Apocalypse Star Hous Chapter 12

“Xixi!” ng Lu hurried, running a few steps to catch up with her. “Yuxi! Wait for !”

“What is it?” Yuxi stopped walking.

“I haven’t seen you these past few days. Are you still mad at ?”

Yuxi really didn’t like this roundabout way of speaking: “I’m asking you, what do you want?”

ng Lu looked at her, montarily speechless, her attention drawn to Yuxi’s clothes. The black down jacket just reached her thighs, looking light and soft, with a fur-lined hood that made it very warm.

L Island doesn’t have winter, so there were no such warm items as down jackets. The rescue team only distributed blankets and fleece clothing. Even wearing multiple layers and wrapping in blankets was still cold, let alone it was impossible for everyone to get several pieces of fleece clothing.

Most survivors who were at the Wanghaishan Hotel during the tsunami still had the warm clothes they brought from their ho countries, and down jackets like this weren’t very valuable.

ng Lu rembered she also had a similar lightweight down jacket in her suitcase. When they left the capital, it was winter, so when they arrived in Haiguo, she couldn’t wait to take off the bulky winter clothes and stuff them into the bottom of her suitcase. She had despised it then, but now she missed it dearly.

They had all co on this trip as part of the sa tour group, so why was Yuxi so lucky? Suddenly, a strange and absurd thought popped into ng Lu’s mind.

ng Lu shivered and directly asked, “Did you know about the tsunami in advance?”

“What are you talking about?” Yuxi’s expression didn’t change at all.

ng Lu looked at Yuxi, seeing confusion and puzzlent in her eyes but no guilt or panic.

Of course, how could that be possible?

She rembered why she had called Yuxi, suppressing the anger from Yuxi’s cold attitude and the absurd thought: “You saw what happened just now. Fang Zichen is just a jerk, and I don’t want to live with those two anymore. Are you staying on the north side of the mountain? I heard there are many guesthouses there. The conditions aren’t as good as here, but many rooms are empty. I want to move there with you.”

“That’s your business. You don’t need to discuss it with .”

“Yuxi! How can you be like this…”

Her raised voice softened again, and her tone beca more gentle, “Xixi, we’re friends. In tis of disaster, we need to take care of each other. Staying at the guesthouse costs money, and you know all my belongings were lost in the tsunami. I just want to borrow so money from you or share a room with you. Also…”

She leaned in closer and lowered her voice, “I have a lot of food and drinks. I can bring everything…”

ng Lu’s aning was clear: she had no money but wanted to move to the guesthouse area, so she needed Yuxi’s help. But she wasn’t asking for help for free; she was willing to contribute supplies, planning to take all three people’s supplies.

Anyway, Fang Zichen was currently at the temporary hospital with Mang Mang, so the room was empty.

“If you have many supplies, moving to the guesthouse area is simple. So places there are already accepting supplies as rent.”

In Yuxi’s opinion, ng Lu didn’t need her help at all. “I have things to do, and you don’t have much ti either. Let’s not waste each other’s ti.”

With that, she bypassed ng Lu and walked through the lobby towards the hotel’s annex.

ng Lu then realized that the once easily appeased and obedient friend was long gone. The current Yuxi was cold and distant, not soone she could placate with a few words.

“Forget it!” she gritted her teeth and ran towards the main building’s ergency exit.

She didn’t have much ti. That green tea bitch probably wasn’t seriously hurt and would co back soon. She needed to return to the room to pack up and leave as soon as possible.

Yuxi knew the floor and room number of Yuan Qi and the others from their registration cards.

The annex was much shorter than the main building. This building had few family suites and mostly single and double rooms, catering to backpackers who liked to travel alone.

Since the rooms were small, the survivors assigned here were mostly family units, without arranging strangers to share a room. This made the atmosphere and environnt much better and more harmonious than in the main building.

However, there were occasional exceptions.

As Yuxi stepped into the fifth-floor corridor, she heard exclamations and saw a dark-skinned man running towards the stairs. Soone tried to stop him halfway, but he was scared off by the man’s knife. The man kicked him away and continued running with a large bag in his arms.

“Find a way to stop him!”

“Be careful! He has a knife!”

…

The man brandished the knife with a ferocious expression: “Get out of the way!”

Several voices sounded at once, mixed with a child’s crying.

Yuxi recognized a familiar voice among them. She sidestepped slightly, a thought crossing her mind, and a three-section baton slid out from her down jacket sleeve. With a flick of her wrist, the tal baton extended fully, and she swung it towards the man’s face with a blank expression.

With a heavy thud, the man, who had not expected her to strike, was caught off guard. The force of her blow, combined with his montum, left a deep cut on his face. He cried out in pain, stumbling. Yuxi took advantage of his unsteady stance to strike his arm again with the baton.

This ti, his hand shook, and the bag fell to the ground. He instinctively reached to pick it up, but Yuxi twisted his arm and forcefully stepped on his wrist.

Yuxi then saw Yuan Ning, who was on the verge of collapsing from chasing the thief and aggravating her wound. Yuxi hurriedly reached out and steadied her as she arrived and almost fell.

“Thank you,” Yuan Ning said with pale lips, giving her a helpless smile, “I owe you again.”

A mont later, in Yuan Qi’s room, Lin Wu, who had been notified, finished treating Yuan Ning’s abdominal wound. He packed away the gauze and tools into the dical kit. “It’s only been three days; the wound can’t heal this quickly. If you keep pushing yourself, find soone else to treat you next ti.”

“Thank you.” Yuan Ning pulled her clothes back into place and nodded at him. “Okay, I understand. I’ll find another doctor then.”

Lin Wu chuckled in exasperation and turned to Yuxi. “Thanks to you today. The rescue team said he’s a repeat offender. After the tsunami, the situation beca chaotic, and several criminals escaped from the local police stations. Since so people’s identities were unclear, they didn’t register with the data center. There have been a few thefts in hotels and guesthouses in the past three days. You just caught one of them.”

The large number of people on the mountain, the complexity of the situation, and the power cuts had halted the surveillance. The rooms’ electronic locks were no longer functional, so survivors had resorted to various makeshift locks or simply left their rooms unlocked, creating opportunities for miscreants.

In the hotel’s annex, families, won, and children were more common, while n were fewer. When two adults went to collect supplies, one child was often left in the room. So people had taken advantage of this.

Lin Wu stayed in the room for a while, naturally exchanging information with Yuxi. He first discussed the situation in the hotel area and then asked about the situation in the guesthouse area.

While Yuxi spoke, she noticed Lin Wu and Yuan Ning’s thoughtful expressions, giving her a hunch about their intentions.

Sure enough, after Lin Wu left, Yuan Ning imdiately proposed relocating their accommodation.

“We have money and supplies,” Yuan Ning said, looking at Yuan Qi. “My sister is conservative and brought a lot of cash with her. She didn’t leave it behind when organizing her backpack. There are more people here, and with the disconnection from the outside world and sudden drop in temperature, things will get chaotic sooner or later. The rescue team consists of surviving police officers and governnt personnel from the island. They are few in number and lack proper weapons, yet they oversee all the supplies on the island. Once things get chaotic, it will be hard to control the situation.”

Yuan Qi was also frightened by today’s events. She had gone downstairs to collect supplies, and Yuan Ning had gone to check on a strange noise in the next room. She found a fifteen or sixteen-year-old boy gagged and tied up in a corner while a stranger rummaged through their supplies.

The people in that room were the ones who ca with them from Coral island. They usually helped each other with minor matters, but this incident was unexpected.

Yuan Ning’s wound hadn’t healed, and with the boy being threatened, she was in a passive position, allowing the thief to escape. Luckily, Yuxi appeared.

The boy’s arm had a deep cut and bled a lot, but he was otherwise okay, and nothing was stolen. Yuan Qi, seeing the boy, thought of her own three-and-a-half-year-old son. What if he encountered such a situation?

Although the guesthouse area wasn’t necessarily safer, there were fewer people. If Yuan Ning could rest and heal, they wouldn’t be as vulnerable in the future.

Finally, Yuxi led Yuan Qi and her companions back to the guesthouse area.

As they left, a woman from the neighboring family of three peeked out and asked where they were going, then retreated without a word of thanks, as if blaming Yuan Ning for not protecting her son from the injury.

Yuan Ning sneered, and Yuan Qi sighed, patting her sister’s shoulder. She picked up her luggage and followed Yuxi out of the annex.

Yuan Ning and her group negotiated the rental of a family suite at the guesthouse, adding a five-kilogram bag of rice, a bag of ham sausages, five packets of instant noodles, and ten potatoes to the original room rate.

When Yuxi accompanied them to act as a translator, the guesthouse owner and his wife were huddled over an old radio, trying to tune in to a station. She overheard that the situation outside was still bad; the surrounding island nations and even the distant mainland had been hit by the tsunami.

The boss and the landlady listened with worried expressions, so in addition to money, they also required food. The original room rate, plus so food, would allow them to stay in the suite indefinitely.

Yuan Ning thought this was a fair deal. She took out her phone to record the terms of their agreent on the room rate and then moved in.

The room was just below Yuan Ning’s, but it faced south, not north, and didn’t have a balcony, but it had two windows.

Looking north, you could still see a sea of floating debris and corpses. Yuan Qi didn’t have the ntal fortitude to handle that, and with Yuan Yuan, a south-facing room was better.

This guesthouse’s location was not ideal. So far, its only guests were Yuxi in the north-facing room on the fifth floor, four young won from the capital in the south-facing family suite on the second floor, and Yuan Qi’s family on the fourth floor.

However, Yuan Ning was satisfied. The conditions t all her requirents, and Yuan Qi was even happier because the guesthouse had a communal kitchen on the first floor, equipped with cooking utensils, dishes, and a stove for burning wood.

She had grown up in the countryside, so what was difficult for others was a piece of cake for her.

So that afternoon, while Yuxi pondered what to have for lunch from the variety of dishes in her Star House storage, wrapped-up Yuan Yuan knocked on her door.

“Sister Xixi, Mom and Auntie want to invite you to have lunch with us!” He was holding a toy dinosaur and wore a hooded long down jacket, his face red from warmth.

Yuan Qi was a very ticulous person. Even though they were on a tropical island, she had packed several pieces of warm clothing in their large backpack.

She probably thought they could wear them once they were rescued and returned ho, but it turned out to be a lucky coincidence that helped them deal with the sudden cold snap.

Yuan Yuan forgot his lines midway and turned to the other end of the corridor to seek help from his aunt, finally managing to complete the invitation.

Yuan Ning walked over slowly and patted Yuan Yuan’s head: “I owe you a few favors and don’t know how to thank you. The best I could think of was to invite you for a warm al. My sister has made so food, nothing fancy, just sothing to warm your stomach.”

Yu Xi, who never ate dry rations and had gained three pounds from eating warm als every day, only hesitated for two seconds before agreeing: “Okay, I’ll just lock the balcony and co right down.”

“Yuan Yuan, wait for your sister downstairs!” Yuan Yuan was evidently happier than Yuan Ning. Although he was young, he could sense the tension in the air these past few days, especially after witnessing his aunt fighting with soone today.

Having Yuxi join them for lunch was a happy event for him.

After Yuan Ning and Yuan Yuan went downstairs, Yuxi locked the balcony door and took out two self-heating tomato beef hot pots from her Star House storage, putting them in her backpack.

The suite downstairs was large, with a bedroom, a living room, and a long table that could seat six.

At this mont, the table was set with four bowls of rice, a dish of fried carrots and luncheon at, a dish of shredded carrots and potatoes, egg-coated fried bread slices, stir-fried cabbage, and a seaweed and egg soup.

It seed like a simple al, but it was not easy to prepare. Rice, cooking oil, carrots, and potatoes were easy to co by, but eggs and cabbage were not.

Due to their perishability, there was limited stock, and survivors had only received one or two fresh leaves in the past three days. The vegetable soup was made with dehydrated vegetables, and egg supply had stopped since yesterday.

Yuxi quickly realized who had gotten these ingredients: likely Lin Wu. She suspected so sort of private agreent or cooperation had started between him and Yuan Ning when they went to the supermarket for supplies. Of course, this was just a guess and couldn’t be confird, as it was their private matter, and everyone had secrets.

Just like she did now when taking out the food: two self-heating hot pots, three boxes of coconut drinks, a large bag of pork jerky, and two apples, placing them on the side table as gifts. Yuan Ning was probably suspecting the sa thing—after all, Yuxi had initially left the dock with just a large backpack.

Yuxi’s self-heating hot pots were clearly not from L Island. While they fit in her backpack, most people would prioritize dry goods when fleeing, and hot pots took up a lot of space and weren’t considered dry goods.

But she needed help for her plan to leave the island, and executing it would inevitably reveal so secrets. She was testing the waters with this gesture.

“You’re just coming over for a casual al; why did you bring gifts?” Yuan Qi didn’t think much of it, assuming the hot pots were brought from ho by Yuxi.

In normal tis, these wouldn’t be a big deal, but in the current situation, they were very precious. She wanted to refuse, but Yuxi insisted, so she accepted, silently resolving to save so food for Yuxi when she cooked porridge or rice.

After lunch, Yuan Qi planned to take the dishes to the kitchen downstairs. She would wash them between 7 and 8 p.m. when the water and power ca on. She had used purified water to cook lunch, asuring it carefully to avoid waste.

Yuxi helped Yuan Qi tidy up, with Yuan Yuan seriously wiping the table with tissues.

Then, Yuan Qi took her son into the bedroom for a nap, and Yuxi offered to have a chat with Yuan Ning.

“You want to leave on your own?” Yuan Ning was surprised, having expected a discussion about supplies.

Yuxi nodded: “The extent of the tsunami’s impact is beyond our imagination. Instead of waiting here, it’s better to save ourselves.”

The plan to leave the island had three challenges: first, a reliable boat; second, enough fuel to reach the nearest mainland; third, soone who could navigate the sea and find their way.