Chapter 217 — The City Center
The Otaku Team’s new base was situated south-southwest of City A. Driving northwest toward the Southwest Base took a little over a day (the consequence of navigating treacherous post-apocalyptic road conditions, collapsed thoroughfares, and mandatory detours). However, if they wanted to reach the northern part of City A where the digital markets and electronic hubs were concentrated, they would have to traverse almost half the city. They could bypass the urban core by taking the outer beltways, but how much extra time would that consume? Moreover, if they crossed paths with official military expeditions or large survivor squads executing base-sanctioned missions, things could easily get complicated.
Fortunately, while fabricating their surface greenhouse, Luo Xun and the team had never neglected to monitor the trajectory of the surrounding zombie tides. Although the massive horde that abandoned the Southwest Base had also marched through the northern sector of City A, they had largely moved through without leaving a significant occupation force behind.
While plenty of zombies still roamed within City A, Luo Xun and the team were able to chart a relatively quiet route. Although running into strays along those roads was guaranteed, the absolute risk factor was nowhere near as perilous as a head-on collision with a full-scale zombie tide.
Furthermore, entering the urban center meant they were bound to encounter survivor squads out to scavenge for supplies. However, those groups consisted primarily of loose, independent teams operating without military participation, meaning Luo Xun and the team didn’t need to overanalyze the threat they posed.
There was another reason they chose to bypass the peripheral outer ring roads—with the arrival of spring and the warming temperatures, the melting snow had thoroughly nourished the soil, old buildings, structures, and cracked asphalt. The closer one drew to the peripheral edges of the urban center, the more rampantly the vegetation grew. Exactly like the environment surrounding their current base, the relatively undisturbed sectors along City A’s outer ring roads were now heavily choked with plant life, bursting through fractured pavement, empty lots, and even scaling the concrete facades of abandoned buildings.
Studying the vibrant expanse of emerald green displayed on the recent satellite images along the outermost ring, a trace of concern resonated in Luo Xun’s heart. Unlike the cultivated grain crops or their tower-defense-like mutated vines, not all mutated vegetation wrapped themselves in freakish textures or distinct alternative colors. The vast majority of mutated flora remained lush, ordinary shades of green. Heaven only knew which plants had developed an appetite for human flesh, and they didn’t dare rashly steer their convoy through those overgrown sectors.
While the city center harbored a fair number of zombies nesting within its ruins, survivor expeditions from the main base also frequented specific thoroughfares. Consequently, the road conditions along those primary commercial tracks were bound to be vastly superior to alternative narrow alleys and side streets, minimizing the inherent danger if their convoy stuck to those routes.
Crucially, prior to launching this expedition, Luo Xun had explicitly pulled Yan Fei aside to upgrade their weapons arsenal once more, significantly boosting the lethality of their custom ammunition and maximizing their safety parameters for this trip.
Two white electric trucks and two large red cargo trucks set out, their interior container beds completely empty for now. Aside from their essential survival gear and rations, a substantial cache of metal intended for emergency utilization was concealed across the vehicles.
Luo Xun and the team anticipated being out for a considerable duration on this run. Therefore, before locking up, they had explicitly programmed the automatic morning and evening lighting cycles for every room, while taking extra measures to secure the above-ground solar panels and glass roofing. Only after ensuring everything was perfectly settled did they steer their convoy through the subterranean tunnel with a touch of lingering anxiety, merging onto the primary highway leading toward the northern district of the city.
City A was monstrously huge—a fact everyone had thoroughly understood well before the apocalypse. However, under current dynamics, with heavily fractured roads, roaming zombies, phantom-like mutated animals, and a dwindling human population fighting for survival, a journey that used to take barely an hour via pre-apocalyptic transportation if traffic permitted was now infinitely elongated. Exactly how many days it would take to reach their objective was a matter determined entirely by luck and karma.
Early in the apocalypse, some survivors who initially holed up inside their apartments were eventually forced to venture out to find an escape route once their food supplies ran completely dry. Even though they were local residents native to City A, their journey from their homes to the Southwest Base had frequently consumed a dozen days or even close to a month, which provided a clear glimpse into the current state of logistical gridlock.
Luo Xun and the team’s circumstances were vastly superior to those early refugees. After all, they possessed operational vehicles, real-time satellite data to reference safe zones, and an array of high-grade weaponry stashed in their trucks. Crucially, at least half of the participating team members were superpower users. Nevertheless, they still had to maintain absolute caution at all times; aside from guarding against zombies and mutated predators, they also had to stay on their guard against other survivors they encountered along the road.
The Southwest Base had been highly active recently. Ever since the conclusion of the latest zombie siege, the administration had been aggressively preparing to implement their sweeping restructuring, intending to thoroughly partition the inner and outer cities using the existing internal ramparts as an absolute boundary line. Fortunately, no official decrees had been formally issued to the public yet; only high-ranking internal personnel and a few exceptionally well-connected individuals had caught wind of the development.
Furthermore, mere moments after the zombie tide had receded, the administration had immediately dispatched a fleet of military transport trucks toward the pre-apocalyptic mining sectors, aiming to haul back massive volumes of raw materials and energy resources.
The tactical directive of the high-ranking officials was to prioritize raising the height of the central partition wall and increasing its structural density. Only after these defensive preparations were complete would they begin implementing the double-standard treatment between the residents of the inner and outer cities.
However, because domestic society was deeply driven by personal connections and networks, the individuals who initially caught wind of these directives were bound to alert their immediate families and close friends, who in turn alerted their own circles. Before long, anyone with a modicum of connection possessed some degree of inside knowledge. While their understanding wasn’t necessarily accurate or complete, a toxic rumor rapidly caught fire across the base—The base’s stockpiles are running completely dry, and the military along with the superpower users are preparing to confiscate every single civilian’s private property!
As for the clause immediately following that rumor—“And then redistribute resources back to everyone based on their documented labor outputs”—it was completely ignored by the masses. The destitute survivors who possessed absolutely nothing to their name were naturally unperturbed, instead jubilantly anticipating the enactment of this decree. But for the rest of the population, it was an entirely different story; who would willingly surrender their hard-earned household assets to be centralized and redistributed by bureaucrats? Unless the resources returned to them exceeded what they surrendered, which common sense dictated was an absolute impossibility!
Fortunately, a secondary rumor quickly rippled through the base immediately after—This protocol is temporarily being tested exclusively within the inner base; the outer base won’t be targeted anytime soon.
In a brief span of barely three days, the inner base became practically hollowed out. Aside from a fraction of destitute survivors who lingered to wait for public rations, or well-connected opportunists who believed their families could extract some benefit from the chaos, only a handful of slow-moving or skeptical residents still remained inside their original apartments.
In contrast, the outer city instantly exploded with rampant activity as a predatory scramble for housing erupted, handily sparing the base officials the effort of coordinating a public relocation campaign.
While rumors ran wild, the independent superpower squads still cut out to execute their mandatory missions exactly as before. The stance of these established teams aligned perfectly with the military, and long-standing protocols had already been consolidated, ensuring their field operations and labor lines remained unaffected by the domestic shifts.
Consequently, after driving for a little over a day, as Luo Xun and his team drew near the perimeter of the Southwest Base, they intermittently encountered various convoys heading out from the gates or returning from the field.
During their journey, Yan Fei continuously harvested metal from the roadside ruins to save as a contingency. Over the past day and a half, the volume of metal he accumulated was large enough to match the mass of an entire vehicle. He simply shaped the raw metal into the contour of a dull, unassuming, soot-grey jeep. By strategically balancing the colors and structural traits of the alternative scrap metals, he created a perfect illusion. Even if neighboring squads drove past them at close range, it would leave a deceptive impression that it was a genuine vehicle fitted with single-way tinted glass windows.
Once the fake vehicle was complete, Yan Fei positioned it directly ahead of their own truck, trailing tightly behind the vehicle Zhang Su was driving. Zhang Su needed to continuously scout the road conditions and detect distant hazards. On this trip, Zhang Su and Wang Duo shared a small electric truck, taking the lead right at the front of the column. Trailing immediately behind them was the large cargo truck driven by Luo Xun and Yan Fei, while the third cargo truck housed Li Tie and the rest of the young men. Xu Mei and Song Lingling brought up the absolute rear of the convoy in the remaining small electric vehicle.
If the metal harvested along the highway allowed him to construct a few more dummy jeeps, Luo Xun intended to sandwich them between their own vehicles and Zhang Su’s vanguard car exactly like the first one, or simply stash them inside the truck container bed for the time being.
True to expectations, because their convoy appeared substantially large, the surrounding survivor squads merely evaluated them from a distance without actively approaching. Even when they camped for the night with alternative teams resting in the immediate perimeter, those strangers explicitly refrained from drawing near, everyone maintaining a deep, mutual wariness toward one another.
Since others kept their distance, Luo Xun and his team naturally didn’t go out of their way to initiate contact. Once they drove deeper into the city center, these independent convoys mostly dispersed to pursue their respective objectives. Early in the journey, the Otaku Team would specifically seek out open lots to construct temporary metal shelters to spend the night. However, once they entered the densely structured urban core, that preference had to be abandoned; if they needed to rest at night, they either slept directly inside their vehicles or located an empty building to lodge in for a single evening.
This was because, for one thing, open lots along the streets were sparse, lacking sufficient clearance to easily erect a metal house. For another, the volume of pedestrian and vehicular traffic passing through was significant; if a traveling squad spotted a metal structure manifesting out of nowhere in the middle of the night, it would likely invite immense complications.
Consequently, on the evening of their third day out from the new base, after dispatching a few loose zombies that lunged at them from the pavement, Luo Xun and the team simply selected an empty storefront along the roadside and stepped inside.
Securing the trucks and grabbing their personal gear, the group stepped into a highly immaculate storefront, conducting a quick sweep to ensure no zombies were nesting inside the alcoves. The final verdict aligned perfectly with the store’s physical condition—it was completely… “immaculate.”
This coordinate wasn’t far from the Southwest Base, and the density of zombies in the immediate perimeter was remarkably low. Any cautious survivor team could easily reach this sector. Forget about finding a single shred of commercial inventory that the store originally housed; even the display racks, counters, doors, and window panes had completely vanished without a trace.
The entire space was hollow and bare, with even a layer of the wall plaster stripped down and the floor tiles pried away. What else could possibly be left?
Taking two turns around the empty room, the group nodded in succession. “Perfect, perfect. Let’s just rest here tonight.”
Yan Fei didn’t even need to manipulate the two pure-metal dummy vehicles outside. He casually flicked his wrist, summoning a stream of structural metal from the residential complex behind the storefront to thoroughly seal the entire room, leaving only a few narrow apertures for ventilation and observation. In no time, the secure room was fully reinforced.
The group scrambled to lay out their bedding, kindle a fire to cook dinner, and heat water to wash their hands. Luo Xun unbuckled the baby from the chest carrier, reaching down to check his diaper for any messes, while little Xinran retrieved a fresh strawberry from the car refrigerator to feed the puppy.
Right amidst this tranquil atmosphere, the distant roar of a revving engine suddenly echoed from the streets outside, accompanied by a succession of frantic, blaring horn blasts…
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