The Apocalypse Solution Provider

Chapter 5: A Society Both Familiar and Unfamiliar

“I’ve given you my name. For the rest of this conversation, I expect complete transparency. No omissions,” Su Jin stated. He pulled a pen and a notebook from his bag, raising his eyes to meet Fu Qingdai’s. “I want your daily routine, family dynamics, the exact wording of what the company told you, and the reason you’re locked up in a psych ward.”

Fu Qingdai gripped her knees, her voice earnest. “I’m not crazy. I was sent here by mistake. I’m a student at Longshan Middle School, and it’s just my parents and me at home…”

Su Jin listened intently, nodding in acknowledgment.

The fact that she wasn’t clinically insane was a mild surprise, though obviously a positive metric.

Judging by her daily life, this world’s social structure was nearly identical to Earth’s, just lagging a few decades behind.

He had lived through a similar developmental era in his youth. Adapting to this environment wouldn’t be an issue; the learning curve was practically zero.

Fu Qingdai continued her breathless recounting. When she brought up her nightmares, Su Jin’s pen abruptly halted. “You’re saying there’s an issue with the rain? A five-day downpour, followed by mass hysteria, cannibalism, and total societal collapse?”

“Yes…” she whispered.

Su Jin’s jaw locked. A phantom fist seemed to squeeze his heart.

He had bitten the bullet and accepted this transmigrational nonsense. He even had a heads-up about the impending apocalypse.

A zombie outbreak wasn’t exactly out of left field, all things considered.

But the vector of infection was rain?!

Omnipresent water contamination. Water was the absolute baseline for survival. If the water supply was compromised, it was a guaranteed game over.

“Cousin… are you okay?” Fu Qingdai asked timidly, noticing his thousand-yard stare.

Suppressing a shudder, Su Jin forced a stiff smile. “I’m fine. Keep going. You mentioned the company in your dream. When exactly did they contact you, and when did they send the notification regarding my arrival?”

“I only found out about the company and your arrival a few days ago.”

“A voice just echoed in my dream. It said it was from the Heavenly Dao Company, and asked if I wanted to live. I said yes. Then it announced that the contract was sealed, and an agent would be dispatched to assist me. After that, total silence… That’s pretty much everything.”

“Sounds accurate. That’s standard company procedure,” Su Jin replied smoothly, while internally cursing up a storm.

What absolute mobster logic! Shoving a gun to someone’s head and calling it a negotiation. Who doesn’t want to live? Wanting to survive equals signing a binding contract?

He had clicked a damn mouse and ended up on an interstellar labor dispatch.

However, there was a glaring bug in Fu Qingdai’s timeline. She had been notified days ago, whereas he had only been ‘hired’ by the Heavenly Dao Company a few hours prior.

A massive temporal discrepancy. Was it a side effect of the transmigration?

Could the company predict the future? Was this heavily premeditated?

The background variables were too complex to debug right now, and Fu Qingdai’s intel on their ’employer’ was practically zero.

But analyzing this single data point, it was obvious: if he failed this task, he would lose all access to the company’s network.

Simply put, failure was not an option. He had to hit his KPIs.

Swearing viciously in his head once more, Su Jin pressed his pen to the paper. “Let’s move on. Hold your questions until I’ve finished my intake.”

“Okay,” Fu Qingdai replied meekly.

“How many days until the rain hits? Do you have a precise countdown?”

“Seven days from today. I remember the date perfectly!”

“Seven days…” Su Jin muttered. “Within that timeframe, can you get yourself discharged? Play the victim, fake a recovery—whatever it takes to get sent home?”

“I don’t know. I’ve begged to go home, but my mom insists I stay for treatment. She is worried, though; she visits every day.”

“Alright, we’ll bookmark that issue for now… Are there any rental properties near your residence? The closer, the better.”

A faint spark returned to Fu Qingdai’s eyes. “Yes! There are several units for rent right in my apartment building. They have phone numbers taped to the windows.”

“Hmm… Give me the rest of your daily routine, and tell me more about your parents.”

Ten minutes later, Su Jin halted his pen once more.

He had extracted a decent baseline regarding the impending apocalypse and mapped out the socio-cultural landscape.

But with a hard deadline of seven days, he needed to accelerate the timeline.

Fu Qingdai seemed sharp enough, but her street smarts were non-existent.

Probing further into her personal life might just yield biased data that could corrupt his planning.

Twirling his pen idly, Su Jin pivoted the interrogation. “What’s the monthly burn rate for your family of three? What’s your parents’ combined income?”

Fu Qingdai blinked, momentarily thrown by the corporate phrasing. “They both make over two thousand… I think we spend about two thousand a month.”

Su Jin pressed on. “Is this a society governed by the rule of law?”

“Huh? Of course it is. We have plenty of laws.”

“If a scandal breaks out at work or school, does resolving it require pulling strings and utilizing personal connections?”

“Well, obviously. How else would you get anything done?”

“Understood.”

He tapped his pen against the notebook, calculating. “Would you classify yourself as attractive?”

“Um… isn’t it obvious?”

“What about me? How would you rate my appearance and wardrobe?”

“You’re quite handsome… Your clothes look nice too, just incredibly warm for this weather.”

“Are there any AV stores, wet markets, or internet cafes in the vicinity?”

“We have the first two, but I don’t know what an internet cafe is.”

“What is the molecular formula for water?”

“H2O.”

“Right… Do you get a period? Do you use sanitary napkins?”

“Excuse me?!” Fu Qingdai’s pale face flushed crimson.

“Answer the question, efficiency is key!”

“…Yes. I do…”

Firing off a rapid succession of similar questions, Su Jin finally snapped the notebook shut and leaned back to process the data.

Legal infrastructure was superficial; societal operations ran heavily on nepotism and personal favors.

T-minus seven days until a localized apocalypse. A continuous five-day torrential downpour, followed by psychological breakdowns and suspected zombie mutations.

The total AoE of the rainfall was unknown. Local law enforcement would inevitably collapse within hours. The military was completely off the table for short-term reliance.

On a molecular level, the water was identical to Earth’s and perfectly safe to drink now. However, the impending contamination effectively deleted ‘wilderness survival’ from his options. He lacked both the capital and the time to construct a proper shelter, and kidnapping Fu Qingdai by force was structurally unfeasible.

Fortunately, the seven thousand-odd cash on hand had solid purchasing power. It would just barely cover rent and a basic stockpile of supplies. Establishing a base camp near her apartment was the optimal play.

Culturally, linguistically, and aesthetically, this dimension was a mirror match to Earth. Seamless integration would be a breeze.

For the next seven days, he needed to keep his head down. No breaking laws, no drawing aggro.

As for the rest of the operational details, he’d have to scout the field manually once he left this ward…

Mid-thought, a glaring error flagged in Su Jin’s mind!

He grabbed his pen, hastily scribbled “H2O” on the notepad, and shoved it toward Fu Qingdai.

“Do you recognize this syntax?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Fuck!”

“Why are you swearing at me?” Fu Qingdai shrank back, utterly bewildered. “What is that? I really don’t know it…”

Damn it all!

Su Jin scowled, the realization hitting him like a freight train.

He could perfectly parse this world’s spoken and written language, and his own speech was flawlessly translated. It had to be a passive buff from the company, or maybe the mask.

But the actual, physical characters he wrote were completely illegible to the locals!

Renting an apartment required a signature on a binding contract. If his handwriting looked like alien chicken scratch, that was a massive operational hurdle.

Navigating the glitch, Su Jin ripped a blank page from his notebook and handed her the pen.

“Write two characters for me: ‘Su’ as in ‘awaken,’ and ‘Jin’ as in ‘ashes.’ Press down hard. Stroke by stroke.”

Confused but thoroughly intimidated, Fu Qingdai obediently complied.

When she finished, Su Jin snatched the paper back and scanned it.

Staring at the two familiar Chinese characters, he reached around and traced his index finger over the back of the page.

Feeling the indentations left by the pen, a wave of profound exhaustion washed over him.

It matched the name on his generated ID card, but the tactile feedback of the strokes was completely disconnected from the visual output his brain was receiving!

The company’s auto-translate patch had a massive bug… Since he couldn’t remove the mask, he was reduced to feeling out the physical indentations just to learn how to forge his own damn name.

Tucking the makeshift signature guide away with a heavy sigh, Su Jin muttered, “That concludes my inquiry. The floor is yours.”

Fu Qingdai gave a jerky nod. Gathering whatever scrap of courage she had left, she voiced the burning question in her mind: “Cousin… you’re an alien, aren’t you?”