The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH214

Chapter 214 — Starting the Construction

After resting at home for a night, none of the Otaku Team members had the immediate drive or physical strength to head right back out the next day. Even if they still wanted to make another run, it was out of the question to do so immediately. Moreover, considering the usual duration of a zombie siege—smaller ones typically lasted three to five days, while larger ones could exceed a week—this current zombie tide was on the smaller side. If those zombies happened to retreat and march in their direction while they were out… running into them mid-journey would be incredibly dangerous.

After moving all the supplies to their designated rooms, Yan Fei brought the metal hauled back this time down to the basement, systematically supplementing what was needed in the rooms where the planting racks weren’t finished yet. The others sorted through the mismatched items they had brought back, neatly organizing and storing them in their proper places. Once Yan Fei’s new racks were completed, they would continue the routine process: filling them with soil, layering the compost, and planting crops.

The members of the Otaku Team spent the entire day packing and organizing. By evening, He Qiankun and Wu Xin had compiled the newly received satellite photos from that day, bringing them over for everyone to view and analyze together.

“Look, there are signs that the zombie tide is starting to retreat!” Enlarging a few of the photos, He Qiankun handed the laptop over to everyone.

Differing from the situation shown in the photos over the past couple of days, this batch clearly revealed that a portion of the zombies showed signs of leaving the Southwest Base. Previously, the zombies had completely swarmed around the outer perimeter of the base, with no further reinforcements arriving from the distance. Now, a “line” had emerged from the densely packed zombie army, appearing to converge toward the exact north of the Southwest Base.

“They’re likely retreating. Judging by this trajectory, the zombie tide should continue marching northward afterward. There’s temporarily no danger around our area or near the warehouses we want to visit.” Luo Xun rubbed his chin, pointing at the display on the screen. “Going by this pattern, they should all be fully cleared out by tomorrow at the earliest, or the day after at the latest. After that, the base won’t let people out immediately. They’ll have to wait another day or two to clear the battlefield outside before squads are allowed out for missions.”

Even if the base management had calculated exactly when the zombies would fully retreat, they still wouldn’t let people out completely right away as a safety precaution. After all, satellite photos couldn’t just be taken or received whenever they wanted. Seemingly because some high-tech facilities had been destroyed after the apocalypse, although those satellites regularly captured the condition of the ground and transmitted the data to various receiving stations, the personnel on the ground could no longer manage subtle operations like changing the recording targets or the photography frequency.

Furthermore, with many places suffering massive, widespread destruction since the onset of the apocalypse, there currently seemed to be no way to launch new satellites into space. If any of the existing satellites broke down… the people on Earth wouldn’t even be able to go up and repair them. Those things truly became a limited commodity—one less available every time one failed.

Temporarily setting aside their concerns regarding the operational lifespan of the satellites, the group discussed their plans. Taking their physical stamina into consideration, they decided to seize the time and make another run right away, at least making a sweep of the distribution hub belonging to a certain logistics company that they had intended to visit before but missed. If they came up empty-handed there, they could always pivot back to the warehouse district they had visited last time, and casually collect a massive hoard of metal to bring home along the way.

Once they set their minds to a task, the group worked with immense efficiency. The next day, they headed out again and drove down to the distribution hub. This round trip took another four days, and Luo Xun and the team reaped a highly lucrative harvest once more. The items inside that distribution hub were truly a bizarre, eclectic mix of everything. What left Luo Xun and the team deeply sentimental was precisely because the inventory held everything—all kinds of eccentric foods, drinks, and daily necessities thrown together—although it had been visited by previous scavengers after the apocalypse, the sheer chaos and lack of organization meant it hadn’t been prioritized as a primary target by many people.

Consequently, this played right into the hands of Luo Xun’s group, who possessed ample time and faced zero interference from threats like zombies. They hauled back a vast assortment of various eccentric gadgets.

From glass jars and pots meant for planting flowers and greens, to washing machines, air purifiers, humidifiers, air conditioners, and water filtration systems—even a substantial amount of dry foods with exceptionally long shelf lives was available, packing the vehicles they drove to absolute capacity.

The two ladies even unearthed a bounty of shampoos, body washes, premium skincare products, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and nail files. Although many of these items were nearing or had just passed their expiration dates, they were perfectly usable. Luo Xun even scavenged some eccentric, unrotted flower and plant seeds alongside a few small hand trowels from several parcels, which he planned to plant at home just to see what kind of vegetation would grow.

Following this long-distance expedition, Luo Xun and the team temporarily had no need to travel far anymore. Aside from still needing to head out intermittently to harvest scrap metal, they could comfortably stay cooped up at home to completely finish renovating and perfecting their small base. Afterward, they could live out a leisurely, comfortable life cultivating flowers and greens.

Upon returning this time, everyone finally let out a thorough sigh of relief after reviewing the satellite photos—the zombie tide at the Southwest Base had fully retreated, and remarkably, the base didn’t appear to have been breached by the horde.

“Boss, are we heading back at the end of this month?” Li Tie asked, primarily because the end of the month was drawing near. Having just weathered a zombie siege, the city inside the Southwest Base was bound to be somewhat chaotic. Many establishments might not be operating normally, and the prices of certain resources within the base would definitely skyrocket.

Luo Xun shook his head. “We won’t head back this month. We’ll go back at the beginning of the month after next; let’s finish our chores at home first before anything else.”

They had located quite a few excellent resources over these past two expeditions. Not only had they secured a substantial stockpile of table salt on their first trip, but when they visited the distribution hub on the second run, the shelves storing food items also held plenty of salt, MSG, and chicken bouillon powder—seasonings that were relatively resilient to storage. Although they had a decent harvest of green leafy vegetables at home this month, the volume wasn’t extreme, so they were in no rush to liquidate the cargo. Naturally, there was no need to scramble back to the Southwest Base under these conditions.

One had to realize that after every zombie tide, the base would implement structural adjustments across various sectors. If they rushed back in a hurry, heaven only knew what complications they might encounter. It was better to wait a bit, letting the various dynamics inside the base settle back into a calm state first.

With their minds made up, the group rested for another two days. Afterward, they went out five or six consecutive times to retrieve a massive hoard of metal, preparing to resume their unfinished engineering tasks.

Excavating basements, fabricating all kinds of fixtures. Once these tasks were fully sorted and another batch of metal was reinforced into the layout, the group was finally ready to tackle the above-ground planting hall.

Yes, the planting hall.

After numerous revisions, Luo Xun had finally finalized the design layout for the above-ground space, and after a serious discussion with Yan Fei and the guys, they finalized the execution strategy.

The first step in constructing the surface greenhouse was to establish a ring of metal perimeter walls. This wall reached a thickness of roughly half a meter, fully made from metal Yan Fei had explicitly refined to achieve maximum toughness and hardness. They erected this ring of metal right against the absolute edge of the mutated vegetation, placing it immediately adjacent to those uncanny plants.

Initially, these plants displayed an immense urge to explore the foreign structures that had suddenly emerged beside them, continuously lashing and feeling them up and down with their branches to conduct a detailed inspection and evaluation. However, the completely smooth texture, the rounded surfaces offering zero leverage to grasp, and the indifferent, rock-like stance caused the plants’ exploration to end in total failure. Ultimately, they treated the barriers as actual boulders, ignoring them completely.

The second step was to apply a secondary treatment to this ring of metal wall—painting it.

Luo Xun and the team selected several useful paint colors, mixing them to closely resemble the shades of the surrounding mutated plants, with only slight differences in depth. They painted these patterns onto the metal plating Yan Fei had fabricated. Once the paint dried, Yan Fei integrated these metal plates alongside another ring of metal he had freshly created into the wall, supplementing the structure to fuse into the absolute top of the perimeter, transforming it into a half-rounded dome curving slightly inward. It closely resembled the architectural domes of certain sports stadiums that only shielded the upper spectator stands while leaving the central space completely open.

If viewed from directly above, this curved design and the varied depth of its painted patterns should look virtually identical to the surrounding mutated vegetation.

The purpose of this pattern wasn’t merely to deceive surveillance from above; the curved design also ensured that even if the outer mutated plants grew taller over time, they wouldn’t be able to grasp the edge of the wall to peer inside.

The height of this metal wall reached nearly four meters, roughly level with the second floor of the small building inside. If someone drove past in the distance, although they could see the upper edge of the wall, they would simply mistake it for mutated plants due to the patterns on the curved perimeter. Furthermore, the bottom of the wall extended deep into the earth, completely fusing into the metal lining of the basements to form a seamless, airtight seal.

With this perimeter wall complete, the remaining tasks became exceptionally convenient. Luo Xun and the team didn’t rush to start the work immediately, first waiting a day until they received the satellite photos. Locating the snapshot covering the coordinates of their base, they inspected it meticulously, confirming that the camouflage effect on the wall was indeed highly successful—failing to reveal a single anomaly even under close scrutiny—before deciding to proceed with the next day’s labor.

This time, Luo Xun and the team didn’t directly lay down a metal floor, instead starting by sandifying the ground surface.

Before the apocalypse, the open plaza at the base had been paved with stone slabs, asphalt, and concrete, and the soil beneath wasn’t suitable for cultivating crops. Therefore, thoroughly sandifying the area before laying down the sun-dried earth excavated from their recent digging as planting soil was a vastly superior option.

Luo Xun and the team collected all the marble slabs and decorative floor tiles individually, stacking them to the side to save for decorating the greenhouse later. Little Xinran then began sandifying the ground, starting from the inner edge of one wall.

The sandified soil was transported directly into the basement to be loaded onto the trucks and hauled out to the edge of the wild fields to be piled into small hills. Luo Xun also decided to demolish the few functional outbuildings standing on the open plaza. Any equipment, agricultural tools, or farming vehicles inside that could be moved indoors were systematically shifted inside. The units that couldn’t fit were temporarily placed in the final sector slated for processing, or encased directly onto a wall-linked platform fabricated out of metal.

After all, Luo Xun and the team had no need to farm on the surface anymore, meaning tractors and seeding trucks likely wouldn’t be put to use anytime soon. However, these machines were still perfectly functional, and letting them go to waste would be a massive pity.

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