Monday.

Step one of the plan: find the repeater.

While Bai Yang was dozing off in school, Ban Xia was racing down Zhongshan Gate Street on her beaten-up bicycle.

Purple Mountain was very close to Meihua Villa. Ban Xia pedaled her bicycle along Lingyuan Road deep into Purple Mountain. The straight asphalt road had shrunk to two-thirds its original width, with soil slowly encroaching from both sides. Nature’s skin was healing itself, mending these crisscrossing rigid scars. The girl passed through dense tree shadows, her wheels rumbling over the road surface, occasionally startling rabbits and pheasants in the roadside brush. She followed BG4MXH’s directions to find the repeater station, but before reaching the ticket booth at the entrance to Meiling Palace, the road was cut off by a massive crater seven or eight meters in diameter.

“Stop stop stop stop stop stop—!”

Ban Xia frantically squeezed the brakes, put both feet down, and scraped up gravel with her shoe soles, barely managing to stop the bicycle before the road’s edge.

She dismounted, removed the sunglasses from her nose bridge, and twirled them on her index finger.

What a huge crater.

At least three meters deep.

Ban Xia crouched at the crater’s edge, looking down at the pale, dry soil beneath the broken asphalt. A few scattered weeds grew in the crater.

Most likely this was a bomb crater.

Perhaps created by a heavy bomb.

But this wasn’t the largest bomb crater Ban Xia had seen. The biggest one she’d seen was near the Southern Library. The last time she went there to look for materials, she saw a massive crater at People’s Life Plaza opposite the library. She didn’t know what had caused it, but all the surrounding buildings had collapsed into ruins.

The girl straightened up and looked around, searching for any crashed aircraft nearby.

Generally, where there were craters there had been intense fighting, and where there was fighting there might be destroyed weapons—fighter planes, armored vehicles, and such. Although those burned-out metal shells weren’t much use, Ban Xia habitually looked for them.

As she looked around, the high branches and leaves above suddenly rustled.

“Wow… what’s that?”

Ban Xia was startled, looking up.

A pale yellow, composed giraffe face peered down from the treetop. It was truly an enormous head, both big and long, topped with two short horns, with huge wind-catching ears spreading out on both sides, and those damn eyelashes immediately caught the girl’s attention—how could eyelashes be so thick?

Ban Xia stared at it dumbfounded, her neck aching from looking up.

The giraffe showed no concern about the human’s presence. It continued contentedly chewing its leaves, at most glancing at her twice before returning its attention to food.

Only then did Ban Xia notice its long legs hidden behind the dense shrubbery, yellow skin with irregular dark spots. This two-story-tall giant creature stretched its neck to pick only the tender leaves at the treetop. Soon a second giraffe head appeared, and the two giraffes feasted here heartily, their large nostrils exploring, tongues curling to pull down tender leaves along with twigs, stuffing them into their mouths with loud “munch munch” chewing.

The teacher had said there were giraffes on Purple Mountain, but this was Ban Xia’s first time seeing them.

They weren’t just alive—they were thriving.

Purple Mountain’s giraffes had escaped from the zoo years ago, and they had adapted well to the environment here. The climate had changed dramatically in the apocalyptic era, with the most notable change being increased humidity and generally higher temperatures year-round, providing excellent breeding conditions for flora and fauna.

Ban Xia simply sat down, propping up her head to watch the giraffes.

She watched from eight o’clock until eight-forty as the two giraffes leisurely ate their breakfast.

Ban Xia observed them eating selectively, pulling down leaves, chewing them, and then spitting them out. As the only giraffes in all of Nanjing, or even the entire Jiangsu Province, they were thousands of miles from their African homeland, had never seen their relatives back home, and didn’t even know other members of their species existed, yet they lived carefree lives.

The giraffes moved away while grazing, and the girl stood up, dusting off her bottom.

Looking across the crater, she saw the road conditions were extremely poor, the surface severely damaged, and the vegetation increasingly dense. Probably impossible to cycle through.

“No way through here.” Ban Xia shook her head decisively. “Time to head back.”

The road conditions made it impossible to continue.

If she couldn’t go up, she wouldn’t. Time to go home.

“Can’t get up Purple Mountain—!” Bai Yang turned to shout toward the door. “The vegetation’s too dense, can’t gauge the depth! Too risky! Try somewhere else—!”

In the living room outside, Bai Zhen and Wang Ning were tinkering with equipment while complaining about how the people from the city committee this afternoon didn’t understand anything.

Hearing Bai Yang’s voice, they looked up at each other.

“If we can’t get up Purple Mountain, where should we look?”

“Zhujiang Road,” Bai Zhen said, screwing in bolts. “Sega Digital Plaza, the computer mall—that place has more electronic components than anywhere else.”

For scavengers, post-apocalyptic Nanjing was a treasure trove. The street of phone shops and digital ports on Zhujiang Road—these electronic components, motherboards, and cables that couldn’t be eaten or worn were worthless to most people in the post-apocalyptic era. In ordinary people’s hands, they were no different from garbage, but in the eyes of those who knew better, this was gold.

Go to Zhujiang Road! Loot Zhujiang Road!

If you’re willing to dig, you’ll always find what you need.

“There’s also the Jiangsu Radio Administration Bureau at 280 Zhujiang Road,” Wang Ning nodded. “They usually confiscate lots of illegal radios and repeaters, all stored in their warehouse. We’ll find something there.”

“Is that the one on top of the Zhujiang Building?”

“Right, right, a pink building with China Merchants Bank on the first floor,” Wang Ning said. “It’s on the 23rd floor, there’s something there, guaranteed.”

“Tell her to go to Zhujiang Road—!” Dad shouted at the door. “Bring a big sack, better yet a cart, and loot all the computer malls and phone shops over there! Bring back everything she can haul!”

Tuesday.

Ban Xia set out from Meihua Villa with a list and pulled a small cart.

Zhujiang Road was quite close too—up Muluxuan Street, turn at the former National Government site, then up Qingxi Road. The whole journey took about an hour to reach Zhujiang Road.

She held the list BG4MXH had given her last night. Last night, Bai Zhen and Wang Ning had schemed loudly over Baidu Maps, going through the street shop by shop, marking the worst offenders as priority looting targets, especially those who had cheated them before—better to kill too many than let any escape. Finally, they realized that even if they eliminated three out of every two shops in the computer mall district, some would still slip through the net.

Swindlers, all of them swindlers.

The two quickly drew up a physical list, dubbed the Divine Punishment List of Swindlers, and gave it to BG4MSR.

They instructed her to go through it shop by shop.

Ban Xia pulled her small cart along the main road alone. It was overcast today, with no sun, and the sky and city were both gray. She walked down the center of the road, each step landing on the double yellow lines.

The road was empty of people, but abandoned cars remained, scattered chaotically across the road and sidewalks, covered in dirt and fallen leaves. When a vehicle blocked her path, the girl went around it, and when cow dung blocked her path, she went around that too, slowly moving forward.

White-barked phoenix trees grew in the green belts along both sides of the road. All the buildings were silent. Ban Xia looked left and right at the colorful signs hanging low over the sidewalks—”Yifeng Pharmacy,” “China Merchants Bank,” “Huamei Beauty Hospital.” Some doors were tightly shut, others wide open. Ban Xia occasionally paused to peek inside. She could stand tall like a queen, but unfortunately, there was no one to cheer where she went. This was her city.

And it was a city of just one person.

Ban Xia looked down at the list in her hand: Buy Now, Sega Plaza, Pacific Security, and the Jiangsu Radio Administration Bureau. The focus was the Radio Administration Bureau because that’s where the repeater stations were.

She didn’t know what a repeater station looked like. BG4MXH had described it as a black rectangular box with a metal case and handle, containing two small amateur base stations. It looked like a computer tower but shorter and fatter.

“You carry the pole, I’ll lead the horse!”

Ban Xia softly began to sing.

“Welcome the sunrise, bid farewell to sunset—!”

Wang Ning and Bai Zhen saw the Nanjing University people at the door, then both collapsed onto the sofa, letting out long sighs.

The Nanjing University people were even harder to deal with than the city committee people.

They lay on the sofa, both covering their faces with their hands and taking deep breaths.

“That bastard Old Zhao.”

“That asshole Zhao.”

Zhao Bowen was quite cunning. Wang Ning and Bai Zhen thought Professor Zhao had arranged everything properly before leaving. Whether it was the city committee or Nanjing University, people would come to help provide resources and solve problems. Who knew Old Zhao hadn’t said anything—he told the city committee people that his friend at the Radio Commission had intercepted suspected foreign spy communications and asked them to investigate along with security departments. He told his Nanjing University colleagues that his friend’s computer had contracted an unheard-of rare virus that automatically looped pornographic videos on startup and couldn’t be fixed, asking if they could help repair it. So they had eagerly come over.

As soon as they arrived, they asked where the computer was.

This completely confused Old Bai and Old Wang.

The two spent an entire afternoon explaining the situation, angrily calling Zhao Bowen in the process. Zhao Bowen argued forcefully on the other end that you had to trick people to come first, then they would seriously listen to what you had to say.

Sending emails, and materials, getting angry, and sending anything remotely wouldn’t work as well as explaining face-to-face.

If you want to truly convince someone, you must meet in person. No important matter can be settled just online. Otherwise, people might agree enthusiastically with “okay okay okay” on WeChat one day, then completely forget about it after sleeping on it.

You have to make them sit in front of you!

You can’t be more than two meters apart!

You have to spray your saliva droplets on their face!

You have to pin them against the wall so they can’t escape!

You have to wall-slam them!

Wall-slam!

Old Zhao passionately delivered his speech on the phone, unclear who he was planning to wall-slam.

So the hardest part was getting these divine beings to come in person.

The hardest part he had already helped solve—what more did they want?

Fortunately, Wang Ning and Bai Zhen’s efforts weren’t entirely fruitless. Both groups expressed they would report to their superiors and would follow up, coming back another day for further investigation.

“Will they take this seriously?” Bai Zhen asked.

“Who knows,” Wang Ning said. “If it were me, I’d at most write a report and drop it on my superior’s desk. Whether anyone reads it after that wouldn’t be my concern. I’d just go about my normal routine, picking up and dropping off kids at school.”

“That’s why you’ve been stuck as deputy section chief,” Bai Zhen pointed at him. “Not proactive enough.”

“You think being proactive would keep you from being stuck as deputy section chief?” Wang Ning sneered. “Anyway, I’ve made peace with it. After I retire, I’ll open a restaurant.”

“What for?”

“To be the restaurant chief.”

“That dream probably won’t come true now. In three years at shortest, five at longest, we’ll all be finished,” Bai Zhen sighed. “How’s Old Zhao’s side progressing? Where is he now?”

“Shanghai,” Wang Ning answered. “At the Eighth Academy. He says this is the final hurdle.”

“Eighth Academy?” Bai Zhen asked. “Which Eighth Academy? Has he finally been beaten into a hospital?”

“China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation’s Eighth Academy.”

Bai Zhen was stunned, somewhat puzzled.

“China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation’s Eighth Academy? What’s he doing there?”