Chapter 98 Points

The situation quickly became one-sided. Rao Junyu and the Bodyguard were dragged to a tent by the guards, and the crowd was slowly dispersed.

As the gathered onlookers scattered, Xu Jiye did not leave. He paced over to Bai Xiao and extended his hand, asking, "May I take a look at the gun?"

Bai Xiao had no reason to refuse him.

Xu Jiye was undoubtedly an expert with firearms. His sequence of loading the rounds, inserting the magazine, and chambering a bullet was smooth and fluid, far more proficient than her own.

When he raised the gun to aim, Bai Xiao's hand at her side had already clenched nervously.

Regardless of whether the man before her had hostile intent, the feeling was like someone sharpening a blade right in front of you—even if they didn't intend to strike, it was a display of force and a veiled threat. It was a truly unpleasant sensation.

With so many people in the square, he ultimately didn't fire a test shot. However, based on experience alone, he had already reached a conclusion in his heart: "Even in the old days, this gun would have been a controlled weapon."

"If Captain Xu has something to say, he might as well say it directly."

Their gazes met in the air—one calm and self-possessed, the other cool and fearless.

Since she had already taken out her gun, she wasn't afraid of others knowing it was a controlled weapon. However, given the current environment, she didn't want to openly make an enemy of the official organization.

The game was already dangerous enough; she didn't want her life outside the game to be riddled with crises as well, as that would undoubtedly drain her energy for the game.

If she eventually had to hand over the gun, it wasn't completely unacceptable. After all, she couldn't use it inside the game. Outside the game, no one on Mian Mountain currently had a gun except for the Disaster Relief Department. As long as she didn't make an enemy of them, having a gun for self-defense wasn't that important. Ordinary people didn't have firearms, so even if she encountered them, they weren't much of a concern.

Unless one day she had to leave this place. Once she left, she would no longer be restricted, and it shouldn't be difficult to get her hands on a real gun.

"By right, controlled weapons should be surrendered."

"If that's the case, why didn't Captain Xu announce it publicly just now?"

If sparks could be struck in the air, they would be flying everywhere right now.

"I can see that Miss Bai doesn't seem to care that much about this gun." Xu Jiye thought that, by common logic, an ordinary person should be quite attached to a self-defense weapon.

Bai Xiao suddenly realized something. The Disaster Relief Department had no shortage of guns, let alone a fake one. What they cared about most were supplies—survival supplies. She had been too naturally thinking from the perspective of an ordinary person.

So she followed Xu Jiye's lead: "What information does Captain Xu want from me?"

"Your route before coming up the mountain and the resource points you passed along the way."

This man was truly greedy. At the same time, Bai Xiao hadn't expected the Disaster Relief Department to be so short on supplies.

She had always felt she only had ten modest storage slots. Time had been tight at the beginning of the disaster, and she had only spent a short time doing some rough research online to hoard some things, so her preparations weren't thorough.

Some items were only collected later when she sensed danger and risked going out, but she had no idea that the small amount of supplies she thought she had was already more than enough for ninety-nine percent of people.

With the current power shortage, the survival resources for the millions of people in Yunzhou City were shrinking. The pressure on the Disaster Relief Department was unprecedentedly massive; they weren't nearly as powerful as they appeared on the surface. The dominance of the Advance Force was merely a strategy—the organization wanted to use force to suppress potential unstable factors.

She didn't know that the Disaster Relief Department was divided into several brigades, with over a dozen mountain strongholds selected in the south and west. Each brigade had to handle the transfer quota of at least a hundred thousand people. Supplies weren't just scarce; they were in a state of emergency.

Mian Mountain had mature commercial development, so its assigned transfer quota was even higher. In a few days, it would be so crowded that even the parking lots would likely be packed.

And the optimistic residents of Mian Mountain were still completely unaware of this dire situation.

To prevent panic, the Advance Force led by Xu Jiye kept their lips sealed, not daring to breathe a word. The task assigned by their superiors was to gain control over all resources on the mountain and eliminate all unstable elements as quickly as possible before the main force arrived.

What Xu Jiye sought were survival supplies, and what Bai Xiao sought was combat capability. What both parties cared about happened to be what the other needed, making the cooperation quite pleasant.

Bai Xiao took back her gun. After marking the map with Xu Jiye, she went to the points trading area.

The trading area was teeming with people, as lively as a bank on opening day, and most people were indeed there to open accounts.

Due to the shortage of resources, the Disaster Relief Department lacked materials to use as physical point cards for the public. Before coming up with a solution, they were temporarily using manual registration to record everyone's points data.

Although this method was inefficient, it at least ensured fairness and avoided unnecessary fighting and counterfeiting.

Bai Xiao couldn't help but think of the points in the game. She thought with some irony that points were now becoming prevalent in both reality and the game.

Of the four categories—clothing, food, housing, and transportation—food and housing were currently the basic necessities.

The cheapest item was compressed biscuits; a 100g biscuit was worth 20 points. Instant foods, such as instant noodles and bread, also cost points based on weight—a pack of ordinary instant noodles was 40 points. Even hot water was charged by the milliliter, with 200ml costing 5 points. Canned meat and other foods were even more expensive, with a 100g can requiring 100 points to exchange.

Accommodation wasn't cheap either, but it was divided into several tiers. A twelve-person room was the cheapest at 10 points per day, an eight-person room was 20 points, a four-person room was 50 points, a double room was 100 points, and a single room was 200 points.

Corresponding to this were the ways to obtain points: one was through labor, and the other was through trading supplies.

Labor opportunities were varied, such as daily chores like laundry, cleaning, assisting with cooking, and small-scale manual labor, which earned about 20 to 30 points per day.

Outdoor exploration, disaster relief, logging and dismantling, house construction, and participating in large-scale projects earned more, ranging from about 50 to 100 points per day.

In addition to physical labor, there were technical jobs such as technical upgrades, effective innovations and inventions, equipment maintenance, tool manufacturing, and medical services, which had higher value, ranging from about 100 to 300 points per day.

There were also water purifiers, equipment operators, night guards, and various other roles. Depending on the difficulty and hardship of the job, they corresponded to different point values.

Supplies trading had even more clearly marked and sometimes high prices. For example, common tools like axes and pliers ranged from 80 to 150 points. A liter of pure gasoline or diesel was 150 points, a complete waterproof tarp over 10 square meters was 200 points, a bottle of antibiotics was 300 points, a functional solar panel was 800 points, and small gasoline or diesel generators were as high as 5000 points.

There were also various seasonings like salt and sugar, warmth-providing items like blankets and sleeping bags, technical books on medicine and farming, and local mountain maps, all of which corresponded to different point values based on their worth.

Bai Xiao thought of the pet food and canned meat she had collected from the pet supply company on her way here. These things were useless to her. Although she couldn't find specific exchange rules for them on the trading list, their nutritional value was there. Even if the taste was a bit poor, they should be exchangeable for some points.

Sure enough, when she spoke to the staff at the trading desk, they were very pleasantly surprised. Most people queuing in the trading area were just there to open an account or trade some small tools; there were no truly valuable supplies.

Now that a big order had come in, how could the people in the trading area not be interested?