Groggy, I blinked awake, my nose assaulted by a bold, spicy aroma.
Turning my head, I saw a half-eaten bowl of instant noodles sitting on the table.
After years of choking down those dry, tasteless ration cakes, I simply couldn’t resist the temptation.
The noodle broth was still warm and red, and for a moment, nothing else mattered I grabbed the bowl and drank straight from it.
Delicious. Truly delicious.
The salty, slightly spicy flavor filled my mouth, and I was so moved I nearly cried.
Like a starving ghost, I tore through everything edible in the house before I finally had the energy to think about my current situation.
No mistake about it....I’d been reborn!
Three months from now, all the plants on Earth would mutate overnight.
Some would become aggressive, others would change in strange ways.
Most grains and fruits would grow huge, but their taste would become nearly unbearable.
There would be plenty to eat, so people wouldn’t starve, but human desires go beyond mere survival.
After getting used to sweet, juicy produce, who could stand chewing on something as dry and tough as tree bark?
I certainly couldn’t. I’d often team up with others to hunt for the rare, halfway-edible fruit… until one day, I got careless and was killed by a mutated plant.
And then I woke up before the plant mutations ever happened.
My first instinct? Stockpile rice, Stockpile vegetables, Stockpile fruit, Stockpile spices.
Stockpile everything that was still edible!
After my parents passed away, they left me a sizable inheritance, so I quit my job and immediately started shopping.
While plants mutated, animals didn’t change much, so for a few years I could still eat meat.
But even animals hated the taste of mutated plant feed, so they grew much more slowly.
Meat prices skyrocketed a chicken barely weighing three pounds could sell for 3,000 yuan, and few could afford it.
Even with all my money, I couldn’t buy much meat.
Food was rationed like in the old days distributed by headcount. Each month, I counted down the days until meat was available, just to soothe my stomach that had grown queasy from too many ration cakes.
Those cakes were made from mutated grains and vegetables, ground up and pressed together.
People ate them as their main staple every day.
Since everything but meat tasted awful, the restaurant industry took a massive hit.
People started ranking food into three categories: Regularly Bad, Super Bad, and Hellish.
I ordered twenty large freezers, filling ten with all sorts of frozen meats and ready-to-eat foods even half a freezer of ice cream.
Huge cuts of beef and lamb, whole sides of pork, cleaned chicken, duck, and goose, plus their eggs every corner was packed.
I hoped I could enjoy “meat freedom” for years to come.
The other ten freezers I filled with processed frozen vegetables and fruits.
Since fresh produce doesn’t freeze well, I bought a ton of dried and preserved fruits and veggies.
Of course, I also stocked up on rice, flour, oil, cookies, bread, instant noodles, nuts, jerky, sausages, soda, chips, chocolate, candy… and every spice and canned pickle I could think of.
I just went down the supermarket list, ordering everything by the box.
I ordered so much that the store owner offered to deliver it personally, but I refused.
Instead, I bought a truck, hired people to load my purchases, and had them delivered to a rented warehouse where I picked them up myself.
I didn’t want anyone to know how much I’d bought, so I was extremely cautious.
But even these supplies would only last a decade or so, so I bought a massive stash of compressed biscuits, military rations, and canned goods enough to make sure I’d never have to force down those ration cakes again.
My bank balance plummeted, so I listed my extra apartments for sale online.
After the plant explosion, prices soared ten yuan then was worth more than a hundred now.
I had to spend every cent before inflation wiped out my savings.
I stocked up on every household item imaginable from appliances and bedding to soap, toilet paper, and sanitary pads. It was enough to open a general store.
After the mass mutation, power and water systems were hit hard, but repairs were quick most services were restored within two weeks.
Still, better safe than sorry I bought a hundred barrels of bottled water, plus two sets of solar panels and generators.
Some things were hard to get, like diesel for the generators and certain medicines, but I managed to get my hands on enough.
Every day, I shopped like crazy, checking for gaps in my supplies until my bank card balance dropped to three digits.
Satisfied, I sat in my overflowing warehouse, thinking about where I’d live next.
After much thought, I realized I had only one real option.
Doomsday Plant Battle - Chapter 1
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