Chapter 239 — Sensing and Testing
The overcast sky revealed not a single trace of blue, yet this gloominess bore no indication of rain. It simply remained stifling, as if a colossal lid had been clamped over their heads. Although the sun was obscured, its scorching heat continued to bake the earth unabated. Moisture practically evaporated into the air, making the already muggy weather feel even more oppressive and unbearable.
On days like this, anyone with respiratory conditions or heart ailments would have found it incredibly torturous to stay anywhere without air conditioning. However, whether it was a stroke of fortune or misfortune, the vast majority of people afflicted with such chronic illnesses had turned into zombies at the very start of the apocalypse. Those who hadn’t immediately turned and managed to endure until now were few and far more between. By today, the physical constitution of anyone who could still tolerate this weather had typically been forged and tempered by the apocalypse, becoming exceptionally resilient.
At this moment, Luo Xun was incredibly grateful that they had chosen to return to their own base. The single biggest reason was that after finally leaving the perimeter of the City A Base, they finally dared to turn on the air conditioner!
The effect of the air conditioning inside the truck cab made the entire space significantly more comfortable. In truth, during weather like this, the cooling function of the air conditioner wasn’t the absolute most critical aspect; the most critical part was actually the dehumidification. Lowering the humidity inside the vehicle and adding a hint of a cool breeze made their current situation remarkably pleasant.
In such a comfortable environment, Luo Xun and the team didn’t even find the few vehicles trailing behind them quite as eyesore-inducing as they had when they initially departed from the base.
“Are they still following us?” Luo Xun didn’t use the walkie-talkie this time. Because the driver’s cab had air conditioning while the rear container was hot enough to suffocate someone to death, Yan Fei had simply knocked a passage through between the front cab and the truck bed, completely integrating the front and rear spaces into one.
In contrast, the alternative small electric vehicle didn’t require such a tedious modification—the driver’s cab and the rear container of that vehicle were inherently connected to begin with.
“Yeah,” Zhang Su hummed in a half-dead cadence, leaning his head against the back of his seat while manipulating a tiny breeze to direct as much of the cold air as possible toward his own face.
Luo Xun helplessly turned his head to glance toward the back seats—his line of sight was obstructed, preventing him from catching that lifeless face. “I say, is that really necessary? Weren’t you perfectly fine yesterday? How did you end up looking this dead from the heat today?”
The beautiful Zhang Su raised a hand to press a bottle of ice-cold water against his forehead, continuing to mumble in a half-dead voice, “I have heatstroke…”
“…You’re a wind-type superpower user…” Luo Xun was completely past the point of grumbling. Yesterday, he himself had been so overheated, yet wasn’t he currently driving while bouncing with energy? How had Zhang Su ended up looking as if his entire skeleton had been removed?
Luo Xun was grumbling at Zhang Su, but Wang Duo was currently fluttering around his partner in an intense state of anxiety, holding a board-like object to continuously fan Zhang Su from various angles. He even murmured in deep concern, “If I had known, I would have scavenged some medicine back at the market… Brother Luo, do we still have heatstroke medicine at home?”
“We have Huoxiang Zhengqi liquid.” Luo Xun pondered for a moment, before reminding him, “It has definitely expired by now, but it should probably still be usable, right?”
Zhang Su slanted his eyes toward the driver’s seat, letting out a disdainful snort. “If it’s heatstroke, drinking some light saltwater, catching a breeze, and getting a good rest is enough.”
Wang Duo immediately stood up, his face flashing with excitement. “We have salt! We have water!” Saying this, he was just about to hurriedly prepare the items for Zhang Su, but Zhang Su shot him a fierce glare. “You stay put!”
“But sweetie, you’re sick!”
Listening to the pair of idiots flaunting their affection and throwing out dog food in the back, Luo Xun couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “If someone calls you foolish, you truly prove them right. He clearly doesn’t have heatstroke! He’s just too lazy to sit up!”
Although Luo Xun had hit upon the exact truth, it still couldn’t stop Wang Duo from showering his Queen with all kinds of absolute devotion. The two continued to flaunt their affection in the back, while a glance at He Qiankun revealed someone who truly bore actual symptoms of heatstroke. He, along with the alternative members who had finally caught the tiny cool draft from the air conditioner, were all either lying down or leaning against the interior walls, playing handheld consoles or reading novels.
A group of people was indeed trailing behind their convoy, and those survivors had explicitly made up their minds to shadow Luo Xun’s group—Luo Xun had already randomly altered their driving trajectory multiple times along the way, yet every single time, the opposition would immediately correct their course to follow. Furthermore, after leaving the immediate vicinity of the City A Base, they had intentionally opened up the clearance separating them from Luo Xun’s vehicles. Currently, they had dropped entirely out of the visual range Luo Xun and the team could observe. If they hadn’t housed someone like Zhang Su in their vehicle—who could perceive hostile movements through the currents—they would have absolute zero awareness that a tail of vehicles was currently shadowing them.
Luo Xun hypothesized that even if these people intended to launch a physical maneuver, they would at least wait until the dead of night to execute it. If they possessed slightly superior patience, they would probably target their absolute long-term objective—shadowing their convoy all the way back to the base where their squad resided.
Moreover, that opposition faction was bound to include a member possessing tracking capabilities, analogous to an elemental user like Zhang Su who could gather hostile intelligence through the wind.
Consequently, Luo Xun wasn’t in a rush. In any case, the trajectory they were currently driving along didn’t map onto the actual route back to their home base. Once they pulled over to rest for the evening, a brief verification would easily yield a general understanding of what exactly these people intended to pull.
They drove due south throughout the entire daylight period. Luo Xun and the team merely required sorting out and severing these loose ends before executing a sharp turn to steer straight back to their own base. Around dusk, right as Luo Xun and the team pulled over to prepare their campsite, Zhang Su completed an elemental scan and detected that the opposition had indeed pulled over to park as well.
Exchanging a few low-voiced strategic points, Yan Fei stepped out alongside little Xinran to execute the preparation labor.
Because the opposition had remained entirely outside their visual range throughout the drive, Yan Fei had seamlessly and unreservedly harvested a massive mountain of scrap metal along the entire highway. However, he hadn’t processed it into a cartoonish display this time, merely doing his best to fuse the metal onto the rear containers of the trucks. From a distance, it simply made the two trucks look significantly “longer,” but a party wouldn’t be able to make a definitive assessment without a meticulous inspection.
Kindling their campfire, everyone proceeded with their standard routines—those responsible for cooking focused on dinner, those managing the cargo organized the supplies, those checking the gear inspected the components, and those handling defenses prepped the traps. Every single member executed their tasks with complete method and discipline, appearing perfectly orderly and systematic, exactly like every alternative campsite rest they had taken in the past.
Eating their fill and finalizing the night watch rotation, the hours ticked late into the night until Zhang Su indicated that his scans failed to perceive a single shred of movement. Consequently, the members scheduled for watch took up their posts while the rest retreated to sleep.
The vanguard watch consisted of Li Tie and Han Li. Consuming two hours of watch, they rotated out to be replaced by He Qiankun and Wu Xin, followed in succession by Wang Duo and Zhang Su, Xu Mei and Song Lingling, and finally Luo Xun and Yan Fei. This arrangement was finalized because after a brief team discussion, they evaluated that if the opposition harbored malicious intent, the probability of them striking during the first half of the night was remarkably low. Thus, they held their primary combat classes in reserve to manage the watch during the latter half of the night.
True to expectations, early the next morning, right as Luo Xun and his partner rolled out of bed to manage the final shift, the opposition still hadn’t executed a single hostile action.
“Did any anomalies crop up during the night?” Once the entire crew had rolled out of bed and completed their basic washing chores, they huddled around the campfire to exchange notes.
“We didn’t perceive a single thing, nor did we catch any stray noises,” Li Tie and the guys stated in succession, indicating that their shifts had logged zero anomalies during the night.
“When I sat up for my watch, my elements failed to detect a single shred of movement from their coordinate,” Zhang Su stated, indicating his scans had yielded a clean slate as well.
The alternative members reported identical results. At the very least, Zhang Su possessed the capability to execute a long-range elemental scan, whereas the rest lacked that specific trait entirely.
“The perimeter traps remain entirely identical to how we left them last night. The subterranean earth bears zero markers suggesting anyone attempted to execute an unprovoked subterranean probe,” Yan Fei reported after completing an inspection of the traps he and little Xinran had deployed the day before.
Luo Xun rubbed his chin, his eyes narrowing slightly into a squint as he pondered for a brief moment before announcing: “Alter our driving trajectory. Target the concrete ruins of the township we visited previously to see if they continue to shadow us. If they relentlessly trail us straight into those residential blocks, we strike.”
Meticulously analyzing the dynamics now, the probability that these individuals intended to follow them straight to the “base” where their squad resided was immensely high. Since that was their objective, they would simply present them with a mock target base!
Standing passively to wait for adversaries to violently lunge at their front door was never Luo Xun’s operational framework, nor was it the style of the Otaku Team. Although they appeared entirely mild and soft on the surface, the absolute moment their personal safety parameters were compromised—even a cornered rabbit would fiercely bite, let alone humans?
Cutting the weeds without yanking out the roots would merely allow the spring winds to breathe life into them once more. They weren’t fools, nor did they harbor that brand of misplaced benevolence.
If they failed to ensure these individuals never returned from this excursion, they could completely kiss their peaceful lifestyle goodbye down the line!
Finishing breakfast, the Otaku Team resumed their march once more. Luo Xun and the team explicitly refrained from continuing due south, executing a sharp turn instead to steer their vehicles straight toward a specific coordinate.
“They altered their driving trajectory again.”
“Could they still perceive that a tail is shadowing them from behind, and want to shake us off?”
“Unclear. Maintain our shadow and continue evaluating.”
…
By the afternoon, catching confirmation that Luo Xun and the team had been driving straight toward a specific coordinate along a locked trajectory, the vehicular column trailing a short distance behind finally finalized their deduction—the vanguard column up front was bound to be driving straight back to a concrete target base, rather than weaving erratically across the thoroughfares like they had on the initial day, which had clearly been an operational display to evade a tail.
“Stay locked onto them! We absolutely must stay locked onto their coordinates.”
“Boss, are we completely certain that their base houses an asset capable of cultivating pristine, non-mutated vegetation?”
“Cut the crap!” The individual addressed as Boss forcefully slapped the back of the speaker’s head. “You have zero intelligence. Back inside the base proper, rumors had already broadcast long ago that a specific group explicitly specialized in liquidating non-mutated crop varieties, and they systematically supplied several independent squads over a prolonged duration. They are bound to possess a specialized cultivation methodology. It was merely a pity that their silhouettes completely vanished from the base grid later on. Evaluating the dynamics now, they definitely established an independent operation elsewhere… or they simply never cultivated these supplies within the walls of the City A Base to begin with!”
Although alternative vendors liquidated non-mutated greens inside the base proper currently, putting aside the fact that the absolute volume was exceptionally sparse, those vegetables had already been completely cornered and bought out by certain high-ranking titans, leaving ordinary survivors completely unable to secure a single bite.
An individual or a squad capable of cultivating ordinary crops or premium mutated vegetation currently didn’t merely command a massive stream of merit points; possessing this specific trade was structurally equivalent to securing an unshakeable foothold inside the base hierarchy, and they would even be completely pampered and maintained by certain massive independent factions or the military high-ranking officials! Consequently, now that they had verified the vegetables Luo Xun and his team liquidated consisted entirely of dried packs sun-dried from non-mutated vegetation, a few factions had naturally let their minds harbor designs.
Coupled with the fact that a few local factions within City A had verified that Luo Xun’s column truly consisted of only these two operational vehicles—and the crew comprised merely this handful of individuals—they naturally let their greed run wild. Once they managed to unearth their methodology to cultivate normal crops… confronted with such alluring, absolute profit, absolutely no one could remain indifferent.
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