Chapter 17 – Fish Soup

During the apocalypse, if one wished to eat chicken, they generally could still find some, but fish…

In the middle stages of the apocalypse, water not produced by a water ability wasn’t drinkable. Naturally, it was impossible for the fish to still be eaten. Moreover, the water produced by an ability user wasn’t able to raise fish, so by nature, fish would become extinct.

Qi Jingchen really liked eating fish before the end of the world. He couldn’t afford to eat expensive ones, so he ate Crucian carp, silver carp, and so on. But after the apocalypse arrived, he had never eaten fish again. After calculating until now, it was no less than ten years since he had tasted the flavour of a fish.

“Around the vicinity of a city is always a fishery that raises common freshwater fish, you both can go look.” Before the bodyguards left, Nie Yi spoke again. He had lived through the apocalypse before, unlike Qi Jingchen who was shut in for the beginning two years, and thus he knew quite a lot of things.

Speaking of, B city’s secure base had initially raised fish in a nearby fishery as well. After all, most fish didn’t need much tending to; just by throwing in some grass and they could raise them, but later…

The two bodyguards have followed Nie Yi for many years already and were faithful and devoted to Nie Yi. Once they heard Nie Yi’s words, they promptly went to ask around. After learning that there was a lake nearby that had been penned by people to raise fishes from Xu Nan, they immediately headed over there.

“To be able to eat at this time is already good enough, there’s really a person that wants to eat fish!” The people by Xu Nan’s side couldn’t resist making sarcastic comments.

“Why do you care about it so much?” Xu Nan glared at that person.

That person twitched his lips and didn’t speak again.

And at this time, Nie Yi was already starting to pick out people from the survivors they had just rescued.

Most of these people were frightened until their courage was destroyed, but in any case, there still were a few that were more courageous. Nie Yi then asked around, picked five people to add to his team and brought them back to their original district.

At this time, the sky was quickly darkening, everyone naturally got busy with making a fire to cook. Nie Yi picked out a pleasantly cool place to arrange a chair for Qi Jingchen and also started to boil water to cook for Qi Jingchen.

To mention this, fortunately, there were quite a few families that had grown flowers and vegetables at their balcony, thus it wasn’t that hard to find some vegetables for Qi Jingchen to eat, it was precisely non-vegetarian dishes that were harder to find.

“Ge, I killed zombies today! Alone!” Qi Yaoyao took advantage of when Nie Yi was busy to rub against Qi Jingchen’s side, speaking excitedly.

If it was before, for her to do such a matter that was worthy of flaunting, she would’ve loudly shouted about it long ago. This time, it wasn’t the same. Even though she was excited, she still kept her voice under control, probably because she was frightened by Nie Yi.

“Really amazing.” Qi Jingchen praised with a sentence. At this time in his last life, Qi Yaoyao was still ignoring him because he had no ability ne; he never expected that it would actually change so much now… Speaking of, him allowing Qi Yaoyao to attack zombies, was also to temper Qi Yaoyao.

But… even if Qi Yaoyao learned how to kill zombies, how many years would she live?

Thinking this way, Qi Jingchen felt his interest fade, bluntly closing his eyes and ignoring her, until the two bodyguards brought back five caught fishes.

The fishes raised by fisheries near cities were usually the most commonly seen freshwater fish. What the two bodyguards brought back was exactly this. These freshwater fishes’ vitality was very strong, at this moment when they were set on the floor by the bodyguards, they even flopped around a couple of times.

“What fish do you want to eat?” Nie Yi asked.

“Crucian carp,” Qi Jingchen said.

Nie Yi nodded, then looked at the bodyguard by his side. “Which one is Crucian carp?”

“These ones!” The bodyguard promptly pointed out two fishes.

Nie Yi nodded his head, grabbing those two fishes and then went to descale, chop of the heads and gutting the stomachs. The method of killing a fish was something he fumbled about himself before, and was extremely vicious…

After killing it, he asked Qi Jingchen, then put the two fishes in the pan to saute with oil, and then put it in the water to stew into becoming soup.

Nie Yi only wanted the two fishes, so the leftover three fishes were sorted out by the two bodyguards and Ping Shengchao. Then, half was cooked by the pickled vegetable flavour packet they found in other people’s homes, the other half was cooked using fish fillets in chilli oil flavour packet.

It was already such a time, so obviously they wouldn’t be particularly attentive to making fish fillets or whatever. Simply cut it into a few pieces then cook it and it was ready to be eaten less than a while later.

Those enriching ingredients in the seasoning packet didn’t conceal the flavour; even though they didn’t have any culinary talent, the final flavour of the fish was actually not bad.

“Why didn’t you guys catch a few more?” After Ping Shengchao finished eating, he still felt somewhat unsatisfied.

“We don’t know how to catch,” The two bodyguards said. They were bodyguards, they never learned how to catch fish. Even though they found a fishing net, they spent no small amount of energy and skills yet only dredged up five fishes and were nearly surrounded by zombies.

Fortunately, their marksmanship was top class, and they had brought a lot of bullets… At the present stage, the ferocity of an ability couldn’t compare to a gun.

“Next time we’ll catch some more, there are still these seasoning packets, without using fish to boil soup or mix with rice is also pretty tasty,” Ping Shengchao said, then heard a retching sound.

Qi Jingchen waited until the Crucian carp soup was done, then drank only a mouthful only to spit it out, and had even been unable to restrain himself from retching. “Take it away!”

Nie Yi took away the fish soup and asked, deeply concerned, “I used clean water to boil it, why…”

“The fish isn’t good.” Qi Jingchen frowned, waved his hand and was too lazy to continue speaking, also uninterested in eating fish anymore.

He only had a mouthful of this fish soup before spitting it out. It was possible that a zombie had fallen into that lake, contaminating the water and fish in the lake.

Of course, even if he felt that it tasted disgusting, it didn’t matter to others. As long as the plants and animals hadn’t turned black, it was unlikely that they would go so far as to immediately turn into zombies. As for whether or not accumulating it over a long period of time would turn them into a zombie, no one knew. Anyway, in the end, the world would be completely dusky and everyone would have become zombies.

For Qi Jingchen to be able to guess this matter, naturally Nie Yi could think of it too, but he didn’t care about this either. Now, seeing that Qi Jingchen wasn’t eating, he took at the spoon Qi Jingchen had used to eat and started to eat the fish soup.

Xu Nan and the rest were all eating not too far away. When the bodyguard had first asked where the fishery was, they hadn’t known who wanted to eat fish, but later, seeing those two bodyguards bringing back the fishes for Nie Yi to pick, and even personally cooking for the one that had been lying down, naturally they knew what happened.

Before the apocalypse, if others wanted to be a daye, wanting people to serve them, they also wouldn’t go so far as to be so envious. At most, they would say that they had a good life, but now it was the apocalypse.

These people had all been trapped in their homes for the past half a month, experiencing the feeling of starvation, and also felt continuously apprehensive and incomparably despairing. Even if they were saved by Nie Yi and his men, they killed zombies for survival… when they saw someone not doing a single thing at this time, yet have someone carry and feeding him fresh vegetables and fish, how could they not be envious?

In the afternoon, some people were envious of Qi Jingchen, and now the envious people had increased. The number of people talking about Qi Jingchen was also steadily increasing.

Of course, the most envious one was Yan Zhe.

Yan Zhe and Qi Jingchen actually had some similarities, but it was their family circumstances that were completely different, Yan Zhe’s luck being better than Qi Jingchen.

Nie Yi was thrown into the army by his grandfather during his first year in university, then he re-entered school to study second-year two years later. When he went to the newcomers welcoming, he had met Yan Zhe.

Don’t say that Nie Yi originally liked men, even if Nie Yi didn’t like men, seeing Yan Zhe, whose appearance was outstanding, he would still take care of him a little more, not to mention the fact that Yan Zhe was also outstanding in other aspects… For Nie Yi to like him, was also a pretty normal matter.

Nie Yi had also managed a company when he was in university, after that he had let Yan Zhe enter his own company to hold concurrent jobs and so on, eventually having never let Yan Zhe really lack money. Compared to Qi Jingchen who always had to think of ways to find concurrent jobs, it really was the difference between night and day.

In fact, if it was before the apocalypse, if Yan Zhe realized Nie Yi liked another man, maybe he would even be very glad. After all, he truly didn’t like men, but now it was the apocalypse, and the only person he could rely on was still only Nie Yi.

Even though he didn’t like Nie Yi, Yan Zhe still intended to grasp Nie Yi firmly.

In addition, when Nie Yi had previously liked him, how comfortably had he passed his days? And now ne? He even had to attack zombies with other people! This disparity, to Yan Zhe, was truly large!

Qi Jingchen wasn’t eating the Crucian carp fish anymore, so Nie Yi then found two packets of things that didn’t have a bunch of additives, merely roasting dry some apples to make some dried apples for him to eat. After seeing him eat, he carried him upstairs.

On this day, Nie Yi slept together with Qi Jingchen as before.

Nie Yi already knew that Qi Jingchen didn’t care for many things. It was just a matter of not letting him be uncomfortable, so of course, he wouldn’t dare do anything excessive. But in the middle of the night, he still couldn’t resist scooting closer to Qi Jingchen.

Qi Jingchen was originally uncomfortable, and now Nie Yi, alike to a stove, stuck close to him. He was completely too lazy to speak and directly rolled off to the side, rolling onto the floor.

“Jingchen!” Nie Yi was startled, promptly carrying him back to the bed.

“Let go, it’s too hot!” Qi Jingchen furrowed his brows. If Nie Yi was like last night, only reaching out a hand, he could still bear it, but forget it if there was anything else!

“I definitely won’t come close to you anymore!” Nie Yi immediately promised, at the same time he missed his water ability even more. If he had his water ability, he could lower his own temperature. At that time, Qi Jingchen, in order to be comfortable, might even take the initiative to hug him, and wouldn’t be like now, rolling off the bed.

Nie Yi was currently carefully accompanying him, yet at this time, there was suddenly a knocking sound from outside.

Someone knocking on the door usually meant there’s a matter, so Nie Yi could only get off the bed but never thought that when he opened the door, he would see Yan Zhe.

For Yan Zhe to come over meant there definitely weren’t any big issues, and Nie Yi couldn’t resist the anger in his heart. “Coming to knock on the door in the depth of the night, you’re crazy!” As he spoke, he even slammed the door closed.

He was still occupied with coaxing Qi Jingchen ne, where did he have the time to deal with this fellow that was already a dead person in his eyes?

Nie Yi then left like this, while Yan Zhe, who especially came to knock on the door wearing a tank top and shorts, had a dark expression.

Baobao Notes

Was gonna update this a few hours earlier, but I got distracted by falling into the Grammarly tips….