It had to be that she was using the wrong approach the past few days. That was the only reason Jing Shu hadn't found more blood mushrooms.
Over the last ten-plus days of watching and chatting, Jing Shu had gotten to know about half the people in the salvage team. Night vision let her see clearly, and when she saw the same faces every day, familiarity followed. She even knew roughly how long each person stayed underwater before coming back up.
Earlier, while looking for supplies, she had only waited passively for someone to vanish. When a diver resurfaced, he would give a rough location, then by the time she went down to search, the missing person had already been gone too long, and there would be no trace left to find.
"Little sister, you again?" Liu Xing held his head, helpless.
Jing Shu nimbly climbed onto the salvage boat. The deck was piled high with all sorts of items, and the loaders were already sorting them piece by piece.
A week ago, the salvage team had gone through the residential buildings and pried up whatever was left in every unit: beds, toilets, sofas, wardrobes, doors, window glass. Anything they could pry loose, they took.
They really plucked every last feather as the wild goose passed, then rushed to install it all in the still-bare apartments. At the very least, everyone needed a bed, and the windows needed glass to block the wind.
Most of it had been soaked and was close to ruined, but it would do for now. With nighttime temperatures just a few degrees above zero, damp clothes, and people sleeping on cold floors, many had already fallen ill.
And every unit needed a toilet. Water wasn't scarce at the moment, but if it were… better not think about it. The government had to solve this big problem, otherwise the stairwells and surrounding areas would be, well, covered in golden piles.
"Brother Liu, how's it looking? Let me see the list. What bounties are posted lately?" Jing Shu smiled.
With Jing Shu, Liu Xing both loved and dreaded her, but he still wore a grin and handed over a detailed log.
She was a walking God of Fortune, not to be offended. In just these ten-odd days, she'd begun with little experience and often returned empty-handed. Later, once there were patterns to follow, any bounty with a roughly known location would fall into the God of Fortune's hands.
Her completion rate was terrifyingly close to one hundred percent. Plenty of requestors even named her specifically.
Just the "juice" dripping through this God of Fortune's fingers in the past few days had amounted to several hundred virtual coins, and Liu Xing's business volume had multiplied. Never mind special requests, even if she asked for something excessive, he would applaud and run to help.
There was only one problem. The God of Fortune loved diving in to drag people out. Somehow she always fished up four or five who weren't fully dead yet. He couldn't just stand by and watch them die. If he did, the divers would probably stuff him down their pants and use him for a soccer ball.
Not only could he not show reluctance to save people, he even had to thank this living Lei Feng with all his might. It made his career much harder. Even the doctors had their hands full, all because earlier recipients of blood mushrooms had leaked some inside info.
They said the famed blood mushrooms were all found where large numbers of leeches existed. But several who went after them had vanished. Teams went down to search and found nothing.
So blood mushrooms might indeed be in leech swarms, or they might not.
And the water was complicated. Some people disappeared because of waterweeds, some were trapped, others met all kinds of accidents.
Liu Xing said, "Seriously, stop diving in to save people."
Jing Shu said, "No. Don't think about it."
Liu Xing changed tactics, assigning divers to act separately and spread out farther. That way the ancestor wouldn't stare at one small area all day. It worked surprisingly well. With so many people in motion, that ancestor couldn't track who was where or who had disappeared. How many could she remember anyway? Still, he had a bad feeling today.
Jing Shu scanned the day's assignment sheet. It listed which group covered which direction, what each diver had pulled up, and what bounties were requested. Some offered 100 virtual coins to move a full set of furniture out of an apartment. Some offered a few hundred to clear out all the supplies in a certain basement.
She usually ignored the petty bounties worth only a few hundred. She only considered those over a thousand, since she didn't have time to run bounties full-time. She only completed them incidentally while searching for materials she needed.
"Uncle Wang is on the seven o'clock bearing today. How long has Xiao Li been down? Why isn't he up yet? Oh, right, Hong Hong is on the twelve o'clock line. That place is dangerous, isn't it?"
"Hey, A Bao, you're up. How'd you do today? You're teamed with Wang Mazi and Gou Sheng. How long ago did they dive?"
The divers were fond of her. They knew there was someone who drove an amphibious shark submarine and showed up every day, often jumping in to save them.
She usually didn't say much. Only when someone shouted that a diver had vanished would she rocket into the water. Lately she'd changed, chatting more, but they still greeted her warmly.
They were shocked at how sharp she was. Jing Shu could match faces to names better than their own supervisor. The supervisor always called roll because, to him, everyone was a shaved head who looked the same.
Liu Xing's mouth twitched. He still didn't know what game Jing Shu was playing when she suddenly exclaimed, "What? Wang Mazi has been down for two minutes already? Alright, give me the bearing and I'll go."
Before he could react, Jing Shu had already whooshed into her amphibious shark submarine. The throttle hit maximum and, in a blink, she was gone.
"Burning fuel like it's free," Liu Xing muttered. Then she reappeared moments later. "Wang Mazi's fine. He'll be up any second. What, Er Gouzi on the other side has also been down two minutes?"
The submarine streaked away again.
That was right. To better carry out her plan today, Jing Shu flew the banner of: rather miss it than let it slip. If anyone failed to surface on time, she would dive in instantly. Rather miss a false alarm than fail to act on the real thing.
This zone was the commercial district. Government buildings and residential blocks had been mostly cleared. Now it was the turn of the busiest shopping area. Before the apocalypse, clothing and the like had surely been moved already, but large equipment that couldn't be carried out still sat in warehouses, and plenty of inventories were hidden in shops' backrooms.
If she searched this area alone, Jing Shu would need days. With hundreds or thousands of divers, the sweep would be done in a day or two. If she really wanted to find blood mushrooms, she had to rely on the masses.
===
Lei Feng was the name of The God of Fortune