Chapter 13: Will your melon stay ripe?

Uncle Nan walked to the bed, reached out and picked up the paper ball and opened it. 

There was a very simple line of words written on the ball of paper. 

"If you don't want him to die, just feed him." 

There were only two things in the paper ball. The iron lighter was naturally ignored, and the only thing left was the carrot. 

"Who...is this looking for us to have fun?" Uncle Nan was stunned, holding paper balls and carrots in his hands at a loss. 

In an instant, he thought of a lot. 

According to the instructions on the note...could this thing be able to cure my son's serious illness? 

He looked down and found that the carrot looked completely different from the irradiated vegetables. Instead of having gray spots, it was crystal clear and exuded a faint medicinal fragrance. 

"Dad...ahem...what is it?" Xiaotian asked in a crying voice while coughing urgently. 

"It's medicine! It's medicine!" Uncle Nan also doubted the authenticity of this note. Can a serious illness that even the hospital cannot treat be cured with just a carrot? 

But at this time, he has no choice! 

Xiaotian's poisoning reaction became more and more intense, and he would die from systemic organ failure in up to two hours. 

Now Uncle Nan is like a drowning man. As long as someone on the shore gives him a life-saving straw, he will hold on to it regardless of whether it can really come true! 

To use an inappropriate word to describe it...that is, treating a dead horse as a living horse doctor. 

"Son, open your mouth and eat it..." Uncle Nan gritted his teeth, walked to the bedside, opened Xiaotian's mouth, and then stuffed the carrot in his hand into his mouth. 

"Chew quickly! Swallow it!" Uncle Nan urged with tears streaming down his face, holding back his grief. 

Xiaotian didn't know what his father was doing, but at this time, his consciousness was close to blurred, and he no longer had the power to think, so he could only follow Uncle Nan's instructions mechanically. 

Li Tianran stood outside the wall, silently watching everything happening in the room. 

Finally, Xiaotian swallowed the first bite. 

"ah!" 

He suddenly screamed, and then his whole body began to tremble violently. 

"Xiaotian! Xiaotian!" Uncle Nan was stunned, and the half carrot in his hand fell to the ground. 

At this moment, Xiaotian suddenly sat up and lay beside the bed and vomited wildly. 

His breathing became steady, and the gray on his skin gradually began to recede! 

Li Tianran saw with his own eyes that his face began to turn rosy. 

He took a deep breath, took out a notepad from his pocket, and wrote with a carbon pen: Ancient medicine grade can have a curative effect on radiation poisoning. It is not yet known whether there will be any sequelae...

The sound of Uncle Nan crying with joy could be heard in the room. 

Li Tianran silently picked up Hanhan, turned around and walked towards his truck in the distance. 

The results he wanted were already seen. 

Xiaotian's cure illustrates the terrifying efficacy of ancient medicine. Xiaotian, as an experimental subject, gained a life, and Li Tianran also got the data he wanted. This is a win-win situation. 

In the next step, Li Tianran's experiments will be even more difficult.

He wanted to see if the ancient medicine level could transform creatures that had mutated due to accidentally eating irradiated vegetables back to their original appearance. 

But such opportunities are rare. 

Even he needs to get lucky. 

…

Driving the truck out of the town, Li Tianran drove into the center of Nancheng thirty minutes later. 

The time at this time was ten o'clock in the evening. 

If it were placed before the Destruction Era, the entertainment street in the center of Nancheng City at this time was just when the nightlife was just beginning.

But now there is no one on the street. Scattered glass and signboards can be seen everywhere. The doors of shopping malls and shops on both sides of the street are closed. The glass display cabinets of some shops have been smashed and the items inside have disappeared. They have obviously experienced a riot.

The neon lights in the ever-popular bars and KTVs have also dimmed, and there is no more exciting music filling the streets. 

There were stray cat and dog corpses lying on the streets without anyone collecting them, and they were rapidly festering.

From time to time, ambulances whistled past with their piercing sirens. 

There is a sense of despair in the air. 

Occasionally, I see military police riding electric motorcycles passing by the roadside. They also look nervous. Most of the words coming from the walkie-talkie on my waist are:

"Another robbery occurred on xx Street..." 

"There was a theft in xx community..." 

"A female body was found in No. xx Reservoir. The time of death was..." 

Seeing this scene, Li Tianran realized that the situation was more out of control than he had predicted. In the apocalypse, there would be too many thugs with evil intentions taking the opportunity to create chaos. The number of people who died in the chaos might not be as high as Few people died from radiation poisoning.

Li Tianran drove the vehicle out of the entertainment street. After turning a corner, he suddenly heard a loud noise. 

Immediately afterwards, he saw a huge crowd of people at the entrance of a department store. At this time, there was actually a queue of hundreds of meters! 

Several luminous banners were hung in front of the department store market.

"Designated Procurement Office for Emergency Supplies" 

Boxes of rice, flour, and some vegetables were piled in the refrigerators. At this time, they were like the most attractive gold and jade, attracting the attention of thousands of people in front of the department store. 

They were not afraid of the cold at this time. They were crowded here like ants, noisy, and even yelling and cursing. 

"Don't fucking jump in line! I've been waiting in line for five hours, let me buy first!" 

"Fart, this position was originally mine, but I just went to the toilet..."

"Cao Ni Ma, you bunch of uneducated farmers, I'm the general manager of Xindong Company... If you offend me, you won't get the benefit of the doubt! Hey, who kicked me?" 

Several police cars parked nearby with their lights flashing, and a military policeman held a loudspeaker and shouted at the top of his lungs: 

"Everyone should consciously abide by the order! Be patient and don't be impatient. Everyone has a purchasing quota! Everyone can buy five kilograms of rice, five kilograms of white flour, and one kilogram of vegetables with valid ID!" 

When Li Tianran saw this, he didn't know what to say. 

Chinese people like to stock up on food every time they encounter a disaster, until they feel safe, until everyone's home is like a small warehouse. Under this national situation, even if the price of food soars at this time, it still cannot offset the amount of food they rush to buy. enthusiasm. 

He was about to leave when suddenly a military policeman came over, gently knocked on Li Tianran's car window, and said solemnly: "Stop the car and turn off the engine!" 

Li Tianran was stunned, took out an opened pack of cigarettes from the passenger seat, pulled one out and handed it over with a smile on his face: "Comrade police, are you okay?" 

He actually has no habit of smoking. To him, smoking is just a social tool. 

Upon seeing this, the military police waved their hands. Although they did not pick it up, their attitude softened a lot and said, "Brother, open the cargo box at the back. I want to check it." 

There was no contraband in the cargo box behind Li Tianran, so there was nothing to be nervous about at this time. He pushed open the door and opened the cargo box according to the other party's instructions. 

The military policeman used a flashlight to shine inside, and after discovering that there were only some farm tools in the container, he nodded and said, "It's okay, let's go!" 

"In the past two days, there have always been some criminals using trucks to pull poisonous vegetables and sell them as ordinary vegetables, seeking huge profits and causing great harm to people!" The military police turned off their flashlights and reminded Li Tianran kindly: "Brother , if you want to buy food, you must go to the designated purchasing point, as the food outside is very unsafe." 

"Thank you!" Li Tianran nodded. 

His prediction was indeed correct. The country had begun to control the sale of grain. However, after listening to the military police, he realized why there had been so many poisoning incidents in the past two days. 

Feelings are like some evil thieves selling irradiated vegetables...

  Pick some vegetables with less radiation, and do business when it's dark and the light is bad... You're so damn unscrupulous! 

Before driving away, he took another look at the people in front of the department store. If he hadn't been lucky enough to be selected as a player, I'm afraid he would be one of these people now. 

Or, be one of those poisoned victims that makes the newspapers. 

"Brother, I feel a little scared..." Hanhan was sitting in the passenger seat. She didn't know what happened, but she always felt that the atmosphere was very depressing and scary. 

Li Tianran touched her head and said, "I'm here." 

Li Tianran didn't say many words of comfort. 

Just these three simple words are enough to make Hanhan feel very safe.

  "Yes." Hanhan nodded desperately: "As long as the big pot is here, Hanhan is not afraid of anything!" 

Li Tianran turned the steering wheel and prepared to return to the farm. It was already too late today and he was already very sleepy. 

However, just as he was driving out of the outer ring road on the outskirts of the city, a modified minivan suddenly accelerated and passed him. With the sound of brakes exploding, the other party directly blocked the car in the middle of the road. Li Tianran's way out! 

"..." Li Tianran suddenly frowned and quietly took out a sharp military thorn from under his seat. 

Snap! 

The door of the other party's car popped open, and a short, fat man with acne on his face jumped out with a big backpack on his back. He quickly ran to the front of Li Tianran's car and knocked on the window and said, "Brother, I'm coming with you." !" 

"Is something wrong?" Li Tianran held the military thorn in one hand, still with a gentle smile on his face. 

"I just saw you wandering around the department store? You want to buy food, but you haven't bought it yet?" The man chuckled and suddenly opened the zipper of his satchel, revealing the contents inside: "Watermelon, courgette, pumpkin, tomato , and rice! Whatever you want to buy, I have it all!" 

The expression on Li Tianran's face froze. 

Is this eldest brother a swindler? 

Li Tianran looked at the other person up and down, and then his eyes stayed on the vegetables in the other person's satchel for a long time. He suddenly smiled and asked: "Brother, can your melon... keep it ripe?"