Everyone Is Starving Through the Winter, So Why Do You Have So Much Food?!

Ox and Horse Club group chat. WC Really Has Mosquitoes: "How strange. Where did the dog mods go? Haven't seen a single one all day." Lao Bai: "Fang Chang and the others went on a quest. They probably haven't logged off yet. By the way, is it really wise to say that right in front of me? (side-eye grin)" (Member "WC Really Has Mosquitoes" recalled a message.) WC Really Has Mosquitoes: "Fuck! They still haven't logged off? Do their characters not get tired?" If in-game characters didn't also need sleep, plenty of people would probably stay online twenty-four hours a day. Lao Bai: "Seems like they've been taking turns sleeping. I just saw Fang Chang on the forum." Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes: "Speaking of which, did you guys see that thread Ah Guang posted on the official website? Looks like version 1.0 is introducing a guild system. Should we start a guild when the time comes?" WC Really Has Mosquitoes: "Do you even need to ask? Absolutely! The Tier 0 combat players and production players are all in our group chat. If we join forces, won't we be invincible under the sun! (bare teeth)" Ye Shi: "Just curious, is that Tier 0 production player you're talking about yourself? (funny face)" WC Really Has Mosquitoes: "Fuck! You looking down on Goblin Technology? (angry)" Ye Shi: "Not me, couldn't be, wouldn't dare. (funny face)" Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes: "(side-eye)" Lao Bai: "Haha, stop roasting Mosquito. Some of the gadgets he makes are pretty solid—I might not have been able to pull them off myself. By the way, Ye Shi, how come you're offline? Quest finished?" Ye Shi: "Finished. On our way back right now. We're taking turns pedaling the bicycles. I was riding earlier, and now Kuang Feng is hauling me while I take a nap on his back. Brother Jieyan hasn't gotten the hang of logging off on the move yet, so he's probably fumbling around. I just washed my face, and after I grab a bite to eat, I'll go relieve Kuang Feng." Since they hadn't managed to trick Lao Bai into joining the squad earlier, Ye Shi had called Jieyan along instead. The bicycles produced by the No. 81 Steel Mill had large frames, with more than enough room for two people. Four people and two bicycles worked out perfectly for taking turns riding. Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes: "Speaking of which, what kind of quest did you guys do?" Ye Shi: "Reconnaissance! Another gang came from the north—about six trucks and five machine-gun pickups welded with steel plates. Their gear is noticeably better than the bunch we ran into last night, likely core forces of the Bone Chewer Tribe. They circled the experimental base twice before heading up. By now, they're probably blowing a gasket. I think I even heard a few gunshots. (funny face)" Lao Bai: "Haha, the fuel rods and supplies were all taken, and whatever couldn't be hauled off was burned. If I were them, I'd be fuming too!" WC Really Has Mosquitoes: "Don't derail! What about the guild? We've got to come up with a badass name, right?" Ye Shi: "Do you even have to ask? (funny face)" Lao Bai: "Indeed, no need to ask. (laugh)" The name "Ox and Horse Club" had almost become an urban legend in the single-player gaming sphere right alongside Wasteland OL. If the guild didn't use that name, it would truly be a waste. ... "Fuck! Stingy as hell!" In the shelter's resident hall, looking at the rewards rolled from the blind box, Chu Guang couldn't help cursing under his breath. There was no power armor. The results were as follows: Two lollipops, three stimpacks, and one active substance extractor. Chu Guang simply could not understand what kind of weapon an active substance extractor was supposed to be. Could it be because it produced the active substance used to make clones? And clones were somehow categorized as consumable weapons? That logical leap was stretching it way too far! Chu Guang felt that if this logic held, synths could probably be considered weapons too. After all, they could serve as human bombs, hold the line as cannon fodder, and drain the enemy's stamina if captured—if that wasn't a weapon, what was? So... Could the system roll him one of those instead? "Whatever. Having an extra active substance extractor isn't bad either." Back when there were only a few dozen players, someone might not even die once a week. Now that the player count had climbed and the conquest of Qingquan City's subterranean world was underway, "natural" attrition occurred every few days. The active substance extractor basically ran non-stop from the moment it was turned on, operating at full capacity every day. Chu Guang calculated that, ignoring the time spent loading materials and unloading product, it produced an average of 1 to 3 units of active substance per hour. For slime-mold mutants, the reclamation speed was considerably slower than for mammals, yielding around 0.9 to 1.5 units per hour. At the same time, factors such as material integrity, moisture content, temperature, and degree of decay all affected the reclaim volume and processing speed. After pondering for a moment, Chu Guang reached a decision. "The new active substance extractor can just be deployed outside Floor B3." That way, there would be no need to chop mutant carcasses into pieces, pack them up, and haul them to the surface to be processed. Chu Guang had long considered Shelter 404 his home. Dragging those gory, bloody things into his home always made him feel a bit nauseated. ... Floor B3 of Shelter 404. Two guards, one in front and one behind, carried a pitch-black "coffin" through the gear-shaped blast door and walked outside. Beyond the door lay an unmapped subterranean tunnel connecting to Qingquan City's subway network, stretching outward past the city limits toward who knew where. Currently, the players' exploration progress was roughly one kilometer to the north and eight hundred meters to the south. Due to the presence of the broodmother in central Qingquan City, pushing toward the city center was more difficult, even though they were still far from it. The construction team from the outpost had built a checkpoint here out of cement, bricks, and sandbags. Two guards stood watch in shifts inside the checkpoint, responsible for issuing quests to the shelter residents while preventing them from bringing bizarre items back into the shelter or luring in troublesome mutants. Although no accidents had occurred so far, the Administrator had still equipped this post with a machine gun, 300 rounds of machine-gun ammunition, a simple 12 kW wood-fired generator, and four searchlights. In addition, the checkpoint had two Panzerfaust rocket launchers stored in a locked wooden crate, with the key kept by the captain on duty. It was like a mini bunker. Even if they ran into a Tyrant, they could hold out for a minute or two—long enough to shut the shelter door. Carrying the pitch-black "coffin" into the checkpoint and setting it down next to the generator, the young rookie guard straightened his back and wiped away his sweat. Watching his superior pull a wire from the generator and connect it to the bizarre machine, he couldn't help asking curiously, "Sir, what is this crate used for?" Liu Ding dusted off his hands, glanced at the recruit, and grinned. "You don't want to know." Just as they spoke, two shelter residents approached, carrying the pitch-black corpse of a gnawer. "We just saw the quest update!" "Can gnawer corpses be recycled now?" Glancing at the subtitles on his VM, Liu Ding followed the Administrator's instructions, nodded solemnly at them, and recited his lines by the book in an awkward accent: "Yes, honored warriors. I leave this to you." The two players beamed, stepped forward cheerfully, adeptly opened the lid of the active substance extractor, and tossed the corpse inside. They were now mature little players. They could produce the raw materials to synthesize themselves! Elaina wiped the sweat from his forehead, stared at the active substance extractor that had started running, and couldn't help asking, "By the way, how many revive coins can this thing produce in a day?" Mole on the Run from the Canyon replied offhandedly, "Heard it's one an hour... but gnawers have a low synthesis yield. Not sure about the exact output." "Fuck! Only that much?" "Can't help it. Word is mammals give a higher synthesis yield." Elaina's mind stirred, and he asked, "Say... how much could you squeeze out of a living human?" Mole on the Run from the Canyon glanced at him. "Never tried. Why don't you lie down inside and find out?" "Are you the devil???" Liu Ding glanced at his VM. No subtitles appeared on it, so he figured these people weren't talking to him. The young guard beside him looked at these warriors with reverence. If only he could one day be as powerful and courageous as them, fighting those terrifying mutants all on his own... ... East gate of the outpost. Roughly a hundred meters past the trench before the perimeter wall, tribespeople were treading across the morning snow, carrying buckets toward Ling Lake to the west. A new day began with fetching water. Now in December, the surface of Ling Lake had frozen over, sturdy enough for people to run near the shore. They had to chisel through the ice to reach the fresh water beneath. With some luck, they might even snag a fish or two coming up to the ice holes to breathe. Since a newly arrived refugee tribe had settled here recently and tribesmen separated along the journey had gradually trickled in, the once sparsely populated settlement looked much livelier. However, although the two tribes lived right next to each other, separated only by a narrow path, they had not merged completely into a single village. Even though they were friendly enough—two couples had even married recently—both sides maintained a tacit distance, neither overly estranged nor presumptuously intimate. The chief of the newly arrived tribe had planted a spear at the entrance of his settlement as their totem. Seeing this, Wu Tiefu followed suit, finding a wooden post to set at his settlement's entrance and embedding an axe into it. And so, the two tribes, Frost Spear and Iron Axe, were born. Patrolling outside the base with rifles slung over their backs, two guards paused by the east gate, glanced toward the tribal settlement, and chatted idly. "It's gotten livelier around the base lately." "Yeah." "Heard that among the recent recruits in the guard team, two are tribesmen?" "That's right. Two skinny, dark-skinned lads, if I recall. Don't even know if they're sixteen yet. I'm worried they'll piss their pants the first time bullets whistle over their trench in a real fight." Wetting your pants in this damn weather was no laughing matter; it could easily prove fatal. "Speaking of which, are we going to war soon?" "Most likely. I heard from the brothers who returned last night that they fought those Bone Chewer Tribe folks over ten kilometers away. Rockets were screeching across the sky, blowing up a ton of people!" Though talk of war brought knitted brows, not a single lad in the guard team was afraid. After all, even a formidable enemy like the Legion had tasted defeat at their hands, so what was there to fear from a pack of uncivilized savages? They had zero doubt that the wise and mighty Administrator would lead them to victory, and that whatever hyenas and wolves dared bare their fangs would be crushed beneath the hammer of justice! Just then, a young guard jogged over from not far away. "We need hands up north! Are you guys busy right now? If not, come give us a hand." The two patrolling guards turned grim, tightening their grip on their rifle slings. "We're on patrol. What's the situation to the north?" Seeing their tense expressions, the young guard chuckled. "Relax, it's not marauders—it's loot! From last night's operation. We hauled the spoils over to Changjiu Farm, and now a batch has arrived at the north gate of the Wetland Park. Trucks can't enter the park, so we need a few strong hands to help move and unload cargo." Hearing that, the two breathed a sigh of relief and eased their grip on their rifle straps. "I'll notify the warehouse manager. Give me a moment." Hauling tasks had to be issued by the warehouse manager; they lacked the authority to post quests. The young guard nodded vigorously. "Yeah! Doesn't need to be many, about ten will do!" Last night's major battle had yielded over thirty tons of grain captured from the marauders, along with a massive haul of standard-issue Legion firearms, ammunition, and even artillery shells! Part of the supplies had been left at Changjiu Farm, while the rest was brought here to the outpost. Right at that moment, in the central courtyard of the sanatorium, Brown, who had just gotten out of bed, rubbed his aching temples and stifled a yawn. All night long, the aerial drone footage he had watched on the VM had looped through his dreams, keeping him awake until dawn. "Yo, our old landlord's up early too." Hearing the voice behind him, Brown turned around instinctively. When he saw who was speaking, his brow furrowed into deep ridges. "Your mouth is as foul as ever. Amazing you've managed to stay alive this long." Night Owl, arms crossed, didn't take the barb to heart, squeezing a slightly mocking smirk onto his scarred face. "Don't get me wrong, no malice intended. Let's talk business—how's your decision coming along?" Brown tilted his chin up slightly. "Until I hear a concrete relocation plan, I refuse to express any opinion." Relocation plan? Did that kind of thing even need a plan? "You always talk in such complicated ways... Straight up, I plan to move here." Brown scoffed at the naive remark, replying flatly, "Is that your own idea, or the collective wish of every survivor in Highway Town?" Night Owl shrugged. "Doesn't matter. I'll convince them." "Convince them with what?" "We're no match for those marauders, and Boulder City doesn't give a damn about us, let alone care whether we live or die. If we don't unite now, what awaits us is being picked off one by one." Such an innocent sentiment. "Can you guarantee those blue coats will truly keep you safe? Even if they have the power, can you guarantee they won't treat you as cannon fodder and throw you onto the front line to waste the marauders' bullets?" Truth be told, while Brown did harbor some hope that these suddenly ascendant blue coats could resolve the encroaching danger from the north—otherwise he wouldn't be here—the arrangement he envisioned was for the blue coats to organize a coalition force that would arrive at their doorsteps in times of need to counter marauder raids alongside them. For that, he was willing to pay a modest price, be it grain or something else. Yet Brown never imagined that the proposal put forward by these blue coats was for all of them to relocate here. Utterly absurd! If he actually did that, it would unquestionably mean surrendering everything he currently possessed! Even taking a step back, if they absolutely had to flee, why not run to the much safer Boulder City? It was far more civilized! Its military was far stronger! And it was incomparably safer than this place! While the two held fast to their opposing views, a commotion arose at the north gate. A group of shelter residents was hauling in bundles of grain from outside using wooden and metal carts. A rough count showed there had to be at least a dozen tons of grain. Having just stepped out of the sanatorium after waking up, Doru rubbed his eyes. Staring at the cartloads of grain being hauled from the north gate toward the warehouse, his beady, pea-sized eyes widened to the size of coins, and he muttered in disbelief, "Where did all this food come from?!" Everyone is starving through the winter, so why do you have so much food?! "Most likely from those marauders." Du Conglin walked out through the doors of the sanatorium wearing a hunter's cap, his expression a mix of joy and dread. The good news was that these blue coats possessed formidable strength. Judging from the spoils, that pitch-black video hadn't been doctored after all; they really had clashed with the marauders and won! The bad news, however, was that judging by the sheer volume of grain, the pack of marauders eyeing the northern outskirts of Qingquan City had to be massive! Tens of thousands of kilograms of grain were being trundled into the granary cart by cart, and what couldn't fit had to be stacked under makeshift sheds. Rations of this magnitude would take multiple truckloads to haul; there was no way this was meant for just a hundred or two hundred people! As everyone knew, marauders didn't farm—at least not by their own hands. To amass so much grain, countless families must have been torn apart and slaughtered along their path... Emerging one after another from the guest quarters, the delegates from other survivor settlements across the northern outskirts watched the shelter residents bustling about moving the loot, each wearing a distinct and telling expression. Some looked envious, some worried, and still others utterly conflicted. Right then, a man clad in power armor walked out through the sanatorium's main entrance. Disengaging the power armor's faceplate, Chu Guang looked at the unfamiliar survivor nearest to him and spoke in a friendly tone. "Did you sleep well last night?" Hearing the lord of this place address him, Du Conglin from Morning Breeze Community said stiffly, "Thank you for your hospitality. I rested very peacefully last night." "Good to hear." Smiling faintly, Chu Guang paused for a moment, then turned his gaze toward the representatives of the other survivor settlements gathered around and continued, "Since everyone is here," "please follow me."