The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH171

Chapter 171 — Wreckage

To determine the extent of the Devil Vines, the group first tossed rocks around the perimeter of the experimental fields…

What left everyone speechless—and somewhat despairing—was that these Devil Vines had completely surrounded the laboratory building in the test field. There didn’t seem to be a single gap left!

And it wasn’t just here. Similar patches of these strange vines had appeared throughout the surrounding farmland as well.

Luo Xun couldn’t tell whether they had already spread into the laboratory building itself, but under the circumstances, they had no choice but to give up on whatever valuable supplies might be inside. After organizing their belongings, they prepared to head directly to the solar panel factory the next day.

“Don’t tell me those things have grown over there too?” Wang Duo said.

By the time everyone finished checking the distribution of the Devil Vines in the nearby fields, a great deal of time had already passed. They simply cleaned out a nearby house, confirmed that it was free of zombies and relatively safe, and decided to spend the night there.

Hearing Wang Duo’s words, everyone immediately glared at him.

“Stop jinxing it!”

Wang Duo’s expression froze. Looking aggrieved, he leaned his head onto Zhang Su’s shoulder.

“Waaah, honey, they’re all bullying me…”

Zhang Su shook his shoulder, knocking Wang Duo’s head aside, his face full of disgust.

“You deserve it.”

Luo Xun coughed twice.

“Well… there shouldn’t be any farmland around the factory. But we still need to be careful on the way there. There are fields along the road…”

Although most of the farmland they had passed didn’t seem to contain those bizarre vines, who knew whether the fields farther away from the base might actually be more dangerous?

Another peaceful night passed.

This left everyone somewhat unaccustomed, considering that every previous trip outside the base had usually ended with them being surrounded by zombies all night long.

After breakfast the next morning, they packed up and prepared to leave. Before departing, everyone instinctively glanced toward the patch of Devil Vines they had attacked the day before.

The area remained as quiet as ever.

Fresh snow had once again covered the vines evenly. If they hadn’t seen them with their own eyes yesterday, they might have thought the vines that had burst out from beneath the snow had been nothing more than a trick of the eye—or perhaps an outright hallucination.

Climbing into their respective vehicles, Luo Xun corrected their heading and drove back toward the main road. Once they reached the previous intersection, they followed the highway toward the factory.

The cold air lashed against them.

Fortunately, the sled cabins were warm. The sun was unusually bright today. As they traveled across the snow-covered ground, it almost felt as though they could hear the snow melting beneath them.

After another full day of travel, on the sixth day since leaving the base, they finally encountered a scene completely unlike anything they had seen before.

“W-What’s going on here?”

“My God, this is…”

“Huh?! Look over there! What are those black things in the distance?”

“Tanks! Armored vehicles!”

“And trucks… It’s the military convoy that came out to collect solar panels before!”

“But everything around here…”

“A… a zombie horde.”

The group stood silently beside their sled vehicles, staring at the utterly different landscape before them.

In a world blanketed entirely in white snow, any patch of exposed earth stood out dramatically. The black, muddy ground stretched across the snow like a giant black dragon sprawled upon the land. The stark contrast was so intense that it almost hurt to look at.

Everyone remained silent for quite a while.

At last, Luo Xun stepped forward and turned toward the direction in which the black dragon-like trail extended.

“It looks like this was the route they took when they headed toward our base. They didn’t come from the road we used.”

“Brother Luo, are you saying… all those zombies were actually moving together?” Li Tie suddenly turned around, his eyes nearly bulging out.

Zhang Su glanced at him.

“If they weren’t moving together, how could so many zombies have suddenly appeared during the siege?”

“B-But… I thought they were attracted by the large population in the base… by the stronger human scent…” Li Tie’s voice trembled slightly.

His choice of words made everyone chuckle despite themselves.

Yan Fei, meanwhile, walked onto the black-and-white patchwork terrain and examined it carefully.

“The ice here is solid. It must have frozen a long time ago.”

This exposed “road” had been trampled out by zombies.

There had simply been too many of them. They had flattened nearly all the snow beneath their feet, leaving behind a thin but densely compacted black path.

The scene resembled the snowless areas around the base where zombies had repeatedly marched. The difference was that around the base, the snow had melted more thoroughly due to the abilities of the evolved humans. Here, however, the zombies seemed to have passed through only once, leaving behind a thick shell of hard ice covering the ground.

Holding a pair of binoculars, Luo Xun climbed onto the roof of a nearby single-story building and surveyed the area.

After confirming that nothing dangerous was nearby, he climbed back down.

“Let’s go check those vehicles.”

They pushed their sled vehicles across the ice and approached the overturned and wrecked military vehicles.

Inside several infantry fighting vehicles, they could still see severed limbs that the zombies hadn’t completely devoured.

The trucks were much “cleaner.” Aside from scattered bloodstains, there was no trace left of the people who had once been there.

Some sort of tragedy had clearly occurred around these vehicles.

The ice crust was gone from the surrounding area, exposing bare ground. In some places, there were scorch marks, large craters from explosions, and spent shell casings scattered across the earth.

Luo Xun and the others found no usable weapons.

The submachine guns were all destroyed beyond repair—crushed underfoot or snapped in half.

The various instruments and equipment that might have been useful had suffered similar fates. Most were completely ruined, while those that remained intact were covered in unknown fluids that had later frozen solid in the bitter cold.

The cargo in the trucks, however, was a different story.

Aside from a few trucks that had overturned and suffered some damage, the contents in the cargo compartments appeared to be almost entirely intact.

Those trucks were indeed the ones that had previously been dispatched to the solar panel manufacturing company. Their cargo beds were packed to the brim with solar panels.

“Load them up!” After inspecting the vehicles, Luo Xun waved his hand decisively. Besides the solar panels, there were also huge numbers of storage batteries. If they hauled all of these back, they’d have enough to cover and recalculate the placement of their exterior walls several times over. Even adding a few more apartment units wouldn’t be a problem.

Although only one of their two planned destinations had yielded results during this trip, the gains far exceeded their expectations. This was a true bumper harvest.

Of the military’s five trucks, two had overturned. The solar panels and batteries in the remaining three trucks were completely undamaged. Even among the overturned trucks, many of the panels and batteries were still intact. After sorting through everything, they managed to gather enough materials to fill more than four truckloads.

If they wanted to transport it all back, the metal Yan Fei had collected along the way was obviously nowhere near enough.

But…

Faced with a field littered with the wreckage of armored vehicles and trucks, would they really be short on metal?

Without another word, Yan Fei extracted all the usable metal and piled it separately.

Xu Mei took Xinran and Song Lingling to the roadside. Xu Mei melted snow into water, Song Lingling moved the water aside, and Xinran created a massive sand pit. Working together, they buried the remaining metal debris and the severed limbs still scattered around the battlefield, creating a temporary grave.

They didn’t know who these people had been. They no longer had complete bodies, and some of them had likely become part of the terrifying zombie horde by now.

But they had all once been survivors living in the same base.

Since it cost them little effort, building a simple grave for them was the least they could do.

Once water had soaked into the sand covering the grave and hardened it somewhat, Yan Fei had already finished modifying a set of temporary trailers for hauling the metal containers.

They had come out with four sled vehicles. Yan Fei simply made four metal containers as well, which could be attached behind the sleds and dragged back.

The problem was that these “containers” were absurdly large.

“How are we supposed to get these back to the base…” Looking at the gigantic metal containers, everyone felt a headache coming on. Forget the fact that bringing them back would attract a tremendous amount of attention—even if they managed to get them home, they probably wouldn’t have anywhere to store them.

“And… isn’t there a chance of house inspections later?” He Qiankun raised his hand weakly to remind everyone.

Right.

There was still that issue.

They hadn’t even figured out how to deal with the inspections yet, and now they had four metal boxes the size of shipping containers on their hands.

“Let’s get them back first and figure it out later,” Luo Xun said after some thought. “If necessary, we can hide them somewhere outside the base temporarily. Worst case, we’ll bring back enough for immediate use and bury the rest…”

They had Xinran, who could dig pits with ease, and Yan Fei, who could create completely sealed metal containers. These weren’t food supplies. As long as they were sealed away from moisture and oxygen, they could be stored underground indefinitely without deteriorating.

“Let’s at least haul them back near the base first,” Xu Mei said. Then she glanced worriedly at the massive containers. “But… can we actually pull these things?”

Everyone’s gaze immediately shifted back to the containers.

The boxes were enormous.

Their sled vehicles looked pitifully small by comparison.

After several attempts, Luo Xun and the others discovered that it took two sleds working together to pull a single container.

But they only had four sled vehicles total.

What were they supposed to do with the other two containers?

In the end, they had no choice but to find a snow-covered area. Working together, they dug a deep pit, buried the extra containers, covered everything with snow again, and carefully marked the location on their map.

As long as they returned later, Yan Fei would be able to detect the metal underground and retrieve it easily.

The entire process dragged on until nightfall.

With no other choice, the group found a nearby place to rest for the night.

Early the next morning, they fastened the containers to the sleds and prepared to depart.

As usual before setting out, Zhang Su used his wind ability to scout the surrounding area.

This had become part of their daily routine outside the base, both morning and evening. Everyone was used to it by now.

But this time, only moments after closing his eyes, Zhang Su suddenly snapped them open.

He turned toward a certain direction, his face filled with alarm.

“Zombies…”

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