Apocalyptic Hoarding Diary

Chapter 404 Entanglement

But she didn't have time to think too much, because she was already in this group, and all she could do was follow along, conserve her energy, stay vigilant, and take it one step at a time.

I followed the crowd for about five hours.

The backpack straps were digging into my shoulders, and the two marks had gone from pain to numbness, and from numbness to a dull, tingling sensation, as if that piece of flesh no longer belonged to me.

The whistle blew at that moment, its sharp sound piercing through the rain. The crowd seemed to have a switch flipped, and their speed suddenly slowed down.

Some people squatted down, put their hands on the ground, and gasped for breath.

Someone was leaning against a tree trunk, eyes closed, rain lashing their face, motionless.

Some people threw their bags on the ground, not caring whether the ground was muddy or wet, and just lay down.

This should be the evening rest time. Xu Xiaoyan didn't hear anyone announce "rest time," but everyone knew what those three whistles meant.

Someone walked to the nearest big tree, sat down against the trunk, stretched out their legs, and tilted their head back.

Someone pulled out a crumpled tent bag, squatted down and started setting up the tent. In a flurry of activity, they put the tent poles in the wrong place and then pulled them out and put them in again.

Some people had nothing at all, so they just lay on the muddy ground, sideways, with their legs curled up, their hands folded under their heads, and their eyes closed, not even bothering to keep out the rain.

Seeing this, Xu Xiaoyan quickly did the same. It wasn't that she didn't want to rest, but that she was afraid she wouldn't be able to find a good place if it got late.

She dragged her heavy steps off the main road and walked several dozen meters into the woods on the right.

The ground was better than the road. Although it was still wet, there were fewer gravel and the mud wasn't as deep. There were also a few trees with slightly denser canopies that could block some of the rain.

She found a relatively flat spot, under a camphor tree that wasn't too big but had a fairly lush canopy, and stomped her feet on the ground.

He kicked aside a few protruding stones, picked up a dead branch lying on the ground and threw it aside, then put down his backpack and took out the tent bag from the top of the bag.

She had done the action of setting up a single tent many times before: pull out the inner tent, unfold the tent poles, put on the sleeves, secure the four corners, and with a lift, the tent was up and standing.

Xu Xiaoyan bent down and crawled inside, zipped up the outer tent, and fastened the rain curtain from the inside. The whole process took less than three minutes.

The tent was very small; when she sat down, her head almost touched the roof, and when she stretched out her legs, they touched the other end.

The sound of rain outside was filtered through the tent fabric, becoming muffled.

She closed her eyes, rain dripping from the brim of her hat onto the tent floor. She didn't want to move anymore; she didn't even want to waste the strength to take off her hat too soon.

I just sat there, eyes closed, listening to the rain and feeling the coolness seeping in from outside the tent.

Before she could even stay there for a few minutes, someone knocked on her tent.

The three soft "tap tap tap" sounds carried a sense of tentative hesitation.

It's not the kind of sound you hear when you tap with your knuckles; it's more like your fingertips tapping on a soaked tent fabric. It doesn't make a very loud sound; it's more of a vibration.

It was the inner wall of the tent against which her back had been leaning that vibrated slightly three times.

Xu Xiaoyan didn't immediately open the curtain, nor did she even move. She simply asked, "Who is it?"

A middle-aged woman's hoarse voice came from outside, "Young lady, I see you brought a tent. Could you please let my daughter go in and take shelter from the rain as well? Please."

Without even thinking, she refused, saying, "I'm sorry, my tent is very small, it can only fit myself. You should ask someone else."

The tone was devoid of any extra emotion; it was simply stating a fact.

Her tent was indeed very small. It was just the right size for one person to lie down, with barely enough room to turn over. If you added another person, it would be too cramped, let alone two people lying side by side, or even sitting down.

Before entering the tent, she glanced around at the surrounding woods and hillside. Many people had set up tents, some even two-person tents, but only one person was inside.

She wasn't the only option, or even the best option; anyone could tell that she could only sleep with one person.

She even suspected that the woman chose her tent not because it was the most suitable, but because it was the tent most likely to be accepted by soft-hearted young people.

After she finished speaking, she turned her head, and with a thought, took out rice balls and fermented bean curd from her spatial storage.

I took a bite of the rice ball; it was soft, chewy, and the sweetness of the rice itself slowly spread in my mouth. Then, I used the tip of my chopsticks to pick up a small piece of fermented bean curd and spread it on the rice ball.

The salty and savory flavor of fermented bean curd melts in your mouth, mixed with the sweetness of rice, making it infinitely more delicious than eating compressed biscuits.

Xu Xiaoyan was enjoying her meal when the man outside the tent started nagging again, this time in a slightly lower voice.

It sounded like he was talking to someone next to him, or perhaps he was talking to himself, but the direction and volume of the voice indicated that he was speaking to Xu Xiaoyan inside the tent.

"My daughter is only five years old. She can't walk anymore and keeps crying. I just want to find a place for her to lie down for a while."

It doesn't need to be big, just a corner will do, it won't take up much space...

The humility in his voice diminished, replaced by a stubbornness.

She kept rambling on and on, occasionally punctuated by the sound of a little girl crying, but Xu Xiaoyan didn't seem to care at all and continued eating.

The noise outside is her business; the meal inside the tent is her business.

From that "please" moment, she knew it was a bottomless pit. Today she let her daughter in to take shelter from the rain, tomorrow she'd be asking her if she had any food.

The day after tomorrow, I'll ask her if she can help me carry it for a while, and the day after that, I'll treat everything as a resource that I should share.

It's not that this woman is bad, it's that she's too helpless, so helpless that she won't let go of any straw she grabs, and Xu Xiaoyan doesn't intend to be that straw.

She finished chewing the last bite of rice and lay down to sleep, the woman's incessant chatter outside still audible in her ears. Her breathing gradually became steady.

In the middle of the night, Xu Xiaoyan woke up to an extremely faint sound: the slight friction between the metal teeth as she pinched the zipper pull of the tent and tried to pull it down.

The sound was so faint that it would have been impossible for her to hear it if her ear hadn't been pressed against the tent fabric.

In that instant, every muscle in the body simultaneously switches from relaxed to tense.

She first confirmed one thing: the sound came from the tent flap, indicating that someone was trying to open her tent, and it wasn't an accident.

The zipper pull was pinched, pulled down a little bit, stopped, then pulled down a little bit more, and stopped again.

The movements were light and slow, with a sense of caution; it was a deliberate intrusion.