Just now, she had been pulling at the sofa the whole time, which suggested that perhaps her true nature wasn’t that of a villain? Jason Carter ventured a guess, mustering his courage.

“…Trust me, I mean well.” Jason Carter wasn’t sure how long his conscience could make this venomous beauty hesitate, so he had to make up a lie on the spot.

“Good intentions?”

“Like saving you when you were about to starve. If I said anything today, I’m afraid things wouldn’t go well for either of us in the future.” Jason Carter continued in a mysterious tone, leaving her plenty of room for imagination.

“Heh.” The beauty gave a somewhat disdainful laugh, but the hesitation flickering in her eyes was unmistakable.

“Maybe we could cooperate. I just arrived here. Well, how should I put it—everything’s a mess. I need a guide… and for that, I can pay you a generous reward.” Jason Carter controlled his pace, dropping a carrot in a calm, unhurried manner.

“Oh? Are you from the Northern Union District?” The beauty raised an eyebrow.

On this wasteland, if there was any place left with a shred of order, it would probably be the Union District established on the distant northern grasslands. Because that area had barely suffered any nuclear strikes and hadn’t had any outbreaks, a stable order was established there.

But “stable” was only relative—slavery, exploitation, chaos. Other than a slightly higher food yield, it wasn’t much better than the utterly lawless city of Shanghai.

“No, I’m just from a relatively wealthy place… collecting some useful things for someone. And getting rid of some surplus goods for us… like that can of soda you drank, and those three cans you licked clean.” Jason Carter didn’t dare claim to be from the Union District—he’d never even been there, and what if he got exposed?

The best approach now was to insist he was from a special place. A place no one had ever been to, so Jason Carter could make up whatever he wanted.

At the mention of “licked clean,” the beauty’s face instantly flushed, as if she realized her eating manners hadn’t been very ladylike at the time. She shot Jason Carter a fierce glare. Jason Carter just smiled, showing he didn’t mind. He knew the negotiation was basically a success.

“I don’t know what you people could possibly want from this place. Every supermarket, granary, even the fridges in people’s homes in Shanghai have been emptied. You couldn’t even find a slice of bread…”

“Beautiful lady, may I ask your name?” Jason Carter shook his head, smiled, and asked.

“Grace Bennett.” Grace Bennett raised her eyebrows and replied, giving a meaningful smile. “Let me be clear: if this so-called cooperation involves any… unusual services, I might just put a hole in your head…”

“You’re overthinking it, Miss Grace Bennett.” Jason Carter sighed. There was no way he’d get into bed with a tigress who might bite off his manhood at any moment. “All I need is an experienced guide… Besides, do you really think I’m short on food?”

“Then what are you looking for? Could it be… slaves?” Suddenly, Grace Bennett’s expression changed, and she looked at Jason Carter with clear hostility.

Right, if he wasn’t short on food, then he must have some kind of farm or plantation. Grace Bennett’s first reaction was that this guy might be a human trafficker—slaves were the best labor force on the wasteland. Trading people was a perfectly normal thing here, but Grace Bennett despised it, because her own sister had probably been sold off by traffickers to who knows where. If it was to a factory, that would be one thing, but if it was to a brothel or a cannibal tribe… that would be a nightmare.

“No, no, no, you’ve got it wrong.” Jason Carter hurriedly explained. “We don’t need slaves… What I need is technology.”

“Technology?” Grace Bennett was taken aback.

“That’s right. Like that laser gun in your hand, and the computer on your arm?… We have those things, but we can’t produce them ourselves, so we decided to come to this abandoned city to look for old-world technology.”

“Those things?” Grace Bennett was clearly surprised, then gave Jason Carter a suspicious look. “Are they really that hard to make? Plenty of people in Liuding Town can assemble them.”

Crap. Jason Carter cursed inwardly, but his face didn’t show a thing.

“I was just giving an example. Our technology is more advanced in food production and logistics, but… uh, general tech is a bit lacking. That’s exactly why I came here.” Lying without blushing, Jason Carter was starting to admire his own Oscar-worthy acting.

He had already noticed that, although this world once had extremely advanced technology, civilization had declined after the nuclear war, and then was hit by the zombie virus. The fact that humanity hadn’t been completely wiped out was a miracle.

If you had to sum up the state of this wasteland in one phrase, it would be: a mixed bag.

You could tell just by seeing high-tech hover cars and axle-driven internal combustion vehicles sharing the same streets.