The Reborn Otaku’s Code of Practice for the Apocalypse – CH246

Chapter 246 — The Poop Scoopers…

After verifying multiple times that the two creatures—be they wolves or dogs—that had just snuck in wouldn’t cause any trouble, Luo Xun and the team decided to let them stay near the tunnel entrance for the time being. To make it easier for the vehicles to back up and turn around, they had explicitly built a circular clearing not far from the entrance when constructing the tunnel. This spot was perfectly convenient for the two wolves to camp out in. As for heading further inside… further down the track lay their planting rooms and other critical areas. With items packed into almost every room, including the parking lot, how could they possibly let these two wander around blindly?

Fortunately, once the rain outside let up or stopped completely, they could release the pair back into the wild. For now, letting them make do here would suffice.

Luo Xun and the team headed back inside first, leaving the two massive creatures behind, accompanied by their own puppy. Returning to the basement, Luo Xun mulled over their strategy for a moment. “Let’s slaughter a few quails. We can deliver the meat to them once we’re finished.” Their household quail yield was at a point of absolute surplus; keeping them cooped up inside that second-floor classroom had actually begun to look a bit cramped. Luo Xun and the team had previously brainstormed whether they should partition a fraction of the flock to raise inside the greenhouse, but looking at the dynamics now, they might as well wait until the third subterranean tier was fully excavated and raise them together with the rabbits.

Consequently, while their own twin eaglets required quails to eat, these two massive wolves who had come to scrounge a meal needed to eat as well. Luo Xun and the team calculated the volume, dispatching six quails in a single breath, while retrieving half a carcass of frozen pork from the refrigerator. They delivered two quails to the eaglets, and once the pork thawed, they boiled it slightly and brought it alongside the remaining quails straight down to the two wolves.

Luo Xun tackled this task alongside Zhang Su and Xu Mei, while the remaining crew systematically bundled around little Xinran and Yan Fei to focus on the fresh excavation directive.

During this round of digging, Yan Fei and the guys detected that the deeper the topsoil layer they breached, the more fertile and moist the earth genuinely became. It was profoundly fortunate that the external runoff hadn’t leaked into the deep soil layers yet. Backed by Song Lingling assisting on the flank to siphon away the residual moisture left behind after sandification, the three classes cooperatively executed the labor with immense harmony. As for Li Tie and the young men who lacked superpowers, they naturally and unreservedly acted as the primary muscle, explicitly focusing on hauling the loose sand into the storage alcoves for temporary holding. Once the skies outside cleared up, they would cart it up to the greenhouse roof to air-dry—although Song Lingling possessed the capability to thoroughly dry the moisture within the dirt and sand on the spot, everyone collectively evaluated that letting the sun bake it was vastly superior, as it could at least provide a baseline sterilization effect.

Once this squad locked into their labor, they completely lost their baseline track of time. Yan Fei assisted little Xinran with the excavation while simultaneously assembling a spacious, heavy metal staircase structure. Following that, he temporarily sealed the entire perimeter of the sandified vault with sheets of metal armor, letting little Xinran dig straight down. Once a sufficient clearance depth was reached, he sealed the floor plates, systematically driving his metal filaments deep into the earth to radiate outward in all directions, fusing the structural elements smoothly with the iron walls extending down from the second subterranean tier. Pinpointing the target operational zone, he marked out one specific direction using a thread-thin wire, retracted the protective metal barrier along that flank, and let the little girl execute a horizontal sandification sweep.

Gradually, the loose sand accumulated into a substantial mountain. Because they were holed deep underground, Luo Xun and the team completely lost track of the hours outside. By the time their consciousness cleared enough to review alternative parameters, they suddenly detected that everyone’s stomach was rumbling with hunger. Scanning left and right, they caught that the two ladies were noticeably absent from the excavation line, leaving everyone to relax their minds—those two had likely realized the hours were growing late and deployed to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

“Let’s halt our labor right here for now… It’s already four in the afternoon. We’ll grab dinner and call it a day,” Luo Xun announced to the crew after verifying the clock. The dust-caked, grime-covered group finally cast their tools aside, and Yan Fei sealed off the semi-excavated wall facade before they smoothly retreated back upstairs.

Stepping onto the residential floors, they discovered that the puppy had somehow slipped back up at some point, currently bounding and frolicking erratically right by the main entrance vault of the second subterranean floor.

“Why are you back up here? What about those two…” Before the words could even fully clear Luo Xun’s lips, he caught sight of a massive wolf head poking straight through the entrance vault. Right beside it, an alternative wolf head was forcefully squeezing inside as well. Catching Luo Xun and the team focusing their gaze over, the rear wolf head violently recoiled backward, unceremoniously using its companion as a human shield to block the front.

…

Well, since they were already inside, they might as well let it slide. Although the subterranean lobby housed a fair amount of loose equipment and materials, those supplies were safely sealed inside custom metal crates Yan Fei had fabricated, meaning these two gluttons wouldn’t be able to compromise them anytime soon.

“Let’s hit the showers first to prep for dinner. As for these two…” Luo Xun’s words cut short midway once more, his expression turning highly surreal as he sniffed the ambient air meticulously. “What’s that smell?”

“Yeah, it feels like a highly bizarre odor?”

“It’s rank!”

The group followed the trailing scent to walk toward the tunnel tracks. The two wolves appeared to realize something, their massive tails whipping frantically back and forth like floor brushes. And then, along a specific line of sight completely unobstructed by the two predators, Luo Xun and the team unearned… a pile of “gold.”

Talk about a massive chunk of high-grade agricultural fertilizer! Except it was intensely rank… Dammit! Excrete if you must, but why on earth did you have to detour all the way to this end of the track to drop it? Couldn’t you have handled it right by the entrance gates!!

Luo Xun merely felt his forehead get thoroughly blanketed in black lines. Their own puppy had already systematically learned to run beneath the greenhouse trees to handle his business and mark his territory, but regarding these two frauds boasting a physical bulk this towering… analyzing it long-term, if their household truly had to maintain them down the line, processing this level of waste material daily would deliver a headache that was perfectly sufficient to drive someone mad.

“Alright, hold off on the showers for now. Let’s focus on cleaning up this pile of ‘treasures’ first.” Although every member systematically managed the quail room, the rabbit cages, and the waste excreted by the twin eaglets daily, the core dilemma was that none of those operations were anywhere near as cartoonishly exaggerated as these two predators! The odor profile wasn’t even within the same competitive tier!

The group of young men, thoroughly caked in the foul stench, bustled for a good while, subsequently plying hoses to thoroughly douse and scrub the concrete flooring. It was profoundly fortunate that whether across the walls or along the floor tracks, the entire tunnel infrastructure was engineered using the metal Yan Fei fabricated. If the team genuinely evaluated that the scrubbing failed to achieve total cleanliness, Yan Fei merely required re-fusing and re-molding those specific sections, causing the non-metallic residue to violently slough off, making maintenance exceptionally elementary.

By the time they finalized their glorious duties as poop scoopers and climbed back up to the first floor, Xu Mei and Song Lingling had only just finished preparing dinner, right about to head downstairs to summon the crew. Catching sight of their bedraggled states, they hurriedly called out: “Dinner is served!”

“Hold on, give us a moment to hit the showers first!”

The two ladies were thoroughly startled by the pack of men frantically sprinting into the bathrooms. By the time their consciousness cleared, the boys had completely vanished, leaving only a giggling little Xinran behind. “What happened to them? Did they plummet straight into a sand pit?”

Little Xinran shook her head with immense pride, holding her chin high as she let out a highly conspiratorial, wicked laugh: “Nope! The big doggies dropped a massive stinky poop! They spent forever cleaning it up, so their entire bodies are completely stinky right now!”

Hearing the explanation, the two ladies burst into laughter, comfortably unmounting their aprons to pull the little girl along into the ladies’ bathroom to wash up thoroughly before returning to consume dinner—due to certain underlying psychological catalysts, the men’s showers ran uncharacteristically long today.

Remarkably, everyone gorged on their dinner with absolute relish tonight—this squad had witnessed enough gruesome, stomach-churning sights throughout the apocalypse, meaning absolutely no one suffered from a lingering psychological aftereffect that compromised their appetite after handling a pile of gold.

Finishing dinner and returning to his master bedroom, Luo Xun stood by the window frame to evaluate the exterior perimeter. Verifying that although the storm continued to lash down, the hail had completely ceased and their base infrastructure bore zero structural damage, he finally let out a sigh of relief. “Let’s wait until the downpour completely stops before we release those two back into the wild.” During the hours spent cleaning those two massive piles today, Luo Xun and the team had bitterly grumbled, and while washing up in the showers, everyone had explicitly declared that this disruption was completely intolerable and they must drive the pair out the very next morning. Yet right now, Luo Xun had already seamlessly shifted his stance.

Yan Fei curled his lips into a soft smile, changing into his sleepwear while watching his partner, highly amused to see exactly how long he would agonize over this development.

Luo Xun didn’t spend much time mulling it over. Turning around after venting a couple of grumbles, he caught sight of an exceptionally handsome young man with his shirt semi-unbuttoned, casting a highly enticing (?) smile straight toward him. Consequently, his tiny heart began thumping frantically—despite being joined at the hip daily over such a prolonged duration, he would still be completely stunned and short-circuited by his partner’s looks from time to time. Faced with an invitation of this caliber, how could he possibly let it slide so easily?

Consequently, Luo Xun transformed into a literal wolf, lunging forward to pin the man flat against the sheets.

Because the puppy had spent an intensely joyous day playing alongside the two massive wolves, he explicitly refrained from trailing upstairs with the couple, content to sleep straight inside the basement tracks tonight instead. The couple had already systematically fed little Baozi his fill of formula, and had originally agreed to play a round of co-op split-screen upon returning before turning in for sleep, but before the console could even boot up, they had already rolled completely onto the mattress… let’s just skip the games for today.

The self-sabotaging Luo Xun rolled out of bed the next morning to once again endure a reality defined by a sore lower back and aching thighs. Scanning the sky that remained intensely gloomy alongside a fine, dense curtain of rain, he let out a silent sigh inside his chest over the lingering regret of being unable to drive those two freeloading gluttons out, before scrambling down the ladder to wash up and consume breakfast, preparing to tackle today’s labor targets.

Forget about Luo Xun; even the alternative members of the crew refrained from raising the topic of driving those two massive predators out this morning. For a full three days, the torrential storm lashed the wild unremittingly, and the two massive wolves handily enjoyed their free food and shelter inside the base for three full days. Luo Xun and the team similarly bustled unremittingly for three full days, packing their storage alcoves and loose vacant clearings with mountains of sand, before simply choosing to leave the final excavated reserves straight within the third subterranean vault.

The structural clearance height engineered for this specific basement floor was significantly loftier than the upper two tiers, explicitly because Luo Xun and the team had resolved to spread a substantial layer of topsoil across this floor to plant immense expanses of wild grass and agricultural greens. Under these dynamics, the topsoil layer was bound to require a baseline depth parameter, which handily accommodated brainstorming how to structure the rabbit warren nests along the way.

However, early on the morning of the fourth day, Luo Xun and the team harbored a vastly more critical directive to execute—releasing the wolves and sun-drying the sand!

Because on this specific morning, the sky outside had thoroughly and completely cleared up!!

Watching the two massive predators put on an intensely reluctant display, taking three lingering lookbacks for every single step they took toward the exit, Luo Xun felt a trace of tender melancholy resonate through his chest, while simultaneously gritting his teeth—these two frauds were absolutely reminiscing about the pampered lifestyle where food and water were delivered straight to them without having to risk their lives in the wild!

During those three days the pair spent holed up inside the complex, they had systematically cleared nearly over half of the frozen pork reserves stashed inside their freezers. Not to mention their household quails… if Luo Xun hadn’t worried about their quail flock hitting a critical bottleneck that broke their production cycle and rapidly adjusted the wolves’ menu, their quail reserve would likely have zero surviving heads left by now.

Not long after the two wolves departed, right as Luo Xun and the team were preparing to return downstairs to resume organizing those mountains of sand, a sudden, thunderous torrent of wolf howls resonated from a short distance away in the wild.

“What’s the story?!”

“Could they have blundered into a hostile human expedition that launched an assault against them?”

“Double back to check it out!”

No matter how one evaluated the dynamic, these were predators they had personally maintained for three full days, and who had nested in their immediate perimeter over such a prolonged duration. No matter how much Luo Xun and the team bitched and grumbled, a baseline layer of emotional attachment had long since stabilized. Their household’s massive wolf-dogs hadn’t even been bullied by their own team yet, so how could they possibly allow an outside faction to march straight to their front door to abuse them?

The group rapidly sealed their main gate defenses and charged out in a frantic column. Circuiting a bend along the highway tracks, they caught sight of the two massive wolves standing perfectly unharmed, turning their heads back to look straight toward them. Right while the crew was feeling completely bewildered, the predators gracefully parted to clear a line of sight, allowing Luo Xun and the team to catch precisely what asset had triggered the wolves to unleash that synchronized torrent of howls—mutated wildlife, specifically mutated predators that had been unexpectedly pelted to death by the hail three days prior!

Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉