Apocalyptic Hoarding Diary

[For Sale] 200 jin of baby bok choy in stock, grab it while you can.

[Looking to buy] Power banks, large capacity required, price negotiable.

[For Sale] Thirty brand new thermos cups, still in their original packaging, selling cheap.

She scrolled up and found a row of category tags at the very top of the page: food, daily necessities, medicine, tools, weapons...

arms?

Xu Xiaoyan's finger hovered over the screen for a moment before clicking on it.

The page refreshed; there weren't many posts, only a dozen or so, each very brief, conveying an inexplicable sense of caution.

[For Sale] Outdoor knife, 90% new, used twice, with sheath.

[Exchange] I'm trading my wood-chopping knife for rice, flour, and cooking oil. DM me if interested.

[Out] Bow and crossbow, high attack power, those who know, please come.

[Out] A baton, which can be taught in a simple way.

[Selling] 200 laser pointers, brand new, unopened.

[Selling] Tactical flashlight, high beam, only those who know what they're looking for.

[Offering] Self-defense training, one-on-one private instruction, details can be discussed privately.

Xu Xiaoyan stared at the posts, her fingers not moving. She leaned back, her back against the chair, the light from her phone screen shining on her face.

This website... is a little different from the official forum.

She exited the app and then clicked on the medicine category.

There were quite a few more posts this time; I had to scroll down several times to reach the end.

Some people were asking for fever reducers, others were selling band-aids and gauze, some were selling Banlangen (Isatis root), and one post said "Selling 50 boxes of Eagle Brand Anti-inflammatory Medicine," with the word "Explosive" on the left, indicating that there were a lot of inquiries.

In the daily necessities category, someone was selling brand new rubber gloves; in the food category, someone was selling homemade pickled cabbage; and in the tools category, someone was selling electric drills, complete with a picture of the actual drill.

She slid down one by one, and after five minutes, she still hadn't reached the end.

Xu Xiaoyan put her phone down on the desk; the screen was still lit.

She took a deep breath, picked it up again, and continued flipping through the pages.

Several posts made her stop for a long time—

[For Sale] Moisture-proof compressed biscuits, shelf life of five years, 120 packs per box, can be sold in whole boxes or individually, posted three days ago.

She scrolled further and saw a post for "exchange": Tent for down sleeping bag, outdoor use, preferably 90% new or better.

There is also a radio that I'm looking to buy, the kind that's hand-cranked and generates electricity, preferably one that can receive shortwave.

Xu Xiaoyan held up her phone and looked at the category labels on the screen again, from food to medicine, from tools to weapons, her gaze lingering on the words "weapons" for a long time.

She suddenly smiled, the corners of her mouth slightly raised, and couldn't help but marvel at her good luck.

I'll set up a stall tomorrow to test the waters.

Then, use this website to stock up on some things.

The next day, Xu Xiaoyan woke up naturally.

There was no alarm clock, no reason to get up at a certain time; she was awakened by her stomach, the empty feeling in her tummy slowly pulling her out of deep sleep.

I opened my eyes, picked up my phone, and glanced at it—10:07.

She lay on the bed for another two minutes, staring blankly at the ceiling for a while, then sat up, threw off the covers and got out of bed. She dragged her slippers to the center of the room, closed her eyes, and paused for a second.

When I opened my eyes again, I found myself holding a plastic bag containing some things and a bottle of red fermented bean curd.

The white rice balls, which she had prepared in advance at her home in Xuan County, were used to pick up a piece from a glass jar with chopsticks and place it on top of the rice. The red oil slowly seeped into the rice grains, creating a small, enticing color.

Xu Xiaoyan sat down at her desk, scooped up a spoonful of rice, and put it in her mouth along with a small piece of fermented bean curd. The salty and savory flavors of the rice and the sweetness of the rice were brought out and melted on her tongue.

She squinted and scooped out another spoonful.

When her adoptive parents were alive, they didn't recommend that she eat these things.

She often remembered the frown on her adoptive mother's face when she saw her eating fermented bean curd with rice, while her adoptive father put the fermented bean curd jar on a high shelf in the cupboard.

They didn't say anything harsh, but they kept repeating, "Eat less pickled food, it's bad for your stomach," "Pickled vegetables contain nitrites, and this should be the same; eating too much is unhealthy," and "You're still young, don't develop this kind of eating habit."

She was indignant at the time, arguing that pickled foods were inherently unhealthy because her ancestors had been eating them for years and were perfectly fine.

She consulted a lot of materials, researching the formation patterns of nitrites, the microbial structure of fermented foods, and the changes in the content of harmful substances at different pickling times.

She wanted to find evidence, to present them with printed materials, and tell them: what you said is not entirely true; pickled foods are not that scary as long as they are eaten in moderation.

But she hadn't had time to find those documents yet.

Or rather, she found it, but it was too late.

That day was a weekend, and she spent the afternoon at the library, borrowing three books and downloading seven or eight expert opinions from the internet and saving them on her phone.

On her way home, she was thinking about how to bring up the topic at dinner that night, how to explain the data in a simple and easy-to-understand way, and how to get them to admit that they weren't right about everything.

Then she received a phone call.

The traffic police's phone number.

She couldn't remember much after that: the hospital, the morgue, the procedures, the forms, the signatures, people talking to her, her nodding, her replying. She was like a machine with a pre-programmed schedule, doing what she was supposed to do and saying what she was supposed to say.

She remembered a young traffic policeman pouring her a cup of water, a paper cup, it was warm, she took a sip and couldn't taste it.

The driver who caused the accident was a loner.

He had no parents, no wife or children, no siblings, and lived alone in a rented house. He drove a truck for a logistics company. That night, he had been drinking, drove against traffic, and crashed into a car traveling in the opposite direction, dying instantly.

She searched everywhere but couldn't find anyone she could take revenge on.

There were no family members to blame, no relatives to hold accountable. The person who took her adoptive parents' lives was also dead, in that car accident, the instant he hit them. She didn't even know who to hate—a dead person? A cold corpse?

That was the closest I ever came to committing a crime.

She stood at the intersection where the accident had occurred, under the traffic light, her mind blank.

It's not that she has no ideas, it's that she has too many ideas and they're too chaotic, so chaotic that she can't grasp any of them.

She wanted to kill, to set fires, to destroy something, to disappear herself—but she couldn't find anyone to take revenge on.

She stood there, cars passing by, and no one knew what this seemingly ordinary young girl was thinking.

A female police officer had been following her.

Xu Xiaoyan later learned that the policewoman had been paying attention to her since the accident scene. She was too calm, abnormally calm. She didn't say a word when she was handling the paperwork, answering only what was asked, with an empty look in her eyes.

The policewoman was worried, so after handing over her work, she didn't leave. She followed her from a distance, watching her take the bus, watching her get off the bus, watching her walk to the intersection, and standing there without moving.

If you enjoy stories about surviving the apocalypse by stockpiling supplies, please bookmark: Apocalypse Stockpiling Survival Story