The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH187

Chapter 187 — Migratory Birds

Spicy and numb flavors were Luo Xun’s personal preference. Although Xu Mei and Song Lingling could cook those dishes, the results were never as authentic as Luo Xun’s. In particular, his ability to withstand choking, spicy cooking fumes was truly staggering, leaving both ladies staring in awe and keeping their distance.

The dish of spicy diced rabbit was stir-fried to a vibrant red, fragrant and intensely flavorful. The moment it was set on the table, it captured everyone’s gaze. Crucially, the large chunks of meat cut from this giant rabbit leg didn’t contain any small bone shards, making every single bite a mouthful of pure, satisfying meat. It was the perfect remedy for their cravings and incredibly complementary to rice. The group fell upon the food as if they hadn’t seen meat in hundreds of years, tossing all sense of propriety out the window as everyone buried their heads in their rice bowls and ate in silence.

Of course, the braised rabbit stir-fried by Xu Mei and Song Lingling was also highly popular. Little Xinran couldn’t handle spicy food, so she ate the braised version with her rice.

The large bone from that rabbit leg was cracked open and used to simmer a huge pot of rich, thick broth. Once the group had completely swept the table clean of food, they finally relaxed, slowly cradling their bowls to sip soup and chat.

Li Tie was practically half-reclined in his chair, sipping the warm soup as he sighed with emotion. “Ah, if only we could raise some animals at the base, how great would that be…”

“Don’t we have quails at home?” Wu Xin, sitting next to him, asked rather cluelessly.

Before Li Tie could speak, He Qiankun, sitting on Wu Xin’s other side, yelled, “Quails count as meat, but that meat is just way too unsatisfying to eat!!”

When they absolutely needed meat, they would still slaughter a few of the household quails. However, under normal circumstances, they couldn’t bear to do it. Killing a few birds once every few months was already a major treat. Any more than that… they simply couldn’t bring themselves to do it, as they needed to keep them for laying eggs.

But what could that tiny bit of meat achieve? It was only good for a brief treat when the meat they had hunted was almost completely gone.

“Exactly, exactly! We could consider whether we can raise a few more types of animals!” Li Tie’s words got the whole group of gluttons excited, their eyes widening and their faces lighting up with joy.

“If we could raise a few mutated animals like the ones we’ve killed recently, slaughtering just one would be enough to feed us for months!”

“Right, right! These mutated animals are so cost-effective nowadays!”

Seeing the group so incredibly excited, Luo Xun really didn’t want to throw cold water on them. However, as he watched their discussion grow increasingly detailed, specific, and to the point where they were about to start building pens for the animals right away, he had no choice but to speak up. “Ahem.”

Seeing everyone’s eyes turn toward him, each pair twinkling with little stars as if eagerly waiting for Luo Xun to give the final stamp of approval, Luo Xun instantly felt a mountain of pressure. “Um… raising mutated animals… isn’t completely impossible, but we have to consider their combat power and—their size.”

Luo Xun pointed helplessly around them. “Smaller, pre-apocalyptic animals are fine for us to raise here, but those mutated animals that grow to absolute monstrous sizes, how many do you think we can actually support?”

Zhang Su had already polished off his own bowl of soup and naturally reached over to take the remaining half-bowl that Wang Duo hadn’t finished. “The bigger they grow, the more they eat—and the more they crap.”

This single sentence nearly caused the stuffed group to throw up their dinner in disgust. Alright, raising mutated animals was indeed rather impractical. Even if they really wanted to raise something, it would be best to first find some ordinary, non-mutated animals. But in this day and age… they should probably wait until they actually found ordinary animals before considering it further.

When Luo Xun and the others left the main base this time, they hadn’t brought along their little quails or mealworms. For one thing, they had too much gear to carry, and for another, they were terrified that an unexpected mishap on the road might freeze them all to death. Consequently, this rabbit successfully solved their meat supply issue for quite a long time.

On the day after eating and drinking their fill, Luo Xun handed out a new task—He Qiankun needed to help search for locations nearby where they could source glass. In truth, when Luo Xun and the others went out last time, they had originally intended to salvage all the intact glass panes still mounted on the walls of the solar panel production factory. However, they had run into that wretched rabbit and the mutated dog. Those two creatures had crashed around blindly in the area, causing the factory building to completely collapse under their chaos. Upon checking afterward, Luo Xun and the team couldn’t find a single unbroken pane of glass.

The wood on the trucks was unloaded, giving everyone a clear objective for the next day’s work. It was back to the same routine: Luo Xun and his partner handled reinforcing the racks in the planting rooms, while Li Tie led the guys in processing the freshly gathered wood. Once the wood was cut, it was boxed up and placed onto the racks to cultivate mushrooms—they were already highly practiced at this labor, so their efficiency was naturally very swift.

He Qiankun managed to locate a factory that likely contained glass—it was also near the area they had visited last time. After confirming that there were temporarily no pressing tasks requiring everyone to stay and watch the base, the group drove out once again.

This trip’s objectives were similar to the last one, still focusing primarily on lumber, metal, and those two iron crates of solar panels. As for the glass… the glass factory was quite a bit further away, and Luo Xun and the team couldn’t spare the time to make the trip just yet, so they had to temporarily put it on hold.

It took them a full four days to return, once again fully loaded. Although they weren’t lucky enough to hunt any mutated animals this time, they did spot the silhouettes of several mutated animals in the distance, which had been hiding who-knew-where previously. Some of these creatures sprinted past in a hurry far away, while others simply occupied the ruins of past architectural complexes. Their sizes, appearances, and habits differed significantly from pre-apocalyptic times. Since Luo Xun and the team had other matters to attend to on this run, they naturally had neither the time nor the means to pick a fight with these animals.

However, knowing that spring had arrived and that there were more traces of mutated animals active in the vicinity made everyone very happy. After all, since these creatures were active nearby, they could hope to capture them in the future to restock the inventory in their home freezers!

With a stomach full of cravings and a mountain of completely inedible iron chunks, massive logs, and broken panels, the group finally returned to the base once more to continue their busy work.

The harvest this time was truly substantial, especially the metal. Aside from the two massive metal spheres Yan Fei commanded along the way, plenty of scrap metal was stuffed into every available crevice of the trucks. The two large iron crates packed with solar panels were brought back as well, and they were currently left sitting in the tunnel. The team planned to finish the work on the two planting rooms first before hauling the panels up to mount them on the remaining sun-facing walls.

Early in the morning, after rolling out of bed and enjoying a leisurely wash, the group returned to the basement to begin their day’s labor. While the adults were busy working on various projects in the basement, little Xinran and the puppy kept watch over the baby. The three children were placed in a small, cleared-out cubicle on the first basement level. That space was slated to be converted into another planting room, but since the seeds they brought along were limited, the room directly opposite was more than enough for now, leaving this particular cubicle temporarily unfinished.

After playing in the room for a while with the puppy and finishing the homework assigned by Xu Mei, little Xinran came hopping out, tugging at the busy Song Lingling. “Mama Lingling, I’m hungry.”

“Are you actually hungry, or are you just craving something?” It was still quite a while before lunch, so Song Lingling knew exactly what she was thinking the moment she heard her speak.

“I’m hungry! And I’m craving something!” The little girl spoke with perfect righteousness. “I want to eat a strawberry cream popsicle, and the puppy wants one too!” As she spoke, she even deliberately pulled the puppy, who was trotting beside her, to help her convince Song Lingling.

“You’re only allowed to have one. Wait here, I’ll go get it for you.” These so-called strawberry cream popsicles were an idea the two ladies had come up with ever since they had cream fruit and a strawberry crop so abundant that the berries would spoil if they didn’t eat them fast enough. In any case, they had a vast number of freezers at home. Crushing the strawberries and mixing them with cream fruit allowed them to create delicious, healthy fruit popsicles for the children—what could be better than that?

Furthermore, they also had a sizable stockpile of homemade strawberry jam stored up, serving as excellent snacks for the kids and treats for the adults when they wanted a sweet fix.

Little Xinran happily ran back to the small room—she knew that her job while the adults were busy was to take good care of the dog and keep an eye on her little brother. So, although she would occasionally run out to act cute and act spoiled, she would quickly return to her “responsibilities.”

While everyone was busy working, they suddenly heard hurried footsteps coming down the stairs. Li Tie and the others, who were buried in their work, raised their heads in surprise, only to see Song Lingling running down with a pale face. “Quick! Quick, go upstairs! There are so many birds!!”

“Birds? Zombie birds?!” Instantly, everyone grew tense. They had long since learned how terrifying zombie birds could be—how could they have returned after such a short time?!

“I… I don’t know, there are so many flying in the sky!” Song Lingling took a deep breath before she could get the words out smoothly.

“I’ll go call Brother Luo and the others!” The planting room on the first basement level was basically sorted out, so Luo Xun and his partner were currently busy working on the second basement level.

Hearing the news, the two quickly dropped their work and rushed back up to the ground-level building. Peering out the window, they finally realized that the situation wasn’t nearly as dire as they had imagined… or rather, nothing was going to happen to them for the time being.

The sky outside was indeed pitch black, like a dense layer of dark clouds, filled with a massive flock of birds flying past. Furthermore, the sizes of those birds looked highly imposing. However, they currently seemed to possess absolutely zero interest in the place where the group was located, appearing as though they were merely passing through.

Luo Xun raised his binoculars and watched for a moment before breathing a sigh of relief. He said softly to everyone, “They’re mutated birds. There seem to be some relatively normal-sized ones mixed in that might be ordinary birds, but they could also be mutated birds like our puppy—unchanged in size but capable of using superpowers. I suspect…”

“Suspect what?” everyone followed up, giving him their full attention.

“I suspect they might be—migratory birds.” Luo Xun didn’t recall migratory birds passing over the main base on such a massive scale in his past life. Perhaps the location they were currently occupying just happened to sit right along the migration route of these birds, whereas the base was situated slightly further off?

Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief, only to hear Luo Xun remind them again, “However, since there are migratory birds passing through outside these few days, it’s best if we don’t go out for the time being. Even if we want to head back to the main base, we should wait until they leave this vicinity.”

He shrugged with a trace of helplessness. “Remember the very first mutated animal we encountered? That was a mutated bird. Mutated creatures always undergo some changes in temperament; they might actively attack humans. So, it’s better for us to be careful over the next few days.”

Everyone nodded in succession. Even if they were drooling over the flock of flying delicacies that could be turned into “roast duck” and “wild fowl feasts,” they needed to be alive to enjoy them! If it were just a single, isolated bird whose superpower was something they could handle, that would be one thing. But running into such a massive flock… it was no different from encountering a zombie tide. Who would dare try to stand in their way?

Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉