Chapter 16：Returning to Serene Countryside Living

When Chen Dao woke up the next morning, it was already half past eight. He hurriedly dressed and glanced at his watch, which read 8:32 on July 26th.

Stepping out of the living room, he saw Dimenia standing in front of the steaming pot. She was holding a notebook, reading it intently, occasionally stirring the pot. Dimenia was so engrossed that she didn't notice Chen Dao until he approached.

Through the window, Peyton was seen busy cleaning up the supplies from last night. He was making repeated trips to the garage to store his car repair tools. The scrap materials and seeds were gone, presumably already organized in the tool room.

"What are you reading?" Chen Dao asked, scratching his head. He hadn't bathed for probably a week. The dirt on his body was getting quite thick.

As an Asian, Chen Dao's body odor wasn't strong. Peyton, however, was a different story. He probably hadn't bathed in a month, and he smelled like a homeless man living in a garbage dump. Dimenia was the same.

With all the supplies they had now, they could start upgrading their base. The first priority was restoring the water supply using the water tank. Then they would check if the generator was still usable, though Chen Dao vaguely remembered it was an industrial generator for three-phase power.

Dimenia didn't respond, but she turned the cover of the notebook to show Chen Dao. He recognized it as the notebook of the woman who had hanged herself.

"Oh...", Chen Dao patted Dimenia's shoulder, "Don't be too sad, we're different from them..."

"I'll go help Peyton." Chen Dao said, preparing to go outside to help Peyton. Dimenia stopped him, pulling out a note, "No need, call him back for dinner. He was so excited last night that he didn't sleep. He started working at 4 in the morning."

After reading the note, Chen Dao's expression was similar to the sweating minion emoji. Peyton was like a carefree child, not looking like he's 23 at all. So, Chen Dao went outside to call Peyton back for dinner.

Rubbing his ears, Chen Dao felt his hearing had improved a bit after waking up. He could now hear the faint sound of Peyton moving heavy objects outside, although it was still very weak.

His ears were very itchy, which made Chen Dao want to scratch them all the time.

Dimenia watched as Chen Dao went out, noticing his constant ear-scratching. She closed the notebook, her mind seemingly elsewhere.

Peyton was outside moving boxes filled with bottles, planning to stuff them into the garage as well. Chen Dao glanced at the garage and noticed it was already filled with various items, so he intervened:

"Hey, Peyton, stop moving stuff. Let's go eat. Besides, look, it's all full...", he said, pointing at the garage filled with various tools.

Peyton heard the voice, stopped what he was doing, lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face, revealing his stomach. But his dirty shirt only made his face dirtier.

Peyton looked back and indeed, he had done too much unnecessary work due to his excitement from yesterday's events. Some of the things inside probably needed to be taken out again...

Chen Dao didn't know what to say. Was Peyton a husky?

"Let's go, let's go back first. Your sister has prepared food. We need to plan out what we're going to do next."

Flushed from moving stuff around all day, Peyton obediently followed Chen Dao, leaving behind the things he was about to move and returning to the farmhouse.

Dimenia had already prepared the food.

Today it was tomato and sardine canned soup, with customary corn kernels added to make the soup more fragrant. In addition, Dimenia had baked some hard-shelled bread. Although the bread had uneven heat marks from the constant turning and baking, it was still very good.

Dimenia had amazingly baked decent bread using the yeast from the farmhouse and the flour found at the settlement, baking it with the fire from the fireplace.

Chen Dao broke off a piece, it was steaming hot. Dipped in some tomato soup, it tasted great.

"Dimenia is really good at cooking! It's excellent!", Chen Dao started to praise.

Peyton was also humming and mumbling something while eating. He was so hungry from working all morning that he was eating and talking at the same time, choking in the process. Dimenia had to pat his back to help him catch his breath.

"Peyton, don't eat so fast, haha." Seeing this, Chen Dao started to laugh.

"Let's eat slowly. We have plenty of time. There is still a lot we need to do!"

Chen Dao took a big bite of bread. It was such a luxury to be able to eat normal food.

After finishing what could be considered either breakfast or lunch, Chen Dao, believing that being full is being happy and thus giving more motivation, took inventory of the important supplies they had.

Various seeds filled a whole box, but most of them were corn.

Small bags of potassium fertilizer filled another box, 16 bags in total.

They had three and a half cans of gasoline, approximately 50 liters, and the car still had half a tank of gas left.

As for farming tools, they had hoes, shovels, pesticide sprayers, and watering cans, but no useful agricultural magazines or skill books, so Chen Dao's farming skills couldn't be upgraded for the time being.

They also had woodworking tools, including camping axes, felling axes, saws, hammers, and various types of nails and screws, many of which were taken from the farm car repair shed.

Food was plentiful, enough for three people to eat for half a month. Chen Dao had a big plan in mind. If it worked, it would deal a devastating blow to the zombies in Faria Village. After clearing those zombies, they could enter the village to collect supplies. Chen Dao was curious about what kind of weapons the gun shop there had.

But before that, it was necessary to ensure that the living standards of him and his group were not below those of a third-world country.

One of the most critical points was to have hot water for showers.

Luckily, they had a lot of readily available materials. With Chen Dao's memory and skill level, and the help of Peyton and Dimenia, they should be able to transform this small farm into a perfect holiday farm in just a few days.

But first, he needed to ask Dimenia where she got the water from.

After the meal, Chen Dao learned from Dimenia that she had been fetching water from a small pond nearby. Before Chen Dao arrived, she would usually go to the edge of the village to try her luck. But if she encountered a zombie, she would run away. She had only killed two disabled zombies due to good luck. One was stuck in a fence and couldn't move, and the other was an old man zombie who somehow wandered near the farm.

After hearing this, Chen Dao searched in his mind for information about the small pond.

Well, Chen Dao wasn't a super brain or anything.

He couldn't remember anything, so he had to ask Dimenia to take him there to find out where it was.

In his memory, he only remembered that this was a resource-rich small village. As for other details like the small pond, the layout of the houses, and other trivial details, he could rarely recall them because he didn't pay attention to them when playing the game.

So, Chen Dao and Peyton quickly got into the emptied car and headed to the previous farmer settlement to retrieve the metal cans from the homemade liquor distillery.

And the heater.

The two of them got in the car and headed straight to the distillery they had visited the day before.

Dimenia stayed at home, busily tidying up other things and preparing the next delicious meal.

Chen Dao and Peyton worked together very happily. Peyton was just too innocent and kind, a little too naive and timid.

After killing the zombies yesterday and showing off his car repair skills in front of Chen Dao, he was now able to relax and interact with Chen Dao without the slight barrier that was there before.

When the two of them started working together, they were a bit awkward at first, but as the work progressed, they gradually meshed well, and their work efficiency increased.

The two of them spent half a day transporting all the cans filled with alcohol back home. The heater, the sealing rings, and even the bottles and cans of chemical reagents were all taken by Chen Dao. He even dismantled a ceramic bathtub with Peyton and brought it back. They ransacked the homes of the private liquor dealers, pulling out the wires, sawing off the water pipes, and Chen Dao even wanted to take the curtain rods.

If it hadn't been for the gradually setting sun, Chen Dao would have even wanted to dismantle the unnecessary furniture into components.

Chen Dao and Peyton worked until after 7 p.m., and it was completely dark before they stopped.

The two of them returned to the farm, famished, and Dimenia had already prepared a large pot of salty beef soup. Served with roasted corn and tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, it was salty, sour, and refreshing. Chen Dao and Peyton praised the delicious food while eating.

"Mmm, this is really good. Where did you get the corn?" Peyton gnawed on the corn, occasionally sipping the meat soup to replenish the minerals he had lost from his hard work today, and taking in enough carbohydrates to compensate for his calorie loss today. He didn't forget to ask Dimenia where she found the corn.

"How come? You forgot? The lake...to the north, there's a cornfield there. I found quite a few still alive," Dimenia said, gnawing on the corn and speaking intermittently to Peyton.

Dimenia ate surprisingly quickly, as if she had something to do. She had finished eating by the time Peyton and Chen Dao had only eaten half of their corn. The corn was a bit tough to chew, but Dimenia's technique for eating corn was very skilled.

She was neither like Peyton who ate large bites like a bulldozer, leaving a lot of residue on the corn cob that had to be licked off slowly, nor like Chen Dao's classic eating method of breaking off and eating a bit at a time. Although it's clean, who would break the corn cob into small pieces and pluck the corn kernels off one by one?

Is there such a person?

Her bites were small and quick, leaving no corn residue or germ on the cob, and no teeth marks on the cob either. The gnawed corn cob was clean and shiny, with only the complete, fluffy corn seed holder left.

Chen Dao broke off a piece of corn and was peeling off the kernels when he saw Dimenia nibbling lightly and quickly on her corn cob.

By the time she finished gnawing, Chen Dao picked up the gnawed clean white corn cob and stared at it.

But Dimenia had been searching on the sofa for a while, then picked up a small box, knelt on the sofa, and held it up to show Chen Dao.

It was dark outside, and Chen Dao saw, by the light of the fireplace, that it was the professional ear-picking tools that Dimenia had found.

Dimenia held the tools in one hand and supported herself on the sofa with the other. The dancing flames in the fireplace illuminated Dimenia's beautiful face, making her face slightly flushed. The orange flames reflected on her red ponytail, making her neck appear exceptionally white.

Chen Dao glanced at the dark sky outside, then at the fire, and after a while, he said, "It's too dark, how about tomorrow?"

What he was thinking was, why does the atmosphere feel a bit off? Did this kid get overstimulated? Why does it feel strange?