Chapter 551: Backup Plan, the Importance of Developing an Antidote
During the day, Oreo would follow Su Chan to herd the cattle and sheep and would not return until four in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, Moore joined the infrastructure team, relying on his strength to earn some extra points to order additional meals at night.
Even Big Spark and Small Spark were busy. Every morning, after they had a good rest, they would stroll down the vegetable fields planted by the villagers to work until evening.
Su Mo finished inspecting the current state of the territory and returned to the shelter, finally having some free time of his own.
He returned to the shelter’s third floor, took out a slightly damp quilt, and put it out in the front of the car to dry. After cleaning the two fish in the trunk, he put them in a pot and boiled some stew.
Afterward, he lay down comfortably on the sofa and began his nap.
The sunlight s.h.i.+ned brightly, and the air smelt slightly different.
On the first sunny day after the heavy snowfall, the villagers were in full swing, sweating as they cleared up the snow around the village and continued to build the planned infrastructure.
The sounds of the villagers traveled through the open door of the shelter but did not disturb the sleeping Su Mo. Instead, he switched his position and slept more comfortably.
He slept for more than two hours until his alarm clock rang, and he opened his eyes leisurely.
He got up and walked to the pot over a small fire. Su Mo lifted the lid, and a strong aroma instantly spread throughout the third floor.
The freshness of the fish, the peppercorns’ fragrance, the red peppers’ spiciness, and the right amount of chili oil made for a very standard Sichuan-style meal.
After two hours of simmering, the flavors of all the ingredients were absorbed into the fish meat that was cut into small pieces, giving the fish fillet an alluring red surface.
The meat was extremely sinewy because of the ample amount of exercise the carps got in the freshwater lake.
Even the coldest hearts could instantly be melted into soft water after having a pot of warm fish stew during the winter.
Su Mo picked up the spoon beside him, took a small sip of the stew, and ate a piece of fish.
He felt the strong taste bursting in his mouth and nodded with satisfaction. He waved his hand and put the pot into his storage s.p.a.ce.
Since he took in the old batch of villagers and set up a kitchen, he had not cooked for a very long time.
It was not because he was lazy but because he had been so occupied every day after he had become a territory lord, and he had no leisure time to be in the kitchen cooking.
The fish stew that he cooked was also not because he was greedy and wanted to eat the meat alone, nor was it to reward the villagers or leaders.h.i.+p working hard in the basin.
The stew was for the group of “unknowns” in the basin!
He summoned the lion clan’s wind ability and confirmed that he had extinguished the fire on the stove, then took away the smell on the third floor and strode out of the shelter.
Su Mo moved the bedsheets that covered the Earth Tiger’s engine to the stool in the garage to continue basking in the sun.
He turned the key, started the engine, and leisurely drove Earth Tiger in the opposite direction of the village.
The snowy road was not easy to get through, especially after the snow had covered the obstacles on the road, and driving through it was full of various dangers.
Fortunately, Su Mo had been through this road on several occasions and could picture it without snow in his head if he closed his eyes.
He put on the song “All the Way North” by Jay Chou and leaned his arm out of the car window. The car left a long trail on the shallow snow all the way from south to north.
There were a number of villagers working outside the basin to gather resources in the first 20 to 30 kilometers of his journey.
They cheered and waved excitedly when they saw the Earth Tiger pa.s.sing by them.
Similarly, Su Mo honked back at them to reciprocate the people’s enthusiasm.
After 50 kilometers out, the silhouettes of people gradually decreased, and traces of humans around the area decreased by half.
It was like the small community of a village in ancient times.
According to an individual’s physical fitness, in the absence of high capabilities to protect themselves, the furthest that a villager could travel was the distance traveled by foot multiplied by four hours.
A person who walked fast and could go 10 km/hr would be able to travel 40 kilometers in 4 hours, and to travel back and forth to work would be 80 kilometers daily.
Those who walked slower and could do only approximately 5 to 6 km/hr would only be able to travel about 50 kilometers per day.
Without modern means of transportation and manufacturing tools, it was no longer possible for humans to cover thousands of kilometers, or hardly even hundreds of miles away.
Su Mo wandered until nearly 5 kilometers from the northern border of the basin and was about 124 kilometers away from the village. He stopped the car and began to look around to identify the correct direction.
He quickly found his way and turned the car around, heading west.
He came to a stop again after traveling 16 kilometers and saw an unexceptional small hill in front of him.
Unlike the big infrastructure in the village that stood stall from the ground and was quite a sight, everything here retained its original state as before.
Apart from the overall potential increase of the basin and the more favorable environment around the area, it would be tough to find any difference between this place and the surrounding area if an outsider were to enter here.
Su Mo turned off the engine and got out of the car. He followed the route from his memory and approached the front of the hill.
The snow had completely buried landmarks that helped identify the direction. Su Mo walked around the place and could not find any traces on the ground. Then, he bent down to clear the snow with a bit of doubt.
After a while, a small pile of snow had been cleared.
He pulled open a piece of turf, and a discordant wooden door appeared on the ground.
Bang… Bang bang… Bang… Bang bang!
A m.u.f.fled sound echoed below the ground following Su Mo’s rhythmic banging on the door.
Underneath the wooden door was evidently not solid ground, but an underground s.p.a.ce with a volume of at least 100 cubic meters.
The first time he knocked on the door, no one answered, and it seemed like there was no one below.
It was the same after he tried again.
After the third time, Su Mo changed the rhythm of his banging, and the sound beneath the door was no longer an empty echo. Instead, there was the sound of light footsteps.
Creak.
The wooden door was pushed up from below, revealing a furry bear head that had disappeared for a long time. It was… Li Li the bear!
“Huh? Shelter lord, why the sudden visit?!”
With a silly smile, Li Li scratched his head, and then he made way for Su Mo to head down the pa.s.sage.
Unlike conventional shelters, the pa.s.sage behind the planks did not have a wide living s.p.a.ce but a stairway that sloped downward with no end in sight.
The air was not stuffy as one would have imagined. On the contrary, it was not much different from the outside.
“Hmm? Did you make vents somewhere?”
Su Mo walked down the stairs, breathed in the air, and asked in surprise.
“Yeah, Connie came back last time and helped me open up another air vent. It’s on the side of the hill. She also blessed it so the air could be changed regularly!
“Connie isn’t around now?”
“Yeah, she came back three days ago and mentioned that the next time she returns will be after the blizzard is over!”
Li Li skilfully stuck his head out to observe the outside and closed the wooden door. The two went down the stairs while chatting about the current situation.
The underground base here used a similar Z-shaped pa.s.sage design as the shelter in the village.
However, the repeated folding of the stairs was much more frequent than in the underground shelter. The stairs going down were about 300 steps, and there were many large iron doors that could be pulled down on the way.
In terms of safety, even if the perimeter of the underground s.p.a.ce utilized wood, it was definitely comparable to Su Mo’s underground shelter!
“Did Connie mention how things are on her side?”
“She did mention a few times that our current team’s combat skills aren’t high, and the supplies we can carry are very limited. Plus the high walls that you mentioned, the acc.u.mulation of grain, and the slow progress for greater results. So she chose to move the territory beside a few small foreign race tribes and decided not to compete with those medium-sized tribes for benefits.
“Her strength is comparable to some large-scale foreign race leaders right now, so the smaller territories know about her and don’t dare to provoke us. Things have been going considerably harmoniously.
“The population of 26 that we had brought over before had now grown to about 84 people after recruiting some wandering foreign races for the past week.
“About accommodation…”
Connie seemed to be prepared for Su Mo’s curiosity about their development and explained everything carefully, even detailed things like the specific resource supplies of every item when he returned the last time.
Although Li Li could not remember everything, he used a very basic method and wrote down all the data to be clear when reporting it to Su Mo.
“You’ve already grown to 80 people so soon? 50 wooden houses built from scratch? This development speed isn’t slow at all!”
After walking down the last set of steps, another door was opened by someone inside and the real underground s.p.a.ce finally appeared in front of them when they entered through the door.
The usable area of the entire s.p.a.ce, from left to right, was about 300 square meters.
Half of the s.p.a.ce was used to accommodate the several foreigners, while the other half was used to store supplies.
Seeing that Su Mo had visited, the six foreigners standing on the first floor turned their heads and walked up to him respectfully.
“You’ve all worked hard!”
“No, it’s not hard at all! We’ve been able to eat well and improve our strength! We’re really comfortable!”
After being patted on the shoulder by Su Mo, the fox-man who opened the door trembled and then told the blatant truth, which made Li Li flush red.
When this mission point was first a.s.signed to them, they heard that they would have to stay underground in the dark every day and were a little rebellious at first.
However, within two days of the mission, they realized the benefits of the job and became honorable “traitors”!
There was no threat to their lives. They did not have to worry about supplies running out and could spend a lot of time doing their personal things. This was a bright future that none of them could imagine in their previous clans.
Looking at Su Mo’s caring eyes, they were not shameless enough to accept his compliment.
“Let’s go down and see what’s going on!”
Su Mo smiled and did not continue to tease the foreigners. He continued descending the staircase in the corner with Li Li.
Soon, a large iron gate was opened from the inside again.
This time, the secret that was guarded in the mission point had finally been revealed!
12 terrifying foreigners’ heads were fixed on something like the base of a light bulb and were wrapped with chains as thick as a baby’s forearm.
About 10 hoses pa.s.sed under the heads and formed nutrient transmission lines, replacing their non-existent bodies.
Seeing Su Mo entering, the skulls were stunned and continued to move with a look of wanting to rush up and bite, which was terrifying.
“They all mutated?”
“Yeah, even the last person couldn’t make it two days ago and had become like this. However, his strength was significantly greater than the others!”
He pointed to the fourth head and had a dreadful expression on his face, evidently startled by what happened like the others.
“Greater strength than the others?”
Su Mo frowned as he heard Li Li’s description of the scene two days ago when the last head mutated at night and almost escaped.
As soon as they arrived at the New World, which was on the night of Month 4 Day 1, Su Mo had secretly given Connie two secret orders.
After receiving the order, Connie dispatched all her foreign race troops immediately and came to the basin one step ahead of the main force.
This is also the reason why most of the villagers suddenly discovered that the foreigners had vanished.
After they arrived, Connie easily used the territory core that Su Mo had given her to build this underground shelter to detain over ten foreigners who had been infected.
After the construction was completed, she left the basin and went to another place prepared by Su Mo for her to establish the basin’s first subsidiary force.
They had to have a backup plan!
In fact, when the virtual reality had calculated that the survival probability of the basin among several ma.s.sive foreign races was less than 0.0%, Su Mo made up his mind that they had to have an alternative plan.
Connie was one of the trump cards that he had prepared.
Once the basin had been invaded to the point of no fighting back, they would decisively give up the territory!
Traveling to other places would be dangerous with only people and no resources.
However, if they were to go to the sub-base established by Connie, with the acc.u.mulation of the resources, the chance of making a comeback would be better than running around with nowhere to go.
Even after all the calculations, Su Mo did not expect that Connie, who was much riskier, would cooperate well while these so-called “zombies” had almost caused a problem.
‘No, but that doesn’t make sense. Oreo predicted that once all the infected foreigners lost their minds, they would not retain their strength and it would decrease by half during the first mutation?
‘How did this happen…?’
Quickly thinking about the information predicted by Oreo, Su Mo observed the mutated zombies in front of him and frowned with his vein protruding on his forehead.
Su Mo had already imagined an overwhelming scene like in the movies on Earth when he heard about the zombie crisis.
He felt a little chill running through him.
After that, when the large army boarded the New World and saw other foreign races, Su Mo initially had a bit of confidence about getting through the zombie crisis since both humans and foreign races had considerable strength and knowledge. It was possible to combine their strength and resist the zombie disaster to relieve individual pressure.
There would even be some foreign races that could serve as sacrifices. The basin in the New World’s hinterland would not need to worry about the zombie waves in the earlier stages.
After witnessing the strength of the Level 8 flame dragon in the Demon clan and the strength of the cyborg armies, the crisis of the zombie waves had completely become mediocre.
Even from a pessimistic point of view, the probability of getting through the disaster was more than 90%, and in terms of threat, it was not even as dangerous as the low temperatures.
However…
If these zombies’ strengths were not substantially reduced into weaklings like Oreo had predicted, and instead were like this fourth skull in front of them whose strength did not decrease and had increased to a more terrifying level…
‘Oh, this is a f*cking surprise! The foreign races at the periphery of the New World would not be able to withstand such strong zombie attacks. The different races would be forced into becoming allies after a wave or two.
‘Even if the basin is in the hinterland of the New World, I am afraid that these zombies will also invade us.
‘This is bad. We have to come up with an antidote quickly. Otherwise, once someone gets infected during a fight with these zombies, it’ll really become a fight against our own!’
Su Mo s.h.i.+vered and steeled his inner judgment when he thought of the terrifying scene of zombies running wild in a world war against zombies movie, then looked at the foreigners with bloodshot eyes and rotten faces.
There were about one or two months left before the mutation of all foreign races happened, but it would at least take two months under the current weather to swim to the New World.
These two conditions combined allowed those in the New World, apart from those unaware of the disaster, at least four months to prepare themselves to respond to this impending disaster!
Considering that other disasters along the way would likely delay the landing of the zombies, there would at least be half a year for the basin!
Within half a year, if they were able to research and come up with an effective antidote, then this disaster would become an opportunity for the basin to rise above the others!
However, if they could not develop the antidote or the strength of the zombies was significantly stronger than expected, then there would be only one option left for everyone…
Hiding underground like mice!