The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH201

Chapter 201 — Dividing the Spoils, Eating Meat

“I feel like our beat-up cars are about to fall apart.” After entering the tunnel, Luo Xun and the others split into two groups. One vehicle hauled a portion of the supplies and one pig back to the end of the tunnel first to swap out for the large truck. Then, the truck returned with the remaining two cars to haul the rest of the items back. Once the entrance gate was sealed, only two vehicles, Xu Mei’s trio, and Li Tie’s group were left waiting there.

“We’ll have to look into swapping cars the next time we head out. Didn’t the boss say he wanted to find solar-powered vehicles?”

“I just hope those few places we found before still have cars left.”

“Even if they don’t, we can search for other cars in the city center.”

A few people stayed at the entrance chatting while waiting for the others to return. Before long, they saw the large truck backing up toward them…

“Why are you driving it in reverse?” Everyone blinked in surprise. Luo Xun was behind the wheel, while Wang Duo stood at the back directing him the whole way.

Hearing their question, Wang Duo pointed helplessly at the surrounding space. “Do you think there’s enough room to pull a U-turn here? If we don’t back it up, how are we supposed to drive it out?”

Luo Xun hopped down from the truck. “We’ll have to expand our tunnel later, at least enough so our vehicles can turn around inside.” For the current tunnel, small cars were fine, but large trucks were stuck. Besides, they didn’t know if anything outside—like those two wolves—would catch the scent and come over to demand their pork. It was better to avoid opening the gate an extra time.

They loaded the remaining pigs onto the truck, along with some loose items that hadn’t fit earlier. Only then did the entire group retreat from the main entrance, heading straight for the basement.

The six massive pigs were piled like a small mountain at the entrance, practically blocking the basement doorway.

Looking at the pigs, the group couldn’t help but feel a wave of emotion. “It’s a good thing we brought back several more freezers over the past few days.” Every time they went out to scavenge supplies, they would pop into any convenience stores or shops they passed. While other items in those stores might have vanished long ago, there were often remaining display racks and freezers that no one wanted.

Remarkably, even though these small shops usually had very little space, they often managed to pack in at least three or four freezers serving different purposes. Every time the team went out, they could bring back a few.

“Even if they don’t fit in the freezers, it’s not a big issue,” Luo Xun rubbed his chin, poking a nearby pig. The hide was stiff, and every strand of fur felt like a steel needle. “We can turn them into bacon and smoked meat to hang up. They can keep for quite a long time.”

“Brother Luo, Brother Luo, let’s make stewed pork today, okay?!” A few gluttons huddled together, their eyes gleaming brightly as they flashed puppy-dog eyes at Luo Xun.

Luo Xun pressed down on the pig skin once more and waved his hand at everyone. “Process the pork! Strip the hide and the fur together.”

“Brother Luo, stewing it with the skin on makes it so much more flavorful, doesn’t it?” He Qiankun asked, puzzled.

Luo Xun shook his head. “These aren’t the pigs we used to eat before the apocalypse. Back then, the pork we ate mostly came from piglets under a year old. How long have these pigs been living out in the apocalypse? The skin has long since hardened to the point that it won’t tenderize from stewing.” Seeing that everyone still looked doubtful, Luo Xun suddenly laughed. “We’ll leave a piece of pork belly with the skin on to stew in a separate pot. If you guys find it acceptable to eat, we won’t skin the rest, how about that?”

The weather wasn’t hot right now anyway, and leaving these pigs in the basement meant they wouldn’t spoil anytime soon. They could make their final decision after the meat was stewed and everyone had a taste test.

With skeptical expectations, the group selected a piece of pork belly from one pig’s chest. After cleaning off the pricking, stiff fur, Xu Mei cut the meat into pieces the size of mahjong tiles. She brought them into the kitchen, added their home-grown scallions, ginger, and garlic, and put it on the stove to stew along with the Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, and cinnamon sticks that Luo Xun had collected before the apocalypse.

While the meat was stewing, the others began organizing the supplies brought back from this run. Meanwhile, Luo Xun calculated exactly how large of a basement they needed to excavate underground, which direction to dig, and what crops to plant in each room.

The items they brought back from the base this time weren’t plentiful on their own. When they had first moved out, they had already taken the vast majority of their belongings. This time, there were only some tables, chairs, stools, quilts, and a massive amount of metal left in the apartments. Naturally, Yan Fei handled the metal, temporarily storing it in the first-floor living space, while the others used carts to stack the remaining items in an empty room on the second floor.

By the time everyone finished their chores, the pork had already been stewing for a full hour and a half. The rich aroma made everyone ravenously hungry, and with green, predatory eyes, they slipped into the kitchen area, poking their heads out to peer into the back kitchen entrance.

Luo Xun remained leaned over the kitchen table, continuing to draw his diagrams. Hearing a burst of cheers from that side, he looked up to see the group surrounding Xu Mei, who was carrying a large pot, escorting her to the dining table like a VIP.

The moment the lid was lifted, a rich fragrance wafted in all directions. Seeing the shining eyes of the group around her, Song Lingling couldn’t help but tease, “It’s not like we’re short on meat at home, is this really necessary?”

“Sister, how long has it been since we’ve eaten pork? You have to sympathize with our stomachs.” If they were talking about richness, the mutton from the sheep they hunted before the New Year was by far the most fragrant. However, one had to sympathize with how long it had been since they tasted proper pork after the onset of the apocalypse. This stuff was incredibly fatty and yielded a massive volume; stewing a giant pot was more than enough to satisfy their cravings! How could it compare to those lean wild animals that were completely covered in sinewy muscle?

Before the apocalypse, due to overnutrition, most people disliked eating thick, fatty meat. But once the apocalypse truly arrived, think about how rarely they could enjoy a meal of stewed meat with such a perfect balance of fat and lean.

Once the pot was set, Xu Mei opened the lid, and everyone impatiently picked up a piece with their chopsticks and popped it into their mouths.

Chew, chew, chew… They exchanged glances, continuing to chew, chew, chew… Then they simultaneously cast a collective glance toward Luo Xun, who was still sitting there calmly drawing and sketching, before resuming their chew, chew, chew…

“Brother Luo… you’re not eating?” Han Li asked indistinctly, his mouth full.

“I’ll eat once you guys manage to swallow yours.” Luo Xun’s words successfully prompted several impatient members to spit out the pig skin they had been chewing continuously without breaking.

“Not only is the skin completely tough, but the meat isn’t all that tender either… Or rather, it’s quite chewy?”

“Sister Xu, how did you stew this meat? It’s not tender at all.”

Xu Mei was also currently locked in a fierce struggle with the pig skin in her mouth. Hearing this, she shot a glare at Wang Duo. “It’s been stewing for nearly two hours! When I stewed the rabbit meat before, it would have disintegrated long ago!”

Only then did Luo Xun set down his pen, picking up a piece for himself with a grin. “You see, if you don’t listen to your elders…”

“Pfft—” The group rolled their eyes in unison. In terms of age, he was practically the same age as Li Tie and the guys—what did he mean, “elders”?!

“We’re definitely skinning them in a bit!”

“Right, the preserved hides can even be used to make winter clothes to ward off the cold.”

“Exactly, exactly! And all that coarse hair, can’t it be processed into bristle brushes?”

The flavor of the pork was actually quite decent; it was just that the texture was much tougher than everyone had anticipated. In particular, the pig skin was completely impossible to bite through. However, if they discarded the skin, the meat from the other parts tasted very good. Thinking back carefully, ever since the first mutated animal they secured, except for the avian wildlife, they had essentially skinned every animal before eating it. It seemed that creatures after the apocalypse had indeed grown thick-hided and tough, making their skins difficult to consume.

They recalled when they wanted to slice off this piece of pork belly earlier, the knife had to be plunged forcefully for a good while before it pierced through the hide. In fact, upon seeing that display, everyone should have realized how resilient the skin was.

Having finally recognized the absolute thickness and toughness of the pig skin, the group finished their lunch and scrambled to help skin and butcher the pork. They drained the remaining pig blood, peeled the hides, processed the carcasses, and hauled the meat to the freezers to be sorted and frozen by cut.

The offal and intestines were also hauled out and thoroughly washed before being frozen in a dedicated freezer—these were excellent items too! Especially the pig intestines; with these and the pork, they could make savory sausages and cured sausages!

Finally, they processed the pig heads. Once they cracked a skull open, they froze in sheer bewilderment—”Huh?! It’s actually a white, transparent crystal?! Could it be that these pigs didn’t have superpowers?!”

Everyone was astonished. These pigs had clearly grown to such a monstrous size, yet they didn’t possess an elemental superpower?

“Test it out, is it level one?” Luo Xun retrieved a crystal, rinsed it in a large basin nearby, and handed it to Yan Fei.

Yan Fei placed his hand over it, his eyebrows rising slightly as a look of surprise flashed across his face. “…It can be absorbed, but the energy concentration feels like a level three.” It was even higher than several other mutated animal crystals they had secured previously.

This crystal had reached the energy concentration of a level-three crystal, yet it was completely transparent and colorless? The group stared at each other in surprise, exchanging bewildered glances. This was truly eccentric.

Luo Xun pondered. “They probably genuinely didn’t possess an elemental superpower besides their massive size, which is why they kept fleeing from those two wolves. If they had superpowers, they would have at least put up a fight against them.”

“That makes sense. But to reach level three without an elemental superpower… how exactly should this mutation be classified?” Wu Xin looked thoroughly perplexed.

The others expressed their ignorance as well. The logic of this post-apocalyptic world was truly bizarre.

“Regardless of the logic,” Luo Xun spoke up to cut through everyone’s hypotheses, patting the crystals on the table. “Six crystals, one for each superpower user in the team.”

They weighed the crystals on a scale—the six weights were roughly identical, with a variance of under fifty grams.

Yan Fei, Zhang Su, Xu Mei, Song Lingling, and little Xinran made exactly five, leaving one extra. Little Xinran threw her arms around the neck of the puppy standing by the table. “There’s the puppy too! That makes exactly six!”

Before Luo Xun could say anything, the others burst into laughter. “Exactly six. In any case, we aren’t superpower users, so taking them is useless to us.”

Ever since discovering that the surrounding mutated farmland was littered with crystals, everyone’s feverish obsession with crystals had cooled significantly. Even when they found exceptionally large ones, after distributing them to the relevant elemental users, the others stated that there was no need to explicitly compensate them with an equal weight of crystals as a buffer. For small-sized crystals that couldn’t be utilized by anyone in the squad, everyone just split them evenly. However, for these massive crystals from mutated animals, the five-man non-powered group along with Luo Xun agreed that no equivalent proportional compensation was necessary.

After all, these superpower users provided the absolute most labor when constructing this base, so it was only right to give them more. At worst, they could just exert themselves to hunt more meat back to give everyone a few excellent feasts later on.

Luo Xun ultimately accepted the massive crystal on behalf of the puppy. Song Lingling suddenly asked, “Should we set one aside for the little baby?” Everyone blinked, and Song Lingling hurriedly explained, “We don’t know what elemental class his superpower is yet, but regardless of the element, he should be able to make use of this kind of attribute-less crystal, right?”

Luo Xun’s brow furrowed. He looked at the crystal in his hand, then at the puppy, feeling a bit hesitant in his heart.

Zhang Su suddenly let out a yawn, casting a sidelong glance at the hesitant Luo Xun. “In any case, whether it’s given to the child or the dog, you two are the ones responsible for them. Can’t you just take it back with you?”

That was true. Ultimately, whether it was the child or the dog, Luo Xun and Yan Fei were the ones raising them. Whomever they wanted to use it on was entirely up to them; they could just go home, close the door, and discuss it. What was there to overthink?

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