Chapter 199 — Leaving
Boom! Boom, boom!!
Around noon on the first of the month, several massive explosions erupted from a building near the edge of the Hongjing residential compound. Fierce gales, wrapped in roaring flames, blasted a massive hole straight through an apartment on the fourteenth floor.
People who had seen and heard the exterior concrete skin of the top floor collapsing a few days prior now quietly gathered in safe pockets around the compound, stealing covert glances at the scene. They gossiped about various rumors while watching the spectacle and waiting for a joke to unfold.
The massive explosion rang out once, and afterward, the telltale sounds of superpowers clashing could be heard intermittently. Those with quicker wits immediately guessed that superpower users were locked in battle up there. The chaos raged for about half an hour before gradually grinding to a halt. Another ten minutes later, a few vehicles drove out of the compound. The onlookers couldn’t be sure if these cars had anything to do with the recent commotion, so they merely observed them from a distance.
About half an hour after the vehicles departed, once the crowd confirmed that no further noise was coming from inside, they finally crept closer to the building.
Aside from the apartment on the sixteenth floor—which was still missing a wall and sat practically half-collapsed—a room on the fourteenth floor had been blown wide open. The walls around the breach were currently scorched a soot-grey, with tendrils of smoke still curling upward. Clearly, a battle had taken place here mere moments ago.
A resident who had carefully observed the specific condition of this building after the top-floor walls had collapsed suddenly pointed at the half-ruined apartment on the highest level and bellowed, “The metal inside that room is gone!”
In the middle of last month, a rumor had begun circulating around the neighborhood. It was said that the tenants occupying the top two floors of this building had packed their homes with all kinds of grain, fabrics, and quilts; all four apartments across two entire floors were allegedly bursting with valuable resources and food.
Others claimed the place was a hoard for crystals and gasoline, completely filling eight rooms.
The rumors spread further and wider, drawing an increasing number of survivors who came to gawk and try their luck. Some tried to find a way inside from the roof or windows, but they were consistently blocked by the thick metal lining the walls. It wasn’t until a certain squad forcibly seized an apartment on the fourteenth floor that they managed to blast a hole through the fourteenth-floor ceiling and climb up into the fifteenth floor.
More than one team had caught wind of this news. Upon learning about the breach, other squads had unwillingly rushed over, eager to force their way in and get a piece of the pie. However, all they found was an entire floor of empty, hollow rooms with absolutely nothing of value inside.
These people were naturally unwilling to accept this outcome, so they blasted another breach leading upward and climbed to the highest floor. To their disappointment, they still found nothing valuable. Crucially, they soon realized that the two corner units on this floor were completely inaccessible. Even when they forcibly pried open the front doors, a solid, incredibly thick sheet of metal blocked their path. They smashed through the communal wall dividing the two apartments, only to find the exact same heavy metal plating blocking the other side.
—A room that can’t be opened is bound to have treasure hidden inside! But unfortunately, no one could breach these thick metal barriers. Heaven only knew exactly how thick the metal was.
There were metal-users within the base, and some well-connected individuals had even reached out to the leaders of the military’s metal-user squads. However, the moment those leaders heard that the target rooms were thoroughly blocked by solid metal walls of unknown thickness, they flatly refused. No one was a fool. Outsiders might not understand, but the few metal-users in the base could easily guess whose handiwork it was the moment they heard about a room reinforced by a solid metal wall.
As fellow metal-users, not only did they generally maintain decent relations with one another, but if they ever had to exert an immense amount of effort to hide their own property, how would they feel if outsiders discovered it and hired other metal-users to pry it open? Whatever was left in those rooms belonged to the owners. For these people to forcibly trespass into someone else’s home and expect military personnel to help them pick the locks—they were dreaming a bit too vividly.
Because it was merely an intermediary attempting to smooth things over, the military squad didn’t make a scene; they simply issued a direct refusal. However, the teams that had breached these two floors were unwilling to give up. Once they confirmed that no one seemed to be returning, they simply moved in while trying to devise a way to pry open the two apartments and extract the goods. Some of the hotter-tempered superpower squads who came to try their luck stood directly on the roof, using their abilities to blast away half the concrete wall of a corner room. Seeing that the inner metal lining still remained perfectly intact, they finally left in frustration.
Until today, when the owners of the home returned…
Standing inside the resource exchange counter, Luo Xun and his team maxed out their monthly purchasing limits for both gasoline and salt, since every squad faced a strict cap on fuel allocation. Turning around, they headed straight to the mission hall to formally register the dissolution of their original team.
Ever since the base’s new regulations were enacted, squads facing mandatory dissolution appeared almost every single day. This was especially true at the start of the month; when faced with the increasingly difficult missions handed down by the base management, very few small-scale squads without substantial backing could actually endure. Consequently, the first of the month had become a day when many teams were forced to disband.
Luo Xun was bent over the counter filling out the application form, while a few members of the team—their fury still unextinguished—gathered a short distance away, muttering bitter complaints. “Do they really take us for soft targets? To actually blast a massive hole through someone else’s floor just to steal! The sheer nerve of these people is unbelievable!”
“Hmph, there were probably others involved too, what a pity…”
“Please, didn’t you just blast them along with the walls straight into the sky? Even if we wanted to leave a survivor to fish for information, we couldn’t!”
Zhang Su cast a sidelong glance at Li Tie, who was complaining about him. His narrowed, mesmerizing eyes caused Li Tie to shiver involuntarily. “If you really want to ask, just grab any resident who was home in that building—I refuse to believe a single one of them is innocent.”
Song Lingling stepped in helplessly to smooth things over. “Forget it since we didn’t get to ask. I doubt we would have been able to hunt them down one by one even if we did find out.” Song Lingling was right. Although they hadn’t witnessed the chaos firsthand, given how the base had degenerated into lawlessness several times before, the moment someone realized a home was abandoned, a predatory mob would swarm in until every single asset was thoroughly plundered.
Even though their own household hadn’t actually lost anything this time, the fact that someone had made such a grand show of blasting holes and demolishing walls meant it had undoubtedly drawn the neighbors to watch the spectacle. The probability that these onlookers had stepped in to take a piece of the pie was highly significant. It was even possible that superpower users from the new district had joined in. Let alone the fact that they might not be able to identify every single parasite who had targeted their home, even if they could, tracking them down individually to eliminate them would be an exercise in futility.
While the group continued to grind their teeth in bitter resentment, wishing they could sink their teeth into the culprits to vent their anger, Luo Xun walked back over. “The application form has been submitted. I’ll make a few calls to coordinate with the squads buying vegetables. The moment the produce is sold, we leave.” He had absolutely zero desire to linger in the base any longer. It could be said that every extra minute he spent here made him feel thoroughly uncomfortable.
Though they had fiercely vented their pent-up rage today, the entire ordeal still left a disgusting taste in their mouths. This place used to feel like their ultimate sanctuary in the apocalypse; when exactly had it become so repulsive?
In his past life… in his past life…
Luo Xun could no longer recall if similar cases had occurred back then. Perhaps it was because the social circles he interacted with were completely different? While the base had never suffered a shortage of lock-pickers and thieves, he had truly never heard of anyone resorting to such brutal destruction, blasting through someone’s floorboards while the owners were away. Was it his own fault? If he hadn’t asked Yan Fei to seal the apartments so tightly with his metal ability, would these parasites have simply moved on once they broke in and realized the rooms were entirely empty?
No, even if that were the case, there was no guarantee that someone wouldn’t have maliciously demolished their walls out of pure spite, infuriated that they had exerted so much effort only to find an empty house.
Surviving the apocalypse meant that anticipating others with the absolute maximum malice was the most fundamental mode of self-preservation. Yet, Luo Xun hadn’t expected that even though he had anticipated the worst, reality would still deliver such a stinging slap to his face.
He contacted the people who had previously sent text messages expressing a desire to purchase vegetables. After setting up a meeting location with them, the group split their forces once more. Luo Xun and Yan Fei handled selling the vegetables, while the others scoured the marketplace to trade for crystals and buy up any necessary supplies in one clean sweep to bring straight back to their new base.
Once Luo Xun concluded his trades with the squad members and Li Tie’s group finished their market run, the convoy—laden to the brim with various supplies—drove through the main gates of the base just as the final traces of twilight dissolved and absolute darkness blanketed the sky.
They had now completely relinquished those apartments in the Southwest Base. Upon learning that Luo Xun’s team had dissolved, the management would automatically reclaim the properties listed under the squad’s name. As of today, even if they returned to this base, they no longer had a home to “go back” to. If they were ever forced to spend the night inside, they would have to make do by sleeping in their cars. Unfortunately, their vehicles were currently crammed to maximum capacity with the newly traded gasoline, salt, the hidden stash of supplies retrieved from the metal-reinforced apartments, and the remaining metal components.
If they truly wanted a comfortable night’s sleep, they were far better off exiting the base, finding an open clearing in the wild, using metal to enclose the vehicles, and fabricating a temporary metal shelter on the spot. Look at that—when it came to getting a good rest, the interior of the base offered far less peace of mind than the wild outside. It truly was incredibly ironic.
A blanket of stars dotted the pitch-black night sky as the group set up camp at a spot roughly four hours away from the base.
Everyone bustled about to organize their temporary resting area. Sitting around the campfire on a ring of improvised metal sofas, Han Li glanced at the continuously silent Luo Xun, then eyed his companions before asking in a lowered voice, “Brother Luo, are we ever coming back to the City A Base in the future?”
“We are,” Luo Xun said. Although he felt deeply dispirited and an empty ache resonated in his chest, he steadily explained to the group, “We can haul our harvested vegetables and grain back to sell in the future. After all, the base holds a lot of resources that are difficult or flatly impossible for us to secure out in the wild. However, we don’t need to explicitly live inside the base anymore. We can enter in the morning, find the right people and places to liquidate our cargo—just like we did today—and then take the opportunity to trade at the counter, browse the marketplace, and buy what we need.”
He paused for a moment, looking around at the others, and offered them a reassuring smile. “We can modify the large truck’s container bed later, fitting the interior out to make it livable. If we ever have to spend the night inside the base in the future, we can temporarily lodge in there. Of course, if time permits, we can just head out early and camp in the wild like we’re doing tonight.”
Hearing him speak with such clarity, the group finally let out a collective sigh of relief. Luo Xun could still think logically and map out rational decisions. This was good—this was very good.
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