Edge of the Apocalypse
Chapter 6: Canned Food and Online Shopping

Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Canned Food and Online Shopping

Tuesday, 8:00 AM.

Five and a half days until the zombie outbreak.

Yu Dong got out of bed, rubbing his sore arms. He pulled out his small personal notebook, glanced at it, and saw he was already behind schedule.

’I was busy so late last night, I didn’t get to the online shopping.’

’I have to finish buying everything today, or it might not get delivered in time.’

Time was tight. He had to move fast!

Last night, he’d been organizing until midnight. He was so exhausted he could barely stand, and he had only just managed to sort out the supplies in the 160-square-meter apartment. The supplies piled up in the living rooms of the other two apartments were still untouched.

It made him realize that many seemingly trivial tasks could eat up a huge amount of time.

Buying things was fast; organizing them was slow.

And there would be many, many more things like this to come.

Yu Dong felt that if he weren’t in decent physical shape, he might not have even been able to get up today.

’If only I had someone to help me...’

But Yu Dong didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing, lest they become a liability after the apocalypse. After a moment’s thought, he abandoned the idea.

He hailed a taxi and headed to today’s destination: the No. 4003 Cannery.

It was a former military-industrial enterprise that produced army rations. It had since been privatized but continued to make compressed biscuits and canned goods, which were highly praised in the market for their solid quality.

An older classmate of Yu Dong’s from university worked here. Two years after graduation, he had already worked his way up to a team leader position.

He planned to make a one-stop purchase here for his second category of supplies: convenient, ready-to-eat processed foods.

Sitting in the taxi, Yu Dong called his senior and then started shopping on a budget e-commerce app.

First, he placed an order for the milk he’d meant to buy yesterday.

’If you don’t refrigerate it, an open carton of milk lasts two days at most. One liter of milk over two days is perfect for supplementing high-quality protein.’

’UHT milk has a shelf life of one year. If stored properly, it can last a few months longer, but any more than that... might be a problem. If I buy 200 cartons, I’ll have my high-quality protein for the first year sorted.’

Because of the large volume, the seller gave Yu Dong a price of 9.5 yuan per carton and guaranteed a production date within the last month.

The milk cost him 1,900 yuan.

Yu Dong also bought some cooking supplies online, the most important of which were portable cassette stoves. These things were made for camping; you just plug in a butane canister, and you can start a fire to cook.

Yu Dong bought three portable cassette stoves from major brands for 540 yuan. He quickly calculated his fuel needs for the next three years and then ordered 150 butane canisters for 750 yuan.

’Three years of cooking fuel for only 1,290 yuan. Thank god for modern industry~’

This was the cost for three years of comfortable cooking, an incredible value.

Yu Dong didn’t buy any more than that; just enough was fine.

While organizing yesterday, he’d discovered that the storage capacity of his three apartments was truly limited. Besides food, there was still a lot more he needed to procure.

For example, there was the item that people online said could rival canned food, also known as "apocalypse gold"—toilet paper.

Yu Dong immediately went on a buying spree.

Based on his usual habit of using one roll of toilet paper a week, and adding a little extra just in case, Yu Dong bought 200 rolls for 270 yuan.

He also casually bought a large number of disposable trash bags and 30 plastic storage bins of various sizes, spending another 791 yuan.

Just as he was absorbed in his online shopping spree, the taxi arrived outside the No. 4003 Cannery.

His senior was waiting for him at the entrance.

Yu Dong greeted him, then easily got the wholesale price thanks to his senior’s connections.

This was the value of being a Food Science major; you had connections everywhere when it came to getting food.

Of course, some graduates from their department did well, while others struggled. The cannery was relatively stable, but some of his other seniors, who worked in the pre-made meal industry, were catching blame for things completely out of their control.

One minute, things were fine, and the next, some big company would stir up a controversy, and they’d be left dealing with the fallout. They could be just relaxing and gaming online, only to open their private messages and find themselves buried under an avalanche of hate from angry netizens.

There wasn’t much to say about canned food. If toilet paper could be called "apocalypse gold," then canned food was the principal investment that generated that gold!

The stuff was invented specifically to withstand extremely harsh environments.

It gives you a huge mouthful of calories right when you need it most.

The shelf life was maxed out. It might say three years on the label, but if you pulled one out thirty years later and the can wasn’t bulging, you could still probably take a bite.

After the apocalypse, meat production would drop to virtually zero. This would be one of the few ways to enjoy meat.

However... even with his senior helping him get the wholesale price, the cans from the No. 4003 factory weren’t cheap.

A 200g can of luncheon meat: 7 yuan. A 200g can of braised beef: 17 yuan. A 227g can of dace with salted black beans: 13 yuan. A 425g can of yellow peaches: 6 yuan.

There were many other types of canned goods, of course, but they were all geared toward enhancing flavor. Yu Dong didn’t want to pay a premium for flavor; he just needed pure protein and calories.

Canned yellow peaches were a great source of vitamins, plus they were delicious and cheap, so he had to stock up on those too.

"Dongzi, what are you doing with so many cans? Are you sending aid to Gaza?"

"Nothing that noble. I’d be happy just to take care of myself right now. I’m actually planning to start a TikTok channel dedicated to teaching people about apocalypse prepping and survival—how to use pre-stocked supplies to create a scientifically balanced diet to meet your body’s needs when you can’t go outside."

Yu Dong had already prepared this cover story.

"That’s an interesting idea for a channel! Sounds just like something from our department. In that case, you have to buy some of our Type 13 compressed biscuits. This stuff is good."

"Oh? How so? Don’t compressed biscuits make you constipated?"

Yu Dong had planned on buying some compressed biscuits, but not too many, since he already had plenty of other staple foods.

"The Type 13 compressed biscuits are a huge improvement over the old Type 90 formula. For one, the texture is better, and for another, the energy density is higher. One 200g pack contains 900 calories. They’ve also added a lot of complex minerals and multivitamins. Theoretically, if you had nothing else to eat, you could live on Type 13 biscuits for a while without any issues. Plus, this version is less likely to cause constipation."

"I see. How much are they?"

Yu Dong’s knowledge of compressed biscuits was a bit outdated; he hadn’t realized the manufacturing process had improved so much.

Vitamins were something you should always get more of if you could; it helped prevent illness.

After he finished his purchases here, Yu Dong planned to go to a pharmacy and buy some large bottles of multivitamin tablets as a backup. If his vitamin intake from food was low, he’d supplement it with science.

"Hmm... if you want it for your show, you should get the barrel-packed version. It’s well-sealed and looks good on camera. It’s 4kg a barrel, with 20 packs inside. I can give you the wholesale price of 90 yuan."

"Thanks for the trouble, senior. Let me calculate how much I’ll get in total..."

After weighing his remaining assets, Yu Dong bought a batch of his "Category Two" foods from his senior.

Twenty barrels of Type 13 compressed biscuits, 365 cans of luncheon meat, 365 cans of braised beef, 365 cans of dace with salted black beans, and 365 cans of yellow peaches.

This would ensure he could open one can of meat every day for three years, and one can of yellow peaches every three days.

The total came to 17,495 yuan.

This price was more than what he’d paid for the three truckloads of goods from the wholesale market. Yu Dong gritted his teeth and took out his phone to pay.

His senior didn’t seem particularly excited about the sale. After all, at the wholesale price, the factory didn’t make much profit, and as a team leader, he didn’t rely on the commission. He was mainly helping out a junior. The students from Yanhai University’s Food Science department were always very united when they were out in the world; it was a department tradition.

He was also very interested in the video channel Yu Dong was planning to start.

"Dongzi, when are you going to start posting videos on your channel?"

"When you do a segment on canned goods, I can be your science consultant! For free~ Just hit me up on WeChat."

"Can I make an appearance?"

"We food science people should stand up and do something meaningful. The internet is so toxic these days... Did you hear about Ma from Dairy Engineering? He got so pissed off by netizens that he supposedly ran off to Inner Mongolia to hug a cow and chug fresh milk. It’s hilarious~"

"Sigh~ If I had your build and good looks, I’d start a TikTok channel too."

"Oh, right. This chocolate tastes pretty good and looks nice, too. It should fit the vibe of your videos. Here, take two boxes to use as props. You can film them from a good angle."

Yu Dong climbed into the cannery’s delivery truck, holding the two large boxes of Type 10 chocolate his senior had given him.

His small order wasn’t even enough to qualify for a delivery...

He could only get one by calling in a favor with his senior.

"You got this, Dongzi! Make it big! I’ll come find you in the city another day!"

"Okay."

Yu Dong looked at his still-chatting senior, a trace of pity appearing in his eyes.

’The apocalypse arrives in five days. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again...’

If it were possible, Yu Dong would have been more than willing to save his senior. Having a helper in the apocalypse was far better than fighting alone.

But there was nothing he could do right now...

Because in his past life, he had personally witnessed his junior, who had been drinking coffee next to him one second, suddenly have his limbs twist and his eyes bleed the next. He turned into something like a zombie and tackled a passing student, gnawing on them.

Yu Dong didn’t know where this "S-virus," as the government had named it, came from. But before the outbreak, there wasn’t a single warning sign.

That junior’s name was Ding Ming. Yu Dong knew him well—a kid from a poor family who had to work part-time to cover his living expenses.

Yu Dong had worked with him many times; he was a very reliable young man.

’If only Ding Ming hadn’t been infected. We could have teamed up to survive together.’

Yu Dong wanted to find people to face the apocalypse with, but the information he’d gathered after the outbreak in his past life was extremely limited.

Yu Dong recalled the brief half-hour he had survived.

While his junior, Ding Ming, was feasting, Yu Dong had slipped away and hidden in a corner for a while. Then, he was spotted by a few zombies and had to run for his life, only to be chased down and bitten to death by Xufeng.

Two people he knew, Ding Ming and Xufeng, had both been in the first wave of people who turned into zombies.

It filled him with despair.

’If those two had survived, we could have formed a doomsday survival team... What a pity. Now, I don’t know who out there I can trust. If I let someone in and they turn into a zombie right next to me, it’s game over.’

Just as Yu Dong was giving up on finding any useful information, his eyes narrowed as he realized something he had overlooked.

’The dead... are also a resource...’