My Dating Sim Just Got an Update - Chapter 60

The location of the underground warehouse entrance was clearly marked on the mini map. After entering the charred ruins of the supermarket, Ren Chenxi intentionally guided the group toward the entrance, casually nudging a few blackened shelves and asking the girls nearby if the structure behind them looked like a door.

Following her lead, several girls began vigorously clearing the piled-up shelves. With Lu Ping—the group’s primary strength-type evolver taking the lead, they easily moved the heavy metal racks aside, revealing a massive, soot-covered door. Although the steel door hadn’t been consumed by the fire, the intense heat had warped it, causing it to fuse almost seamlessly with the blackened walls. To an untrained eye, it was nearly invisible. It took several strength evolvers working together in a display of brutal, coordinated force to finally wrench the steel door open.

With a heavy thud, the door collapsed, revealing a stairwell corner. One flight of stairs led up, while the other descended into the darkness.

Outside the supermarket, zombies were still wandering around in significant numbers. However, the interior was a different story. The aisles were so cluttered with burnt debris and fallen rafters that there was hardly a clear path to walk, which seemed to have kept the zombies at bay. The stairwell itself was completely clear of the undead.

Chen Gu and the other boys consulted with Mu Ning before checking the upper floor first, hoping to find some leftover stock that might have survived the fire. They returned shortly after, covered in gray ash and soot. According to Chen Gu, the upper floor was even more of a disaster than the ground level; everything had been incinerated, the shelves were collapsed in tangled heaps, and sections of the ceiling had caved in.

That left them with only one option: the basement.

However, after seeing how thoroughly the fire and explosions had gutted the building, no one held much hope for the lower level. This was why Wei Yuzhe, the first one to reach the bottom and see the warehouse, let out a sharp, high-pitched scream of joy.

“What are you doing?! For a big, tough guy with such beautiful long hair, your scream is way too gir—”

Chen Gu, who was right behind Wei Yuzhe, didn’t even get to finish his teasing before he let out a similarly high-pitched, girlish shriek of his own.

“…”

While Chen Gu’s scream was a bit grating, the fact that two grown men had reacted that way told the girls everything they needed to know: there was something in the warehouse! And probably a lot of it!

The group surged down the stairs. When they saw the warehouse packed to the brim with supplies, they erupted into a collective, frenzied howl of excitement. It was hard to blame them for losing their cool. This was a literal mountain of resources! The rice, flour, oil, and grain alone were enough to sustain them for a year or two. In the two years since the apocalypse began, they had spent countless days scavenging, often having to fight others for scraps or settle for whatever leftovers the bigger groups had missed.

But now, this entire warehouse belonged to them.

“Sis Xi! Aah! You’re amazing! If you hadn’t suggested checking here, this whole warehouse would have sat here until everything rotted away!”

Several girls, unable to contain their euphoria, grabbed Chenxi and started jumping up and down in a group hug. Mu Ning, watching from the side, finally intervened with a cold reminder: “Enough. If you scream any louder, attracting zombies will be the least of your problems. If you draw in other passing survivors, are you willing to hand over half of this warehouse?”

The moment Mu Ning finished speaking, the room went dead silent.

Was she joking? Everything in this warehouse was theirs! No one was getting so much as a grain of rice!

Though they stopped shouting, the looks they turned toward Chenxi became even more fervent. Tang Ying whispered urgently to her, “Sis Xi, can your inventory really fit all of this?”

Based on the mini-map and the physical dimensions of the space, Chenxi estimated the warehouse was roughly two thousand square meters. She wasn’t entirely sure how many inventory slots a warehouse of that size would occupy. However, seeing the neat rows of items, she thought of the bedding she had stored earlier. Deciding to test it, she walked up to the nearest shelf and mentally selected it. In an instant, the massive rack—which reached all the way to the ceiling vanished, along with every item on it.

“Ohhh!” Even though they had seen her make the bus disappear and reappear many times, the sight of the giant shelf vanishing into thin air still drew a collective gasp of wonder.

Chenxi didn’t have time to worry about their expressions. She opened her backpack panel, found the slot for the shelf, and checked the info. Seeing the label “A Shelf of Goods,” she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Stuffing all this into my space shouldn’t be a problem. But.”

“But what?” they asked nervously.

“But if I just shove all these shelves in at once, they’ll all be squeezed together in one big mess. If I need a specific item later, it’ll be impossible to find.”

Since the stack limit for an inventory slot was 999, putting 999 shelves into a single slot would mean any shelf she pulled out would be entirely random.

“Then… can you categorize them as you store them?” Mu Ning suggested from the side.

Chenxi’s eyes lit up. Right! Why was I only thinking about using one slot? She could use one slot for food shelves, one for daily necessities, and another for miscellaneous goods. She had plenty of slots to spare! She nodded happily at Mu Ning, and the group began working systematically from the entrance. Under her direction, they organized the shelves so she could store them in an orderly fashion.

The once-packed warehouse began to empty out, foot by foot. When the final shelf vanished, the group was about to celebrate when they noticed a heavy, sealed steel door at the very back of the room.

Could there be another warehouse on the other side?

Riding the high of their massive haul, the young survivors greedily forced the steel door open. Unfortunately, while there was indeed a large amount of food on the other side, it was all frozen goods. After two years without power, the food in the freezer section had completely rotted. The moment the door was breached, an overpowering stench of decay flooded the room.

“Sigh…” It was a tragedy to see so much food wasted.

Someone let out a disappointed sigh, but the group couldn’t stand the smell for long. After a quick, foul-smelling check to ensure there were no other doors, they retreated back to the main warehouse. Seeing the empty space they had cleared, their spirits quickly rebounded. After all, they had just secured an entire warehouse’s worth of supplies!

With the warehouse cleared, they had to hurry back to the base. Although it looked like Chenxi was just “clicking” things into her inventory, sorting and labeling the items based on their contents had taken quite a while. Some goods were in unmarked boxes that had to be opened and verified. To make future retrieval easier, they had become more meticulous as they went along. By the end, the warehouse’s contents occupied over twenty of Chenxi’s inventory slots. The grains alone were categorized into rice, flour, and noodles!

By the time everything was stored, over an hour had passed. It had taken nearly an hour to get there, and the return trip would take the same. Chenxi was worried that by the time they reached the base, they would miss the window to pick up Huo Keyu and the others.

Her fears were realized. Despite their best efforts to rush back, it was past 11:00 AM by the time they reached the base. Chenxi, Jian Dan, and the others hurried to the quarantine area, but Huo Keyu and her group were nowhere to be found.

“Sis Xi, I don’t see Keyu anywhere!” Jian Dan and the others searched the immediate vicinity, even asking people entering quarantine if they had seen anyone leaving the rooms, but there was no sign of them.

If a group that large was waiting nearby, they would have been easy to spot.

“Sis Xi, do you think… Keyu was still worried about being a burden? Maybe she left the quarantine point and went to find her own place in the base?”

“Let’s go! Let’s check near the teaching buildings!” Chenxi agreed. Knowing Huo Keyu’s personality, that was exactly the kind of thing she would do.

As Chenxi and the others ran toward the teaching buildings, Mu Ning, who had gone to search in a different direction, appeared. Following behind her was Huo Keyu, along with the three S University students who didn’t have powers.

“Sis Xi!” “Sis Xi!”

Seeing Huo Keyu, Chenxi felt a wave of relief. Before she could even ask where they had been, Song Xin and Chang Ling rushed forward.

“Keyu! Honestly, where did you go? I thought you were going to abandon us!”

“How would we dare abandon you?” one of the students laughed. “We came out of the quarantine rooms and didn’t see anyone, so we thought you had abandoned us!”

Though she knew they were joking, Chenxi stepped forward to explain seriously, specifically addressing Huo Keyu: “We wouldn’t. We would never leave you behind! We just went to check the underground warehouse of that supermarket we passed yesterday…” Chenxi knew what Huo Keyu had endured since the apocalypse began; she had been betrayed by friends and was understandably sensitive. Chenxi didn’t want her to misunderstand.

“We guessed as much~” Huo Keyu smiled and shook her head, signaling that she hadn’t doubted them. “You said yesterday that you’d come for us.”

“Right! I will always come for you!” Chenxi grabbed Huo Keyu’s hand and led her toward the villa district. “Now, let’s go to our new home together.”

“Okay~”

Mu Ning followed silently behind them. Watching the two of them walking so closely together, her heart began to feel that familiar, sour twinge again.

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