5: Chapter 5 Preparation Checklist

In November, Jiangcheng's autumn wind already carried a hint of chill.

Especially at night, the wind crept into the room through the gaps of the poorly sealed aluminum alloy windows, making people's necks stiff from the cold.

Jiang Lin sat cross-legged on the bed, with a pile of odds and ends spread out on the bedsheet in front of him.

There were bright red one-hundred-yuan bills, crumpled ten- and twenty-yuan bills, and a large handful of coins of various denominations.

This was all the fortune he had saved up since he was a child.

New Year money given by relatives, small change saved from running errands to buy soy sauce for his mom at the convenience store downstairs, and even a few yuan from collecting and selling scrap materials back in elementary school—it was all right here.

Jiang Lin sorted the money into neat piles, stacking the coins into small columns.

Then he counted it over and over three times, finally arriving at a figure accurate down to the jiao: 2,145.5 yuan.

Unfortunately, the last time he went to the Municipal Second Hospital, the registration fee was 28 yuan, the CT scan fee was 360, plus Oryzanol and Anshen Bunao Liquid, costing nearly 500 yuan in total.

Otherwise, he would have had nearly 3,000 yuan.

Of course, even 3,000 yuan, in the eyes of those second-generation wealthy classmates, probably wasn't enough to buy a pair of limited-edition sneakers.

That Zhou Rui sitting in the last row by the window—the pair of AJ sneakers on his feet reportedly cost over 3,000 yuan.

Over 3,000, which was 1,000 more than his entire net worth.

Zhou Rui probably would never understand how someone could spread 2,000 yuan on a bed, count it three times, and care about the destination of every single yuan.

But for Jiang Lin, this was the startup capital for wilderness survival in that Wasteland World where not even a ghost's shadow could be seen.

Being dragged unprepared into that dark red Wasteland and staying there for a day and a night, experiencing that unbearable hunger and thirst—he never wanted to experience it a second time in his life.

What's more, last time was just an accidental trial pass; this time, he was going with the intention of being a permanent resident in there.

To pitch camp in a place like that and still keep a clear head to study and grind through practice problems, relying solely on strong willpower and boiling passion was complete nonsense.

He had to arm himself to the teeth.

Money was scarce; every single fen had to be split in half to be spent, right where it counted most.

Jiang Lin took out his long-neglected Redmi phone, charged it, and turned it on.

The battery of this cracked-screen phone had aged terribly, and playing Honor of Kings would probably lag like a slideshow, but using it as an e-book reader was more than enough.

Step one: solve the storage problem for study materials.

He connected to the home WiFi.

All textbook PDFs for the three years of high school.

The complete electronic version of Five Years of College Entrance Examination, Three Years of Simulation—Math, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, he downloaded every single subject.

Past gaokao real exam papers from various provinces, the national papers of the past five years, Beijing papers, Shanghai papers, Jiangsu papers...

Jiangsu's math paper was notoriously difficult, but he downloaded it anyway; whether he would do it or not was another matter, he would prepare it first.

There were also all sorts of messy tutoring materials, things like Breakthroughs in College Entrance Examination Math Finale Questions, Physics Model Problem-Solving Methods, Chemistry Technological Process Topics, Biology Genetics Full-Score Strategies...

As long as it showed up in the search, he didn't even look at the content and clicked download directly.

Then he opened Xianyu.

This was the part that took up most of his time.

Things on Xianyu were cheap, but a mixed bag; prices for the same product could vary by several times, and mismatches between descriptions and actual items were the norm.

He had to click into each seller one by one to check their credit score, historical reviews, and real product photos.

If it were stock images, he would swipe away immediately; there had to be real photos, detail shots, and preferably a video.

Spending over 50 yuan, he snagged an Ah power bank.

He bought two sets of outdoor camping lights with solar charging panels for 36 yuan.

The two lights would be used in rotation; as long as that dark red sun of the Wasteland could still shine, he wouldn't be left fumbling in the dark at night.

For a science student whose brain wasn't all that sharp, just looking at the screen with his eyes wasn't going to calculate the general formula of a sequence.

Moreover, most of the time, understanding it with your eyes wasn't truly understanding it; being able to write it out with your hands, calculate it correctly, and get the points—that was what truly understanding meant.

This was a bloody lesson he summarized from countless exams.

Those problems that felt "this isn't that hard" when listening to the teacher in class would, when tackled by oneself in the examination room, get stuck in some unexpected place for at least five out of ten questions.

He needed a lot of draft paper.

So, he snagged two boxes of damp and yellowed A4 paper.

One box was five packs, five hundred sheets per pack, so two boxes made ten packs totaling 5,000 sheets.

5,000 sheets of A4 paper, even if he used up 100 sheets of draft paper a day, would last him 50 days.

Then came pens.

Ballpoint pens didn't need to be bought too fancy.

He bought a box of ten black ballpoint pens for 5 yuan.

He additionally bought a hundred universally sized pen refills.

That was enough for him to write until the end of time.

Study tools fully prepared, the main event came next.

Saving his life.

Last time he went to the Wasteland, although he came and went in a hurry and hadn't even explored a complete corner of that world clearly, that devastated scenery at a glance had clearly experienced some kind of great destruction and great ruin.

If it wasn't a natural disaster, it was man-made.

Jiang Lin was a poor science student, and his pitiful amount of Physics and Chemistry common sense told him that in a place like this, devoid of vegetation and where not even a fly could be seen, there was a high probability that nuclear radiation remained.

He didn't know how high the radiation level on the Wasteland was.

Perhaps it only slightly exceeded the standard, and staying for a few days wouldn't hurt.

Perhaps in some places the radiation dose was so large that staying inside for an hour would cause irreversible damage to DNA.

He didn't know, and he couldn't gamble.

So he spent another 55 yuan to buy a second-hand civilian Geiger counter.

The seller said this thing had a bit of a bad contact, but measuring rough values was no problem.

Where he lived couldn't be sloppy either.

Broken walls and ruined ruins letting wind in from all sides—without shelter at night, the rate of body heat loss could freeze a person to death alive.

He needed to buy outdoor equipment.

Outdoor equipment had a high circulation volume on Xianyu; many people bought a bunch of equipment, went camping once, and then listed it for sale upon return.

He easily picked up a set of outdoor equipment locally.

An 80% new single-person outdoor tent, green, double-layered, with the outer layer being rainproof Oxford cloth and the inner layer being breathable mesh.

The matching tent poles and ground pegs were all there.

A moisture-proof mat, aluminum-foil surfaced, about 1.9 meters long when unfolded.

A three-jin cotton sleeping bag, with the temperature scale reading a comfort temperature of 0 to 10 degrees and a limit temperature of -5 degrees.

The seller said he bought it last year, used it only once, and later was too busy with work to find time for camping, so leaving it around was just gathering dust.

Listed at 150.

Jiang Lin chatted with him for half an hour, and finally picked it up himself for 130.

As for self-defense and tools, Jiang Lin was actually quite troubled.

Finally, spending 80 yuan, he bought an engineering shovel that could both defend against danger and serve as a tool.

Foldable, the shovel head was made of high-carbon steel, with one side edged to be used as a machete, the other side serrated to saw wood, and a retractable handle that concealed a small blade and a screwdriver inside.

This thing was heavy, feeling substantial in the hand.

After unfolding, the shovel head was about as long as his forearm, and when the handle was fully pulled out, it reached his chest.

Medical aspects were also of utmost importance.

The sanitary conditions of the Wasteland couldn't be counted on.

No vegetation had been found on that dark red soil yet; how much dust was suspended in the air, and how many bacteria and chemical pollutants were carried in that dust, he had no way of knowing at all.

No matter how clean the water and food he brought over were, staying there for a month, casually inhaling some dust, or getting tense and having his immune system disordered, he would most likely get diarrhea.

In the wilderness lacking medical care and medicine, a severe bout of diarrhea could suck an adult dry and dehydrate them.

The teacher said in sophomore biology class that the body's daily excretion of water through urine, feces, sweat, and breathing was about 2,000 to 2,500 milliliters.

When having diarrhea, this number would double or even more.

Water and electrolyte imbalance caused by severe diarrhea could be fatal within 48 hours.

He couldn't die from a bout of diarrhea.

Montmorillonite powder, compound multivitamin tablets, iodophor, iodine tablets, ibuprofen, amoxicillin, Band-Aids—he bought some of all these basic medicines.

When paying, he turned around and entered the small supermarket next to him, carrying away two packs of cheap, plentiful toilet paper.

A time-travel without toilet paper was definitely incomplete.

Even in the apocalypse, he had to preserve the final dignity of a modern civilized person.

Moreover, toilet paper could also be used as a rag, as kindling, and stuffed into clothes as a temporary insulation layer.

In the following days, his shopping list continued to grow longer.

Waterproof lighters, 60 of them bought for 15 yuan.

On the Wasteland, if you could find something that could burn, fire was life.

Fire could boil water and sterilize, could provide heat, could drive away beasts, and could give people a little psychological comfort in the dark night.

The last time he spent a night on the Wasteland, the most desperate moment wasn't shivering from the cold, but keeping his eyes open in complete darkness, unable to see anything, unable to do anything, having to passively listen to the wind raging until dawn.

Backup nylon rope, ten meters long, load-bearing two hundred kilograms, more than ten yuan.

It could be used to fix tents, tie up supplies, dry clothes, and could even be used as a safety rope in emergencies.

Sealed ziplock bags, one pack of one hundred, in all sizes, used to separately pack food, medicine, and electronic products, moisture-proof and dust-proof.

Second-hand folding knife, fifteen yuan, the blade was only two inches long, good for whittling something, cutting a piece of rope, opening packaging, more flexible than an engineering shovel.

N95 dust masks.

A box of twenty, forty yuan.

Those dark red dust particles on the Wasteland, who knows what consequences there would be if inhaled into the lungs.

Maybe heavy metal dust, maybe radioactive fallout, maybe just ordinary rust.

But he didn't want to gamble.

Disposable nitrile gloves.

A box of one hundred, blue, twenty-something yuan.

Wearing them when treating water sources or touching potentially contaminated objects was always better than bare hands.

Simple waterproof raincoats.

Those thinnest plastic raincoats that folded up to only the size of a palm, five yuan each, and he bought three.

In case it rained on the Wasteland, that rainwater was most likely acid rain.

Although the raincoat was thin, at least it could separate the acid rain from the skin.

Trivial items, after much tossing about, he recorded every single expense on a draft paper.

That notebook labeled Wasteland supplies had already been flipped through several pages, with every page densely recording item names, prices, purchasing channels, and arrival status.

Finally calculating the total price, 952 yuan.

Twenty-one hundred forty-five point five, minus nine hundred fifty-two, leaving eleven hundred ninety-three point five.

Next was the most important food and water.

Among them, the water issue was particularly important.

A person could go without eating for a week, but couldn't go without drinking water for a week.

The human body is sixty to seventy percent water; blood, lymph, extracellular fluid, all physiological activities cannot do without water.

A two percent dehydration would cause thirst; five percent dehydration would result in dizziness, fatigue, and a racing heartbeat; ten percent dehydration would lead to blurred consciousness and organ failure; fifteen to twenty percent dehydration would result in death.

On the Wasteland, if he couldn't find a clean water source, how much water he brought determined how long he could live.

Yet he had endured in that land for over thirty hours without finding any clean water source that could be drunk.

This also meant that he needed to carry water, a large amount of water.

But the problem came, water was certainly cheap, but it was also very heavy.

One person, two hands, he simply couldn't carry much water.

Jiang Lin used his phone to open a chemical forum and typed in a few keywords.

"Strong inorganic acid water quality, heavy metal exceeding standards, simple neutralization and filtration."

The search results popped up dozens of posts.

There were professional environmental engineering practitioners discussing industrial wastewater treatment processes, outdoor enthusiasts sharing wilderness water purification experiences, and some obviously pseudo-scientific nonsense said with a straight face.

He clicked into them one by one to read, and took screenshots to save useful content.

The liquid in that puddle on the Wasteland, to become drinkable water, needed to go through several processes.

Heating distillation was the safest, but he hadn't found firewood for the time being, and might not even have organic matter that could burn.

Bringing solid alcohol or gas canisters over took up too much weight and wasn't cost-effective.

He could only use chemical neutralization, cheap alkaline substances, baking soda, sodium bicarbonate.

Weakly alkaline, even an overdose wouldn't cause serious alkali poisoning, and it could precipitate heavy metal ions to a certain extent.

After some thought, he bought ten packs of food-grade baking soda, a box of coffee filter paper, a pack of medical absorbent cotton, and two jin of loose activated carbon.

These things, theoretically, could allow him to treat the polluted water on the Wasteland to a barely drinkable degree.

Of course, there was still a long distance between barely drinkable and safe to drink.

But in the face of life and death, this distance was acceptable.

Finally was food.

He didn't go buy things like self-heating hot pots, Snickers, or beef jerky; those things had too low cost-performance for a poor student.

They were okay for satisfying a craving, but if truly used to resist hunger long-term, they could eat a person into bankruptcy.

He directly placed an order on Xianyu for a full 40 jin of iron-barreled military compressed biscuits.

This thing was heavy in salt and oil, hard as a brick, scratched the throat when swallowed, but as long as you ate a little, poured some water into your stomach and it swelled up, it could sustain half a day's consumption.

Next were 4 barrels of 5-liter mineral water, and vitamins worth a few yuan a bottle, used to supplement nutritional deficiencies caused by not eating vegetables and fruits.

Finally, all that was lacking was clothing to protect against the cold.

Jiang Lin dragged out a labor-insurance military overcoat left behind by his grandfather back then from the old camphor wood box under the bed.

This overcoat had some years on it; the outside was extremely thick and wear-resistant green canvas, the collar was a circle of artificial fur, and the inside was solidly stuffed with heavy cotton.

Jiang Lin tried wearing it, good grief, it felt like wrapping a thick quilt around his body, heavy and clumsy, even bending over was a struggle, and it exuded a strong, pungent mothball smell.

[Total budget: 2155.5 yuan. Consumed: 1325 yuan. Remaining: 830.5 yuan as emergency reserve fund.]

At this point, everything was ready, except for the east wind.

...

November turned into December.

The temperature in Jiangcheng dropped again and again.

Jiang Lin's life entered a bizarre two-line parallel mode.

During the day, he was an ordinary high school senior with below-average grades.

At night, he was the logistics minister, equipment purchaser, and physical fitness trainer of a Wasteland expeditionary force.

December 4th, five-fifty-nine in the morning.

Having secretly eaten and drunk to his fill in advance, Jiang Lin stood in the exact center of his bedroom, lowering his head to look at his current look.

That thick and oversized labor-insurance military overcoat was tightly wrapped around his body.

He carried a duffel bag on his chest, the zipper of the bag stretched almost to the point of bursting by the bulging things inside.

The second-hand tent bought on Xianyu, along with the packaging bag, was tied with a nylon rope by him and slung diagonally across his back.

In his left and right hands, he each held a snake-skin bag.

The bags were filled with draft paper, compressed biscuits, and heavy mineral water.

That Redmi phone filled with hope and pain, along with the power bank, was tucked by him into every pocket of the military overcoat.

Too heavy.

This set of bits and pieces added up must have exceeded one hundred catties.

Just hanging everything on his body for less than two minutes, he felt the calves of his legs begin to tremble uncontrollably, and his breathing also became heavy following that.

The straps of the duffel bag dug into his flesh, and his hands ached severely from being dragged down by the snake-skin bags.

But he gritted his teeth and endured it.

In this past month, because he had put a lot of attention into preparing supplies and planning survival ideas, his grades had slipped quite a bit.

Last month's midterm exam, his grade ranking almost dropped out of the top one hundred.

At Jiangcheng No. 7 High School, what did dropping out of the top one hundred in the grade mean?

Junior college reserve.

On the evening the results came out, when school ended, head teacher Lao Liu specifically called him to the office to drink black tea for a full ten minutes.

Jiang Lin took a deep breath, looking at the countdown in the upper right corner of his vision that was about to return to zero, the corners of his mouth pulled into an arc that was slightly self-deprecating, yet inexplicably excited.

Who says you can't go to a key school without talent?

He was about to drag over a hundred catties of survival supplies to study by himself in a Wasteland World, fighting for a bright future.

"Come on."

He silently chanted a sentence in his heart, then tightened all the muscles in his body, making force-bearing preparations for the upcoming teleportation.

The seconds of the countdown flew rapidly across his retina.

[00:00:00:03]

[00:00:00:02]

[00:00:00:01]