression of lody Sumrs. After all, the special dicine she had donated had been a godsend for the ergency response office.
lody Sumrs told Officer Sean Pierce what she had encountered at the Oceanus Hotel.
After finishing her account, lody Sumrs added, "Officer Pierce, the front desk staff told my uncle to his face that they can provide ’special services’ for certain custors. On top of that, there have been frequent robberies in the alley not far from the back of the hotel. I’m eighty percent sure there’s sothing fishy about that hotel."
Officer Pierce frowned in thought after listening. "We can’t determine if there’s truly a problem with the hotel based on differential pricing alone. As for these ’special services’... rest assured, I’ll report this to my superiors. The relevant departnts will send people to investigate."
lody Sumrs could only nod. She knew she didn’t have any concrete evidence, and these clues alone weren’t enough to prove anything.
But she felt she at least had to get the hotel on the police’s radar. That way, if anything happened in the future, they could respond in a tily manner.
’And then there’s Flynn Adler...’ lody rembered that in her past life, Adler Enterprises had been colluding with foreign powers from the very beginning of the cataclysm. They had exploited governnt support and subsidies for desalination companies to embezzle and transfer state-owned assets, and had been investigated for it several tis.
The only reason lody knew about this was because Sylvia Lancaster had once co ho and bragged about it to Robert Lancaster as if it were a point of pride. Sylvia had praised Flynn Adler for being so clever and acting so quickly, destroying the evidence right before the state investigation began and leaving the authorities to co up empty-handed.
Although lody didn’t understand the intricacies of it all, she decided that as soon as she got back, she would write a flurry of anonymous tips to every relevant departnt, hoping to spur the governnt into investigating these matters ahead of ti.
*
That evening, after the supermarket closed, lody Sumrs, Winnie Sumrs, and Colin Sumrs walked ho together, flanked by mbers of the neighborhood patrol, which gave them a great sense of security.
As they walked, they discussed how in the ti since they had moved out of The tropolis Residences, five more elderly people living alone on the upper floors of Buildings 3, 8, and 9 had died from the heat. By the ti they were discovered, they had been dead for two days.
The seniors’ families were all out of town and couldn’t make it back, so they had entrusted the property managent office with handling the final arrangents.
Then there were the two pregnant won in Buildings 7 and 4. With the public healthcare system paralyzed and private hospitals being unaffordable, they had no choice but to watch online tutorials and give birth at ho on their own.
One of the won had a difficult delivery, resulting in the death of both mother and child. The other, despite a safe delivery, couldn’t afford the steep electricity bills, so she turned off the air conditioner at night. The newborn didn’t survive the high temperatures and passed away.
lody Sumrs sighed. She knew from her past life that this heatwave would kill a great number of people, and she had steeled herself for it. But hearing about these tragedies happening one after another in the very complex where she used to live still made her heart ache. All she could do now was pray for ti to pass more quickly.
When the three of them returned ho, their grandmother, Miss Lowell, and their aunt had already prepared dinner.
Winnie Sumrs and Colin Sumrs were stunned to see the table laden with food. Winnie asked, "Mom, where did all these vegetables co from? Didn’t we empty the fridge before we left?"
Her grandmother, who was just bringing a dish of sautéed potatoes, eggplant, and peppers to the table, smiled and replied, "Oh, I was thinking we wouldn’t have any fresh vegetables for the next few days. We were even planning to rehydrate so of the dried ones from the pantry. But then, Thorne from next door unexpectedly brought over so many! We’ve put the hardier ones in the refrigerator—it’s packed to the brim. We also blanched and froze so things, like the green beans, and pickled a few jars of vegetables."
Her aunt chid in with a smile, "This will be more than enough to last us until the vegetables in our garden are ready to harvest. And if worse cos to worst, we still have plenty of dried vegetables in the pantry! We definitely won’t be running out of greens."
Miss Lowell added with a smile, "He brought lots of fruit, too—so much, in fact, that we’ve already cooked down the more perishable ones into canned fruit preserves to make them last longer. We thought the fruit trees in the backyard were done for, but after we cooled the area with the air conditioner and gave them so water today, they’ve perked right up. Now we’ll have no shortage of fruit at all."
The al was a feast of ten full dishes, with both vegetables and at, including a plump young lamb that lody had just butchered that day. The Sumrs family ate until they were stuffed.
Between cleaning the house, stocking her store, and shipping orders, lody was completely exhausted. But now that she was finally back in her own ho, she slept soundly and peacefully.
*
The items lody had listed in the Arcadia Store a few days prior were almost completely sold out, and user reviews had started to trickle in.
"User xxx: Arcadia finally restocked! The prices are quite a bit higher, but the quality is impeccable. These grapes sll amazing!"
"User xxx: I honestly haven’t had such a fragrant mango in forever. The mangoes from Rhodes are just sweet and sour; they don’t have that rich mango aroma. Arcadia is still the gold standard."
"User xxx: This lamb isn’t gay in the slightest; it even has a faint, milky fragrance. I was just about to reorder, how is it already out of stock?"
"User xxx: My employer yelled at for not managing to buy any lamb, but thankfully I got the offal. I was all prepared for the hassle of cleaning it, but it arrived already perfectly prepped. You guys did such a clean job—not a speck of anything left. Thank you."
"User xxx: Is there really no hope for more wild mushrooms? My employer’s family ntions them every single day. If you get them back in stock, they’re willing to pay up to 500,000 per portion."
’Wild mushrooms?’ lody paused. She decided to go to The Arcadian Woods another day and see if there were enough to stock a new batch.
After scrolling through the reviews, lody went to check the residents’ group chat for The tropolis Residences.
"7-408 Gone with the Wind: That wriggly white bug is on my window again. It bites, doesn’t it?"
"6-501 Suzy: They do. I’m on a lower floor and one crawled onto our window. My kid was being naughty and tried to grab it to play with and got bitten."
"5-1107 Azure: Aren’t those things poisonous? I rember hearing the Desert Vines are highly toxic. Is your kid okay?"
"6-501 Suzy: They’re a little bit toxic, but it seems to be okay. The area around the bite looked pretty scary, all black and blue, right after it happened, but my kid didn’t say it hurt, and it went away after a little while."
"Property Managent Center: To all residents, the white bugs that have been spotted around the complex have hatched from eggs within the Desert Vines. Experts have nad them Sandvine Worms. The flesh of the Sandvine Worm is non-toxic and edible. Its protein content is eight tis that of beef, and it can be captured and processed as a dietary protein supplent.
Sandvine Worms have teeth in their mouthparts, so please take care not to be bitten when attempting to capture them. We advise against trying to capture worms that are on the Desert Vines. If you must do so, please use proper tools. The complex is currently experiencing a shortage of the specific antidote, so anyone injured by Desert Vine thorns will be responsible for their own consequences."
"5-1706 Adian: Um... could you please not remind us that sand vine cakes are made from bug larvae? My boyfriend is terrified of bugs, and he has to overco a massive psychological hurdle just to eat them. Now that you’ve ntioned it, he’s run off to vomit again."
"4-1209 Fishing: To be honest, I used to be afraid of bugs, too. But during this apocalypse, I’ve realized they’re just beautiful, beautiful protein!"
"2-1908 Coco: Right now, it looks like these worms are the only source of protein I have access to. Forget real at; you can’t even find at-flavored starch sausages on the market anymore."
"3-1007 Kiki, Mom of Two: Last night, my Buddy and I went out in the dark with a cell phone for light and caught 10 of them. You can grab them easily with chopsticks. We were originally planning to keep them in a jar for the kids to play with, but as soon as we heard you could eat them, we imdiately pan-fried them. The aty aroma was incredible, and my two kids polished off all 10 in one sitting. [Image] [Image]"
"4-1209 Fishing: I’m going to go catch so after sunset! Not now, though. It’s way too hot."
"..."
Many people were already coming to accept the Sandvine Worms. After all, they were a rare source of protein.
lody put down her phone and went with Albus into The Arcadian Woods to dig for so wild mushrooms.
She hadn’t harvested any for so ti, and after a period of recuperation, The Arcadian Woods was experiencing another mushroom boom.
Having learned from last ti, lody had read up on the subject and acquired so professional knowledge. Now, after each harvest, she was careful to cover the soil to maintain the mycelium, hoping to make her harvests sustainable.
lody priced this new batch of wild mushrooms at 450,000 per portion. She had observed that The Arcadian Space was the sole source for this particular variety.
In addition to the wild mushrooms, lody also harvested so honeycombs and processed them into several hundred jars of honey, which she priced at 100,000 per jar.
Back at the auction in The Nimbus Hotel, lody had witnessed wealthy individuals casually dropping tens or even hundreds of millions on jewelry and art. It was clear these people were fabulously rich, so she no longer held back when setting her prices.
Both the wild mushrooms and the honey were snapped up the mont they were listed. Many custors bought 10 or 20 portions at a ti. lody and Albus rolled up their sleeves and began shipping, preparing to hit their ten "small goals."
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