The Apocalypse Survival Manual (Three Days Before Doomsday, I Stockpiled Billions) novel Chapter 454

Chapter 454

Cola wasn’t the only one on guard.

Zeph had set a simple perimeter around the tent, thin wires strung with small bells. Anyone trying to get close at night would trip the line and set them ringing.

They put out the light and went to sleep.

It was colder in the mountains. Sometime during the night, Nicole felt the chill. Zeph pulled a thin blanket over her, then stepped into the other section to cover Poppy as well.

They woke early the next morning, washed up, ate, and went back to work.

They didn’t clear entire areas. Any tree showing new growth was left alone.

Once they finished one patch, they moved on to the next.

While crossing a narrow stream, Nicole suddenly stopped, her gaze locking onto a small plant. She crouched and began digging it up.

Zeph frowned. “What is it?”

“Silvervine.”

It was only a few inches tall, its leaves barely formed. If she hadn’t studied herbal texts carefully, she wouldn’t have recognized it.

Western medicine was gone, and most herbs had disappeared as well. Finding a young silvervine like this was pure luck.

She dug it out with the surrounding soil and placed it carefully into her bag.

The streambed was damp. Among the dead brush and wilted plants, fresh green shoots appeared here and there.

Nicole lost interest in cutting timber. She crouched in the undergrowth, scanning carefully, searching for herbs she could transplant into storage.

Zeph and Poppy didn’t know much about herbs. They stayed nearby and kept working.

She found quite a few: creekfern, morvain, fivewood, groundberry, goldbark, and hearthwort. None of them were rare, and their uses were limited, but to her, it was a windfall.

After hours of searching, she had gathered more than a dozen varieties.

By noon, they found a shaded spot and called everyone over to eat.

Zeph walked over, hands still dirty, holding a single plant. For once, there was a trace of excitement on his face.

“Nicole, I found it!”

“What?”

He rarely reacted like that. If someone didn’t know better, they might have thought he had struck gold.

Then again, gold meant nothing now.

“This is it. The one that treats the lung and liver issues from the smog.”

1/2

+15 Benus

He had spotted it under a tree, small and easy to miss. He had taken his time to confirm it.

Nicole took the plant and studied it closely.

Well… She couldn’t exactly blame Zeph for forgetting the name. The truth was, she couldn’t identify it either.

At this stage, it looked completely ordinary, the kind of plant you would overlook in a patch of weeds.

Unwilling to give up, she finished eating and pulled out a copy of “The Herbal Canon” she had taken from a library.

Zeph sat beside her as she flipped through the pages. After nearly an hour, he tapped an illustration.

“I’m pretty sure it’s this one.”

Pretty sure? This was something people ate. “Pretty sure” could get someone killed.

Nicole stared at him. Had he gotten dumber lately?

He hesitated. “It looks similar, but not exactly.”

The plant was called wyrmleaf. According to the book, it helped fight infection and support respiratory health. It grew in mountain streams in the southern regions and only under very specific conditions.

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