novel
| ← Ch.172 | Ch.174 → |
In order to detect the devil vine's range, the team first threw stones around the test area... It left them a little speechless and desperate, the devil vines actually surrounded the building, there was not even a gap left!
Not just here, a lot of the other farmland had grown the bizarre devil vines.
Luo Xun was not sure if these things came from the test building, but for now they have to give up, pack their bags and head towards the solar panel factory tomorrow.
"Those things can't grow here right?" They were delayed after checking the range of the vines. It was safer to spend the night after cleaning out a nearby house and making sure there were no zombies around.
After hearing Wang Duo's words, everyone looked at him, "Don't jinx us you blabbermouth!"
Wang Duo stiffened before placing his wronged head against Zhang Yi."Wuwuwu, dear, they are bullying me..."
Zhang Yi shook his shoulder and said, "You should have said nothing."
Luo Xun coughed twice."That... there should be no farmland near the factory but we should be careful on the road since there is open land..."
Although the majority of the land they passed did not seem to have those strange vines. But who knew if the land grew more dangerous the further away from base?
After a night of relative peace, the team who were used to being surrounded by zombies felt a tad strange. They ate breakfast early in the morning, packed up their things and subconsciously watched the vines that they had tried to observe.
The area was as quiet as ever, with the even snow, if they had not seen everything yesterday who would have thought there were devil vines around? Or was everything they saw yesterday all hallucinations?
They climbed into their respective cars. Luo Xun charted their course and they drove towards the road before following the highway towards the factory.
The cold air buffeted the team but fortunately inside the sled was very warm. The sun shining extra bright so the snow seemed to start melting. After passing the whole day on the road, on the sixth day after exiting base, they found a different scene than before...
"This... what's going on?"
"God, this is too..."
"Hey?! What are those dark things in the distance?!"
"Tank! Armored vehicles!"
"And the truck... it's the army that came out to get solar panels!"
"But around here..."
"It's... a zombie horde."
The team stood silently beside the sled while looking at the scene. Before the earth was covered in white snow, but now there was unearthed land that resembled a black dragon in the snow. The contrast hit their eyes hard.
The crowd was silent for a long time before Luo Xun took a step forward to look where the horde went."It seems that they returned to base by this road... it's not the one where we came from."
"... Luo Xun, are these zombies cooperating?!" Li TIe turned his head, his eyes looked like they were about to fall out.
Zhang Yi squinted."If they were not acting together, how could there be so many zombies in the siege?"
"But... I thought it was because they were attracted by the scent of the people inside base..." Li Tie's voice was quivering but the team could not help but laugh at his word choice.
"The ice in these muddy areas is hard and should have frozen over a long time ago." Yan Fei look a closer look at the border between snow and earth.
The'road' showed the land underneath and was flattened by zombies. Since there were so many, the snow had been extremely flattened. Now there was only a thin layer of solid black that could be seen. It was similar to when the zombies trampled the ground around the base. Since they only passed once, there was an ice shell on the surface to be melted by ability users.
Luo Xun grabbed his telescope and climbed up to the roof. He looked around and determined that there was nothing nearby."Let's go to those cars and see what happened."
They pushed the sled cars towards the turned over military vehicles. In several of the vehicles you could see some leftover hands and feet not eaten by zombies. The insides were relatively clean, except for some blood there were no traces of people
There were signs of tragedy next to the cars with bare land, some parts charred and with large holes and shell casings.
Luo Xun did not find any weapons, almost everything was completely destroyed. All instruments that might have been usable were damaged or contaminated with an unknown liquid that was completely frozen in this weather.
But in the trunk, except for a few things, the rest were in decent condition!
The trucks were really the ones being sent to solar panel factories, there were a large number of the things in storage.
"Grab them!" Luo Xun checked around and waved - there were plenty of batteries along with the panels. If all these things were collected, it would be more than enough for their walls! It would not even a problem for multiple homes!
Although only one of the two target locations was harvested, the gains were far higher than expected, a real'bumper crop'!
Two of the trucks were turned over, the remaining three had undamaged solar panels and batteries. However the first two trucks had other materials that were salvageable. Together they sifted around four trucks worth of material.
If they wanted to move all this, it was obvious that Yan Fei had not collected enough metal along the way...
In the face of the car wreckage, would they actually be short on metal?
Without saying anything, Yan Fei put all the metal to one side. The three ladies were on the roadside. Xu Mei melted the snow, Song Lingling moved the water aside and Yu Xinran created a hole. They all worked together to bury the remains of the wreck, throwing the body parts into the makeshift grave.
Although they did not know who these people were since there only body parts, likely some of the dead had joined the ranks of the zombies. But these were all survivors from the same base and building a simple grave did not cost anything.
The sand became more solid after coming in contact with water. Yan Fei walked over with a metal plate.
They filled the four sled cars and Yan Fei simply made four metal boxes to pull behind them. But the size of the boxes was larger than one would normally expect.
"How are we going to get back to base..."
Looking at the comically large metal boxes, not to mention there would be trouble re-entering base, there was no place at home to leave it...
"And there's... won't people check the insides?" He Qiankun weakly raised a hand and reminded the group.
Right, there was that... They had not thought about it and now they had an extra four metal containers...
"Get back first, if need be, hide it somewhere outside the base." Luo Xun thought a bit before explaining."If we have to... take some back home and the rest can be buried in a pit..."
It was easy for the team to create holes with Yu Xinran and Yan Fei who could make sealed boxes. This stuff was not food so it should be storable with no contact with moisture or open air!
"Then head back to base first." Xu Mei looked at the boxes with some worry."Can we really... pull these things?"
Everyone focused on the box, it was so large compared to their tiny sleds...
After experimentation, they found that it took two cars combined to pull a box. But they only four of them! What would they do with the remaining two boxes?
No other way, they could only find a place covered in snow to dog a pit and bury it. They left a mark on the map. As long as they came here, Yan Fei could detect the metal location and dig it out.
This operation took until nightfall. The team had to find a place to rest after tying up the box to be ready for the morning.
Zhang Yi was in the habit of using his wind ability to check around. This routine was something everyone was accustomed to. But this time, Zhang Yi's eyes flew open and he turned with fearful eyes.
"Zombies..."
| ← Ch. 172 | Ch. 174 → |