RIACMET chapter 75

 

“Brother Jing is the best.”

Flirting a little was fine, but now that they were holding hands, it really felt like a secret date. Jiang Nian’s heart beat faster, and his ears felt hot.

To distract himself from the rising heat, he cleared his throat.

“Malls like this in industrial zones sell everything. Usually, aside from clothes and food, there’s also a jewelry or gold shop on the second floor. A big fire can burn everything else to ash, but some precious metals can’t be destroyed.”

“…You want to find gold.”

Cheng Jing smiled and gripped his hand even tighter. As expected, his wife was smarter than anyone else.

People used to say that antiques were valuable in prosperous times, but gold always held its value in tough times. Gold is a hard currency in every era. Before the apocalypse, he’d visited several gold shops and stockpiled a lot of gold.

During the early days of chaos in Qingyun City, while everyone else was busy gathering food and clothes, he used his position to collect gold wherever he could. Naturally, he also took silver and other jewelry.

With the quantity of gold and jewels he now owned, he could take care of Jiang Nian for a long time after the world fell apart.

However, he hadn’t expected to find a gold shop in a shopping center in an industrial zone like this one. He’d assumed it was just a low-end supermarket selling daily necessities.

Jiang Nian nodded.

“Since we’re already here, maybe we’ll find something interesting.”

After all, when most people saw a burned-out place, they thought there wouldn’t be any food or clothing left, so they were too lazy to bother searching. Besides, many people subconsciously assumed that shopping centers in industrial zones wouldn’t be worth much and ignored them.

He knew about this because he’d once worked a summer job in a factory and visited a similar mall. Some malls had them and some didn’t, so he wanted to try his luck.

It wasn’t worth coming all this way just for that, but if you happened to pass by and find something, that would be good fortune.

Since there was no one else around, Jiang Nian started experimenting with his powers in different ways inside the abandoned shopping center.

More than ten minutes later, they found the jewelry stall. A few charred corpses were in the cage-like counter. They were a bit horrifying, so Cheng Jing cremated them on the spot.

Jiang Nian pressed his palms together and murmured softly to the pile of ash.

“Heaven and Earth, please help us find some gold, and let us do a good deed. Amitabha…”

People always said that gold was spiritual, so you had to say a few nice words when you took it.

“…”

Cheng Jing didn’t quite understand, but he respected it.

As the team’s captain, he was on high alert nearly every moment. Only when he was with Jiang Nian did he experience an unexpected sense of relaxation.

After murmuring to himself, Jiang Nian took out a small metal detector and a hand rake from his spatial ring, as there was no one else around.

“Heh heh! Finally, it’s my turn!”

They had prepared all sorts of things before the apocalypse—some ordinary, some luxurious, and some very simple. They basically had anything they could think of or might need.

There were so many items, big and small, that it was impossible to count them all. When you needed something, it appeared with just a thought. Never underestimate how satisfying that was.

Cheng Jing was pleased with his mental state. Once he turned on the detector, he picked up the rake and started panning for gold.

Soon after, the detector sounded an alarm and Cheng Jing swung the rake, digging out all sorts of gold jewelry, bars, and beads of different sizes from the pile of broken glass.

The sense of achievement from panning for gold reached its peak instantly.

“I’m a man, but I love gold!”

His eyes sparkled as Jiang Nian grabbed a few big gold chains.

Suddenly feeling proud, Cheng Jing reminded him,

“We already have a lot.”

Jiang Nian looked at him.

“In the future, I’m going to make a gold bed. I can’t even imagine how happy I’d be sleeping on a gold bed.”

“…”

Cheng Jing raised his brows and teased him shamelessly.

“One person definitely can’t imagine it. My imagination is much wilder.”

“Uh…”

Jiang Nian froze for a second; the image in his mind was definitely not normal. He rolled his eyes at the man, who was scowling and smiling simultaneously, and silently tucked the gold chain away.

Besides the gold, they found a lot of relatively intact silver jewelry and other accessories. They gathered everything up, and the total weight came to about thirty kilograms.

They stuffed it into a snakeskin bag and tossed it straight into the spatial ring.

There were two gold shops on the second floor of the mall. While Cheng Jing and Jiang Nian searched the second shop, their teammates finally came over, unable to resist any longer.

Cheng Jing was busy digging through the rubble with a rake while Jiang Nian grinned as he picked things out. When he saw them, he held up a handful of gold necklaces and waved them around.

“Come on, everyone—come get some gold.”

“… ”

Everyone was stunned for a moment, then realized what was going on and rushed over to help.

Huang Qian was the most enthusiastic.

“Xiao Nianzi, you should have told us earlier!”

Liao Yu followed along, fawning shamelessly.

“Godfather is wise! Even if I had another head, I’d never have thought of this.”

The others all agreed. They knew he was searching for gold, but they hadn’t realized it would be here.

Jiang Nian waved a hand.

“I was just speaking from experience as a worker. I only wanted to try; I wasn’t sure if we’d find anything. It would’ve been embarrassing if I’d been wrong.”

“Hahaha…”

“…”

Just imagine the whole team rummaging through the trash and finding nothing. That would have been quite a scene.

With Zhao Lei, the metal-powered mutant, here, the gold, silver, and various accessories were quickly gathered up.

Jiang Nian divided the loot on the spot. After all, he couldn’t use the spatial ring in front of Yang Kai, so dividing it up made it easier to carry.

He didn’t take out what he’d already found. He and Brother Jing wouldn’t forget their teammates even when they became wealthy.

After clearing out the jewelry stores, everyone searched the other shops but didn’t find much else.

It took them an hour to leave the burnt-out mall.

They walked along the alleyways of the industrial zone and ran into plenty of zombies. When they saw that time was running short, they took a different street back to the parking lot.

Many people had come to the industrial area that day. The entire time, they could feel eyes watching them from the buildings along the street, so they had to stay on high alert.

This wasn’t the base; there were plenty of people who were scarier than zombies.

Some people left the base not only to hunt zombies or scavenge for supplies but also to rob their fellow survivors.

However, their team looked formidable enough that even though those eyes in the dark were full of hatred, no one dared to act.

Just as they were about to reach the parking lot, five men in protective masks approached, dragging two disheveled women behind them.

Without warning, Lu Ningzhou raised a wall of earth about a meter high in front of the team, creating a safe distance and avoiding trouble.

Seeing this, the other group stood on the opposite side of the earth wall and spoke in rough voices:

“Brothers, you have a fine team. Would you like to trade 500 crystal cores for these two women?”

As he spoke, he repeatedly squeezed the exposed skin of one of the women in a vulgar manner. The woman bit her lip hard and looked up at him with pleading eyes.

The women were showing too much, and the unmarried men in the group didn’t dare look directly at them.

Just as Cheng Jing and Huang Qian stepped forward to introduce themselves as members of the rescue team from the base, Jiang Nian suddenly sensed two strange supernatural power fluctuations coming at them simultaneously.

The next second, Cheng Jing and Huang Qian both froze midstep. Jiang Nian’s face darkened instantly, and he looked at the two women with a cold gaze.

“Superpowers.”

As he spoke, he flipped his hand, lifted his gun, chambered a round with a click, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.