The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH203

Chapter 203 — Quails

Rubbing their hands together, the group walked around the pile of vehicles twice. After a closer look, they noticed that the roofs of some trucks were somewhat uneven, and loose debris like gravel was scattered nearby. They couldn’t be sure whether the dents in the roofs were caused by objects smashing into them or if something had once fallen onto the vehicles.

Fortunately, with Yan Fei on their team, these minor structural damages to the roofs were absolutely not an issue.

There were two rows of vehicles, totaling fourteen in all. Luo Xun and the others obviously didn’t need that many cars, and after being left for so long after the apocalypse, the storage batteries in these vehicles were completely drained. However, bringing them all back meant that if one or two broke down, they would have replacements on hand. Fortunately, they had not only driven all their smaller cars on this run but had also brought the large truck. Each of the four small cars towed one or two vehicles behind it, while the remaining ones were packed into the large truck’s bed. With Yan Fei’s superpower, they could even secure vehicles on top of the truck container. The absolute last ones were hitched directly behind the truck. In this manner, all fourteen vehicles were hauled back in a single trip.

Because they had successfully secured the electric vehicles on this supply run, Luo Xun and the team didn’t make any detours to actively search for other resources along the way. They merely scavenged a few freezers from roadside shops as they passed. The destination they visited this time was quite a bit further from the main base than their previous trips, and by the time they returned, the sky had completely darkened.

As the vehicles rolled along, one side of the road was lined with lush, green, mutated farmland, forcing Luo Xun and the others to drive against traffic on the opposite side of the highway out of caution, terrified that the mutated plants might stretch their branches out and drag the trucks inside.

Before they could even reach their destination, a distant sound echoed from afar—wolves howling at the moon!

Luo Xun instinctively slammed on his brakes, and the voices of the others immediately crackled through the walkie-talkie.

“Boss, it can’t be them again, right?”

“Possibly. Let’s wait and see what direction they’re in.” Although the two wolves hadn’t done anything to them during their last close-quarters encounter, Luo Xun and the team still had to proceed with caution. After all, they had hauled all the remaining pigs back to their base. What if the two wolves remembered and came to demand their pork? They couldn’t understand wolf language, after all.

The puppy, who was curled up asleep in the backseat bed, also snapped its head up, peering curiously outside.

Before long, Luo Xun and the team spotted the silhouettes of the two wolves. They were rolling around and frolicking on a patch of ordinary grass nearby. While one rolled on the ground, the other jumped around it joyfully, causing the earth to shake slightly with every bound.

Confirming that the two wolves had no intention of hunting them, Luo Xun lowered his voice and instructed everyone over the walkie-talkie to head home quickly. The group resumed driving and returned to their secret tunnel.

The spoils of this excursion consisted of fourteen new energy vehicles, five freezers, two beverage coolers, and two massive metal spheres. In addition, they had rummaged up a car refrigerator from an abandoned vehicle by the roadside. This gadget was an excellent asset; with it on hand, they could bring fresh meat and vegetables that required refrigeration whenever they went out, sparing them from having to prepare a mountain of dry, unappetizing food in advance.

After transporting all the items into the tunnel one by one, Luo Xun and the team felt a major headache coming on as they looked at the chaotic pile of goods. “We’re running out of space…”

Yes, they were running out of room. Unless they could utilize the entire above-ground surface area, where on earth were they going to park these vehicles? The number of freezers at home was also substantial. They had already cleared out the classrooms on the second floor, filling an entire room to the brim with their scavenged freezers. Another room was specifically dedicated to housing their surplus solar panels and storage batteries, which connected to the panels outside.

However, the desks, chairs, and lab equipment originally inside those second-floor classrooms were still there! They hadn’t figured out a proper use for those items yet, so they could only stack them together for the time being, planning to modify and organize them later.

“Brother Luo, why don’t we focus on excavating the basement tomorrow? In any case, we’ve hauled back so many things this time; we should wait until we have a place to store them before heading out to search for other supplies,” Li Tie hurriedly suggested upon seeing the situation.

“That’s our only option for now. Tomorrow we dig the basement, move all the cramped items from those two underground rooms inside, and then head to the glass factory we located on the map.” There were plenty of intact glass panes on buildings inside the city center, but those panes were too scattered. They would have to clear them out building by building, which required waiting until they had ample free time to spend outside.

As for other matters… they would just have to put them on hold for the time being.

After a full day of hustling, Luo Xun and the team returned home and immediately crashed into bed without even organizing their gear. Early the next morning, after washing up and eating breakfast, the group returned to the basement to begin their day’s labor.

The men worked together to haul the freezers and coolers from the truck beds, temporarily dumping them into one of the classrooms on the second floor.

“I modified the blueprints again just now,” Luo Xun said, pointing to the diagram. “I added a parking garage at this position. The garage will have two levels, constructed on the second basement floor right alongside our tunnel. In the future, every time we return, we can just park the vehicles here. Over here is the expanded planting area built onto the foundation of the two original underground rooms. Each room will be roughly one mu, and the planting racks inside can be linked directly to the original ones. That way, we won’t have to shift the automated machinery every single time we finish harvesting a row of racks.”

Luo Xun explained his layout to the group. “We’ll also construct a planting room in each of these two directions, each roughly one mu in size. Later on, we’ll use these two rooms on the first basement level specifically to cultivate mutated rice and wheat. The second basement level will be used specifically to grow sweet potatoes, peanuts, and soybeans—cash crops that can produce oil. The rooms expanding outward from the second basement level will be just like the original setup, used to grow various green leafy vegetables. As for things like fruit, we can cultivate them above ground later.”

He paused for a moment. “We already planted watermelons, lemons, and sunflowers when spring arrived this year. Once the above-ground greenhouses are sorted out, we’ll transfer them all up there.” They didn’t need to cultivate a massive amount of these items; even if they grew a ton, they wouldn’t be able to consume it all, right? If it really came down to it, they could always add another level above ground, but doing so might attract the attention of survivors passing nearby, so he planned to stick to a single story for now. Besides, they still had the ground-level main building, which could also be used to grow things.

“Sure, no problem!”

“Today we’ll have to rely on little Xinran and Brother Yan.”

Luo Xun pondered for a moment and added, “The basement excavation needs to be expedited. If we truly can’t spare enough hands later, I’ll evaluate the situation tomorrow or the day after. Maybe I’ll take a few people to head out of the base with Zhang Su specifically to collect that glass, while the remaining crew stays behind to dig the basement.”

The core labor for excavating the basement relied on little Xinran’s sand manipulation and Yan Fei’s metal ability, along with a few people to help haul the sandified soil above ground to dry. It didn’t require too many hands, so Luo Xun and the team could easily dispatch a few members to find the glass factory.

?? (Yan Fei) cast a glance at Luo Xun. If a team was heading out of the base, Luo Xun would undoubtedly tag along. Truth be told, Yan Fei felt highly uneasy leaving him without his own company by his side, but logistically speaking, this arrangement was the most logical.

“Let’s see how things go, if we can manage the workload.”

Hearing Yan Fei speak, Luo Xun understood his intent and tapped the table. “Then it’s settled—”

“Captain! Captain! The quails have mutated!” Just as Luo Xun finished assigning the day’s tasks, the voices of Xu Mei and Song Lingling came shouting from a short distance away. Little Xinran was also clapping her hands, hopping up and down alongside the puppy.

“Quails? Mutated?!” Luo Xun widened his eyes, quickly scrambling to his feet and sprinting toward the room where the quails were housed.

The quails had been temporarily placed in the corridor of the second basement level, where Yan Fei had used metal to partition out a secure room, complete with fully functional lighting and ventilation systems.

Luo Xun sprinted past a helpless-looking Xu Mei, a snickering Song Lingling, and a jubilant little Xinran and puppy. Peering into the room, he was immediately greeted by a massive quail flapping its wings and lunging straight toward his face. Caught completely off guard, Luo Xun snatched the quail in mid-air, and the human and the bird ended up staring at each other with wide, unblinking eyes…

“…This is a quail?”

“This bulk can practically compete with those mutated sparrows, right? It’s about the size of a chicken?!”

“Pretty much, though it’s a bit smaller than an ordinary chicken. But this is still incredible… By the way, how much food is a quail of this size going to eat per meal?”

Luo Xun silently set the quail down. The startled birds crowded together into a plump, chubby ball, hiding their heads as a ring of quail rear ends faced the doorway, shivering in terror… Could it be that they had suddenly ballooned in size and even managed to terrify themselves?

“…We need to clear out another room specifically to raise them,” Luo Xun said, uncertain if these suddenly mutated quails had developed superpowers. But looking at their classic, cowardly “quail behavior,” even if they had secured the most formidable superpower, they probably wouldn’t have the guts to unleash it, right? No, even if they did unleash it, the first creature to be startled out of its skin would likely be themselves—that much was completely beyond doubt.

The sudden quail mutation incident forced everyone to rearrange today’s tasks once more. Luo Xun and the team hurriedly emptied out a large classroom on the second floor, converting it into a proper room suitable for the quails’ habitation. Fortunately, only about one-third of the flock had undergone the mutation, leaving the remaining two-thirds at normal size. However, judging by the current trend, there was no guarantee that the remaining two-thirds wouldn’t mutate one day as well. If they didn’t set aside sufficient space for their activities in advance, Luo Xun and the team were terrified that the original small room would be completely burst by their sheer volume.

Yan Fei rapidly constructed a layer of metal underfloor heating for the new room, adding an inner lining of metal plating along the walls. A row of fluorescent lights was suspended from the ceiling, and finally, everyone evenly spread the rich, fertile soil they had dried and stored for farming across the floorboards. They transplanted a patch of vegetables and constructed an artificial stream for their drinking water, turning the entire room into a miniature indoor ecological park.

Upon seeing the layout, little Xinran and the puppy grew incredibly excited, announcing that they wanted to hang out and play with the quails here in the future.

Regrettably, the group had no spare time to track down decorative pebbles or river stones right now, so they merely used metal to fashion a small path encircling the entire room. Once they had some breathing room later on, they could easily build a dedicated garden like this for the little girl, letting a flock of quails roam free inside—which would actually be quite nice.

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