Reborn One Week Before the Apocalypse

Chapter 423: Chapter 413: Homeowners’ Group

About a week of such leisurely days passed. Tang Mo herself could hardly believe that for a three-month mission, so much time had already gone by in the blink of an eye.

’This is way too easy!’

A strange sense of panic welled up in Tang Mo’s heart. ’The Illusion Realm is being this good to me? No way, right?’

Sure enough, what you fear is what comes to pass. Murphy’s Law is never wrong.

One morning, when Tang Mo woke up at noon as usual and picked up her phone, she saw she had been added to a strange group on her messaging app.

The group’s name was [Mutual Help Homeowners’ Group].

The moment she saw the name, Tang Mo knew what this was. She remembered this event from Xu Yin’s memories; the impression it left was quite deep.

Of course, it wasn’t a good memory.

Xu Yin’s home was in a high-end residential complex, but it wasn’t a neighborhood of villas. A single building still housed a dozen or so families, and this entire complex had about a dozen of these apartment buildings.

At this moment, there were already over 200 people in the group.

Tang Mo couldn’t help but marvel at how resourceful the person in charge of the complex was. They had actually managed to add everyone to the group, even someone like Xu Yin who never cared about community matters.

In reality, for a complex like this, creating such a group wasn’t difficult. After all, all the information of the registered homeowners was on file.

They had all sorts of contact information, including everyone’s phone numbers.

It was just that the management staff normally wouldn’t disturb the homeowners. But these were special circumstances in a special time, so they probably couldn’t worry about that anymore.

[Housekeeper Zhang]: Hello, everyone. I am the housekeeper for our complex. You can just call me Housekeeper Xu. Here’s the situation: due to the current weather and environmental conditions, many homeowners are facing the prospect of running out of food. To ensure all homeowners can make it through this difficult time, we have specially decided to create this mutual help group. We hope everyone can help each other out.

[Sun Geng]: This is great! I just ran out of things to eat at home. We’ve had no food for two days.

After the housekeeper finished speaking, one homeowner was the first to speak up. They probably hadn’t stockpiled any food beforehand and had only survived a few days on their existing household supplies. Now, they clearly couldn’t hold out any longer.

For them, wasn’t the sudden appearance of this ”mutual help group” a ray of hope?

In this situation, what ”mutual help”? No one was short on money; what they lacked was food.

After all, this was a high-end residential complex. Many families, like Xu Yin’s parents before, bought fresh groceries every day and wouldn’t stockpile much of anything.

[Tao Jiayun]: Who has extra food right now? Everyone is in a tough spot, who can help whom? Don’t we pay so much in property management fees? How come it’s ”mutual help” when we need assistance? What are you property managers even for?

But not everyone was grateful for this group. Most people had been forcibly added.

After all, they were all people of status, and many had business dealings with one another. Since they were already in the group, it would be awkward to leave.

It would be one thing to say they had no food, but they were all accustomed to a certain level of generosity. Even if they truly had nothing, let alone if they had something, not everyone was willing to swallow their pride and admit defeat.

It had only been a week. Most people hadn’t yet truly tasted the pangs of hunger. For the time being, self-respect was still a valuable commodity in this world.

[Housekeeper Zhang]: It’s like this, our property management will definitely do our best to help everyone.

Housekeeper Zhang sent a picture to the group. The background was the somewhat lavishly decorated property management lobby.

In the center of the lobby were some bags of rice, white flour, and cooking oil. This property management company didn’t just manage this complex; the complex next door was also under their purview.

However, the complex next door was clearly not as high-end as this one. The rice, flour, and oil were obviously freebies prepared by the management to encourage residents to pay their property fees on time.

But now, it was clear these undistributed gifts had found a greater purpose.

[Housekeeper Zhang]: Our property management will, of course, do our utmost to help everyone, but our capabilities are limited. We don’t know when this Illusion Realm outside will return to normal, so it’s better for us to make long-term preparations and stand united. This is all reserve food, and it’s for everyone to eat. However, after a discussion, we in property management have decided that this food will only be used after another week. This will be the most effective use of our resources.

Seeing the picture the housekeeper sent, the group of people who had been so vocal with their objections fell silent.

No one questioned why the property management’s supplies had to wait another week to be used. After all, even if their refrigerators were empty, every household still had some snacks or fruit to tide them over. Feeling the misery of hunger might be real, but no one was about to starve to death just yet.

It was only right that life-saving food should be saved for last.

No one doubted the truth of what the property management staff said. After all, they could have easily kept all that food for themselves. The fact that they were willing to show it to everyone and be transparent meant they probably genuinely wanted to do something practical.

Xu Yin’s family had lived here for several years. To be fair, the property management here was truly excellent in all aspects—impeccable and trustworthy.

Seeing the food, everyone’s attitude softened considerably. After all, with so much food stored by the management, and knowing their own supplies might one day run out, no one wanted to say anything offensive at a time like this.

However, asking them to take out their own food to give to others at this moment was something they were absolutely unwilling to do.

Many of the people in the group were executives or even entrepreneurs. While not all of them were fabulously wealthy, they usually did some charity and made donations. They were compassionate people.

But the feeling of donating a hundred dollars when you have ten million is completely different from donating ten dollars when you only have a hundred.

No one was a bad person, but no one wanted to be a selfless martyr either. This was perfectly normal.

[Wen Qianli]: Please, everyone, please help us. My husband is away on a business trip in another city, and it’s just me, our nanny, and my twin daughters at home. Two days ago, our nanny stole everything from my fridge and fled to another building where her sister works. Now it’s just me and my daughters, with no food at all. Please, someone, save us!

The group fell silent for a long while before a woman named Wen Qianli posted this message.

Many of the nannies here had come from their hometowns together to work. Her nanny probably decided that taking care of children during an apocalypse was pointless and fled directly to the home where her sister worked.

The employer of the nanny’s sister was away traveling and not at home. This left the two sisters alone with plenty of stolen food, living quite comfortably in these apocalyptic times.