Rebirth: Leading Families to Survive in the Apocalypse novel Chapter 387

Chapter 387 -387: Selling Grain

The village, teeming with elderly and children, saw wisps of cooking smoke gradually rise from a courtyard.

From a distance, the sight of the smoke told everyone that it was time for dinner, and so groups of elders paired up or took by the hand children too small to walk alone and headed toward the courtyard.

“Old Man Li, are you just going to have some porridge? You haven’t collected your share of the coarse grain cornbread yet!”

One of the women serving meals spoke out.

But Old Man Li simply waved his hand and said, “No need, no need, save it for the young ones, I’m not hungry.”

There were many other seniors like Old Man Li who merely glanced at the place where the coarse grain cornbread was distributed and then squatted by the courtyard wall, beginning to drink their thin porridge.

“Ah!”

The woman serving meals wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes.

Everyone here knew that the shelter’s food supply was limited and that most of it had been obtained through life-threatening efforts by Xing Taian and his group of soldiers from before the Apocalypse. Seeing those elderly figures now reduced to skin and bones tugged painfully at her heart.

“Granny, let’s eat together,”

A little boy broke off a piece of the yellow cornbread and handed it to an old woman with white hair.

“Dear little Mark, you eat it. Granny is old and can’t eat much; I just like this porridge! You need to eat up and grow fast, so you can be as brave as those uncles,”

the elder said, gently stroking the boy’s hair.

The boy shook his head, breaking his half of the cornbread into smaller pieces and dropping them into the elder’s porridge.

“Now Granny can eat it,”

he said, satisfied, before starting to eat his own half of the cornbread.

…

Watching the scene in the courtyard, Su Jin, Lu Hao, and others finally realized just how difficult the food situation Xing Taian mentioned really was.

“This is heartbreaking,”

Lin Xiuyuan said with a bitter expression, relieved that Lin Yunguo and Li Xiuying hadn’t come out to witness this scene, otherwise, the two elders would definitely feel sad for a while.

“There are people worse off than them; we simply don’t know about them,” Su Jin said.

In her past life, she had seen many people starve to death and others who, due to hunger, couldn’t run away and ended up being devoured by zombies or mutant animals and plants. Those here who had encountered Xing Taian and his group were indeed very fortunate.

“But this place will not last forever,” Lu Hao said.

The elderly could only spend their final years here, and if the children were lucky enough to grow up, they would surely have to leave this place one after the other.

“It’s already very good like this,”

Su Jin said, feeling this was the best outcome possible.

They walked a little further, the village was too quiet; many of the elderly just sat quietly by their doors. It was the children, constantly running around laughing, who added a hint of vitality to the area.

Along the way, elderly and children often stopped to ask whether they had seen someone by a certain name outside.

They listened patiently, but those names, they had really never heard of.

Seeing everyone walk away disappointed, they also decided to head back. Before the Apocalypse, this place was probably just a small village—from one end to the other, it took only about fifteen minutes to walk through.

As they neared their dwelling, a gunshot rang out from the courtyard next door.

“Alas! Another one’s gone,”

a gaunt elderly person passing by Su Jin said, shaking their head.

“Sir, what happened?” Ren Yingjie couldn’t help but ask.

“That’s the team that goes out to exchange crystal cores for food. Almost every time they return, some of them have been eaten outside or turn into zombies right here,”

the old man said, looking towards Xing Taian’s courtyard with cloudy eyes, where the glint of tears could still be seen.

At that moment, Xing Taian also came out, his eyes red, with a handgun in his hand. He leaned powerlessly against the doorframe of the courtyard, noticing the group not far away.

“The bullets in this gun, we’ve always been reluctant to use them. I saved them for my brothers; to ultimately be killed by it is a kind of luxury,”

he said with a bitter smile.