C13 Chapter 13

“I won’t do it again. I swear—I won’t.” Wu Xiaowu clutched his broken leg and rolled around on the ground in agony, hating Sunn Tiantian with everything he had.

He’d just gotten back from the clinic that morning when Sunn Tiantian came looking for him, saying she had a way to help him get revenge. She told him to bring some guys and wait at a certain spot—someone would lead Liu Wenmei there. As long as they subdued Liu Wenmei, they could do whatever they wanted with her, and Sunn Tiantian would cover for them.

He’d shown up all fired up with his crew, but Sunn Tiantian never told him Liu Wenmei was this tough. In just a few moves, she dropped all six grown men. Even Liu Wenkai—the quiet one—turned out to be vicious. He’d stepped in and snapped Wu Xiaowu’s leg like it was nothing. Right now, Wu Xiaowu felt like he could kill Sunn Tiantian.

Liu Wenmei wasn’t surprised at all by how ruthless Liu Wenkai was. After all, he was the kind of guy who’d nearly managed to take down Sunn Tiantian. Without real nerve, he never would’ve gotten that far.

“Who beat you up today?” Liu Wenmei walked over to Wu Xiaowu and looked down at him.

Wu Xiaowu didn’t react fast enough. One of the men beside him hurried to answer, “We got into it over something stupid. We did it to ourselves. Mr. Wu’s leg—he fell out of a tree.”

“Yeah, yeah. We did it ourselves. I broke my leg falling.” Wu Xiaowu finally caught on and forced the words out through the pain.

Liu Wenmei gave them a satisfied look. “Good. Now get out of here. And if you see me again, go the other way.”

“Got it. Got it.” They hauled Wu Xiaowu up and rushed off.

With Gu Jianjun there, Liu Wenguang and Liu Wenkai didn’t ask how Liu Wenmei had gotten so strong. They just told her to head home soon, then went back to work.

Liu Wenmei checked the time and decided to make a trip up the mountain anyway.

There was nothing worth a damn around the outer edge. She followed the trail deeper in. The light faded, the trees grew thicker and thicker, and using her psychic power, she found a few nests of wild eggs along with a couple of pheasants and rabbits. She took them down with a few pebbles, stored them away, and kept moving forward.

She wanted to find something valuable. No matter when, medicine was always worth the most, and in the later stages of the apocalypse, the most lucrative jobs on the mission board were the ones that involved gathering medicinal herbs.

When the team took on assignments, she’d made a note of a few high-value plants and figured she’d see if this mountain had any.

Liu Wenmei had trekked a long way, and just as she was about to give up, her Psychic Power swept over a cluster of red berries. After checking it again and again, she finally confirmed it was wild ginseng. The discovery sent a jolt of excitement through her—ginseng was one of the most expensive medicinal herbs in the post-apocalypse.

She traced the ginseng’s roots with her Psychic Power, got a rough sense of where the rootlets spread, pulled out her shovel, and started digging.

She unearthed the wild ginseng quickly. By experience, Liu Wenmei could tell it was at least a hundred years old. She stored it in her space, then began searching the area carefully. A ginseng that old usually meant there would be smaller ones nearby.

Sure enough, before long she found several smaller ginseng plants that looked a few decades old. She quickly dug them up and put them into her space as well.

Then Liu Wenmei started heading back. She was already far from home—she’d crossed at least four or five ridgelines. This place really was incredible, she thought. Food was everywhere. Meat was a given; she’d already collected more than a dozen wild chickens and rabbits, plus a wild goat. Whenever she spotted wild boar, she gave them a wide berth—she wasn’t planning to take one on today.

There was plenty of fruit, too. She didn’t even know what region this was, but up in the mountains she’d found peaches, plums, guavas, mangoes, longans, blackberries, and raspberries. Even living through the apocalypse, she knew those plants weren’t supposed to thrive in the same place.