Chapter 27: Cutting Us Off from the Entire Team
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Actually, when Nong Yasi traded cement, she had been acting on a whim.
At the time, she had been so busy that her head was spinning. She had to keep Mother Shi from running off everywhere, look after Shi Xiangrui, and deal with all the survivors who came to trade clothes for bread.
By the time she saw those few bags of cement, Nong Yasi had already collected a huge pile of clothing.
The idea had simply flashed through her mind: perhaps they could repair the toilet behind the Shi family’s tarp.
It had never occurred to her that she had no idea how to repair a toilet.
Much less that they would now have to build a road as well.
But when Yuebai Shi set her mind to something, very few people could change it.
The next morning, just as Second Sister-in-Law Shi and Nong Yasi opened their eyes, Yuebai Shi handed each of them a piece of cloth.
“Our conditions are difficult. We have neither shovels nor carts for hauling stones.”
“So for now, we can only use our hands. Put the stones into the cloth, then use it to move the rubble farther ahead.”
Yuebai Shi pointed out the direction.
The Shi family’s tarp currently stood at the foot of a collapsed bridge pier.
It was the dirtiest, messiest place, with the most garbage and rubble.
That was why no one in the group wanted to live there.
They had banded together and driven the Shi family and Guai Guai over to this spot.
Themselves, they lived communally on the broader, cleaner riverbed beneath the bridge.
The public toilet was above the bridge pier, half-collapsed and half-buried.
According to Yuebai Shi’s plan, they had to carry the stones away by hand and clear a path through the mountain of rubble beneath the pier.
The stones they removed would be piled in front of the Shi family’s tarp,
forming a natural barrier.
“That way, we’ll be separated from the whole group,” Nong Yasi said, looking out beyond the tarp.
Yuebai Shi nodded indifferently.
“That’s exactly the point. Otherwise, after we finally get the toilet cleaned up, won’t everyone use it for free?”
As if that would happen!
From now on, anyone who wanted to use Yuebai Shi’s toilet would have to pay.
Nong Yasi glanced at Second Sister-in-Law Shi. The woman had already turned around and begun carrying stones.
There was no way to ignore Yuebai Shi’s orders, so she might as well finish her assigned work as soon as possible.
Nong Yasi hurriedly turned around as well. The two of them placed the rubble onto the cloth piece by piece.
Then they grabbed the four corners and carried the stones to the spot Yuebai Shi had designated.
Shi Yaoyao swayed unsteadily to her feet, wanting to help.
Yuebai Shi raised the long stick in her hand like a foreman.
“Go practice your writing. Write the word ‘sky’ eighty times, the word ‘earth’ ninety times, and the word ‘people’ one hundred times.”
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“When you’ve finished, do one hundred addition problems with numbers up to five. Then come out and work.”
After assigning Shi Yaoyao her task, she turned to Mother Shi.
Mother Shi had given birth, yet behaved as though she had not.
She seemed to have no idea that she had a child at all.
After waking, she had run about wildly and incoherently,
without even sparing Shi Xiangrui a glance.
Of everyone in the Shi family, Mother Shi obediently listened only to Yuebai Shi.
When she saw Yuebai Shi looking at her, Mother Shi stopped just as she was about to get up and run away.
She sat properly, then looked at Yuebai Shi and pulled her lips into a grin.
“Heh heh.”
Yuebai Shi pinched the bridge of her nose and pointed toward the pile of firewood inside the tarp.
“Mom, light the fire. Don’t let it spread to anything else. Then heat some water and take a bath.”
Mother Shi was much dirtier than Shi Yaoyao and Second Sister-in-Law Shi. After the birth, Yuebai Shi had not had the time to take care of her.
Nong Yasi had changed Mother Shi into adult protective underwear to contain the postpartum discharge.
But Mother Shi did not know how to change it herself.
And since she had not washed herself either before or after giving birth, she now smelled enough to make anyone recoil.
She was a mother who doted deeply on her children—at least where Yuebai Shi was concerned.
Because Yuebai Shi had spoken, Mother Shi immediately sat beside the fire and began poking at the embers.
The weather had suddenly turned cold that day. The survivors in the group hunched their necks, pulled on long sleeves and trousers, and walked outside the Shi family’s tarp.
A thin line of rubble had already been piled around the edge of the open ground in front of the tarp, outside the stone pattern.
The several survivors who had collapsed beside the pattern the day before had already been dragged away by their respective families.
Everyone knew Yuebai Shi’s rule: no one was allowed to enter the area paved with the stone pattern.
So someone stood outside it and shouted at the top of his lungs,
“Yuebai Shi! Yuebai Shi! Are you trading bread today?”
Yuebai Shi sat inside the tarp with a stern expression and said nothing.
A large basin of water sat in front of her.
Nong Yasi was clearing stones from behind the tarp. Hearing the shout, she immediately took several small loaves of bread outside and called to the people there,
“Yuebai says we’re trading for cement today. One loaf for ten bags of cement. Bring as much cement as you have.”
A crowd of survivors holding clothes immediately began voicing their displeasure.
“Why are you only trading for cement?”
“We know you’re trading for clothes. We went scavenging yesterday and brought back plenty of new clothes.”
“Exactly! Why are new clothes worth less than cement? Why are you discriminating against us?”
Nong Yasi’s lips moved, but in the end she only said,
“Trade if you want to. Bring cement, and we’ll trade.”
She turned around and carried the loaves back inside the tarp.
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She had far too much to do that day and did not have time to waste arguing with this group of people.
“Wait, wait!”
One survivor held up a box of disinfectant.
“Do you want this? It hasn’t expired. It was produced just before the Wasteland Era. Take a look. I have ten boxes. I’ll trade them for sixty loaves of bread.”
The survivor seemed desperate and pushed frantically through the crowd.
Each box held six one-liter bottles of disinfectant.
His feet had already stepped onto the stone pattern, and his head was spinning, yet he continued holding the box above his head.
Nong Yasi turned back instinctively, hesitating.
From inside the tarp, Yuebai Shi spoke.
“Trade.”
“Doctor Nong, trade for all medical supplies they bring.”
“No haggling.”
Medical supplies were in high demand everywhere.
When survivors outside the city scavenged medical supplies, most of them took the goods into the city to exchange for food.
But prices inside the city were high. Sixty bottles of disinfectant might not even fetch sixty small loaves of bread.
The survivor who had brought the disinfectant had already profited by exchanging it for sixty loaves from Yuebai Shi.
Nong Yasi immediately reached out, took the box of disinfectant, and handed the bread in her arms to the survivor.
Box after box of disinfectant was carried into the area enclosed by the stone pattern.
The survivors erupted in an uproar.
They asked Nong Yasi,
“Why are you willing to trade for anything?”
“Do you still want cement? We brought cement!”
Some of the quicker survivors had already run off to haul cement the moment Nong Yasi emerged from the tarp.
Nong Yasi was soon sweating from the rush. She used another ten small loaves to trade for one hundred bags of cement.
By the time she finished, it was already afternoon.
She looked apologetically at Second Sister-in-Law Shi, who had been silently carrying stones all by herself.
“I’m sorry, Sister-in-Law. You ended up doing all my work…”
“It’s all right. Go wash yourself.”
Second Sister-in-Law Shi was so exhausted that she could barely straighten her back.
But strangely enough, she was not hungry.
Not only did she feel no hunger—neither did Mother Shi, Shi Yaoyao, Nong Yasi, or even Shi Xiangrui.
Shi Xiangrui whimpered twice. Yuebai Shi stroked his head, and he fell asleep again.
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