Chu Che watched the ceramic cup hit the table, his left eye twitching in a spasm of genuine emotional agony.

That had been Pu’er tea. Vintage. Part of his personal collection from before the world ended.

When the apocalypse broke, most people scrambled for canned food, batteries, or weapons. Chu Che had grabbed his tea leaves. In this hellscape, every sip was a non-renewable resource. You couldn’t buy this with gold; once it was gone, it was gone forever.

He barely drank it himself, rationing it out like liquid mana.

And Nana had just downed it like cheap tap water. To make matters worse, she had chewed up the tea leaves and swallowed them whole. It was the definition of casting pearls before swine.

“Captain, stop being such a miser,” Nana complained, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “You give me a thimbleful every time. It’s barely enough to wet my whistle.”

Chu Che stared at the empty pot, the veins on his forehead throbbing. She ate the leaves. She actually ate the leaves.

Nana smacked her lips loudly, oblivious to his internal crisis. “Not bad, though. I feel a bit of energy coming back.”

Chen Ye sat silently, observing the interaction. The woman was gorgeous—a delicate, high-maintenance beauty on the outside—but her actions were as crude as a barbarian’s. It was a jarring contrast.

However, her lack of formality signaled something important: she considered Chen Ye an insider now. His performance in Longevity Village had earned him a seat at the table.

“Cough.” Chen Ye cleared his throat, steering the conversation back to business. “Uncle Abao, what’s the final headcount?”

Uncle Abao, standing stoically by the tent flap, didn’t sugarcoat it.

“We started with 124 people in the convoy,” the older man said, his voice gravelly. “We’re down to 44. Between the raid on Longevity Village and the attack last night, we lost eighty souls.”

He paused, letting the weight of the number settle. “Current breakdown: 16 men, 28 women.”

A heavy silence descended on the makeshift command tent.

Eighty dead in twenty-four hours.

Before the system descended, a mortality rate like that would have dominated global news cycles for weeks. Governments would have fallen. Memorials would have been built.

Now? Nobody outside this tent knew, and honestly, nobody inside the convoy really cared beyond their own survival.

Even Chen Ye was slightly surprised by the severity of the loss. He had estimated a fifty percent casualty rate. The reality was much grimmer.

The discrepancy came from the gender split. The scavenging teams sent into Longevity Village were mostly men—stronger, faster, able to carry more load. High risk, high reward. Consequently, the men had been slaughtered wholesale inside the village.

Last night was simple natural selection: those with cars lived. Those on foot didn’t make it to the camp in time.

“What exactly happened in there?” Chu Che asked, finally tearing his eyes away from his empty teapot. “How did we lose that many effective combatants?”

Nana leaned back, recounting the events from the moment they breached the village entrance. She didn’t embellish, detailing the ambush and the layout. Chen Ye chimed in occasionally to clarify tactical details.

Chu Che, Uncle Abao, and Old Li—representing the comatose Iron Lion—listened intently.

When Nana described the village square, the blood drained from Uncle Abao’s face. A massive willow tree adorned with hanging Corpse Thralls like grotesque wind chimes.

Just imagining the scene made the ordinary humans in the tent shiver.

Then came the description of the Hunchback Thrall—the monstrosity with a human head grafted onto its spine.

“Wait,” Chu Che interrupted, his brow furrowing. “You’re saying the Hunchback Thrall didn’t attack you?”

Nana paused, blinking. Now that he mentioned it, the creature had been passive.

“That… is strange,” she admitted.

It defied the fundamental laws of this new world. Anomalies and humans were natural enemies. When an Anomaly spotted a human, it usually attacked with mindless, relentless ferocity until one side was dead.

“I can confirm that,” Chen Ye said, his voice low. “It didn’t engage. It just watched us. It felt… calculated.”

This was the detail that had been gnawing at Chen Ye since they escaped. The creature hadn’t been mindless. It had been waiting.

“What’s your read on it, Chen Ye?” Chu Che asked, shifting his gaze to the young man.

Chen Ye considered his words carefully. He didn’t want to cause panic, but they needed to know.

“I have a theory,” Chen Ye said coldly. “The Anomalies aren’t just getting stronger. They are evolving. They’re gaining intelligence.”

He cited the Hunchback Thrall in Longevity Village and the Weeping Paper Effigy back in Apricot Blossom Town. The Paper Effigy hadn’t been a genius, but it had shown intent—a rudimentary cunning that shouldn’t exist in a mindless monster.

The temperature in the tent seemed to drop ten degrees.

If the monsters started thinking, humanity’s odds of survival would drop from ‘slim’ to ‘non-existent’.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.

“Forget it,” Chu Che finally said, exhaling sharply. “No point dwelling on nightmares we can’t fight yet. The world is already fucked; let’s focus on what we can control.”

He tapped the table. “Let’s divide the loot.”

“Iron Lion is still out cold, so Old Li will accept his share. As agreed: I take thirty percent, Nana takes thirty. Chen Ye and Iron Lion get twenty percent each.” Chu Che looked around. “Objections?”

Chen Ye shook his head. “None.”

It was a fair deal. Chu Che hadn’t entered the village, but without his leadership and the convoy’s infrastructure, they would all be dead in the desert. Nana was a Sequence 2 powerhouse who had done the heavy lifting in combat.

Chen Ye knew he hadn’t yet proven his full value to the team. Walking away with twenty percent of this haul was already a massive profit.

“Let’s start with yours.”

Chen Ye nodded and hauled his two backpacks onto the table. They weren’t huge—one worn on the back, one on the chest—but they were packed tight.

He unzipped them and dumped the contents.

Thud. Thud. Clatter.

The table was instantly buried in a mound of red and gold packaging.

The first bag was almost entirely cigarettes. Huazi, Lotus, HTS—cartons ranging from high-end luxury to worker-grade smokes. He had also stuffed several bottles of Baijiu liquor into the gaps.

Back in the village supermarket, Chen Ye hadn’t bothered with rice or flour. He had swept the tobacco shelf clean.

The second bag contained high-calorie emergency rations. Spicy gluten strips, vacuum-packed snacks, and a heavy stash of condiments: jars of Lao Gan Ma chili crisp, soy sauce, cooking wine, and salt.

In the apocalypse, survival meant calories, but sanity meant flavor. These were essentials.

The commotion of the loot distribution drew the eyes of nearby survivors. Among them were the Zhou sisters, Zhou Lan and Zhou Xiaoxiao.

They hovered at the edge of the canopy, curious. They knew Chen Ye’s team had scored big, and they were hoping to barter for necessities.

When Zhou Xiaoxiao saw the pile, her face fell.

“Why is it all… junk?” she whispered, disappointment evident.

Zhou Lan immediately pressed a finger to her lips, shooting her sister a warning glare.

Around them, a low murmur rippled through the crowd. The reaction was split. Some looked confused, but the veterans—the ones who had survived the longest—stared at the table with burning, predatory hunger.

Chu Che picked up a carton of Huazi, inspecting it with a satisfied nod.

“Smokes and booze,” he mused. “Good haul. I don’t smoke, but this? This is hard currency.”

He tossed the carton back onto the pile. “Gold is useless. Paper money is toilet paper. But nicotine and alcohol? You can trade these for anything—gas, ammo, women, information. And best of all, they’re light. High value, low weight.”

“And the alcohol…” Chu Che’s eyes gleamed. “It sterilizes wounds, fuels lamps, and numbs the pain. It’s liquid gold.”

The greed in the surrounding eyes intensified. If not for the terrifying combat power of the Sequence Beyonders sitting at that table, the mob would have rushed them already.

Zhou Xiaoxiao blinked, surprised by the Captain’s assessment.

“Sis,” she whispered again, tugging Zhou Lan’s sleeve. “You can’t eat cigarettes. You can’t drink smoke. Why is everyone acting like he found a diamond mine?”

“Quiet,” Zhou Lan hissed, her voice low and urgent. “Look at their eyes, Xiaoxiao. Really look at them.”

Zhou Xiaoxiao curled her lip. What’s the big deal?

But she obeyed, scanning the crowd. She saw men licking their lips, their gazes locked on the red cartons. She saw hands twitching toward weapons. She saw a raw, naked desire that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with addiction and vice.

She didn’t smoke. She hated the smell of it. She didn’t drink.

But looking at the feral intensity in the eyes of the men around her, she realized she was missing something fundamental about how this new world worked.