Chapter 93 — Overexertion
Judging from the sorry state of the metal sandbags in Zhang Su’s apartment, he had clearly been pushing himself hard these past few days in order to raise his ability as quickly as possible. But his situation was different from Yan Fei’s. Yan Fei was constantly using his ability while working during the day, and even more extravagantly, he had official crystal core support. Zhang Su, on the other hand, had almost no opportunities to use his ability during the day, and could only come up with various ways to push himself once he got home at night.
Even so, although he went all out at home, it didn’t really affect the people around him. The heavy metal décor in his apartment was strangely effective at blocking noise, so it hardly disturbed teammates next door or downstairs. And every time he overused his mental power and went to bed at night with limbs sore and weak, his spirit drained, that delicate, exhausted look delighted the person by his side—the usually extremely foolish, second-to-none idiot of a boyfriend, Wang Duo.
Generally speaking, Zhang Su was just as domineering and unreasonable in bed as he was in everyday life, so satisfying him usually meant following his preferred positions, timing, and pacing, leaving the one doing the work utterly exhausted. But when this tyrannical “delicate flower” was rendered weak and limp from excessive mental exhaustion… wasn’t he simply at Wang Duo’s mercy? As for the particular pleasures involved—ahem—that was something only Wang Duo and Zhang Su understood, and not for outsiders to know.
Luo Xun and Yan Fei spent two days temporarily finishing the metal planting racks in Zhang Su’s and Li Tie’s apartments, as well as the iron grates climbing along the exterior walls outside the windows. The remaining rooms would require more metal materials before work could continue.
After finishing that, the two of them began processing wood.
Luo Xun cut the tree he had previously collected, along with the wood Xu Mei and the others had gradually brought back over the past few days, into suitable sizes, sawing them apart one by one. The saws were, of course, made by Yan Fei. And the sawdust wasn’t useless waste either—it could be collected, dried, and put into large glass tanks for mealworms and earthworms.
Xu Mei’s household also received some metal racks and began experimenting with planting plants and sprouting seedlings, allowing the two women to familiarize themselves with the planting workflow. The rest would have to wait until more metal materials arrived before they could really be put to use.
The residents of the two floors spent nearly an entire month transforming their little nest. During this month, Yan Fei used up all the metal they had brought back from the last trip outside the base. Through his connections, Zhang Su procured another full truck of metal materials. Luo Xun and Yan Fei also managed to obtain quite a bit of metal from their own team leader.
Xu Mei and the other woman helped Luo Xun spread out and dry all the soil the women had dug up in one empty room—to avoid bringing in any mutated or zombified insects or creatures.
As for the mushroom logs, under Luo Xun’s direction they were processed one by one, inoculated with fungal spores, and placed beneath the drawer-style metal racks to grow mushrooms.
Of course, many other things were happening at the same time. For instance, Luo Xun and Yan Fei’s work on the outer walls had been successfully completed. The ten-meter-high perimeter wall was now clearly visible even from the center of the base. After that, the two of them returned with the team to the inner base’s military camp, where they took on the task of continuing the construction of the camp’s perimeter walls.
Another example was that within this month, Zhang Su, Song Lingling, and little Xinran all successfully advanced their abilities to Level Two. With guidance and tips from Yan Fei and Xu Mei—the first to reach Level Two—everyone else’s progress was remarkably fast. Song Lingling was the quickest of all. First, she had previously used crystal cores together with Xu Mei; second, during this month she vigorously produced clean water to irrigate the plants on both floors while training her ability at the same time, so her leveling speed was naturally very fast. Zhang Su followed closely behind—every night after getting home, he would frantically use his wind ability to train. Only little Xinran lagged behind; because her ability was extremely destructive, there were very few things she could be allowed to practice on. As a result, she didn’t fully absorb the five hundred crystal cores and reach Level Two until the end of the month.
There were also good results from the work inside the building. The metal materials that Zhang Su and Yan Fei had gradually brought back had now been turned into underfloor heating channels for two rooms on the 15th floor. Everything else, however, would have to wait until the end-of-month outing was over before construction could continue.
As for the crops that had to be planted later? Luo Xun and the others weren’t in much of a hurry. Farming wasn’t something that could be done overnight. If a season was missed or time delayed, they could only leave it for now and deal with it later—after all, the apocalypse wasn’t going to disappear completely anytime soon.
Finally, they used the metal in their homes to renovate the corridors on both floors. The heavily sealed iron door was moved to the space between the 15th and 14th floors. The stairwell space had also been targeted by Luo Xun, the great conqueror of square footage—once the current round of harvesting was finished, all those areas would be planted with various crops!
The elevators serving the 15th and 16th floors were also sealed off by Yan Fei using his old method—thick iron plates. This way, no one could come up unless they chose to open it themselves, preventing any accidents.
The two women of Xu Mei’s household hadn’t left the base at all this entire month. Zhang Su helped them find a job processing garments at home. Every few days they would go pick up a batch of fabric, process it, and turn it in for a certain number of points. The pay wasn’t high—it could be considered the lowest-paying type of work in the base—but the flexible hours were a plus, and as long as they completed tasks on time, how much work they took on each time was entirely up to them.
Many women in the base who couldn’t leave the base did this kind of work from home. The two women made good use of their mornings by going to the designated soil-digging areas to dig for soil, then bringing it back at noon while grabbing food. Afternoons and evenings were spent at home tending their plants, sewing and mending, and taking care of the child.
In the blink of an eye, the end of May was approaching, and the weather was growing warmer. Having learned from the issues they encountered on the previous return, Luo Xun and the others chose to go out to hunt zombies and collect crystal cores on the middle two days of a four-day break.
Li Tie and his group couldn’t manage to secure any extra time off, so they had to move their vacation forward by one day to coordinate with everyone else. Zhang Su did the same, moving his three-day leave forward by a day.
Among everyone, only Xu Mei and the other two women—who had spent the whole month at home sewing, mending, planting flowers, and raising plants—were unaffected.
At this moment, however, Luo Xun was sitting in a room with Xu Mei and the other woman, processing mushrooms.
Each of the three held a glass vessel in their hands, used for grinding mushrooms. Yan Fei sat to the side leisurely assembling hollow-point rounds. Little Xinran was playing with the little one on the balcony—the girl was thin and small. Although she looked a bit plumper than before recently, she was still very light. The little one had already grown into the shape of a large dog, nearly half a person tall. With Xinran’s petite frame, even riding on the dog’s back couldn’t press it down at all.
The girl and the dog were hugging and playing together, almost rolling all over the floor. Yu Xinran was still holding a leaf of lettuce in her hand, teasing the little one with it.
While carefully processing the mushroom extract, Xu Mei occasionally glanced toward the balcony. The rapeseed Luo Xun was keeping for seed had already bloomed there, a brilliant expanse of golden flowers that looked dazzling. “The little one is really pitiful. It’s probably never been outside since it was little, right?”
Hearing this, Luo Xun smiled helplessly. “There’s no choice. We really don’t dare let it out. You know how dogs like to sniff around everywhere, and sometimes they’ll eat things randomly.”
“Yeah, that just makes it even more pitiful,” Song Lingling sighed along with her. You couldn’t blame Luo Xun for being cautious—leaving aside the risk of it coming into contact with something filthy or getting infected, just think about how long it had been since people in the base had smelled meat. Letting it out now would basically be delivering food straight to someone else’s table.
Luo Xun also felt resigned. When he first decided to keep the little one, one reason was that having a dog at home could scare off intruders; another was simply to keep him company. And there was also a very slim hope—that perhaps the little one might mutate into a mutated animal. Mutated animals were immune to the zombie virus.
But now that he had Yan Fei, and the household’s security level had risen to the highest tier, the little one’s role had diminished quite a bit. Even so, every time they returned from going out and saw the little one come over to cling to them affectionately, both of them felt as though their hearts had been washed clean.
As for mutated animals… it was said that some animals had already mutated in the early days of the apocalypse, but those animals usually fled to uninhabited places immediately. No one knew their exact situation—only that starting in the second year, such animals began roaming about and attacking humans. Yes, by then, humans would not only have to face zombie attacks, but also these mutated animals hunting everywhere.
Of course, animals that had been raised at home from the start generally wouldn’t attack their owners after mutating, and there was a high chance they would retain their rationality and accompany their owners in hunting zombies.
There weren’t too many mushrooms to process today. They had already handled two batches before—once mushrooms reached large-scale maturity, they had to be processed quickly.
Of the four freezers Luo Xun and the others had brought back last time, aside from the two in regular use, the remaining two were now fully dedicated to storing mushroom extract. One of the regularly used freezers was placed in Li Tie’s apartment, and the other was in Xu Mei’s home. Judging from this upcoming trip, they would probably need to bring back a few more as backup.
Through experiments conducted by Luo Xun and Yan Fei, it was confirmed that frozen mushrooms could be stored for at least a month without issue. When mushroom extract was loaded into bullets and frozen together, the results after thawing were almost no different from before. Of course, the extract could also be frozen separately and loaded into ammunition when needed—it all depended on which method was more convenient at the time. In any case, of the two freezers at home, one was used specifically for freezing special ammunition, and the other for freezing pure mushroom extract.
After a full day’s work, they finally finished processing and packing this batch of mushrooms, and transported them in advance to the vehicles parked downstairs, ready for use when they went out of the city the next day. Besides that, yesterday Luo Xun and Yan Fei had once again exchanged a large amount of gasoline at the exchange window, following the same quantities as last time. The effect of burning zombies with gasoline last time had been truly terrifying—they absolutely weren’t going to pass up such a good method. Even if they had plenty of mushroom extract at home, it made no difference.
Early in the morning on the 28th, everyone was dressed in long sleeves, long pants, and rain boots. Although the weather was now warm enough to wander around in short sleeves, no one heading out of the city was willing to sacrifice their safety just for the sake of staying cool.
Standing at the front of the team, Luo Xun—together with the three women—looked everyone over one by one, checking their equipment. After confirming there were no problems, he nodded and pointed toward the stairwell. “Let’s move out.”
With experience from the previous two outings and the defensive measures they had finished before leaving last time, this trip out of the city went exceptionally smoothly.
On the way to the bank, Yan Fei casually collected all the metal materials within a twenty-meter radius from buildings on both sides of the road and from roadside debris. As a result, Li Tie and the others following behind watched in utter horror as small bits of metal first began flying alongside the vehicle. Later, those scattered pieces merged into metal balls of moderate size that rolled wildly along behind the car. Before long, like a snowball rolling downhill, the ordinary metal sphere grew larger and larger…
The thunderous rumbling attracted all the zombies along the route. They howled excitedly, bounding along as they chased the group, until they reached the vicinity of the bank—where these “food items” that had climbed out of the vehicles turned around and wiped them out instead.
After checking the bank they had used last time and confirming that although a few new tire tracks had appeared at the entrance—and it did seem that someone had stopped here before—those people had neither used the place as a base nor stayed for any length of time, Luo Xun and the others finally relaxed.
Yan Fei left the enormous metal ball that had rolled along the entire way on the street outside, and directly “pulled out” the metal that had fused near the bank last time. Very quickly, a massive metal wall took shape again, reinforced with additional metal peeled off from the big sphere, making it even taller and thicker.
After leaving firing ports in the metal wall, everyone once again ran to the entrance to begin setting up the traps.
Luo Xun first climbed up the lookout tower Yan Fei had specially made and surveyed the surroundings. Frowning, he climbed back down. “There are some zombies nearby that have been gradually lured toward the city outskirts recently, but the numbers aren’t very large. After one round of luring, there probably won’t be many left.”
They could simply abandon this stronghold and go deeper into the city to hunt crystal cores, but that would be much more dangerous. And although the ability users in the team had all reached Level Two, ordinary people were still ordinary people—aside from having better weapons, they had no other advantages.
“Well then, Captain,” Zhang Su asked, legs crossed and lazily swinging the shoe on his foot that looked like it might fall off at any moment, “do you have any brilliant ideas?”
“Lure them,” Luo Xun said after a moment’s silence, looking at him. “Preferably someone with very strong mobility and abilities.”
Zhang Su’s amused expression twisted slightly. He stopped swinging his foot, narrowed his eyes, and leaned closer to Luo Xun. “You mean you want me to run out there and make a round?”
Luo Xun quickly shook his head, saying under Wang Duo’s near-bulging stare, “By driving.” Then he added, “And it’d be best to bring some blood packs.”
Luring zombies out was the most efficient solution, but the person doing it would definitely face greater danger. Naturally, that task should go to the most suitable person—someone like Zhang Su, whose wind ability could enhance his movement speed.
Otherwise, Yan Fei would also be a good choice. In a crisis, he could completely encase himself in metal, or even shape it into a sphere and roll all the way back to safety. (Sure, he’d probably get dizzy, but at least he’d be safe.)
Either of them could do it, but both would need to be mentally prepared to take some risks. After speaking, Luo Xun looked at Yan Fei again. “You could go too, but you’d need to keep a close eye on your surroundings. If there’s danger, make sure there’s enough metal nearby—when things get bad, just make a thicker metal ball and hide inside it…”
Before Luo Xun could finish, the people around them were already mentally scrambling at the image of Yan Fei rolling back inside a metal ball. Zhang Su impatiently waved his hand. “I’ll go. Why make it so complicated? Making a ball and rolling back—how did you even come up with that?”
Without bothering to look at anyone else’s expressions, he walked straight toward a car.
The gasoline and ammunition had already been unloaded from the vehicle. Above the traps outside the breach, Yan Fei had already laid down a solid metal cover using his ability. Zhang Su stepped on the gas and drove straight out, even showily flicking the tail of the car and pulling off an exaggerated drift at the open intersection in front of the bank, before following the route Luo Xun had marked on the map.
Only after both man and car disappeared from sight did Wang Duo come back to his senses. “I should’ve gone with him!”
Han Li unceremoniously slapped the back of his head. “What would you go for? To cause trouble?”
“Exactly. If Brother Zhang can handle it himself, bringing you along would just slow things down.”
“Yeah—do you even have an ability? Can you control wind?”
Even Wang Duo, who slept next to Zhang Su every day, couldn’t clearly say what new abilities Zhang Su’s Level Two wind power had gained. The only thing he knew for sure was that its attack range had expanded—the whirlwind radius had grown from ten meters to twenty. As for anything else, it was completely unclear.
However, judging from the abilities of the team’s other two Level Two users, Song Lingling and Yu Xinran—Yu Xinran could now cause a patch of ground at a certain distance to suddenly turn into sand, and the sand could then be controlled to coil around a target’s feet and drag them downward. To train this ability, under the guidance of two utterly unscrupulous older sisters, the little girl had secretly dug countless sand pits in the open areas of the base, causing unsuspecting passersby to occasionally trip and fall while walking.
Song Lingling’s water-type ability had advanced in a similar way. In addition to having far more abundant and faster control over water elements, she had also gained a new ability—if a target other than pure water contained moisture, then once it was cut and wounded, the liquid and blood flowing from the wound would also fall under her control.
However, the range she could control was still limited. For example, when Luo Xun and the others processed mushrooms yesterday, if a mushroom was sliced, Song Lingling could only draw out the “water content” within about five centimeters of the wound. While that was sufficient when dealing with mushrooms, mushrooms weren’t dangerous only because of their juice—the flesh itself was equally corrosive. That was why Luo Xun and the others had been reluctant to let Song Lingling use her ability so freely on these precious mushrooms.
Still, when fighting zombies now, she could try extracting the decayed fluids from zombie wounds, though it still wasn’t of much practical use.
Even so, just these two people’s standard abilities had already shown very obvious improvement—let alone Zhang Su, the special wind-type ability user.
So half an hour later, everyone witnessed the following scene—
Zhang Su’s car came charging toward them as if it were a small boat riding waves in a storm, propelled forward by the wind itself! Amid jaws dropping all around, everyone sincerely marveled—truly brutal, worthy of Her Majesty the Queen!
Zhang Su came riding in on the wind, spraying blood all the way. The blood pack he had hung on the rear of the car to attract zombies had spilled everywhere along the road because he’d been having too much fun drifting; he hadn’t been careful, and by the time he drove into the passage Luo Xun had specially left open for him, the blood had already been scattered all over the ground. After getting out of the car, Zhang Su coughed lightly, sounding a bit guilty. “I forgot there was still a blood pack on the car on the way back… wasn’t paying attention, spilled some of it on the ground.”
Luo Xun stared for a long moment at the blood pack still clipped to the rear of the vehicle—now almost empty—and at the bright red stains smeared across the trunk and bumper, without saying a word. He seemed to recall having specifically told him to be careful and not let the blood spill, even giving him a metal container for that very purpose.
He didn’t ask where the container had gone—Luo Xun strongly suspected it had been dropped somewhere along the way. He pointed toward the rear of the car, telling Wang Duo to go help wipe it down, while the rest of the group followed his orders and prepared to face the enemy.
This time, Zhang Su had gone deeper into the city, doing his best to draw in as many nearby zombies as possible. There was no helping it—after all, he’d been swaggering around with a blood pack, parading it through the streets.
Before long, the zombies came charging toward the group’s position, howling with excitement. At this moment, Luo Xun was extremely glad that the route he had planned wasn’t very long and that the number of zombies drawn in was limited; otherwise, they’d really be in trouble now.
They used the same pit-kill strategy as last time—first clearing out the scattered zombies that arrived in small groups, then, once the main horde had reached the area and clustered outside the wall, opening the trap and killing a batch at once.
This time, the method was identical to last month’s. However, what gave everyone a slight headache was that the number of Level Two zombies was clearly much higher than before.
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