The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH238

Chapter 238 — The Venue

Luo Xun felt their luck on this trip to the City A Base wasn’t particularly good. They had intended to purchase a substantial batch of textiles, but the prices were far too exorbitant; if they didn’t want to play the sucker, it was better to keep their crystals to themselves. Then, they heard someone was selling the exact seeds they required, but not only were the seeds fraudulent, the vendors had explicitly looked ready to swing their fists at the slightest disagreement.

Seeing his dejected look, Yan Fei offered comfort: “It doesn’t matter even if we can’t buy those seeds. Otherwise, even if we did secure them, we’d still have to figure out how to deseed, spin the cotton, and weave the cloth—things none of us know how to do yet.” Of course, both Yan Fei and Luo Xun possessed the theoretical knowledge, but with absolutely zero relevant equipment on hand, how could they possibly spin yarn and weave cloth out of thin air?

Brought back to reality by Yan Fei’s reminder, Luo Xun let out a deep breath, finally shaking off the minor frustration lingering in his chest. Before he and Yan Fei could even make it back to their own stall, they happened to pass a counter set up by a merchant who had newly moved in this afternoon, and discovered rows of long, dark, bamboo-like stalks arrayed across the earth platform—”Sugarcane?!”

Li Tie and the guys were sitting idly behind their counter yawning, casting intermittent glances left and right to see if Luo Xun and the team had returned yet.

“Do you think they’ll buy seeds back?”

“Even though those seeds are premium, we can certainly afford them. It’s just a question of whether those seeds belong to mutated plants…”

“Eh? Brother Luo and the others are back, and they’re holding… sugarcane??”

Luo Xun and Yan Fei each cradled a compact bundle of sugarcane as they walked back to their stall. Setting the bundles down, Luo Xun shook out his arms, instructing Li Tie and the young men who had crowded over to assist, “Careful, don’t break off the buds on the stalks.”

“Buds? What buds?”

Following the direction Luo Xun pointed, everyone indeed caught sight of some newly sprouted, slightly wilted buds emerging from the nodes of the sugarcane.

Luo Xun tugged at his collar to fan his chest. “I checked them out; these buds are still alive. Remember to keep their roots moist. Once we get back, we’ll cut them section by section to see if we can cultivate them successfully.” If their household could grow this crop… their family would never run short of sugar again!!

Although they currently housed an immense variety of fruits at home, they lacked a specialized plant dedicated purely to sugar production. If these sugarcanes could be cultivated successfully, they would serve a highly critical purpose.

Hearing this, the group immediately escorted the sugarcane into the truck containers with absolute caution. Xu Mei evaluated the empty woven baskets slung over their backs, asking, “You didn’t purchase the seeds?”

Luo Xun’s expression looked a touch resigned. “Their seeds have likely been tampered with, and they strictly forbade anyone from verifying the goods. The moment they caught me trying to test those seeds, they tried to violently drive me off.”

Hearing about this development, the rest of the crew also expressed deep regret—they weren’t particularly worried about Luo Xun running into physical brawls with those men, after all, hadn’t Luo Xun and Yan Fei returned completely unscathed? They were merely disappointed that their household couldn’t expand its cache of cash crops.

“The matter of cotton isn’t a pressing emergency either. Our coordinates are inherently close to the rural fields anyway, so we can always take a turn through the surrounding villages later to see if we can locate fields previously dedicated to cultivating cotton. If we unearth any, we can brainstorm a strategy then. And…” Luo Xun let out a couple of coughs. “Even if we did cultivate cotton… we’d still have to figure out a method to process it properly…” Otherwise, even if they held raw cotton in their hands, they wouldn’t have a way to put it to use.

Xu Mei froze for a split second before a wave of realization struck her, and Song Lingling beside her slapped her own forehead: “Exactly! Remember the two sheep we slaughtered before setting out? I originally noted that both specimens had mutated from domestic sheep, and that we could harvest the wool after returning to knit sweaters. But right now, we don’t even know how to spin yarn…”

After those two sheep were skinned, the hides had been systematically sent straight back to their base to be hung and dried. Although the plumage of mutated animals generally ballooned in thickness, with the hair growing coarse and long, remarkably, the wool from these two sheep remained immensely soft and fine. The team had instantly envisioned themselves wearing wool sweaters down the line. But analyzing it meticulously now, they didn’t even understand the basic mechanics of how to spin raw wool into yarn! How were they supposed to knit sweaters?

Shaking off their grievances over failing to secure pristine seeds, the group noticed that dusk was gradually falling. Organizing the remaining inventory on the counter, they scrambled inside the truck bed to hold a quick briefing.

The core agenda of the meeting was—do they head straight back today? Or do they continue browsing the market for another couple of days?

Braving the heavy, sweltering heat inside the container, the group wiped their sweat while exchanging ideas. Ultimately, Luo Xun integrated everyone’s input: “Let’s return home first. Fortunately, because this trade fair handily counts as the very first marketplace hosted by the major bases, the overhead for a great number of items is falsely inflated, and the absolute quality of the merchandise remains highly inconsistent. Our visit this time counts as a way to evaluate the dynamics; the supplies we urgently require aren’t exceptionally numerous. Some items possess short shelf lives, and the current climate parameters are awful. Therefore, we’ll head back first on this run. There’s a high probability that once the major bases accumulate experience, subsequent arrangements will be vastly more systematic.”

This executive call received the unanimous backing of the entire crew, and the absolute primary catalyst behind it was—the climate parameters. This was early August, precisely the hottest stretch of the entire year for City A. Furthermore, the recent weather wasn’t merely hot; the moisture density in the atmosphere was immense. The moment the gales died down, staying outdoors left one feeling as though they were trapped inside a literal steamer basket, intensely miserable.

Forget about someone like He Qiankun who easily suffered from the summer heat, even the two ladies possessing the slimmest statures couldn’t tolerate it anymore.

Having finalized their strategy, they exploited the hours right before the marketplace closed for the night to exit the venue.

Vehicles and stalls inside the market tracks were permitted to stay overnight, but a single night commanded a rental overhead of twenty crystals per slot, and if a merchant prepared to continue setting up their stall the next day, it would cost another twenty. In contrast, the parking lot explicitly refrained from hosting vehicles overnight, driving the traffic off the absolute moment the deadline struck. Consequently, the vast majority of merchants who had arrived to barter goods chose to depart directly, locating a patch of vacant open ground flanking the marketplace perimeter to stay overnight.

Luo Xun and the team exploited the mass exodus to steer their vehicles out as well, locating a relatively detached coordinate to kindle a campfire, bracing themselves to endure the night before hitting the road the next morning.

The density of alternative vehicular columns camping in the perimeter exactly like Luo Xun’s team was substantial; some were merchants who had set up stalls to liquidate goods, while others were expeditions out to execute large-scale procurement. Among the vehicles camped in the perimeter were not only traders who had traveled from far-flung bases, but also local squads residing inside the Southwest Base who explicitly stayed outside the city gates overnight, fearing they wouldn’t be able to secure an excellent stall slot the next day if they returned to the base proper.

Kindling their campfire and mounting a large pot, the group huddled in a tight circle to prepare dinner and pass the idle hours. Truly, although they certainly hadn’t managed to inspect every single stall within the marketplace, virtually every member had secured some form of harvest.

For instance, the truck containers now housed a fair collection of children’s clothing across various sizes, and Luo Xun and the team had also located a stall liquidating books, selecting a few copybooks meant for fountain pen calligraphy practice.

Not to mention the sugarcane Luo Xun and his partner had secured, along with a massive medley of miscellaneous trinkets.

While Xu Mei and Song Lingling were out browsing the marketplace alongside little Xinran, they had spotted a stall displaying an abundance of toys. Consuming a mere three crystals, they had purchased a massive mountain of toys explicitly meant for the little girl and baby Baozi. Little Xinran was currently cradling two Barbie dolls in her arms, and Baozi’s miniature crib was now fitted with several highly colorful, visually stimulating hanging toys. Even the two ladies had carted back a large, bulging bundle of supplies, strictly refusing to let any of the men peek at what was sealed inside.

As everyone was sharing jokes and waiting for dinner to finalize, a lone silhouette walked over from a short distance away. Catching that Luo Xun and the team had focused their attention on him, the man offered a smile toward Luo Xun’s group: “Folks, I have a substantial hoard of excellent merchandise stashed inside the trucks over that way. Want to step over to take a look?”

Not every merchant who set up a stall inside the venue managed to cover their baseline overhead. A fair number of people had given it a single trial run, only to discover that the revenue generated failed to match the premium cost of the entry token. Consequently, starting from the second day, they simply set up wild stalls outside the perimeter, exploiting these evening hours when the vast majority of the crowd exited the venue to circulate and draw shoppers to purchase their goods.

Luo Xun scanned the coordinate the man was pointing toward, before shaking his head: “No thanks. Whatever supplies you have, we’ll evaluate them after daybreak tomorrow.” No joke, the direction the man was pointing toward sat strictly in the reverse trajectory of the base and the venue tracks—a chaotic expanse of collapsed masonry choked with wild grass and overgrown thickets. If they rashly followed him over, heaven only knew if that coordinate held merchandise for sale or a trap designed to rob their convoy?

The man pressed the offer a few more times, but seeing that Luo Xun and the team truly harbored zero interest, he could only turn to walk away in frustration.

Li Tie and the guys didn’t find the dynamic shocking at all, explicitly refraining from expending any extra mental focus to discuss the individual after his departure. Back when they resided inside the base, they knew with absolute certainty that they must never follow any stranger who approached to strike up a conversation claiming to sell goods, let alone in the current environment?

Before long, within the brief span it took for Luo Xun and the team to finish dinner, alternative peddlers of this tier arrived in a succession of five or six separate waves. There were even individuals who pushed small carts to a short distance away, standing to wait for survivors to step over to inspect the goods. However, if those peddlers carried substantial merchandise, they explicitly didn’t dare draw too close to the camped vehicular lines, likely harboring deep anxiety that if they approached with valuable goods, they might end up violently robbed by the squads instead. Furthermore, the supplies they liquidated usually carried zero objective value; truly premium, high-value assets were never brought out so casually to be delivered straight to the resting camps of alternative independent squads.

The buyers deeply distrusted the sellers, and the sellers similarly harbored zero faith in the buyers. Under these dynamics, it became vastly more difficult for both factions to execute successful transactions outside the official trade venue. Luo Xun and the team dealt with the peddlers for a brief stretch, finding the environment significantly more disruptive than operating a stall inside the venue, and simply finalized their night watch rotation before retreating into the trucks to rest.

This night was not spent comfortably. The coordinate where Luo Xun and the team camped sat in close proximity to the Southwest Base and the newly constructed trade hall. For the sake of long-term security parameters—and to prevent sudden ambushes launched by zombie columns or mutated land predators—the administration of the Southwest Base had simply felled and bulldozed all the towering trees and concrete ruins surrounding the perimeter gates. Currently, the immediate area surrounding the trade hall was processed with identical protocols, and it wasn’t until one looked at coordinates further out that the past ruins and the wild, rampantly growing post-apocalyptic vegetation came into view.

Because of the sparse vegetation footprint, this sector was thoroughly baked by the blistering sun throughout the day, and the ambient temperature showed zero signs of dropping significantly during the evening. Coupled with the extreme humidity index in the atmosphere, the absolute moment Luo Xun woke from his sleep, he felt as though he had been hauled straight out of a pool of water.

Using some relatively cool water Song Lingling had newly conjured to wash his face, he fished out a bottle of frozen water from the truck refrigerator, refraining from drinking it as he simply held the cold plastic in his hands to lower his core temperature.

“How is it? Are we prepped to head back?” Before long, the rest of the crew rolled out of bed in succession, He Qiankun’s eyes flashing with vibrant excitement as he looked toward Luo Xun.

Luo Xun nodded, pressing the semi-thawed ice bottle against his cheek: “Move out. We hit the road the absolute moment breakfast is finished!”

Shortly after, the engines of the two vehicles rumbled to life, steering onto a major highway along their return trajectory. The convoy hadn’t driven far when Zhang Su’s voice crackled through the walkie-talkie: “Roughly five vehicles behind us have also merged onto this thoroughfare, maintaining a distance of about three to four hundred meters from our rear.”

Luo Xun narrowed his eyes: “Maintain our driving speed and brace for impact. They might simply be charting an identical route.” Today mapped onto roughly the third or fourth day since the arrival of the foreign base columns. If those foreign caravans were departing, their absolute vehicle counts wouldn’t be this sparse, and the independent squads exiting the Southwest Base wouldn’t necessarily select this specific trajectory. If the trailing vehicles belonged to a compact peripheral base operating in the area, even if they shared this route, the alignment would only span a brief segment. Therefore, they merely required a brief observation period to derive a definitive answer.

It would be best if those people were truly, purely charting an identical route…

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