The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH197

Chapter 197 — Noodles

No matter how plump or large the sparrows by the roadside were, Luo Xun and his team had no time to get out of their vehicles to hunt animals that heaven only knew might possess some bizarre superpower. Their home freezers were stocked, and their ceilings hung heavy with all kinds of frozen, air-dried, and cured meats. It was more than enough to satisfy their cravings for several weeks, so they had no need to covet these roadside delicacies for the time being.

They drove directly to their destinations, running back and forth between their home and the elevated highway. From time to time, whenever they passed certain spots, they would casually dig up useful trees, flowers, or plants to transplant back home. This hustle went on for a full ten days.

In those ten days, they made five full trips. Almost every single run focused heavily on hauling massive quantities of metal, while the remaining space in the trucks was packed to the brim with withered trees. Finally, they had managed to gather a barely sufficient amount of metal to renovate their new base.

On the surface, the main building, the garage, the granary, and the agricultural tool shed were completely encased within a protective framing of metal that Yan Fei had repeatedly refined.

The four walls, ceilings, and floors of the basements were also lined with refined metal plating to prevent anything from accidentally burrowing in through the soil. The long underground tunnel was modified by Yan Fei once again, significantly increasing the thickness and sturdiness of its walls.

By the time they finished all of this, about one-third of the metal they had collected was consumed. Over the past couple of days, Luo Xun had been drawing up blueprints, preparing to remodel the rooms throughout the entire building into the same kind of water-heated, underfloor metal flooring they had used back at the Southwest Base.

Not only here, but after inspecting the equipment in the two underground planting rooms, he also planned to overhaul the temperature regulation systems inside. The original setup was advanced, but the control instruments were far too precise. Once a glitch occurred, it would be impossible to repair without specific replacement parts. It was far better to convert them into systems they could easily monitor, modify, and repair themselves at any time.

Finally, there was the open plaza outside. Luo Xun and the team planned to handle it as soon as they finished the water heating setup for all the rooms. They would completely enclose the open ground with metal and structural framing, then inset glass to turn it into a massive greenhouse for fruits and vegetables.

They intended to extend the metal greenhouse all the way to the innermost edges of the mutated plants. Luo Xun and the others had conducted experiments previously by placing fabricated metal objects right next to the vegetation. Although the plants could cause a certain amount of damage to metal that Yan Fei had refined several times, if the metal was left sitting completely stationary and didn’t draw their attention, the plants would simply ignore it once they confirmed the objects wouldn’t move on their own and were inedible. This was fantastic news for Luo Xun and the team. They could confidently construct their metal walls right up against the plants. As long as the walls were thick enough and the plants couldn’t perceive the humans on the other side, they wouldn’t display any interest in the metal barriers.

During this period, Luo Xun took little Xinran to sift through the soil near the inner perimeter. They didn’t expand their search area, yet even so, the number of crystals they unearned was staggering enough to leave everyone dumbfounded. Heaven only knew how many corpses of zombies and mutated animals had been buried here since the onset of the apocalypse. These crystals were enough to last them a very long time, so the group temporarily desisted from digging any deeper. They took the opportunity to give little Xinran a vacation, letting her run around and play throughout the small building with the puppy.

Right now, Luo Xun and the guys were rubbing their hands in excitement, preparing to kick off a fresh round of labor—the wheat and rice they had brought out from the Southwest Base had finally matured completely, and it was time for the harvest!

“This machine is the harvester, this one is the dryer, and this unit is the equipment used to bundle rice straws and things,” Luo Xun said, patting the two machines sitting on the first basement level. “In a bit, once Yan Fei temporarily modifies our planting racks, we can directly use them to process the grain.”

“This is way more convenient than when we harvested grain last autumn!”

“The tool shed upstairs also has a hulling machine. Once the grain is dried, we can haul it straight up to be de-hulled. We can even use the machine to grind flour directly.”

If one were to ask what Luo Xun valued most about this new base, it was without a question the incredibly complete array of agricultural equipment available here.

Perhaps this school had been exceptionally wealthy, or perhaps it had received specialized funding. Regardless of how many acres of farmland were actually here or how many practical students the school used to host, the equipment available was astonishingly comprehensive. Everything they could possibly use—and even things they couldn’t—was present. Although some of the machines were small-scale and less efficient, these compact units were a perfect fit for Luo Xun and his team!

“Brother Luo, Brother Luo! There’s even a noodle press upstairs! It can make fresh noodles and dried noodles. Should we try it out in a bit? After all, the majority of our harvest this time is wheat!” He Qiankun asked with shining eyes.

“Sure, but since we don’t have much cooking oil, we can just make a small batch to bring along whenever we head back to the base or go far out to scavenge supplies,” Luo Xun nodded with a smile. “However, we need to set aside a substantial portion of seeds this time. Once we finish processing this harvest, we need to open up more space underground specifically dedicated to growing grain.”

The rice they harvested last autumn was practically depleted by now. Had it not been for the continuous supply of various vegetables, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and corn at home—which served as excellent grain substitutes—their store of rice would have run out long ago.

It was also fortunate that they had managed to hunt that giant rabbit after leaving the base, combined with their large pre-existing stockpile of bacon and air-dried meats, which allowed them to maintain an excellent diet up until now.

Currently, they only had one room genuinely dedicated to growing grain, with an area of barely one mu. For the Otaku Team, one mu of land was just enough to sustain their meals for half a year. They needed to clear out at least one more mu of planting area to live a relatively affluent lifestyle, which would also allow them to sell some grain and vegetables whenever they returned to the main base.

Seeing everyone nod enthusiastically as he finished speaking about setting aside seeds, Luo Xun smiled and continued, “We also need to set aside a portion of seeds to cultivate—the Devil Vines.” Over the last few days, they had been intermittently receiving regional satellite photos and various transmissions broadcast by other bases through their satellite signals. Among the data, there was a small section of satellite photos covering their current coordinates. Luo Xun had already used them to confirm the distribution of the surrounding mutated farmland. The coverage of mutated plants in this vicinity was quite massive, and he could easily exploit this feature to make some adjustments, artificially cultivating some mutated plants to cleanly link these fields into one giant expanse.

During their seedling stage, the Devil Vines possessed virtually no lethality and were relatively simple to cultivate. This was one of their primary methods for protecting their base, and the faster it was completed, the better. That way, they could freely expand their underground planting area. As long as they didn’t cultivate crops out in the open spaces near the highway where there were no Devil Vines, even if metal-users drove past, they wouldn’t be able to detect them.

“No problem. Right, Brother Luo, we need to keep painting, don’t we?” Over the past few days, while Yan Fei handled constructing the metal frames and protective walls, a portion of the team was dispatched to casually brush a mottled mix of green, black, and brown over the exterior metal to serve as camouflage. Judging by the effects shown on the returned satellite maps, this approach was indeed quite successful.

“We need to paint. Once this batch of grain is processed, we’ll allocate a portion of hands to paint, while the other portion continues to process the lumber… There are just too many things to do.” And it was almost the end of the month again. After a moment’s thought, Luo Xun hurriedly added, “Let’s put it on hold for the next couple of days. If we head out of the base in a few days, we should see if we can hunt a few animals to freeze in the freezers.”

The rabbit meat at home was nearly finished. Since Luo Xun and the team now had to set aside a larger portion of seeds to continue planting grain crops and cultivate mutated vegetation, their food supply for the second half of the year was bound to be tight. While growing more sweet potatoes, potatoes, and corn, they also needed to secure more meat. Eating barbecue a few more times could satisfy their cravings while saving grain, so why not?

Joyfully harvesting the grain, Li Tie and the guys used carts to wheel the crops into the elevator, transporting them up to the ground level, and then hauling them into an adjacent granary specifically designed for processing grain. Aside from storing crops, this building housed all the specialized machinery needed for processing. Between these two buildings, Yan Fei had already constructed an enclosed metal corridor to prevent any flying creatures from coming in to cause trouble.

Sack after sack of wheat and rice were de-hulled, and the wheat was ground into flour. The pure, clean fragrance of grain drifted through the air, causing every single member of the team to instinctively break into a smile.

Operating the dried noodle equipment was a bit troublesome, as it required using cooking oil during processing, so Luo Xun and the team skipped it for the time being out of convenience. However, Xu Mei and Song Lingling cleaned out the noodle press. Combining machine kneading with homemade cutting, they used the rich broth simmered from the remaining mutton bones to cook noodles that very night. Accompanied by fresh cilantro and green onions grown in their own apartments, the flavor was delicious enough to make one virtually melt.

“This is perfect. We can use the machinery to process the flour from this harvest, which is way less troublesome than making it by hand.” Everyone had a mountain of tasks to attend to every day, and Xu Mei and Song Lingling didn’t always have the time or energy to cook daily. The same went for Luo Xun; with various tasks waiting for him every day, it had been a long time since he had cooked a meal personally.

“There’s even a mantou machine in the kitchen!” Song Lingling’s eyes shone. “Sister Xu and I aren’t great at proofing dough. Every time we made mantou before, they would deflate and shrink the moment we opened the steamer, and we don’t have yeast at home right now…”

Luo Xun knew how to use sourdough starter for fermentation, but again, he simply had no time to spare for that right now. Hearing Song Lingling’s words, he had no choice but to dampen her enthusiasm. “Even if you use a mantou machine, you still need an agent capable of fermenting the dough to make them…”

The smile on Song Lingling’s face froze for a moment before she turned to look at Xu Mei, acting as though she hadn’t heard Luo Xun’s words at all. “Sister Xu, should we try out that dried noodle machine tomorrow?”

Luo Xun shrugged helplessly. “You two can look into it tomorrow. It’s a good way for us to switch up our diet anyway; otherwise, every time we go out, we either boil porridge or bring pre-made dry flatbreads. Once we make dried noodles, we can just whip up a quick broth while out in the wild to cook a meal.” The items produced by that machine were essentially instant noodles, except they had to mix the seasonings themselves, and the texture differed from ordinary commercial instant noodles. Theirs consisted of pure flour, unlike certain pre-apocalyptic manufacturers that would throw all kinds of random additives inside to impact the quality.

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