Chapter 74: Mutated Rat Infestation
After all, it was more than a thousand jin of meat. By this point in the apocalypse, the majority of people in the base hadn’t tasted meat in a long time—let alone such fresh meat. No one was going to turn it down.
In the end, the four major factions of W City Base divided up the wolf meat among themselves and agreed to allow the Southern Base to enter the laboratory to study the soilless cultivation technology. Dr. Yang was overjoyed and, that very day, packed up with his two assistants and two wood-type ability users and moved straight into the laboratory.
Wang Xurong, however, still couldn’t quite swallow the blow to his pride. With a fake smile that didn’t reach his eyes, he took a jab at them. “What a pity—you won’t get to taste any of this meat. If you change your minds, the Wang family’s doors will always be open to you. There will naturally be a share of the meat for you as well.”
“Heh heh.” Zhan Yun and the others responded with a few perfunctory, half-hearted chuckles.
With Dr. Yang’s capabilities, it shouldn’t take more than a few days to master the soilless cultivation technology—but that also meant Guan Hong and his group would need to remain in W City Base for a few more days.
That night, a rich aroma of meat drifted through the base. With fresh meat in hand, each faction naturally cooked it up. With the weather so hot, the meat wouldn’t keep for long anyway.
The Wang family took out part of their share to stew into soup, distributing it among members of their faction as a way to win people over. Another portion was used for a full meat banquet for the Wang family themselves. Although the Wang family was wealthy in supplies, they were usually reluctant to eat meat. On the rare occasions they indulged, it was typically cured, pickled, or dried meat. Fresh meat was something they hadn’t tasted in quite some time—today, they finally got to experience the joy of eating meat to their hearts’ content again.
As for mutated beast meat, it truly lived up to the rumors—it was exceptionally delicious. This day was practically a carnival for W City Base, with members of all four factions eating until their mouths were slick with grease.
The local garrison benefited the most. They were originally the weakest of the four factions, and the soldiers’?? were inferior to the others’. They had the least supplies and were always the ones sent to do the hardest and most dangerous work, yet reaped the fewest benefits. The Wang and Hong families frequently invoked the lives of innocent civilians, and the garrison—unable to stand by and watch people die—had no choice but to grit their teeth and charge in, no matter how dangerous the situation. If not for the Lu family’s support during this period, they might not even have had enough to eat.
This time, their share of the meat was still the smallest, but it amounted to two hundred jin nonetheless. The local garrison was commanded by a Major surnamed Dai, who led a regiment stationed in W City. After giving it some thought, Major Dai decided that since the meat wouldn’t keep long and the brothers hadn’t had a proper full meal in ages, he might as well cook it all. All the meat was braised. Unfortunately, wolf meat didn’t have much fat—mostly lean meat—so it wasn’t as tender as pork when braised. Still, it was meat, and just the aroma alone was enough to make mouths water.
Some dried vegetables were added to the leftover broth from the stew, and it became delicious in its own right. With several large pots of plain white rice cooked alongside, hundreds of men squatted together, eating without even looking up.
Major Dai even specially invited Guan Hong and his group to join them. After all, they were comrades-in-arms, and this time, being able to eat meat at all was thanks to these fellow soldiers who had come from afar.
Guan Hong didn’t refuse. He brought his brothers along, intending to take this opportunity to tell Major Dai about the new type of bullets and the fruit-and-vegetable juice. At the very least, it could help strengthen their forces.
Zhan Yun and his group didn’t go along. Instead, they holed up in the inn, shut the doors, and had a fish hotpot. With the smell of meat everywhere outside, no one paid attention to this small group quietly indulging in good food.
“Hmph, who cares about that lousy wolf meat? There’s barely any fat on it—it’s dry as hell,” Zheng Jiahe muttered disdainfully as he piled slices of meat into his bowl.
“Exactly. Those people looked like they hadn’t seen meat in centuries—their eyeballs were practically popping out when they saw the wolf corpses in the truck,” Song Chengshu chimed in, a rare moment of agreement. He really couldn’t stand Wang Xurong’s arrogant, superior air. That guy was nothing more than a frog at the bottom of a well, thinking that awakening a lightning-type ability made him something special.
Everyone chimed in one after another, making the meal lively and animated.
While eating, Su Ruizhe didn’t say much, but he wore a smile the whole time. He clearly agreed with Zheng Jiahe and the others. He was especially annoyed with Wang Xurong, who had spoken so rudely to Brother Zhan. So while the Wang family happily feasted on wolf meat, Su Ruizhe and his teammates enjoyed a fish hotpot together.
W City Base didn’t have electricity, so they used a portable camping gas stove to cook the fish hotpot.
The soup base was made from fresh black carp raised in the spatial storage, simmered into a fragrant fish broth. The sliced lamb, beef, meatballs, and the like were all ready-made frozen items taken from a supermarket and kept fresh in a small cave inside the spatial storage—when taken out, they were practically unchanged from when they’d been put in. The vegetables were all grown in the space as well: radishes, bamboo shoots, leafy greens, spinach, napa cabbage, mushrooms—everything imaginable. The group ate fish and meat to their hearts’ content, bellies bulging, and even Xiao Hei drank two big bowls of fish soup.
After they were full, Zhan Yun quietly used his corrosion ability to completely destroy the kitchen waste, erasing all traces. Using his ability for something like this did feel a bit like overkill, but when it came to safety, caution was always the better choice.
After Guan Hong returned, he sought out Zhan Yun and the others once more. Upon hearing about the new type of bullets, the local garrison was both shocked and thrilled. However, they lacked the proper equipment to manufacture the new bullets. The Lu family, on the other hand, possessed some homemade firearms technology and had been very supportive of them, so the garrison wanted to cooperate with the Lu family. Before sharing the good news with the Lu family, though, they wanted to obtain Guan Hong’s consent first, since the information had come from him.
As for Guan Hong, he wanted to hear Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe’s opinions. After all, tracing it back to the source, the people who had truly discovered that plants could suppress the zombie virus were Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe.
“We have no objections.” After exchanging a glance, Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe smiled and answered together.
Zombies are the common enemy of all humankind. Kill one more, and humanity gains one more sliver of hope. So from the very beginning, Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe had never intended to conceal this information.
Their original purpose in telling the local garrison was precisely to help them grow stronger. The Lu family had long been cooperating with the garrison to counter the Wang and Hong families, so gaining this information would undoubtedly make them even more formidable.
Guan Hong smiled as well. He knew that they were not the sort of people to hoard advantages for themselves.
“Captain Zhan, Mr. Su, I have one more favor to ask…”
“Please go ahead, Captain Guan.”
“It will take them some time to produce and fully master the new-type ammunition, so I’d like to first give them a portion of the new bullets we brought with us. However, our supply is limited, so I was hoping to trouble Mr. Su to convert some plant bullets for us. Would that be possible?” As he spoke, Guan Hong took out two fresh, large ears of corn, clearly produced by the W City Base through soilless cultivation and accelerated by wood-type ability users.
“Of course,” Su Ruizhe replied. For him, this was merely a small effort.
When Guan Hong left, he took with him a small pouch of corn bullets and two corn grenade warheads.
Six days later, Dr. Yang returned to the team brimming with confidence, carrying his experimental records and data, eager to return to their own base and put the soilless cultivation techniques he had just learned into practice.
After bidding farewell to Major Dai, Guan Hong led the team out of W City Base that very night.
The return journey went smoothly. It took only four days in total, and on the evening of the fifth day, they arrived back at the Southern Base.
What they never expected, however, was that the Southern Base was already in complete chaos.
A large portion of the grain stored in the base warehouse had somehow vanished into thin air. After extensive investigations, the base discovered a rat hole, and only then realized that a rat infestation had broken out within the base. Regiment Commander Jiang ordered all soldiers to join in exterminating the rats, but these rodents had mutated—not only becoming much stronger, but also highly aggressive. Many soldiers were bitten as a result.
The rats carried numerous pathogens. The bitten soldiers developed skin ulcerations and fevers, but with the current medical standards being so limited, all they could do was administer anti-inflammatory drugs and tetanus shots.
Now the base was facing both food shortages and a constant stream of rat attacks. Panic spread among the people, and Commander Jiang was so anxious that he had started losing hair.
He tried smoking out the rat holes and even had water-type ability users flood them, but the tunnels crisscrossed in every direction. Block one side, and the rats would escape from another. Unless every single rat hole could be sealed, killing them all was nearly impossible.
Posting soldiers to guard the granary around the clock and covering the warehouse floor with glue traps proved useless as well. The rats were incredibly strong, and all they could do was watch helplessly as their food reserves dwindled bit by bit.
As soon as Zhan Yun and the others returned, Jiang Xuzhou immediately sent someone to invite them to the base headquarters. He felt that Zhan Yun’s and Su Ruizhe’s abilities were rather special and that they might be able to come up with a solution.
After hearing the situation, Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe also realized how difficult it was, and agreed to give it a try.
These mutated rats were extremely troublesome to deal with. Zhan Yun went to Yu Dongdong and borrowed Xiao Hei, planning to try using a cat. Cats are natural enemies of rats. Although these rodents had mutated, Xiao Hei was no ordinary cat either—perhaps it could play a crucial role.
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
