Once We Lived in Nanjing

Monday.

First step of the plan, find the relay station.

While Bai Yang was dozing off in school, Ban Xia was pedaling her shabby bicycle, speeding along Zhongshan Gate Street.

Zijin Mountain is very close to Meihua Villa, Ban Xia pedaled her bicycle deep into Zijin Mountain along Lingyuan Road. The width of the flat asphalt road was only two-thirds of what it used to be, as soil slowly eroded from both sides of the road. Nature's skin was healing itself, closing up these crisscrossing, harsh scars. The girl rode through the dense shade of trees, her bicycle wheels rumbling over the road, occasionally startling the rabbits and pheasants in the roadside bushes. She was following BG4MXH's plan to search for the relay station, but before arriving at the entrance gate of Meiling Palace, the road was cut off by a massive pit with a diameter of seven or eight meters.

"Stop stop stop stop stop stop stop —!"

Ban Xia was startled and squeezed the brakes fiercely, letting her legs down, scuffing up stones from the road with the soles of her shoes before finally stopping right at the edge of the road break.

She got off the bike, took off the sunglasses from her nose, and twirled them on her index finger.

Such a big hole.

The pit was at least three meters deep.

Ban Xia squatted at the edge of the pit to look down, underneath the broken asphalt road was light-colored dry soil, with a few clumps of weeds sporadically growing inside.

This was likely a bomb crater.

Maybe even from a heavy bomb.

But this was not the largest crater Ban Xia had seen. The largest one she had seen was near Nantu, when she last went there to search for materials. Opposite Nantu at Life Insurance Square, she saw a massive hole, not knowing what had exploded, all the nearby buildings had collapsed into ruins.

The girl straightened up, looking around to see if there were any crashed planes nearby.

Generally speaking, a presence of a bomb crater indicated there had been intense battles; where there were battles, there could be damaged weapons, warplanes, armored vehicles, and the like. Although those burnt-out shells were useless, Ban Xia always had a habit of searching.

She looked around; suddenly the high branches above her rustled.

"Wow… what's that?"

Ban Xia was taken aback and looked up.

A light yellow, calm deer face peeked out from the tree top, it really was a massive head, large and long, with two small short horns, huge spreading ears on both sides, and those damn eyelashes, which immediately caught the girl's attention. Why were the eyelashes so thick?

Ban Xia stared at it, her neck getting sore from looking up.

The giraffe was completely indifferent to the presence of humans, continuing to blissfully chew on the leaves in its mouth, giving her an occasional glance before focusing back on its food.

At this moment, Ban Xia noticed its long legs hidden behind the dense bushes, its yellow skin marked with irregular dark spots. This massive creature, tall as a two-story building, stretched its neck to nibble only the tender leaves at the top of the trees, the second giraffe head appearing shortly after. The two giraffes feasted leisurely here, their large nostrils probing around, their tongues rolling up the tender leaves and shoots, pulling them off and stuffing into their mouths to chew loudly.

The teacher had once mentioned giraffes in Zijin Mountain; this was Ban Xia's first actual sighting of them.

They were not only alive but seemed to be thriving.

These giraffes had escaped from a zoo in the early years, and it seemed they had adapted well to the environment here. The climate had undergone drastic changes in the post-apocalyptic era, most notably becoming more humid and a general increase in temperature year-round, providing excellent conditions for the reproduction of flora and fauna.

Ban Xia simply sat down, resting her chin on her hands to watch the giraffes.

She watched them from 8:00 AM to 8:40 AM, the giraffes leisurely having their breakfast.

Ban Xia watched them eat selectively, tearing off leaves to chew and then spitting them out again. As the only giraffes in the entire Nanjing City, and even across Jiangsu Province, they were miles away from their African homeland, never seeing their relatives back home, nor aware of other members of their species, yet they seemed quite content.

As the giraffes moved away while munching, the girl patted her bottom and stood up.

Looking across to the other side of the pit, the road condition there was extremely poor, the road surface heavily damaged, and the vegetation even denser, likely impossible for riding a bicycle.

"This road is blocked." Ban Xia shook her head decisively, "I'll head back home."

If the road is impassable.

Then don't go up; go home, go home.

"Can't get up Zijin Mountain—!" Bai Yang turned his head towards the door and yelled, "The vegetation is too dense, the depth unclear! It's risky! Let's search another place—!"

Inside the living room outside the door, Bai Zhen and Wang Ning were tinkering with machinery, complaining about how clueless the city committee representatives who came in the afternoon were.

Hearing Bai Yang's voice, the two looked up at each other.

"If Zijin Mountain is not accessible, where should we search?"

"Zhujiang Road." Bai Zhen said, his head down screwing in a bolt, "Seg Electronics Plaza, over by the computer city, is where electronics parts are most abundant."

In the post-apocalyptic era, Nanjing City was a treasure trove for scrappers; the string of mobile phone stores and digital harbors on Zhujiang Road, these electronic components, motherboards, and wires, which were neither edible nor wearable, were essentially trash to ordinary people after the apocalypse. However, to those who knew their value, they were gold.

Head to Zhujiang Road! Raid Zhujiang Road!

If one is willing to dig through, they can always find what is needed.

"There's also the Jiangsu Province Radio Administration at 280 Zhujiang Road." Wang Ning nodded, "They usually confiscate a lot of illegal stations and relays, all piled up in the warehouse, we can definitely find what we need there."

"Is it the one on top of Zhujiang Building?"

"Yes, exactly, a pink building, with China Merchants Bank on the ground floor." Wang Ning said, "It's on the 23rd floor, absolutely guaranteed to find something there."

"Let her go to Zhujiang Road—!" Dad shouted at the door, "Bring a big sack, better have a cart, clean out the computer city, the mobile phone shops, everything! Bring back whatever can be brought!"

·

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Tuesday.

Ban Xia carried a list and dragged a small cart, setting off from Meihua Villa.

Zhujiang Road was also quite close. From Muxuyuan Street, turn at the former site of the National Government, then go up along Qingxi Road. Walking end-to-end would take about an hour to reach Zhujiang Road.

She gripped the list given to her by BG4MXH last night, while last night Bai Zhen and Wang Ning loudly plotted over Baidu Maps, scanning each place along the way. They marked those they deemed most exploitative, especially those that had wronged them, preferring to err on the side of excess rather than lenience, and eventually noticed that among the computer cities on the street, even if they eliminated three out of every two, there would certainly still be ones that slip through.

Deceitful merchants, all of them.

The two quickly compiled a physical list, calling it the "Deceitful Merchant Annihilation List," and handed it to BG4MSR.

They instructed her to scour each place listed on the form.

Ban Xia walked alone on the road, pulling her cart. It was an overcast day with no Sun, and both the sky and the city were grey. She walked in the very middle of the road, each step landing on the double yellow line.

The road was deserted, but there were abandoned cars scattered messily on the streets and sidewalks, covered in mud and fallen leaves. Occasionally, when a vehicle blocked her way, the girl would detour around it, bypassing even cow dung as she leisurely moved forward.

Along the roadsides, Chinese Parasol trees with white bark were planted in the green belts, and the buildings along the way were all silent. Ban Xia looked around at the colorful signs hanging above the sidewalks, seeing "Yifeng Pharmacy," "China Merchants Bank," and "Huamei Beauty Hospital." Some doors were tightly shut, others were wide open. Ban Xia occasionally paused to look inside. She could carry herself like a queen, chest puffed out, but sadly, there was no one to applaud her—this was her city alone.

It was indeed a city with only one inhabitant.

Ban Xia looked down at the list in her hand, which included Cybermart, Seg Plaza, Taipeng Security, and primarily, the Jiangsu Province Radio Administration, because it housed a relay station.

She did not know what a relay station was exactly. BG4MXH described it to her as a black rectangular box, with a metal casing, equipped with a handle, containing two small amateur base stations inside, resembling a computer tower but shorter and fatter.

"You carry the load, I'll lead the horse!"

Ban Xia quietly hummed the song.

"Welcome the sunrise, and bid farewell to the evening glow—"

After escorting the people from Nanjing University out, Wang Ning and Bai Zhen sat down together on the sofa, exhaling deeply.

The folks from Nanjing University were more troublesome than those from the municipal committee.

Lying on the sofa, they both covered their faces with their hands, taking a deep breath.

"Old Zhao, that dick."

"Old Zhao, that asshole."

Zhao Bowen was particularly cunning. Wang Ning and Bai Zhen thought Professor Zhao had arranged everything neatly before his departure, whether it was the municipal committee or Nanjing University—people who came were supposed to help solve problems with personnel and resources. Little did they know, Old Zhao hadn't mentioned anything; he told the people from the municipal committee that he had a friend in Wuwei who intercepted suspected international spy communications and asked the municipal comrades together with the State Security Department to investigate. To his counterparts at Nanjing University, he said a friend's computer was infected with a rare virus that would automatically loop pornographic content stored on the hard drive whenever the computer was powered on, and they couldn't fix it by themselves; could they help with an on-site repair? Hence, they eagerly showed up.

Once they entered, they asked where the computer was.

This baffled both Old Bai and Old Wang.

They spent an entire afternoon clarifying the situation, angrily calling Zhao Bowen. Zhao was very assertive on the line, claiming you have to lure people in for them to genuinely listen to what you're saying.

Sending emails, materials, or temper tantrums from afar doesn't compare to clarifying things face-to-face.

To truly convince someone, you must meet in person; any important matter can't be settled over the internet, otherwise people might agree readily over WeChat one day and completely forget the next morning after waking up.

You have to have them sitting in front of you!

You and the other person must be no more than two meters apart!

You need to spray your saliva in their face!

You have to corner them against the wall to prevent them from escaping!

You have to wall-slam them!

Wall-slam!

Old Zhao passionately delivered his speech on the phone, not knowing who he was wall-slamming.

So, the hardest part was getting these gods to personally visit.

The hardest part he already helped solve. What more did they want?

Fortunately, the efforts of Wang Ning and Bai Zhen were not fruitless; both groups promised to report back to their superiors and would follow up with further investigations at a later date.

"Will they take this matter seriously?" Bai Zhen asked.

"God only knows," Wang Ning said. "If it were me, I'd maybe write a report and leave it on the superior's desk. Whether it gets read is none of my business—I just go about my daily work routine, picking up and dropping off my kids at school."

"That's why you've always been sick with the 'Deputy Syndrome,'" Bai Zhen pointed out, "not proactive enough."

"Think being proactive means you won't get the 'Deputy Syndrome'?" Wang Ning scoffed. "Anyway, I've made peace with it. Once I retire, I'm going to open a restaurant."

"Open a restaurant for what?"

"To be the 'Director.'"

"That dream of yours most likely won't come true. In three years at minimum, five at most, we're all done for," Bai Zhen sighed. "How's Old Zhao's progress? Where is he now?"

"Shanghai," Wang Ning replied. "At Eighth Institute. He says it's the final hurdle."

"Eighth Institute?" Bai Zhen asked. "Which Eighth Institute? Has he finally been beaten into a hospital?"

"China Aerospace Science and Technology Group Eighth Research Institute."

Bai Zhen was puzzled for a moment.

"China Aerospace Science and Technology Group Eighth Research Institute? What's he doing over there?"