The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH192

Chapter 192 — Moving, Moving

Luo Xun and the others had driven two vehicles out today, and their truck beds were naturally filled with the produce they needed to liquidate. By now, the goods they wanted to sell were basically all gone, and the group split into two forces to drive home. When the vehicles entered the residential compound and returned downstairs, they noticed that the crowd of onlookers gathered around the area had mostly dispersed. However, a few lingering marks and bloodstains from the fallen thieves were still visible on the ground, though not overly prominent.

Wang Duo had already returned upstairs ahead of them. Luo Xun and the others parked their cars and carried the traded crystals and supplies all the way upstairs, completely ignoring the appraising gazes of the neighbors still lingering nearby to watch the spectacle.

Returning to the apartment, the moment they pushed open the iron security gate, they heard Wang Duo teasing the little girl and the puppy. The little girl’s voice was sharp and high-pitched, and she was currently rolling around laughing. Seeing Luo Xun and the others return, Wang Duo waved at them. “Did everything sell?”

“All sold.” Luo Xun and the guys stepped into the room one after another, pulling out chairs to sit down. Little Xinran crawled into Xu Mei’s arms, tilting her head up to act spoiled with a bright smile. Luo Xun turned back to Wang Duo. “Did you manage to fish for any gossip just now?”

Wang Duo had returned early precisely because of his innate talent for local gossip. With a powerhouse like Zhang Su whose combat strength topped the charts accompanying him, the two could easily handle any situation they encountered.

Hearing the question, Wang Duo hurriedly relayed the information he had gathered. “I heard that the glass in our apartments was smashed around the night of the twenty-ninth or the early hours of the thirtieth. Some nearby residents heard the commotion in the middle of the night, and the next morning they saw glass shards littering the ground. More than half of the curtain in one of our rooms had been hooked outside, and apparently, someone stealthily climbed up during the day, yanked that curtain down, and carried it off.”

Wang Duo’s expression turned somewhat ugly as he continued, “The onlookers don’t know exactly what we have stored inside, but rumors are flying all over the compound right now. Everyone is saying our homes are packed with food and mounds of supplies—otherwise, why would we enclose the place with so many metal frames? Apparently, this kind of rumor has been circulating for quite a while now.”

After all, this was the top floor, and they had reinforced two entire levels with identical renovations; how could it not draw attention? Previously, it was only because Luo Xun and the team had been living inside the base continuously, and any parasites who grew greedy enough to target their home had been systematically dealt with by them, which kept things perfectly peaceful.

This time, Luo Xun and the team had been gone for a significant period, and they had been targeted by a few scout lackeys. Once those thieves made their move, the rumors around the compound naturally flared up again, reportedly spreading all the way to other nearby residential quarters.

Wang Duo possessed a very righteous-looking, ordinary face that was fairly easy to recognize, but the members of this team were simply too reclusive. Even if nearby neighbors had interacted with them in the past, the vast majority only remembered individuals with striking, otherworldly appearances like Zhang Su and Yan Fei. Beyond that, the neighbors knew the team had several major beauties. In the end, the most recognizable person was actually He Qiankun due to his weight. Very few people recognized Wang Duo’s face, especially since he had deliberately bundled himself up today with a hat and a pair of glasses he had dug up from who-knew-where.

Having finished his piece, Wang Duo patted the head of the puppy curling beside him. “Still, after the puppy gave them that terrifying display today, the rumors might still be there, but I doubt anyone will dare come over to throw their lives away for a while.”

Luo Xun let out a soft sigh, shaking his head. “This will only scare them off for a few days at most. If someone managed to peek at what’s inside our rooms, they’ll inevitably return sooner or later.”

Song Lingling frowned upon hearing this. “Can we make it so that other people absolutely cannot step foot into our apartments? Even if we don’t live here for long periods, and even if we’ve decided to move all our primary assets out of the base and only use this place as a temporary fallback, we still don’t want our home to be casually pried into by just anyone, or let random parasites wander around inside!”

Luo Xun’s brow furrowed as he cast a glance at Yan Fei beside him. Yan Fei arched an eyebrow, looking at the group. “Let’s seal it completely.”

He gestured toward the balcony windows—this was the room on the fifteenth floor where Song Lingling and Xu Mei lived, but the glass in their living room and balcony had been smashed from the outside. “We’ll use metal to thoroughly seal the interior of all doors and windows. We’ll only open them when we return.”

“Seal it completely? Isn’t it already sealed like it is now? Do you mean turning these metal bars into solid iron plates?” Li Tie pointed toward the window.

Yan Fei shook his head. “We can retract all those outer metal bars onto the windows themselves, and we can simply make the metal layers much thicker. We have plenty of metal inside the apartments, especially on the walls and floors. We can increase their thickness to match the reinforced walls of our underground tunnel.” If they made the metal plating at least ten centimeters thick, standard brute-force methods would be completely useless against it.

“Let’s just do exactly that,” Luo Xun decided. “We won’t stay long whenever we return in the future anyway. Since we have the extra truck on this trip, let’s aim to haul away absolutely everything we can carry! We’ll only leave the finished underfloor heating structures in two or three rooms upstairs; the metal flooring in the other rooms can all be stripped and repurposed into doors and windows.”

This way, unless the intruders happened to be metal-users themselves, trying to break in would be a massive engineering project!

About half an hour later, Zhang Su returned.

He stepped through the door, allowing his devoted follower Wang Duo to serve him by taking his coat. “I couldn’t find anything out. The military vehicles hauled those people straight to the crematorium.” Zhang Su strode to the table, picking up his cup to take a sip of water. “I waited around the crematorium for a while longer, but I didn’t see anyone notable show up, so I came back first.”

Luo Xun crossed his arms, his fingers tapping against his sleeve. “Either the perpetrators were just low-tier lackeys sent to test the waters, or the mastermind behind them is terrified to show their face and has temporarily accepted the loss…”

He looked up at the group once more. “We don’t have the luxury of time to waste on them. Pack everything up. Let’s aim to haul away all our key gear within a day or two. If it really doesn’t fit, we’ll expand the carrying capacity of the trucks and perform some temporary modifications on the spot.” With Yan Fei with them, modifying these things was an absolute breeze.

Everyone nodded in unison. Ever since they returned this time, the suffocating atmosphere inside the base grew increasingly intolerable. Having grown accustomed to the absolute freedom of living on their own territory, returning to this prison-like base felt like having a blade resting constantly against their necks. Every step they took and every action they wanted to perform felt incredibly restrictive.

On their last trip out, Luo Xun and the team had carried out a significant portion of their stored supplies. This time, aside from the remaining provisions, they also had a massive amount of actively growing crops that needed to be moved. These were grain crops that were rapidly approaching harvest… In fact, if they just waited less than a month, these grains would be ready for harvest. Luo Xun had initially hesitated over whether they should simply wait until the harvest before leaving. But now, they couldn’t be sure who was targeting their home, or whether the news of their massive, near-harvest grain stash had leaked out. If the mastermind realized their lackeys had been wiped out and that they couldn’t get their hands on the goods, would they simply choose to blast the information out to the public?

Even though the military was currently cultivating large amounts of grain within the base, a private residence producing such a massive yield of crops was an absolute eye-magnet for greedy parasites. Once the gaze of everyone in the vicinity shifted onto their home, even if Luo Xun and his team remained inside, they wouldn’t necessarily be able to protect these assets.

The vegetables that had already matured were basically all liquidated by Luo Xun and the team—they had already planted a substantial patch of vegetables at their new base outside anyway, and they would have another harvest after waiting a while longer upon their return.

However, the actively growing wheat and rice could not be crammed or compressed; they had to remain intact, temporarily sealed within metal boxes to be hauled away. Even after Yan Fei raised the height of the container boxes to accommodate two tiers, they still couldn’t fit everything! Not to mention they had other gear to carry.

“Tomorrow morning, I’ll head out to see if I can rent or buy a large truck to bring back.” The group bustled about until midnight, only to discover that if they wanted to move as many of their things as possible, they would either have to make another trip back in a couple of days or secure at least one more truck.

Hearing Luo Xun’s words, Yan Fei furrowed his brow in thought for a moment. “There’s another way.”

“What way?” Luo Xun’s eyes lit up as he hurriedly asked.

“We can exit the base first, drop the supplies off at our new base, and immediately make a return trip. That way, we can haul away the remaining gear.” Seeing Luo Xun frown, Yan Fei smiled. “Aside from that method, there’s another approach—we can drive out first, park the fully loaded vehicles in a concealed spot nearby, leave the container boxes of the large truck and one small truck behind along with the other cars, and drive the two empty chassis back into the base once more.”

The roads outside were littered with abandoned vehicle chassis, wheels, and structural frames. They even carried spare wheels inside their trucks. It wouldn’t be difficult for Yan Fei to fabricate a trailing chassis to hitch behind the vehicles, allowing each to pull an extra container box. The only downside was that their return speed would slow down significantly, making it rather troublesome for everyone to flee if they encountered danger along the road.

Luo Xun’s eyes lit up instantly. “That’s a brilliant method! Let’s do exactly that!!”

Early the next morning, taking advantage of the dim twilight, Luo Xun and the team loaded the final batch of supplies onto the vehicles and drove smoothly through the main gates.

Unlike entering the base, vehicles exiting the city didn’t need to undergo inspections, and no one suspected that anyone would actually carry massive amounts of supplies out of the base—wouldn’t that be pure stupidity? The outside world was incredibly perilous right now; everyone went out to scavenge supplies, and no one had ever heard of a fool carrying supplies out.

Even if some people harbored the desire to abandon the City A Base, who knew how far the nearest alternative base was? Was the road perilous? Would they run into unexpected disasters? Was there any guarantee that a new base would be safer or better than the City A Base?

Therefore, Luo Xun and the team’s exit from the city was as simple as a casual yawn, and they quickly found themselves standing completely outside the fortified walls.

Parking the vehicles near an area thick with building structures of various heights, Yan Fei constructed a protective metal shell for the members staying behind to guard the camp. Then, Yan Fei, Luo Xun, Zhang Su, and Wang Duo drove the two vehicles with empty container beds back toward the base once more.

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