WEF - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Must Eat for a Thousand Days

Wang You was driving along smoothly when she heard an explosion.

She looked through the rearview mirror and saw flames shooting into the sky.

Zhuang Yuezhen had been reading gossip about Ning Dali online. Startled, she set down her smart device and asked dazedly, "What the hell blew up?"

"It might be Ning Dali fighting someone," Wang You said. "Or her car might have blown up."

She thought she had seen a tire flying through the air.

Zhuang Yuezhen was stunned. "What?"

Wang You stomped on the brake, shifted gears, and sent the SUV into a drifting turn on the spot. Its nose swung a hundred and eighty degrees, then it headed toward the fire.

They saw an RV burning.

Beside it stood a shadow thick with menace.

The shadow of the King of Shadows.

Wang You and Zhuang Yuezhen both felt a magnitude eight earthquake in their pupils.

The SUV immediately braked hard, drifted, and headed back the way they had come, its tires giving a piercing screech. They raced away even faster than they had arrived, and Zhuang Yuezhen gripped the handrail, nearly thrown from the vehicle.

After they had driven a kilometer in silence, Zhuang Yuezhen finally asked, "Can she still be alive?"

"Maybe not," Wang You said gravely.

Through the rearview mirror, Wang You could see Ning Dali bound like a mummy in Shadow's coils. It was plainly a punishment from Shadow.

Zhuang Yuezhen picked at the smart device in her hand with one fingernail. She wanted to say that jumping on someone else's hype was not worth killing them over, but with Shadow in the vehicle, she valued her life and kept her mouth shut.

Through the rearview mirror, she glared at Shadow, silently condemning its lawlessness.

The look was as toothless as the SUV that had come to pay its respects, and Shadow paid neither one any mind.

Shadow idly kept Ning Dali bound, and a new line of text appeared on its face.

[Still not naming a price? Are you too heartbroken to speak?]

The Truth Crystal had not finished asking its three questions. Until it did, Ning Dali could only answer "yes" or "no."

"No."

It was not because she was too heartbroken to speak. She simply could not name a price at that moment.

Shadow seemed to realize this. It paused, then asked a throwaway question in a seemingly casual tone.

[At noon, did you really choose me because I was so popular?]

"Yes," Ning Dali replied offhandedly.

Shadow nodded and folded its arms.

[All right. You can name your price now.]

There was not the slightest apology in Shadow's stance for blowing up someone else's RV. Instead, it radiated the brazen confidence of someone shouting, "Come kill me!"

Looking at the burning RV, Ning Dali said sadly, "This was my home. My home is gone."

A pair of disdainful cartoon eyes appeared on Shadow's face.

[Why play the sympathy card? You're not planning to live in the RV anymore.]

If Ning Dali still intended to live in it, she would not have jumped on the publicity to make her Ability known far and wide.

By deliberately exposing herself in public, she showed that she was prepared to join a Base.

That meant she had no need of the RV.

A villa was far better than an RV.

Shadow knew exactly what she had in mind.

Even so, it still blew up the RV.

Blowing up someone's home in their face was deeply satisfying.

Even if it had to compensate Ning Dali, so what? Money was made to be spent. An RV was peanuts to a Base Lord; Shadow could earn back its cost in a single breath.

At worst, it would pay a little more. No big deal.

"But there was still food in my RV," Ning Dali said in a hollow voice.

"You didn't retrieve it. You wasted food."

Shadow had just released a frustrated breath when it stiffly turned its head.

Food in the RV? Had it all burned to ashes with the vehicle?

[Haha, no way.]

No one kept food outside a refrigerator.

"I hope you're wrong." Ning Dali closed her eyes.

Beside the refrigerator, inside the cabinet beneath the induction cooker, were seven or eight jin of rice packed in opaque, sealed canisters. Beside them were three unopened packets of dried noodles, each weighing five hundred grams.

In the cabinet above the induction cooker were unopened bottles of milk that could be kept at room temperature: eight one-liter bottles and twenty-three 580-milliliter bottles. There were also a jug of peanut oil, half a bottle of vinegar, and more than half a bottle of soy sauce.

In the storage compartment beside the driver's seat was a box of candy with some left in it. By a conservative estimate, more than twenty pieces remained. The box also held a heavy flatbread, and even through the plastic bag came its tantalizing scent of wheat...

Ning Dali's account was so detailed that there was no room to dispute it. The more Shadow listened, the more it suffered.

It had no time to ask whether Ning Dali had robbed a granary. Instead, it let out a strange shriek, and countless shadows threw themselves toward the RV all at once.

At that moment.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The blast charges inside the RV seemed to detonate in succession. What had been left of the RV's frame exploded into countless fragments.

There was no way to piece it back together.

The shockwave and heat slammed into Shadow's face, accompanied by a deafening roar. Shadow froze in bewilderment, the word "NO" covering its entire form.

Ning Dali stood beside Shadow and watched the RV vanish completely without saying a word.

This RV had been her first home.

She had spent her childhood in a Federation foster care center and lived in school dormitories through middle and high school. She dropped out of high school and moved into a prison cell.

She spent ten years in prison, then lived at a construction site for three years after her release.

Only at thirty-one did she have a home of her own, one that belonged to her completely.

Now she was thirty-five, and her home had just been blown up in front of her.

Tears welled in her eyes. In an instant, she suppressed them.

"Calculate what you owe me," Ning Dali said calmly.

"The RV, the food, all the odds and ends in my vehicle, and damages for my emotional distress."

Shadow stood in place, still unable to recover from the catastrophe.

Ning Dali patiently waited ten minutes.

Shadow came back to its senses, its form flickering.

Without a word, it flexed its fingers, loosened the wrappings binding Ning Dali, then reached into the shadow on the ground and fished out an accountant.

A line of smaller text appeared on Shadow's face.

[Accountant Li.]

[Calculate what she owes.]

Accountant Li pushed up her glasses with one finger. Without asking what Shadow had done, she deftly took out her smart device and carefully recorded a video of the scene.

Then she produced an abacus.

She used an abacus because it was more imposing, its sharp clatter making the size of the Base's payment unmistakable to Shadow.

Accountant Li looked at Ning Dali apologetically. "Ms. Dali, please accept our condolences. Take a moment to collect yourself, and we'll begin making our offer. Our Shadow King's compensation will certainly satisfy you."

Ning Dali gave a brief account of what had just happened.

When she heard that Shadow had bought a refrigerator's worth of food, Accountant Li's eyes lit up. With evident satisfaction, she swapped the abacus for a calculator.

When she heard that the RV had exploded, she patted Ning Dali's shoulder in deep sympathy.

When she heard that there had still been food inside when it exploded...

Accountant Li froze for two seconds, then let out a piercing shriek.

"What, that means food was wasted! That's against the law!"

She spun around. "Boss, we need to hush this up..."

Halfway through her sentence, Shadow silently raised both hands.

A pair of bright red Flame Shackles appeared around its wrists.

[The Law already knows.]

Accountant Li paused for several seconds, then drew a deep breath. "How heavy will the sentence be this time?"

Food Waste was the gravest offense of all, far more serious than murder or arson.

[It will not be light.]

[The Law]'s ruling showed that Shadow really had wasted a great deal of food, even more than Ning Dali had reported.

Recalling the details of her inventory, Accountant Li could not stop herself from offering Shadow a tactful criticism. "You weren't very smart today."

[That is why we need to hush this up.] Shadow did not argue.

[A fifth person must not learn what happened today!]

"Understood. Please deal with the shackles first. I need to clean up your mess." She said it without reservation, then stopped looking at Shadow and turned to Ning Dali with an earnest smile.

"With a loss this large, we won't itemize it. Shall I quote you one total figure?"

"For the RV, your emotional distress, and the hush payment, I'll round the three items into one total: fifteen million." She said it with visible pain.

Of the three costs, the hush payment was by far the largest. The King of Shadows' IQ and reputation were at stake.

If word spread that she had wasted food, condemnation was one thing. Being mocked as too foolish was another.

For the sake of Ying's career as an internet celebrity, Accountant Li had to pay a hefty sum to suppress the story completely.

"For the food on the ground, I can calculate its value at current Base prices and give you Points. As for the food destroyed in the RV, we cannot yet determine an exact quantity. I may have to wait for the Shadow King's ruling, then calculate the Points according to the judgment. Is that acceptable?"

This world had two kinds of currency.

One was money, and the other was Points.

Money could buy anything except food.

Food could be obtained only in exchange for Points, and even then it was scarce. Beef could be traded for Points, but Points might not be able to buy beef.

"Why don't you look at the food on the ground before you say that?" Ning Dali said suddenly.

"Uh." Accountant Li choked on her words. "Are you worried we can't afford our offer? Haha, impossible."

As she spoke, she opened the plastic bags radiating cold.

Her face filled with confusion.

"This is meat? What kind of meat is this?"

Where did meat this big come from? Aren't pieces of meat supposed to be paper-thin?!

"The piece in your hand is beef," Ning Dali said. "It is beef you can only eat five grams of per day."

Accountant Li: "..."

She opened the bags one by one, her expression growing more grave. She unconsciously put away the calculator, took out a scale, and weighed each piece.

Ning Dali kindly reminded her, "You can take your time weighing it, but I can tell you the result first."

"Setting aside the other meat, there are ten jin of beef here alone."

Ten jin of beef. Five thousand grams.

At five grams a day, it would take Shadow a thousand days to finish the beef alone without violating [The Law].

Even if she brought every one of her closest confidants along to share, it would take anywhere from ten days to half a month.

That was not the worst of it.

The real danger was if it became known that Shadow and her followers ate beef every day, on top of the news that she had wasted food.

Accountant Li looked terrified.

"We cannot buy this. We absolutely cannot buy this beef!"

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