A Wasteland Scavenger Travels to the 1960s

This novel is now being updated, usually around noon. Please add it to your favorites, dear readers~

In Year 24 of the Calamity, scavenger Xiang Yun was killed by a hyper-evolved plant on the outskirts of the Evolutionary Forest.

When she opened her eyes again, she was a kidnapped bride locked in a woodshed by bandits.

Outside the door, the bandits shouted, “Tonight, we’ll make her our bride!”

Xiang Yun had no idea what a bride was, but she had no time to figure it out.

She could smell food.

The door was kicked open. A bandit held up a steaming plant root and sneered at her. “Be good. You’ll need a full stomach for what comes next.”

Xiang Yun stared at it. Food!

One by one, she took them down. Five bandits lay sprawled on the ground.

Xiang Yun squatted on the threshold, reverently holding the thing called a “sweet potato” and taking a huge bite, skin and all.

*

When Captain Cheng arrived to rescue her, he found bandits unconscious all over the floor and a bride in red sitting on the threshold, munching on a sweet potato.

The bride’s cheeks were puffed out like a squirrel’s.

“Did you… beat them?”

Xiang Yun nodded and tucked the sweet potato behind her back.

Captain Cheng fell silent for three seconds.

“…We’re here to take you home.”

Xiang Yun gave him a serious look, pulled the sweet potato from behind her back, and broke off a thumb-sized piece for him.

“Here. You can have this much, but no more.”

*

Her husband’s family said she was “no longer pure,” while her own family said, “A married daughter is like water poured out.”

Xiang Yun looked from one side to the other.

Neither of them wanted to feed her.

She pointed at Captain Cheng. “I’ll go with him.” This man hadn’t stolen her sweet potato, and he’d even given her candy.

Everyone: ?

Captain Cheng was silent for a long time, then gently nodded.

*

Cheng Chen had only meant to give Xiang Yun a place to stay.

But he hadn’t expected her to be such a mystery.

Give her a meal, and she could carry enough food for two people all by herself.

When the old Soviet-made machine at the factory broke down, she crouched beside it, listened for a moment, and diagnosed a shattered spindle bearing.

When asked how she knew, Xiang Yun replied without expression, “I heard it.”

The whole factory started saying she was an expert with machines.

Only Cheng Chen knew that everything this “expert” did was for the sake of getting a full meal.

And she needed every meal.

Reader’s guide:

1. An alternate historical setting, against the backdrop of the Third Front construction campaign in Southwest China. Mostly daily life, with a career storyline.

2. The heroine comes from a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by natural disasters and is obsessed with food.

Theme: A tough start from the very beginning, then riding the winds and breaking through the waves