The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH226

Chapter 226 — The Wolves and the Birds

“Once we get back this time, we won’t be heading out for a while. Even though we didn’t find the furniture we were looking for, we can just keep making it out of metal after we return. We have plenty of fabric at home, plus all the foam sheets we salvaged this time. It’ll be the perfect project to design and set up our rooms while escaping the summer heat,” Luo Xun said to the group gathered around the campfire, taking a bite of the freshly cooked dinner.

“Brother Luo, why don’t we check out those residential compounds?” Han Li suddenly suggested.

“The residential compounds?” Luo Xun blinked, caught off guard.

“Yeah! Let’s see who left furniture behind! When those people ransacked the malls, they didn’t strip the houses bare, did they? And when they fled the city, they wouldn’t have carted off all their heavy furniture. Since we just need to find some decent furniture anyway, why not?”

“That actually is a viable option…” Luo Xun pondered for a moment, peering through the viewing window toward the flanking concrete high-rises. “Alright, tomorrow we’ll take a turn through the nearby residential compounds to see if we can unearth anything.”

As long as the nearby compounds hadn’t been picked clean by professional scavenger expeditions from the main base, they might not find food or clothes, but there should still be some furniture items left behind.

Having made a rare trip out, although they had secured some resources, they still felt a bit unsatisfied returning like this. Thus, they decided to complete a final sweep before heading home.

Early the next morning, the group steered their vehicles into a nearby residential compound. They randomly selected a building to check, only to discover, to their disappointment, that these places had indeed been thoroughly visited. Although some items remained, a significant portion of the wooden furniture, beds, and shelving units had been violently smashed and dismantled into fractured splinters.

“What’s the story here? This doesn’t look like water damage from the rain; it looks like someone intentionally tore them apart,” everyone remarked in bewilderment after checking five or six buildings in a row and seeing the exact same chaotic wreckage.

“They were likely stripped bare to be used as firewood,” Luo Xun replied. He didn’t find the situation particularly shocking, making a definitive assessment after taking a lap around one of the rooms.

If survivors wanted to live through the apocalypse, surviving without fire was an absolute impossibility. Aside from individuals who possessed the fire attribute or had fire-users in their squad, anyone wanting to keep warm or cook food had to kindle a fire.

And what did you need to start a fire? Tinder, coal, and wood. These wooden fixtures had undoubtedly been explicitly dismantled by humans after the world ended. What Luo Xun found strange now was—had this dismantling been done by base expeditions scavenging for resources, or by local survivors holed up here early in the apocalypse?

Reflecting on it for a moment, Luo Xun rose to his feet. “Let’s go, we’re returning to the base.” Seeing the surprised expressions on everyone’s faces, he explained, “Someone has definitely been here, or this township used to host a pocket of survivors. We won’t be able to find any useful resources now. We might as well haul our cargo back quickly and focus on decorating our home first.”

Since there was nothing left to salvage, returning early was the vastly superior option.

Luo Xun was actually a bit puzzled: why did the furniture plaza on the commercial street still hold a substantial amount of clearly water-warped furniture that hadn’t been stripped for its timber? Could it be that subsequent scavenger squads had systematically dismantled the wood from these residential blocks first, and by the time they looked at the furniture plaza, the items inside had already been ruined by the elements, leaving them exactly as Luo Xun’s group found them?

Perhaps there were alternative explanations, but Luo Xun had zero inclination to play Sherlock Holmes over these meaningless mysteries right now.

Since this sector no longer held resources worth gathering, Luo Xun and his team naturally lost all interest in lingering.

Heading downstairs and climbing back into their respective cabs, the convoy marched majestically back toward the perimeter of the township.

Although they hadn’t managed to pack their container beds to absolute capacity on this run, a closer evaluation revealed that their harvest was remarkably decent. It was just a minor pity that the extra wheel chassis they brought along to construct additional cargo beds hadn’t been put to use. Still, Luo Xun had already finalized a strategy—on their journey back, they would fill every single inch of remaining cargo space with dead wood! That way, their physical efforts on this trip wouldn’t go to waste.

Steering the vehicles along the highway, Yan Fei continuously harvested metal along the road. Their trajectory out of the township mirrored their path in, requiring them to roll past the high-rise residential compound holding the massive eagle nest on its roof.

Luo Xun and the team first verified the apex of the building, confirming that the eagle nest appeared completely deserted before comfortably driving past.

Right while he was extracting scrap metal, Yan Fei suddenly halted his movements, turning to look out of Luo Xun’s side of the cab. “Something is a bit off over there.”

“What? What’s off?!” Luo Xun immediately focused his attention toward the direction his partner was staring—his left side happened to flank those concrete high-rises.

“The metal concentration is heavily dense… it feels significantly more concentrated than the alternative residential blocks we passed through in the city center,” Yan Fei remarked with a slight frown, pointing toward a specific tower.

“Metal… concentrated? Could a metal-type superpower user have fabricated something inside?!” Luo Xun’s eyes widened instantly.

“It’s not that kind of structural focus. When I harvest scrap along the thoroughfares, I can perceive the distribution of metal within a fair radius. That coordinate feels more like a massive concentration of metal-bearing household appliances. Whether there are other things hidden inside is unclear, but the volume of these gadgets vastly exceeds what ordinary households in alternative compounds possess,” Yan Fei explained with precise accuracy after a moment of thought.

Luo Xun mulled it over silently for a brief moment before noting, “It’s highly possible that a pocket of survivors lived there, though there’s no telling if they’re still around.” Following the onset of the apocalypse, it was completely normal for survivors to hole up inside these concrete towers and hoard salvaged resources inside their apartments. It was just a question of how long they managed to endure. Were they still nesting there right now, or had they abandoned the sector to seek sanctuary at a nearby base?

“Brother Luo, why did we suddenly pull over?” Li Tie’s voice crackled through the walkie-talkie.

Luo Xun composed his thoughts and explained, “We feel that someone might be living in that residential compound… Yan Fei says there seems to be a massive hoard of metal appliances concentrated within a few specific apartments, though we don’t know if anyone is still inside.”

The walkie-talkie fell silent for a brief moment before Xu Mei’s voice resonated: “Captain, let’s not court unnecessary trouble. Let’s just drive straight home.”

“Yeah, let’s move,” Luo Xun replied. At that exact moment, he caught a sudden, brief glint of reflection flashing from behind a window pane of one of the towers—it looked remarkably like the reflection from a glass lens or binoculars. Scanning the high-rise meticulously, he confirmed that several apartments on the upper levels still held completely pristine glass windows, and a few even appeared tightly boarded up from the inside. There was a high probability that humans were currently living out their lives within those concrete walls.

Post-apocalyptic survivors possessed all kinds of survival strategies. If these individuals truly managed to carve out a viable method to sustain themselves, they could completely survive without relying on official bases.

Exactly like their own group—hadn’t they managed to forge a completely pristine, independent, small-scale base?

In truth, the ruins of the city center were bound to host hidden survivors. Some people deeply distrusted the official bases, harboring zero expectations of seeking sanctuary within those walls from the very beginning, preferring instead to guard their own small plot of territory to survive. Once they discovered a method to evade the zombies’ initial predatory onslaughts—and the zombie columns subsequently marched away while the newly arrived mutated predators failed to target their coordinates—they could live perfectly well. Not to mention, there were always survivors who simply couldn’t tolerate the dynamics inside the bases anymore.

Luo Xun currently possessed zero desire or interest in provoking these survivors. The other side hadn’t displayed a shred of intent to signal for rescue anyway; if his group rashly approached, they might end up targeted by an unprovoked assault instead.

They were currently unwilling to court trouble with even the major City A base, let alone these lone survivors.

The convoy rumbled out of the residential sector. Collecting scrap metal and harvesting dead wood along the way, the group drove relentlessly toward their own base. It wasn’t until the four trucks were packed to absolute capacity—and the temporary container extensions were loaded to the brim—that they joyfully merged onto the highway flanking their base. And then… they came head-on into the spectacle of the two wolves fleeing in absolute, pathetic desperation, pursued hot on their heels by an anonymous waterfowl that was frantically flapping its wings, running, jumping, and intermittently blasting superpowers to make a break for its life.

What left everyone even more open-mouthed was—the moment the two wolves sprinted into an area where a larger flock of waterfowl had gathered, the birds didn’t scatter in a panic at all. Instead, they spun around in unison, craning their long necks to aggressively peck and pinch the two wolves!!

To think predators of that size would be chased around by white geese and wild ducks that were several sizes smaller than them—was that honestly dignified?!

“…B-Brother Luo, what’s our move?” Someone’s voice crackled through the walkie-talkie, heavily twitching from holding back a burst of laughter.

Luo Xun’s face currently read: (°?°)

Luo Xun truly hadn’t anticipated that these two wolves could be so… pathetic? Hearing them let out sharp, agonized whimpers while being relentlessly pinched by a flock of waterfowl left him completely speechless. Where was the ferocious momentum they displayed when pursuing herds of cattle and pigs previously? Did they only know how to act tough because those cows and pigs didn’t possess superpowers?!

Perhaps catching those tragic, pathetic whimpers—which sounded exactly like a pair of thoroughly whipped mutts—the puppy in the back seat snapped upright. Its eyes flashed with vibrant excitement as it began barking furiously toward the windshield.

Luo Xun stared speechlessly at the dog’s head thrusting between the two front seats. He could swear he detected a look of absolute smugness and schadenfreude on that canine face, though he couldn’t tell if it was a pure illusion.

“They’re charging straight toward us.” Yan Fei’s voice snapped Luo Xun’s focus right back to the front. He watched in utter speechlessness as the two wolves, likely catching the puppy’s barks, frantically redirected the entire agroed flock straight toward their convoy!!

“…Defensive positions, everyone prepare for battle.” Was this tactic considered throwing trouble onto someone else, or signaling for assistance? Luo Xun expressed his total speechlessness and resignation. He could only order everyone to brace for impact. The silver lining was that they were facing a flock of waterfowl rather than a heavyweight stampede like the cattle herd, meaning a head-on collision was well within their capabilities to handle.

Metal protective plating, metal bird-snaring wires, and metal netting.

Before Luo Xun and the team could even fully deploy these defensive apparatuses, the two wolves arrived in the vanguard! Refusing to detour or slow down, the pair launched into a massive leap, bounding directly onto the roofs of Luo Xun’s cargo trucks! Sprinting along the roofs, they bolted straight to the absolute rear of the convoy!!

“Block the flock immediately!” Luo Xun had no time to curse out the two wolves, ordering everyone to prioritize the oncoming threat. Instantly, an array of superpowers and metal netting deployed in tandem. The flock of waterfowl, failing to react in time, came crashing clatter-shatter-clang one after another straight into the solid steel plates and microscopic metal grids…

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