Rotting Land: Survive

It took almost an hour to finish blocking the road; besides clearing out a passage, Luo Baocun, who was in charge of checking usable car parts, also had an unexpected discovery.

It was all thanks to that sudden flash of inspiration from Xu Renjie; otherwise the Survivors would definitely have missed this rare chance to get supplies.

As mentioned before, both Old Xu and Wei Dazhuang’s groups had checked the vehicles, but came up empty-handed.

So Old Xu concluded that because of the location and how much time had passed, the vehicles had already been "looted."

But he overlooked one place: the luggage holds of the buses, especially tour buses. Before boarding, passengers are always asked by the driver to put large items in the side luggage holds to lessen the pressure on cabin space and also to keep sudden emergency braking from sending things flying and injuring passengers.

And while searching for usable vehicle parts, Luo Baocun accidentally discovered this "loophole," and with a testing mindset pried open the luggage door, never expecting he’d hit the jackpot.

No doubt those Survivor Teams who had looted the buses before had made the same mistake as Xu Renjie; they all habitually ignored places that were out of sight.

So this unexpected haul, in a sense, also taught Old Xu a lesson: you can’t just look at the surface of things, or you’re very likely to miss something valuable.

Finding supplies is a happy thing no matter when it happens.

Especially these unopened packages; to Survivors right now, they’re like New Year’s gifts—everyone’s eager to see what’s inside.

The action group carried the big and small boxes back to base camp in batches, then started sorting the supplies.

The sun was setting in the west, and the afterglow of the sunset dyed the whole sky red like fire.

Old Zhao and Wei Yang had been busy for a good while, and the dishes were coming out of the pots one after another. Since they’d prepared well before departure, all they had to do was reheat the cooked dishes.

Five dishes and one soup, plus a basin of fragrant white rice—there weren’t many types of dishes, but there was plenty of each.

After all, the Survivor Team had been expanding for half a year and was no longer small in scale, so in terms of supply allocation Old Zhao had made very thorough preparations before setting out.

Considering safety, the Guard group responsible for security went down to eat in shifts, two people at a time.

No choice; even if it felt a bit inhuman, the team’s safety was always the most important thing.

The soldiers from Sharp Blade Company had no complaints about this. They were the hot-blooded men who could shed blood and sacrifice their lives for the people of the motherland; having dinner a bit later for the team’s sake was nothing.

In front of the blazing bonfire, the Survivors gathered together and began their routine debrief meeting.

As usual, Old Xu spoke first. As the team’s overall commander, he gave a basic rundown of the day’s actions. Overall, everything had gone smoothly.

Then Old Xu very naturally shifted the topic over to the two brothers, Li Zhong and Li Guo.

Back in the villa days, the two of them had been holed up in the garage workshop muttering over something.

Because the situation was so tense back then and he was run off his feet, Xu Renjie never had the time to "bother" the two brothers.

But Old Xu had still heard some things; he’d heard the brothers had come up with quite a few inventions.

He’d especially heard that once they knew the team was leaving the villa, the two brothers specifically developed some things for that.

It was just that Old Xu hadn’t yet seen any finished products. Taking advantage of mealtime, he asked with great interest, "Li Zhong, how’s that improved driving communication project you mentioned to me last time coming along?"

Li Zhong stopped what he was doing, pointed back at the escort truck behind him, and grinned. "It’s already been tuned and tested. Initial tests all look good."

Following the direction of Li Zhong’s finger, Xu Renjie looked over and sure enough noticed that the escort truck’s exterior had changed.

There was an extra round object on the roof that looked like an antenna. Old Xu was quite curious at the sight and pressed on, "Heh, Xiao Li, don’t keep us in suspense. Everyone’s waiting. Just tell us straight what your thing does."

Li Zhong didn’t act coy. Normally he might seem a bit dazed, like many academic types, but the moment he talked about his own field, he was like a different person—serious and all business. "The main purpose of this is to solve communication issues while driving. Right now we can use radio to talk, but sometimes, in special situations, it might not be convenient to speak. So I thought of using the laptop’s built-in Bluetooth module, and routing it through a homemade antenna on the roof so that the two vehicles can form a local link while on the move. Also, I wrote a driving chat program. Time was tight so there are still some bugs, but it should be fine for basic chatting."

"Whoa!" As soon as Li Zhong finished, he immediately drew exclamations from the younger generation—Wu Chao and Wen Quanxin.

Especially Tang Xiaoquan. As someone in the IT industry himself, he felt that compared to Li Zhong, the gap was really huge.

Compared to the excitement of the younger ones, Old Lin, though quite stirred, still kept a cool head overall. He thought for a moment and cut to the point: "Xiao Li, this is a good idea. So what’s the current supported receiving range?"

Obviously, the quality of the signal would decide the success or failure of this project. If the maximum distance was only one or two meters, Lin Junfu didn’t think the project had much practical meaning.

After all, in post-apocalyptic driving, who could keep the distance between vehicles strictly at one or two meters?

If something urgent came up, never mind whether such a distance would cause an accident; just a sudden disconnection could be enough to cause a disaster from poor communication.

Having been steeped in the computer industry for so many years, Li Zhong naturally wouldn’t make such a rookie mistake. He answered confidently, "The equipment has only just been installed. According to my calculated data, the current signal reception should be stable up to about a hundred meters. Of course, weather and environment will affect it, so there may be some deviation, but the error shouldn’t be large."

"A hundred meters?" Hearing that number, Lin Junfu subconsciously nodded. That distance was clearly enough to meet the convoy’s needs.

Old Xu immediately gave a thumbs-up. "Nice! Well done! Xiao Li, this is a really good piece of development."

"Heh, Old Xu, if you start praising him now, isn’t it a bit early?" Wang Zhongyu said with a mysterious look and a slightly jokey tone.

"Hey, Xiao Wang, you again." Li Zhong rolled his eyes at Wang Zhongyu and shook his head with a wry smile.

But Wang Zhongyu pretended not to see, and repeated, for at least the tenth time, what he’d been saying, "Zhong and Guo didn’t just come up with Bluetooth comms, you know. The two of them also installed a third eye on our vehicles."

"A third eye!?" Apart from the Survivors who’d already been told, almost everyone else, including Old Xu, blurted out in surprise.

"What do you mean? Xiao Wang, you’ve been hanging around Xiao Wen too long and picked up his show-off habits, huh!" (To be continued. If you like this work, you’re welcome to go to Qidian (qidian.com) to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users please read at m.qidian.com.)