Chapter 106 — The Eastern Base
“Pour the mushroom juice! Stay clear of the window areas!”
After hearing Song Lingling’s report, Luo Xun immediately gave the order. Everyone hurriedly lifted bucket after bucket of mushroom juice and poured them into the metal funnels Yan Fei had just made, which led directly above the trenches outside.
The shrill squeaking outside became even louder. As the highly corrosive mushroom juice was poured down, more than half of the zombie rats in the trenches were immediately destroyed. Most of them didn’t even leave behind bones, dissolving straight into foul liquid.
Fortunately, because the number of zombies they had cleared earlier that day was not large, they still had plenty of mushroom juice and gasoline left. Otherwise, even if they had managed to hide inside the metal shelter Yan Fei built, they might not have been able to eliminate the zombie rats outside tonight.
Zhang Su controlled the airflow inside the metal shelter, exchanging it continuously with fresh air from outside. Meanwhile, Li Tie and the others worked hard, pouring bucket after bucket of mushroom juice into the funnels.
Gradually, most of the mushroom juice had been used up, yet there was still no sign that the number of zombie rats outside had decreased. Worse still, the constant thud-thud sounds of rats slamming against the metal walls, along with the grinding noises of them gnawing at the metal, made everyone’s scalp go numb.
When the trenches outside were nearly filled again, Luo Xun immediately ordered everyone to switch from mushroom juice to gasoline, pouring it out through the same funnels.
This time, before Luo Xun even had a chance to order Xu Mei to release a fireball, one of the fire-type zombie rats outside accidentally ignited the gasoline itself!
Fortunately, the fireballs they spat only landed inside the trenches and did not ignite the funnel openings. Otherwise, the people pouring the gasoline would have been burned by the flames rushing back.
“That was… too dangerous,” Luo Xun murmured quietly as he looked at the suddenly blazing fire outside.
Li Tie and the others who had been pouring the gasoline had no idea how close they had come to being injured. Seeing the flames erupt, they actually breathed a sigh of relief.
Yan Fei patted Luo Xun’s shoulder and comforted him softly. “Let’s treat it as a lesson learned. Next time I make the oil outlets, I’ll try to avoid this problem.”
Luo Xun could only nod. Sitting beside Yan Fei with his knees drawn up, he leaned against him silently and waited for the flames outside to burn out.
Zombie rats were astonishingly fast. Because of that, they could charge forward like cannonballs. As they leaped across the flames, their rotten, broken skin would catch fire, and the burning bodies slammed against the metal walls like fiery projectiles.
Yan Fei had deliberately made the trenches quite wide, but even so, the rats could still use wind abilities and their own sprinting speed to leap across.
The only fortunate thing was that ordinary zombies, even though some could be quite strong in one-on-one combat, usually moved slowly at the start. Even the faster zombies could never attack in such dense numbers like these zombie rats. Otherwise, their previous battles would never have been so manageable.
That entire night, no one dared sleep.
Whenever the flames outside weakened in any direction, someone immediately poured more gasoline there. Xu Mei manipulated the fire constantly, strengthening the walls of flame where the attacks were densest and making them burn more fiercely.
Zhang Su had to ensure the air inside didn’t become oxygen-deprived and that smoke didn’t seep in. At the same time, he occasionally assisted Xu Mei by increasing the oxygen supply outside to make the flames burn stronger.
The fire burned the entire night.
Everyone secretly felt grateful that before leaving the base, Luo Xun had insisted they collect as much gasoline as possible—and that they had brought it all with them. Otherwise, there was no way they could have held out through the night.
When the first ray of sunlight appeared, Luo Xun and the others barely noticed. Only after the sun fully brightened the sky did the squeaking outside gradually diminish. The zombie rats on the outskirts slowly retreated.
Just like when they came, their retreat was almost instantaneous. In the blink of an eye, they vanished completely.
“They… they left…”
“We actually made it through!!”
When they realized the zombie rats were truly gone, everyone nearly burst into tears. Then several thump sounds followed as people collapsed onto the ground without caring about appearances. The most exhausted ones even fell asleep immediately.
Luo Xun also leaned against Yan Fei and drifted into sleep. In his mind, he still thought that fortunately zombie animals retained their habits from before they were infected. Even though they did not fear sunlight, they were still instinctively reluctant to hunt or move around during the daytime.
Otherwise, even if they had endured until morning, they might not have escaped safely.
When Luo Xun opened his eyes again, the sun had already climbed nearly overhead.
He checked the time—11:20 a.m.
Dragging his sore and exhausted body to his feet, he looked out through the small windows around the shelter. After confirming that there wasn’t a single zombie rat outside—and no zombies or people nearby either—he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Li Tie and the others were still sleeping. Xu Mei had just sat up, rubbing her eyes. Yan Fei had already woken up when Luo Xun rose and was now drinking water.
“Let’s clean up the battlefield outside and head back early to rest,” Luo Xun said, his voice hoarse. He took the water Yan Fei handed him and drank a few mouthfuls.
They woke everyone up and began collecting crystal cores together.
It had to be said—the mad swarm of rats had left them with a truly impressive number of cores.
The crystal cores inside animals varied in size compared to those in zombies, depending on the size of the animal’s body.
For creatures like rats, the cores inside their heads were only about one-third the size of those in zombie brains. Yan Fei and the others tried absorbing one and nodded afterward.
“The energy is about one-third of a normal core,” Yan Fei said.
That was true for ordinary cores as well as Level Two ones.
However, the number of zombie rats they encountered was simply astonishing. The number they had burned and killed throughout the night was equally shocking. After a rough count, there were actually more than forty thousand crystal cores.
Adding the Level Two zombie cores they had already collected earlier, this harvest once again made everyone gasp in amazement.
Unfortunately, the proportion of Level Two rats was lower than that of zombies—roughly about one in three, far less than the ratio from the zombie cores they had collected earlier.
Even more regrettable was that the cores from zombie rats were so small that they couldn’t be sure how the base would evaluate their value. Moreover, if so many cores suddenly appeared in the market or reached the military, it would likely arouse suspicion.
Therefore, it seemed they could only sell them gradually in the future.
As usual, the cores were divided into five portions—one for the team’s shared fund, and the rest distributed as personal income.
After packing everything and loading it back into the vehicles, they cleaned up the surrounding area and carefully concealed the traces of their stay before driving back toward the base.
Luo Xun spent an entire day before he barely managed to recover most of the fatigue from the previous night.
Looking back on it now, what left the deepest impression on him was actually this—when they returned yesterday, they entered the base incredibly quickly.
Ever since the base installed the detection devices and no longer required blood tests, the speed of passing through security had become extremely fast. When Luo Xun and the others went out to hunt zombies, they mostly attacked from a distance and rarely engaged in close combat. So when they returned to the base, there was not even a trace of zombie virus on their coats.
The only contaminated part was the vehicle tires. But that was unavoidable for anyone leaving the base.
The dirt stuck to the wheels was washed off by the military personnel responsible for cleaning when Luo Xun and the others went to submit their mission. They didn’t have to worry about it at all. When they finished, they simply picked up their vehicle and went home. The whole process was much faster than any previous return.
After resting well for a day, Luo Xun and Yan Fei decided to go out again on the last day of their break. First, they wanted to see if they could find the metal-type crystal cores Yan Fei needed. Second, they hoped to sell some of the non-metal Level Two cores they had obtained from the zombie rats.
Those cores were too eye-catching. Rather than exchanging them directly with the military, it would be better to see if they could trade them away on the market first.
After wandering around for a while, they returned to the same stall where they had traded before. When Yan Fei took out several smaller Level Two crystal cores, the stall owner was surprised for a moment but didn’t seem overly shocked.
Although such items were rare, people like him who had seen many things were not completely unfamiliar with them.
After the gate incident last time, everyone already knew that zombie animals existed in the city. Some teams that ventured deep into the urban area had encountered them before. When the numbers were small, ability users could still kill them with some effort and gain a few crystal cores.
“You two have had good luck lately, huh?” the man chatted casually while trading with them. “Our team went out several times recently and only brought back a batch of Level One cores. We hardly encountered any Level Two zombies—and the few we did weren’t the types we needed.”
Luo Xun was slightly surprised, but he asked calmly, “Our luck hasn’t been great either. We did run into some, but the ones we got weren’t the type we wanted. Where did your team hunt? Didn’t encounter many Level Two zombies? Sounds like good luck.”
The man laughed. Since their mission had already been completed, he wasn’t worried about others competing with them. With a bit of pride, he said, “Two days ago we took a mission to the northern district of the city, to transport cloth from a factory. Along the way we mostly saw Level One zombies…”
So the northern part of the city was still mainly Level One zombies?
Then could it be that because of the previous airstrike in the south, most of the surviving zombies there had evolved into Level Two?
Luo Xun felt somewhat puzzled.
After finishing the transaction and leaving in a hurry, he quietly discussed it with Yan Fei.
“What do you think is going on? Why are there so many more Level Two zombies in the south than in the north?” In his previous life he had only gone to the northern area, so he had never known the south was like this. If that man hadn’t mentioned it today, Luo Xun wouldn’t have noticed.
Back then, the reason he managed to survive his early outings was precisely because the places he went mostly had Level One zombies.
Yan Fei frowned slightly. “Maybe it really is related to that airstrike?”
After discussing it for quite a while, they still couldn’t reach any conclusion and could only leave the matter for now.
The next day after work, the two of them went to the military exchange window and traded the Level Two crystal cores they didn’t need for the ones they did need, along with some Level One cores and points.
As for the zombie rat cores, both the market and the military exchanged them at a ratio of one to three compared with normal zombie cores, which was roughly the same as they had estimated before.
Time soon entered early August.
While working hard every day, Luo Xun and Yan Fei also secretly worried about the zombie siege that might soon arrive. However, despite their careful attention, none of the ability-user teams returning from missions had brought back any unusual news.
On the evening of August 4th, after returning home, Luo Xun and Yan Fei harvested the crops in their apartment together with Xu Mei and Song Lingling. They were just about to go home and prepare dinner when Li Tie and the others came running upstairs excitedly after getting off work from the military cafeteria.
The moment they opened the door, Li Tie shouted happily to Luo Xun and the others.
“Look! Guess what good stuff we brought back!”
“A hard drive?” Luo Xun looked at the item in Li Tie’s hand with surprise.
“TV dramas! Pre-apocalypse TV dramas!” Li Tie waved the hard drive proudly. “No idea where they found them, but they asked us to upload them to the internal network. So we copied them first!”
Everyone now had mobile phones. Although watching TV dramas or movies on a phone wasn’t as enjoyable as using a TV or computer, it was still much better than having almost no entertainment at all.
“Come on, let me copy them into our computer…”
Ever since discovering that Luo Xun still had a computer at home filled with novels, Li Tie and the others had started bringing back various discarded military equipment during their spare time. Over time, they had actually assembled a working computer!
Inside were not only the novels Luo Xun had contributed, but also all sorts of entertainment like these newly recovered dramas.
“Great. We can watch something before bed tonight.” Even reading novels every day could become boring after a while. Watching something different sounded refreshing.
Everyone excitedly ran upstairs to fiddle with the computer. The computer host and router were kept in Li Tie’s apartment, while signal boosters were installed in other apartments and along the hallway—all put together by Li Tie’s group.
“There are movies too!”
When they discovered that one of the hard drives also contained many famous Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and Hollywood movies from before the apocalypse, Xu Mei and Song Lingling became even more interested.
“Of course! These are just what we brought today. Once we finish copying them, we still have more over there. We’ll bring others tomorrow!” Han Li seized the opportunity to show off in front of the two women, patting his chest confidently.
Song Lingling rolled her eyes playfully and sighed, “Do you have Korean dramas? The longer the better—perfect for passing time. Too bad recent Korean dramas are shorter now. If you can find those old ones with hundreds or even thousands of episodes, copy a few more!”
Han Li nearly choked on his own saliva.
Hundreds of episodes? Several of them?!
Even the hard drives might not hold that much!
No, tomorrow he had to find some larger-capacity hard drives. He absolutely had to satisfy the wishes of the ladies in the team!
Xu Mei lowered her head and laughed quietly, pretending not to notice her teammate acting like a foolish young man.
As the movies and dramas were copied into their computer, everyone began thinking about which one to watch that night.
Standing by the door, Wang Duo suddenly heard the sound of someone opening a door in the hallway. Realizing that his beloved “master” had returned, he immediately ran out to share the good news first.
Zhang Su and Wang Duo walked in one after the other. Zhang Su handed his bag to his little follower Wang Duo, then spoke to everyone in the room.
“Something happened to the Eastern Base.”
The room fell silent instantly.
Everyone stared at him in shock, as if they hadn’t understood what he meant.
“I just received the news before coming back,” Zhang Su said, taking a bottle of water and drinking a few sips. “The Eastern Base sent out a distress signal. The base is surrounded, and many survivors inside have suddenly turned into zombies. Their high-ranking officials have retreated into safer areas inside the base to temporarily shelter while sending out requests for help and trying to defend themselves.”
He shrugged.
“The army is organizing a rescue team and sending doctors with the troops. It has nothing to do with me, so I was able to come back.”
In truth, the hospital could have sent him with the rescue team, especially since he had wind-type abilities and could protect himself.
But his habit of suddenly acting strangely was well known throughout the hospital—and even the military had heard about it.
Rescue missions couldn’t tolerate uncertainty. So even without Zhang Su saying anything, his superiors would never consider sending him along.
The doctors selected for this operation were all military-trained physicians—people with strong mental fortitude who would absolutely obey orders without hesitation.
As for the unreliable ones… it was better for them to remain safely in the base and continue treating patients.
After a moment of silence, Luo Xun asked, “Did you hear any specific details?”
Zhang Su shook his head and shrugged. “No. I only know that the higher-ups are mobilizing people to go on the mission. How many were sent or what the exact situation is over there—I have no idea.”
Everyone exchanged glances silently. Suddenly Li Tie seemed to recall the rumors that had circulated in the base earlier. He inhaled sharply.
“Wasn’t there a rumor in the base before, saying there would be a zombie siege in early August? First the Eastern Base, then our place?! If that news…”
The others’ expressions also changed dramatically. Before anyone could begin discussing it, Li Tie suddenly raised his voice.
“Otaku! That useless otaku!!”
“Huh?” Han Li and the others looked at him in confusion.
Li Tie’s face turned red with excitement, almost ready to jump on the spot.
“Don’t you think that rumor might have been released by that useless otaku? Before the apocalypse he already predicted the coming of the apocalypse, and he even posted so many things about what would happen and how to survive afterward. This situation looks exactly like something he would do! I knew it! Since he could predict the apocalypse, there’s no way he died! He must have come to our Southwest Base too! That proves he thinks our base is the safest one! Ahhh… how can we find him? He must know even more information… He definitely has some kind of precognition ability—maybe he’s even a powerful ability user…”
Everyone silently glanced at Li Tie, who had clearly sunk into wild speculation, and then looked toward Luo Xun, their captain.
Luo Xun wiped away a cold sweat and said to everyone, “Since something has happened at the Eastern Base, it’s possible our base might face a similar situation, just like the rumors said. Whether people inside the base might suddenly turn into zombies is still unclear, but a zombie siege might really happen. I suggest we suspend our plans to leave the base this month and observe the situation first. Also—from tomorrow onward, try not to act alone when going outside. Stay alert and pay attention to what’s happening around you.”
As he spoke, he looked at Zhang Su.
Among everyone present, Zhang Su was the only one who might end up moving around alone. Although he was supposed to finish work around five every day, the nature of his job meant that this “supposed to” was basically meaningless. The earliest he could leave was usually after six, and sometimes it wasn’t unusual for him to work the entire night.
Zhang Su spread his hands. “I have abilities…”
“No way!” Wang Duo immediately stood up. “You’re already exhausted after a whole day of work. What if something happens?” He thumped his chest loudly. “After work, I’ll go wait for you at the hospital entrance! I’ll escort you home!”
Zhang Su glanced at him sideways and said disdainfully, “You? When the time comes, will you save me or will I save you? You want to wait alone outside the hospital? Are you joking? There are people coming and going there all the time, and most people who come already have some kind of problem. If something really happened, how could I find you in time? If something happened to you…”
He Qiankun quickly grabbed Wang Duo before he could say anything more.
“How about this—we’ll go to the hospital with Wang Duo. Anyway, after work we usually go to the cafeteria for food. We might as well eat there first and then head to the hospital. If nothing unexpected happens, Brother Zhang should be about ready to get off work by then.”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll go together! We’ll bring our weapons!”
“Should we drive there? That would be safer, and we can sit in the car while waiting.”
“And we have phones! Once we arrive, we can send Brother Zhang a message. When he’s about to come out, we’ll go to the hospital entrance to meet him.”
After a long round of lively discussion, Zhang Su finally nodded reluctantly.
After all, Li Tie and the others worked inside the military camp, so the route from their workplace to the hospital was mostly within military-controlled areas. The risk there was lower than in other parts of the base. And with Zhang Su accompanying them, their safety would also be much better if something happened on the road.
In a way, it actually improved the safety for both sides.
As for work…
Zhang Su silently made a decision in his heart. When he went to work tomorrow, he would try to slack off a little instead of working as hard as before.
Because of certain strange psychological tendencies, whenever he held a surgical blade he would become unusually excited, which resulted in his work efficiency being more than double that of other doctors.
Now, for the sake of making sure he could protect those people if something unexpected happened while walking home together, he was actually planning to slow down and ease off his pace.
For Zhang Su, that could already be considered a miracle.
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
