My Dating Sim Just Got an Update - Chapter 80

Mu Ning said she would provide two extra nuclei as compensation, and she really did fish for another hour until she had hauled in two more Level 6 mutant fish.

As the sun began to sink toward the horizon, Mu Ning signaled for everyone to pack up. They prepared to board the bus back to the base, their haul even more substantial than the morning’s. Before leaving for the beach that afternoon, Chen Gu and the others had specifically bought a large number of bamboo baskets in addition to the iron buckets they used earlier. That morning, several survivor teams had already sought out the basket weavers to buy supplies; when Chen Gu’s group returned for more in the afternoon, the craftsmen were beaming. They had a feeling that by tomorrow, even more people would be coming to buy their baskets.

Just as Chen Gu and the others were loading the baskets of seafood onto the bus, a loud honk sounded from behind. Everyone turned to see Qi Sheng’s familiar RV.

“Hey, Brother Sheng! How was your harvest today?” Chen Gu waved enthusiastically at the RV.

The RV slowed down and pulled over to the right of the bus. A window rolled down, revealing Qi Sheng’s face, which didn’t look particularly good. “Did you encounter any more Level 6 mutant beasts this afternoon?”

“No. Why, what happened?” Mu Ning met Qi Sheng’s gaze calmly.

Hearing her answer, Qi Sheng let out a long sigh and said in a heavy voice, “We went to the beach you were at this morning.”

“Did you run into a Level 6 fish?” Chen Gu cut in curiously.

“A Level 6 fish would have been fine! But we were attacked by a Level 6 mutant jellyfish!”

“A mutant jellyfish?” Chen Gu let out a startled cry. He immediately thought of that white, translucent mass he had helped the Boss pull in earlier.

Qi Sheng assumed Chen Gu was simply frightened by the idea of a jellyfish. He nodded and continued, “And it was a highly venomous one!”

“V-venomous…” Chen Gu recalled the narrow escape from earlier and stammered, “Was… was someone hurt?”

“No…” Qi Sheng’s expression darkened further. “One of my brothers was stung just once by its tentacle. He was gone on the spot…”

“Gone…”

Chen Gu was so shaken he could barely catch his breath. Mu Ning turned to glance at Ren Chenxi. When that white Level 6 monster had attacked her with its tentacle earlier, she hadn’t thought much of it; she had only wanted to tighten her vines and haul the damn thing ashore. It was Ren Chenxi who had shoved her out of the way and then used her cards to kill the creature instantly.

This person, Mu Ning thought, sometimes she’s so sharp and sarcastic, but in her heart, she still cares about me.

While Mu Ning’s mood lightened, Qi Sheng’s was heavy with regret.

“I shouldn’t have been greedy. I shouldn’t have wanted a Level 6 nucleus so badly that I went to that specific beach. If I hadn’t…” He trailed off, but in reality, if given the choice again, Qi Sheng would still have taken the risk.

“So… Brother Sheng, did you kill the jellyfish to avenge your brother?”

“No… when our group of ability users attacked it, it escaped directly back into the sea.”

“…” And then it came over to our Boss! Chen Gu thought, though he didn’t dare say it out loud. He couldn’t provoke Qi Sheng by telling him that the Level 6 jellyfish that killed his man was easily dealt with by Ren Chenxi’s “head-exploding” ability.

Qi Sheng took Chen Gu’s silence as fear. He gave a bitter laugh, waved at everyone, and the RV slowly drove away.

Once the RV was out of sight, Ren Chenxi gave a cold “tch” of disdain. “What a hypocrite.”

“Eh?” Chen Gu was confused by her sudden remark.

“We were attacked by the jellyfish about an hour ago…” Seeing Chen Gu’s confusion, Mu Ning explained with rare patience. “Since it came from their direction, Qi Sheng’s group must have been attacked even earlier. If they truly cared about their dead teammate, why did they linger on the beach so long before returning? They surely weren’t holding a funeral service in the middle of a danger zone.”

 With that, Chen Gu understood what Ren Chenxi was sneering at.

If they really wanted to bury their teammate properly, they should have brought the body back to the base immediately. The wasteland was full of danger; if you just dug a hole and left a body, hungry mutant beasts would inevitably dig it up. Qi Sheng’s “brotherly” sentiment clearly didn’t go that deep. If he didn’t bury the man, then the only reason he stayed so long was obvious: the seafood on the beach was more important than his brother’s corpse.

“But… Qi Sheng is the base leader. I guess he has no choice?”

After a long pause, Chen Gu could only manage that one sentence.

As the leader of a base in this chaotic world, food and power always had to come first.

The encounter with Qi Sheng’s team was just a brief interlude. In this harsh world, people died every day, both inside and outside the base. Chen Gu shook off his gloom and went back to loading the heavy baskets of seafood. On the bus, Tantan—having played his fill—was curled up obediently on the window seat Ren Chenxi usually occupied. When she boarded, he let out a few “meows” only to be ruthlessly picked up and placed on the floor. Ren Chenxi then pulled a towel from her bag and meticulously wiped the sand off the seat.

Ren Chenxi could sit on the sand herself without a care, and she had stepped into the water earlier without hesitation, leaving her pant legs soaked. But this bus wasn’t just her property; someone else might sit in this seat tomorrow. Seeing Tantan flop his dirty body onto it felt to her like seeing someone put their muddy shoes on a bus seat in the pre-apocalypse world.

“Meow meow meow…” Tantan didn’t understand why his acting cute didn’t get him a hug. Instead, he was dumped on the floor. Feeling aggrieved, he rubbed his head against Ren Chenxi’s legs repeatedly.

Once she finished cleaning the seat, she looked down at the persistently affectionate cat and let out a long sigh instead of picking him up. She had been so worried about him running into the sea that she completely forgot how difficult it was to clean a long-haired cat covered in sand. Looking at his wet, clumped fur matted with grit, she felt a massive headache coming on.

“Go ahead and meow all you want! When we get back, I’m shaving all this long hair off!”

“Meow meow meow—” Tantan seemed to understand the threat and continued to act pitiful. From the seat across the aisle, Mu Ning watched Tantan rubbing against Ren Chenxi’s legs and wore a look of pure schadenfreude.

Heh, you little brat, you finally got what was coming to you.

Since so many survivors had gone to the beach and most had successful hauls, Ren Chenxi suggested that they shouldn’t open the barbecue stall for the next few days. This would prevent the stall from being overwhelmed by chaotic crowds and keep Huo Keyu and the others from working themselves to death processing everyone’s seafood.

This proposal was immediately welcomed by Huo Keyu and the other non-ability users. They had been busy at the beach all day; despite the harvest, they were exhausted. They preferred to spend their evenings resting.

In the end, Ren Chenxi didn’t have the heart to shave Tantan. She remembered how he looked when she first found him—filthy, diseased, and forced to be bald. Now that he was so beautiful and healthy, she couldn’t bear to see him like that again.

In the bathroom beautifully “renovated” by Tang Ying, Ren Chenxi spent quite a while cleaning Tantan’s fur. Although he looked like a disaster when they returned, she brushed him every day, so his fur was usually smooth. Even when wet and sandy, a few thorough rinses were enough to wash the mess away. Giving him a bath turned out to be easier than she expected.

Of course, this “ease” was only possible because Tantan was well-behaved in the bath, and because Mu Ning’s water ability meant Ren Chenxi could use “precious” water resources without a second thought.

Yes, precious water resources.

She only truly realized this when Liao Lan and Li Jie showed up again, shamelessly asking Mu Ning for a bit of water. Ren Chenxi, who had spent the last three days giving Tantan lavish baths, felt a momentary wave of dazed realization.

Over those three days, Ren Chenxi and Mu Ning had gone to the beach every day just like the other survivors. It was mostly Mu Ning; her obsession with fishing had reached a near-manic state. The number of Level 6 nuclei stored in Ren Chenxi’s backpack for her had reached forty-three. If Qi Sheng knew this, he would probably lose his mind too. Besides the Level 6 nuclei, there were fifteen Level 5 ones—some from Mu Ning’s first day of fishing, and others from when Chen Gu’s group was attacked by Level 5 crabs, lobsters, or fish over the following two days.

Perhaps because of the increasing number of ability users on the beach, the mid-level sea monsters lurking in the depths had begun to swarm the shore like bees to honey, attacking those scavenging for low-level food.

On the first day, Qi Sheng’s team lost a member to a Level 6 jellyfish. By the second day, word spread through the base of other teams being attacked by Level 5 and 6 monsters. Some were lucky and escaped; others were unfortunate and lost several teammates at once.

Because of the massive harvests seen on the first day, other cautious survivors were green with envy. By the second day, almost every able-bodied person in the base had rushed to the coast. Even “leech” teams like Li Jie and Liao Lan’s followed the crowd, hoping to scavenge for cheap gains.

Everyone had ignored the fact that the base leader’s team had lost a man on day one. Everyone assumed the beach was a giant cake waiting to be sliced—just dig a little and take home a fortune.

But they forgot that wherever there are many people, mutant beasts are attracted. The vicious predators in the sea were no exception.

By the third day, there were even rumors that one survivor team had been completely wiped out. Another team had lost more than half its members.

That team, the one that lost more than half its members, was the team belonging to Li Jie and Liao Lan.

It seems the “honeymoon phase” of the beach harvest is over.

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