“What’s wrong? Why are you laughing?” Xu Song raised his head in confusion when he heard laughter.
“Does it still hurt?”
“Huh?” Xu Song blinked, realizing that someone’s gaze had slid down to his waist. His face turned red in an instant, and he gritted his teeth, lowered his head, and ignored him.
A large hand rested on his waist. “I’ll give you a good massage later.”
Xu Song rolled his eyes and turned to glare at him. “How did I not notice before that you have such thick skin?”
Yue Zheng smiled warmly, a rare sight. “If I had noticed earlier, wouldn’t you have run away?”
Xu Song choked back a response, continuing his work but with no intention of really pushing away the wandering hand on his waist. This man was someone he had worked so hard to get close to, and he would be crazy to push him away. However, the counterattack plan had to be put on the agenda!
After modifying the fuel tanks of two vehicles, they installed the previously removed solar panels on top of the pickup truck, connected the power source, and routed it into the vehicle. They also added a spare battery, completing the work thoroughly.
Yue Zheng picked up the tools and helped his beloved, who was still “injured”, to return to the RV. Mother Xu had already prepared lunch.
There was a large quantity of mixed food at home, even astonishingly large. But thanks to Abu, if they didn’t add things like potatoes and carrots, they could eat it for another day or two before it would be fully digested.
After lunch, they harvested oil fruits to replenish the new energy oil they had consumed. While processing the cotton seeds, they all pitched in to prepare them into finished products to be delivered to the Widow’s Legion’s processing center tomorrow.
It wasn’t until evening that everyone’s work relatively came to a close.
In their hands were two translucent and seemingly sturdy soft sacs. However, the outer layer of these things was as tough as rubber gloves, and it was extremely flexible.
Xu Song took a pair of scissors and struggled for a long time before finally piercing one of them.
The crystal-clear, seemingly iridescent red liquid flowed out instantly, and the thin membrane quickly deflated.
“So much energy,” Xu Song held his personal crystal, feeling the brilliant light slowly dissipating into the air. The crystal he held in his hand was heating up and seeping into his body through his skin, which was closest to it.
“This thing is so strange. It hasn’t dissipated much over the past few days, but once you puncture it, it instantly evaporates,” Xu Song said.
They had been too busy these past few days to bother researching these sacs extracted from the mutated beast’s body. They had only decided to dissect them today.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“This thing should be able to enhance our abilities,” Yue Zheng pondered, then suddenly picked up the pendant hanging from his neck and slowly approached it with the blue energy sac.
Over the past few days, they had vaguely felt that the crystal emitted more heat when they were near this sac, but it wasn’t a significant increase. Xu Song also observed that the sac was slowly shrinking every day. So today, they decided to experiment with it and see if there was a better way to use it.
And now…
Yue Zheng and Xu Song, both wearing necklaces with platinum-framed, empty outer layers, had no special reactions when they touched the sac.
However, when Yue Zheng accidentally allowed the sac to come into direct contact with the crystal inside the necklace, the blue luminance seemed to come alive. It flowed into the crystal through the connection point, transforming the radiant blue into a colorless glow, as if the crystal had returned to its original state.
Without a closer look, one could see the faint colorless radiance flowing within the crystal.
“It can be used like this?!” Xu Song exclaimed, his eyes wide with excitement as he stared at Yue Zheng’s chest.
Tiancheng and Tianyou, along with Mother Xu, approached with curiosity, looking at the crystal around his neck.
Yue Zheng glanced at Xu Song’s expression and, seeing only excitement and no other emotions, sighed inwardly. If he had known that this was how the crystal could be used, he would have used the sac on it directly earlier. But now…
“Next time we encounter an anomalous mutant animal and find one of these, we’ll put it into your crystal nucleus.”
Xu Song nodded and continued to curiously poke the pendant. “And for Tiancheng Tianyou and Xiao Shu.” The crystal in the pendant was continuously emitting heat, not as pronounced as when they punctured the sac, but it could last for a longer time.
Yue Zheng softly touched his soft hair and nodded silently. Everyone’s abilities needed to be enhanced as much as possible, but unfortunately, they encountered too few anomalous mutant creatures with abilities.
While everyone else avoided anomalous creatures with abilities, they actually hoped to encounter more of them… It was simply against common sense.
The next morning, the two of them got up early, loaded the rat skins and seedless cotton onto the car, and drove out of their home gate.
Their eyes were met with a vast expanse of white. Everywhere was covered with pristine snowflakes, making the base look exceptionally pure. They drove onto the streets, where the thick layer of snow made it nearly impossible for ordinary vehicles and rickshaws to move.
Xu Song was very grateful that they had the foresight not to randomly pick up a small pickup truck from the street but instead chose a new car with a large displacement and high load capacity when they passed by a car exhibition center.
The car struggled to drive in the snow, and on the way, amidst this picturesque scenery, funeral processions with mournful faces seemed to play a suppressed tune in this world.
Their destination was the cemetery to the east of the safe zone, where the deceased of the base found their final resting place. To prevent bodies from turning into zombies, as soon as someone in the base passed away, they would be sent there for cremation and burial.
Neither of them had a good mood when they left home. While they had warming supplies in their car, they couldn’t save everyone in the entire base, and they couldn’t help everyone. They didn’t know how long winter would last or how low the temperatures would go. If the time came when even the RV and these heating supplies couldn’t keep them warm, they wouldn’t be able to survive this winter either.
They drove to Zone C, following the address left by the Widow’s Legion from yesterday.
Passing by the place where they had previously purchased sewing machines and other equipment, they drove deeper into Zone C. Before long, they saw several rows of relatively large buildings that resembled factories.
This area was rented out specifically to small teams, some of which had been converted into simple “villas” for the entire team to rest and live in. Most of them had been filled with mechanical equipment gathered from various sources for production.
They parked the car and checked the doorplate number which was not covered by snow.
“It’s here,” Yue Zheng said, parking the car in front of the gate and honking twice.
A young girl, whom Yue Zheng had seen the day before, lying on the bed and crying that “good men have all turned gay,” stuck her head out to confirm that it was Yue Zheng and then withdrew, shortly after which the factory door opened.
“Hurry, close the door, we’re freezing!” A group of women dressed in a mishmash of various styles and seasons of clothing, both male and female, huddled around a fire in a relatively open space inside the room, beckoning people to close the door as they warmed themselves.
“Where’s the handsome guy?”
“I want to see the cute one!”
“Baby face!”
“His eyes and nose look a bit like He Shuhua’s.”
“They do make a good couple.”
“Top and bottom roles…”
Xu Song shuddered and looked at Yue Zheng helplessly. Why didn’t he warn him in advance that these women could be so terrifying?!
Yue Zheng suppressed a laugh, patted his shoulder, and, amid the women’s screams, opened the car door and faced… danger.
Xu Song got out of the car as well, and then… this unfortunate boy, who hadn’t been to the Widow’s Legion headquarters with them yesterday, was completely surrounded by these terrifying women…
“How old are you?”
“When did you hook up with your husband? Before or after the apocalypse?”
“Didn’t He Jie say her son just started his sophomore or junior year of college?”
“Right, your name is Xu Song, right? He Jie’s son, isn’t it?”
Xu Song was on the verge of a breakdown. If he were a woman or only as old as Tiancheng Tianyou, he would surely burst into tears and scare these terrifying women away. Didn’t his mother say that the Widow’s Legion was made up of pitiful women who had been abandoned by their husbands, lovers, and families and no longer wanted to love anyone? Then why were they surrounding a man like himself?!
Most of the women around Xu Song were relatively young and had a great interest in handsome guys. Of course, there were a few older ones, but their personalities were extremely nasty, and they liked to tease young guys.
In comparison, Yue Zheng’s situation was somewhat better.
The leader, Wu Jie, called over two women with physical mutation abilities to help Yue Zheng carry things down.
“Wow, there’s so much! No wonder they said it’s a big job,” Wu Jie said, looking at the stack of rat skins piled together with wide eyes.
“Yeah, we didn’t expect it to start snowing so suddenly these past two days, so we rushed to get this done,” Yue Zheng explained.
“Don’t worry, it’s fine,” Wu Jie had someone unfold a piece of rat skin and examine the intact hide, raising an eyebrow as she glanced at Yue Zheng with a smile that seemed to have more to it.
“You’ve got Impressive skills.”
“Huh?” Yue Zheng was busy stuffing cotton into the rat skin and didn’t quite understand her comment.
“No bullet holes, the skin is intact,” she said, then opened another one to inspect.
“The cut positions on each piece of skin are the same… When you guys kill these things, do you go straight for the head?”
Seeing that Yue Zheng just smiled without responding, she didn’t mind and opened a third piece, “I’ve never seen anyone with this technique back at the base…”
Thanks for the update 🤣❤️🤣❤️🌳🦮🦔🐝🦗
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