Apocalyptic Hoarding Diary

Wang Xiao suddenly stopped, all his fatigue and pent-up frustration exploding at that moment. No longer caring about the wet, cold, and dirty ground, he plopped down on a protruding, cold granite rock next to him.

"This godforsaken place!" His voice was hoarse from being deliberately lowered. "You might not find anything even during the day, let alone in this pitch-black night! What a waste of effort!"

He looked up at the sky, where there were only a few dim stars. Xu Xiaoyan beside him was silent. She was also tired, but she was more tolerant than Wang Xiao, or rather, she was better at suppressing her emotions.

She didn't immediately respond to Wang Xiao's complaint. Instead, she clicked off the flashlight in her hand. With the only light source gone, she could barely see the blurry outlines of the nearby trees and her companions in the moonlight.

In the almost suffocating darkness, her voice was unusually calm. "Don't rush." ​​She turned to Wang Xiao and Xie Yingtang, who had been standing silently beside her. "Now we can take a car, which saves most of our energy. That's the biggest advantage." She paused, as if organizing her thoughts, or perhaps encouraging herself. "We can search all night and sleep in the car during the day. We have much more time than when we had to rely on our own two legs to escape."

Her words were neither impassioned nor did they depict any unrealistic hopes; she simply stated a fact calmly—compared to the turbulent days of the past, the current situation was already an "improvement."

Wang Xiao loosened his grip on her hair a little, and her heavy, rapid breathing gradually calmed down. Yes, at least now they had a military vehicle where they could temporarily take shelter.

"Xiao Yan is right," Xie Yingtang finally spoke. He stood up and patted the dust off his knees and trouser legs. "Now that we've come this far, let's not give up so easily."

His gaze swept over Wang Xiao and Xu Xiaoyan. "Let's look further ahead. The vegetation on this mountain is quite lush. Perhaps someone cultivated it before. Luck won't always be so bad."

Wang Xiao let out a long sigh of relief, then stood up from the rock. "I'll listen to you! We'll dig three feet into the ground to find something that can even fill a gap in our teeth!"

The three got up again and resumed their search. This time, their mindset had subtly changed. Instead of blindly scanning, they were searching more intently, using the electric beams of their assistants to search the ground inch by inch.

Xu Xiaoyan focused on the crevices in the rocks and the shady spots, where more moisture might be retained and tuberous plants might be more likely to survive. The darkness amplified their senses and lengthened the passage of time. Only their heavy breathing and the sound of their footsteps scraping the ground proved their perseverance.

After they had been groping forward for another twenty minutes, Xie Yingtang, who was walking at the front and had been on high alert, suddenly stopped. His movement was abrupt, his body tensed up instantly, and then he slowly squatted down. Wang Xiao and Xu Xiaoyan immediately realized that they had made a discovery, their hearts jumped into their throats, and they held their breath and moved closer.

Xie Yingtang carefully parted a clump of tangled vines and decaying leaves that were almost blending into the surrounding withered leaves.

"Look at this," he said in a very low voice, but Wang Xiao and Xu Xiaoyan both keenly caught the slight, imperceptible tremor of excitement in his voice as he pointed to the patch of ground he had cleared.

There, exposed to the dim light, were several slender vines with distinct ridges, twining around the withered branches of a nearby tree. Scattered among the vines were a few dried and shriveled, grayish-brown leaves, whose heart-shaped outlines could still be vaguely discerned.

"This..." Xie Yingtang's fingers gently brushed over the ridged vine, his tone carrying a hint of uncertainty, "It looks a lot like a yam vine."

"Yam?" Wang Xiao's pupils suddenly dilated in the darkness. Without saying a word, and before he could even express his excitement, he swiftly drew his watermelon knife. He pushed Xie Yingtang aside, knelt down at the base of the vine, and began to carefully and quickly dig along the main stem of the vine with the tip of the knife.

Xu Xiaoyan also squatted down, positioning herself in a position that would illuminate the digging site without hindering Wang Xiao's movements. Holding a flashlight, she steadily focused the beam of light on the small pit that had just been dug. The yellowish-white light pierced the darkness, illuminating Wang Xiao's hands, whose veins were slightly bulging from exertion, the flying dirt, and the few vines that carried hope.

No one spoke, only Wang Xiao's heavy breathing and the "crack" sound of the watermelon knife cutting through the soil and hitting the stone.

Time seemed to stretch out infinitely at that moment. Xu Xiaoyan's arm, which was holding the flashlight, began to ache, but she remained motionless, her eyes fixed on the ever-deepening pit.

Wang Xiao dug very hard, and beads of sweat quickly appeared on his forehead, sliding down his dirty cheeks. He didn't bother to wipe them away. He dug out handfuls of soil, and the pit gradually deepened and widened. He became extremely careful, afraid of damaging the roots in the soil. After digging about half a meter deep, the sensation from the tip of the knife suddenly changed!

It was no longer soft or hard soil, nor was it an obstacle of stones, but rather a... slightly resilient, hard block!

Wang Xiao's movements froze instantly. He looked up and met Xu Xiaoyan's gaze. Both of them burst into unbelievable ecstasy. Even Xie Yingtang, who was standing next to him, couldn't help but lean forward.

"There really is something down there!" Wang Xiao's voice was trembling with excitement. He put down the knife and used both hands to gently clear away the loose soil around the pit. Xu Xiaoyan adjusted the flashlight beam to the best angle and held her breath.

As the soil was gradually removed, a thick, cylindrical rhizome was finally exposed to the light! The skin was yellowish-brown, covered with dense, fine roots, and its shape was exactly the same as the wild yam I remembered!

"I found it! I really found it!" Wang Xiao suppressed his voice and let out a low cry that was almost a sob. He carefully cleaned all the soil around the yam and then pulled it out with both hands.

The yam was as thick as his forearm and nearly half a meter long. It was heavy and covered with fresh soil. Although only this one yam was dug up, it was undoubtedly an excellent and milestone start!

"Since there's one here, there's likely to be more nearby!" Xu Xiaoyan said in a low voice, her tone filled with barely suppressed excitement and certainty.

She quickly moved the flashlight beam away from Wang Xiao's "trophy" and refocused it on the ground beneath her feet and around her. At that moment, the vines and vegetation that looked almost identical and dazzling in the night suddenly became clear and distinct in her eyes.

Her gaze swept meticulously over every inch of the land, searching for any shape or feature similar to the yam vine she had just seen.

Xie Yingtang, being more experienced, didn't rush to blindly expand the search area. Instead, he gestured for Wang Xiao and Xu Xiaoyan to come closer and, in a very low voice, imparted the key points: "Look, it likes to grow around the bushes or dead branches, using them to climb upwards. Although the leaves are dry, the ridges of the vines are very distinct when you touch them, unlike those rounded ordinary vines." As he spoke, he touched the root of the vine from which the yam had just been dug up, letting the two feel the unique ridges.

Having grasped more specific and operational characteristics, the three tacitly dispersed, forming a loose fan shape centered on the location where the first yam plant was discovered, and slowly advanced and searched outwards.

Wang Xiao was young and had the best eyesight. Coupled with the encouragement of his recent success, he was full of energy. In just seven or eight minutes, he found a similar vine with angular edges, wrapped around a dead branch, at the base of a clump of low but dense bushes not far to his right.

"Here! Another one!" His voice was filled with the joy of discovering a new continent, but he controlled his volume well. This time, without saying much, he swung his watermelon knife again and began digging. With the experience of the first time, his movements were more skillful, and he controlled the position and force of the knife better, saving a lot of energy. Sure enough, without much trouble, another yam of similar size was dug out intact and without any damage.

"Great!" Wang Xiao held the yam up to his eyes. Despite being covered in mud, it looked bright and he almost cheered. However, Xie Yingtang stopped him with a sharp look. He immediately realized what was happening and quickly covered his mouth, but the bright smile on his face and the light in his eyes could not be hidden.

The next few hours became their most efficient and fruitful period since entering the mountains. They found traces of yams one after another. Sometimes they were in the shady places of huge rocks, with vines growing close to the cold stone walls; sometimes they were under the trunk of a dead tree that had already fallen and begun to rot, relying on the nutrients of the decaying wood; and there was even one that was climbing along a section of a broken stone wall.

The tools used for digging were no longer limited to Wang Xiao's watermelon knife. Xie Yingtang found a hard rock with a relatively sharp end, and Xu Xiaoyan also took out a dagger from her backpack. It was very useful for clearing the loose soil around the roots. The three of them dug in tacit cooperation and had a good harvest.

After successfully digging up yams each time, Xu Xiaoyan would use her backpack as cover to quickly and discreetly transfer some of the good-quality yams into her spatial storage. She would only collect about one-third to one-half each time, and put the rest, along with the slightly inferior or smaller yams, into the burlap sack she carried with her as a disguise.

The sacks gradually swelled at a steady pace, and by the time a hint of blue began to seep from the horizon, the sacks they had brought were already full and could not hold anything more.

Xie Yingtang rubbed his knees, which were sore from squatting for so long, and looked up at the faint light on the horizon that heralded the approaching dawn. He said, "That's about enough. This should be enough for us to eat for many days. Let's pack up and go back."

Wang Xiao and Xu Xiaoyan also understood the principle of knowing when to stop. They were already extremely lucky to have found so much real food in the dark mountains without encountering any danger.

Around 5 a.m., Xu Xiaoyan, Xie Yingtang, and Wang Xiao, carrying bulging bags, headed straight back towards the direction where the convoy had parked at the foot of the mountain. Their figures, laden with goods, and the heavy bags that were clearly filled with things, immediately attracted the attention of others, and all eyes focused on them like searchlights.

"They...found food?" a dry voice asked uncertainly, trembling with disbelief.

"Look at that bag, it's so heavy... It must be quite substantial!" The person next to him subconsciously licked his chapped lips, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed non-existent saliva.

"What good stuff is it? Potatoes? Sweet potatoes? Or..." Speculation spread like wildfire through the crowd. Many people who had been curled up sat up involuntarily, and a near-mad light rekindled in their numb eyes.

A few bolder individuals, or perhaps those driven to near madness by hunger, exchanged glances and stood up, instinctively taking steps forward to subtly form a circle around the three, intending to block them and demand an explanation. Deep down, they were also calculating whether they could use their numbers to force a share, even if it was just a single piece or half a piece…

However, Xu Xiaoyan and her two companions moved very quickly, without any hesitation or pause, heading directly towards the core area of ​​the convoy.

As they approached the outer edge of the convoy, where a "defense line" of several military trucks and armed soldiers was vaguely visible, the soldiers on patrol naturally noticed them and the restless crowd behind them.

The soldiers' hands were already subtly placed on their holsters, silently intimidating the group of people who wanted to gain something for nothing. Their sharp, hawk-like eyes swept over the survivors who tried to approach, sending chills down the spines of those who were itching to make a move.

Just as the group of people who wanted to get closer were about to form a circle around them, and the man at the front with a stubble-covered face and fierce eyes had even reached out as if to grab the bag on Wang Xiao's back, the patrolling soldiers tacitly made way for a small gap that could only be passed by one person at a time, signaling Xu Xiaoyan and the other two to pass through quickly.

At the same time, two soldiers stepped forward. Although they did not shout, the guns with their cold, hard metallic gleam, faintly visible at their waists, and their eyes, were the clearest and most deadly warning.

The crowd that wanted to surround them froze on the spot as if they had been doused with a bucket of cold water mixed with ice shards. Their outstretched hands were also withdrawn in embarrassment. They watched as the three quickly crossed the "boundary" guarded by the soldiers. In the end, the instinct for survival completely overwhelmed the desire to rob.

They could only stop in their tracks, filled with resentment and extreme envy as they watched the bags of supplies being safely brought into the core area of ​​the convoy. Their gazes, like sticky spider webs, lingered on the departing figures of the three men and the heavy bags, refusing to leave for a long time.