Chapter 182 — The New Base
The wilderness was as peaceful as ever, with ruined buildings lining both sides of the road like broken monuments. This time, Luo Xun and his team did not follow their usual route to the experimental fields. Instead, they took a detour along a highway bordered by a relatively higher concentration of structures.
Aside from wanting to switch paths to prevent anyone from discovering their new base, they also needed Yan Fei to collect metal along the way and bring it back to the laboratory building. Building a brand-new, fully functional home that could serve all their needs required an immense amount of metal.
Thinking back to how much effort and metal it had taken just to renovate their two floors back at the base, it was easy to see how staggering their metal requirements would be this time.
They had an entire three-story building to remodel, several surrounding structures of various sizes and functions to renovate, and a basement that needed to be deeply excavated…
If it weren’t for the fact that Yan Fei needed to conserve his energy for potential emergencies, and that the available metal along the road was ultimately limited, Luo Xun and the others would have loved to scrape the earth bare as they traveled. Even so, two massive metal spheres rolled alongside the convoy with a thunderous, magnificent momentum—a sight that was genuinely terrifying to behold.
After being away for nearly seven or eight days, the area still looked largely the same from a distance as it had when they left. Of course, there were differences, especially now that the weather was genuinely warming up. The snow and ice covering the nearby fields had begun to melt on a massive scale, fully exposing the horrifying plants hidden beneath the pristine white landscape.
The group parked their vehicles a safe distance from the farmland and looked around with a mix of awe and lingering dread. This was the terrifying zone they had accidentally stumbled into before. This was the place where they had nearly lost their lives—where, if not for their sheer luck in having a baby with an unknown superpower, they would have all gone to the afterlife together.
Luo Xun’s train of thought was clearly different from Li Tie and the others, who were still caught up in emotional reflection. Rubbing his chin, he tilted his head in thought for a moment before suddenly speaking up. “Let’s spend the next few days clearing out the interior and getting things into shape. After that, we should expand the area of these Devil Vines.”
“Huh?!”
“What?!”
“Expand them? Expand the range of the Devil Vines?!”
The group stared at him, utterly dumbfounded. But while the five university students were shocked, the other superpower users quickly caught onto Luo Xun’s wavelength.
Song Lingling clapped her hands first. “Yeah! If we can grow these things ourselves, we should plant a ton of them and completely surround the area!”
Zhang Su agreed. “These things actually grow pretty tall. Before, the snow was weighing them down, so they didn’t look much taller than the rest of the terrain. Now, they look quite promising.”
“…Why would we want to plant something like that? Isn’t it extremely dangerous?” Wang Duo looked at his “Prince” with a completely dazed expression, practically begging for an explanation.
Zhang Su shot him a thoroughly contemptuous side-glance. “Are you stupid? If we plant a thick ring of these things around the perimeter, who else would dare come near besides us, the residents who know the secret passage? Think about how much trouble this stuff can keep away from us.”
Li Tie and the others widened their mouths in realization. “That’s a brilliant idea!!”
Yan Fei also helped elaborate on the reasoning. “We plan to expand the underground planting area later. If we ever get discovered, it would only take one earth-user and one metal-user to sniff out our base. Expanding the coverage of these plants will help camouflage that vulnerability.”
He pointed toward the secret passage they had dug out a few days prior. “Once a metal-user’s level is high enough, they can sense metal underground even without direct line of sight. A single metal passage might pass under the radar—other metal-users driving past might not necessarily notice it. But an entire, sizeable underground basement reinforced by massive amounts of metal? That would be a different story.”
“Ah! I get it now!”
“Right, right, right! But is this stuff easy to grow?”
Luo Xun nodded with a smile. “It shouldn’t be hard. We just need to find a room, plant some rice or wheat, and make sure not to put any mushroom wood inside. Or we could just dig up some of the contaminated soil underneath them. It should be pretty easy to cultivate that way.”
The task of digging up the soil could be easily handled by little Xinran. She wouldn’t even need to step in front of the mutated plants; she could manipulate the soil to turn into sand and “walk” right over to her. Besides, they didn’t need a huge amount of that soil to get started.
Opening up the secret tunnel they had constructed earlier, the group once again hauled their luggage and the collected metal back into the laboratory building, kicking off a fresh round of busy work.
It was only February 8th when they returned, meaning Luo Xun and the team could easily stay until the end of the month. They had a solid twenty days or so to organize their belongings and get things fully settled.
They selected several well-lit rooms on the top floor of the laboratory building and divided them up. Luo Xun and Yan Fei naturally shared a room, taking their little bundle of joy and the puppy with them. Xu Mei, Song Lingling, and little Xinran shared another. Zhang Su naturally stayed with his Wang Duo. The remaining four men discussed it and decided to split into two rooms, with two people per room.
Li Tie and Han Li stayed together, while He Qiankun and Wu Xin shared the other. This wasn’t because of any unspoken romantic situation between them, but rather because “we finally have more rooms to choose from, so why not live a bit more comfortably and spaciously?”
With five groups in total, they cleanly divided the five rooms on the top floor. In truth, there were seven livable rooms on the highest level. After everyone chose a well-lit office to settle into, the largest conference room and a smaller break room were set aside, designated to be converted into future planting rooms or storage spaces.
With the rooms assigned, even though extensive renovations would be required later, everyone temporarily had a place to rest. They naturally carried their respective belongings into their rooms, set things up simply, and turned in for a good night’s sleep.
They passed a peaceful night. No zombies came knocking on the door, and no flying creatures came to harass them. Early the next morning, bathed in the bright and brilliant morning sun streaming through the windows, Luo Xun and the others rolled out of bed. They fed the little baby some milk—on this trip back, they had brought out a massive stash of cream fruit, enough to feed the little guy for a month or so.
Fortunately, these fruits were small, and they had confirmed that once harvested, they showed no signs of spoiling even after a month. Moreover, the cream fruit plants back at their base had already yielded another sizable harvest.
But that was a tangent. In short, after feeding the baby, changing his diapers, and ensuring both humans and dogs had a peaceful breakfast, Luo Xun and the others went back to work.
“Today, we’ll start by modifying the building’s exterior walls and mounting all the solar panels we brought back last time.” Only when the solar panels were up and power was restored could many of the other projects truly get underway.
Seeing everyone nod in agreement, Luo Xun pointed down toward their feet. “Also, those two corpses in the basement… let’s carry them out and bury them today.” This was another matter that needed to be handled. Though they were well-accustomed to seeing corpses, leaving two dead bodies lying around in a place where they would be constantly active wasn’t ideal.
“Sure, no problem.”
While burying corpses still felt a bit uncomfortable, it didn’t cause anyone any psychological stress. Yan Fei used his metal manipulation to directly encase the two bodies into two metal boxes. After burying the boxes a good distance away, everyone returned to their new base, brimming with energy for the grand renovation project.
They hadn’t found any suitable paint yet, so for the time being, Yan Fei did his best to turn the metal armor surrounding the building a dull grey. In fact, metal of this color was relatively easy to manipulate, especially since the metal Yan Fei purified for high toughness and hardness naturally took on this shade.
Once the protective metal casing was formed, they began mounting the solar panels on the side of the wall that faced the morning sun. Luo Xun led Li Tie and the guys to hand the panels up to Yan Fei. Xu Mei and Song Lingling took charge of the interior affairs, cleaning and tidying up every corner. Zhang Su was tasked with assisting the two ladies—his wind ability was an absolute cheat code when it came to clearing out room dust. Aside from making things a bit chilly, a blast of his gales left the rooms absolutely spotless.
Meanwhile, He Qiankun received his orders to sit in front of the computer. His job was to scan the surrounding maps for areas likely to hold large quantities of paint, as well as potential hoards of metal materials. Before leaving the base this time, they had gathered a wealth of data, downloaded it onto the computer, and brought it along.
The little girl and the puppy kept an eye on the baby… after all, these three couldn’t exactly help with the current labor.
On the first day, the group managed to get the home’s solar panels sorted out. The large crates of panels they had transported practically covered the entire roof and the sun-facing wall. Early the next morning, after a brief discussion, they decided to inspect the basement and prepare to plant their very first batch of crops in this new base.
The seedling room was easy to set up. Since Luo Xun and the team didn’t plan on using the basement to grow any exotic crop varieties, let alone perform bizarre experiments, the basement’s original laboratories and changing rooms were largely useless. Converting them into seedling rooms was a perfect fit.
After setting up the seedling room, Luo Xun and the others inspected the two larger underground planting rooms. Once they decided what needed to be planted in each room, they handled a few areas that required repairs or modifications.
While everyone was busy working, He Qiankun found the information they needed—locations for sourcing paint and potential metal materials.
“This warehouse is right near the solar panel factory we visited last time. There are also several small workshops around it, so there’s bound to be plenty of metal materials,” He Qiankun said, pointing to a spot on the map where several marked dots indicated the things they currently needed most.
Luo Xun pondered for a moment, then looked up at Yan Fei and little Xinran, who was standing to the side, standing on her tiptoes to join the fun. “We can expand the underground tunnel first before heading to these places. That way, we can pull the items directly inside from underground.” Otherwise, the things they needed this time would simply be too heavy. Even if they managed to scavenge them, hauling them across the open ground would take up way too much time.
Seeing that she was needed, little Xinran happily bounced up and down twice. “Dig a tunnel! Dig a tunnel!”
“No problem,” Yan Fei agreed with a nod. “I can add some texture to the tunnel floor, maybe some ridges or patterns, so the vehicles don’t slip when we drive in.” The basement floor from before had been a bit too smooth, and they would occasionally slip while walking on it. This was the perfect opportunity to fix it.
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