Cave Refuge-Chapter 314 - 291 Reunion_2
The survivors in the camp all entered a busy state of work when Dong Tianyu found Robinson William and invited him up to the Black Car. From the car’s refrigerator, he took out a bottle of ice water and handed it to Robinson William, casually asking, "What’s the situation at the military camp?"
Robinson William took the ice water without drinking it and simply recounted to Dong Tianyu their support mission experience.
According to Robinson William, when they arrived at the military camp, it had already been attacked by Giant Scorpions. Due to the need to protect the Granary, they were significantly restricted in combat.
This support wasn’t only from their camp but also included others. It was through this mission that Robinson William learned there were quite a few Survivor Camps in Saxon County, but in terms of the number of survivors, as well as their combat strength, those camps were far beneath theirs.
For instance, the camp where Robinson William, leading all Martial Artists of the Inner Breath Realm, went to assist didn’t have one to begin with. Most of the assisting troops were combinations of Martial Artists and ordinary people, and many among the dispatched teams didn’t have Cultivation Levels that reached the Inner Breath Realm.
As Dong Tianyu and Robinson William were discussing the camp’s matters, the sound of a convoy on the move reached them from not too far away. Dong Tianyu used Divine Sense before the convoy approached the camp and confirmed that it was Ye Liuyun returning with the vehicles.
Through the front windshield, Robinson William also saw an armored transport leading the convoy. Such vehicles were not absent in Pengcheng and Saxon County.
However, camps that possessed these vehicles typically deployed them in multiples, not singly, whenever they were sent out.
Like the armored transport leading the convoy now; it was the one Robinson William had brought from afar.
Ye Liuyun had only just returned to the camp when she first went to find Master Ye, asking him to gather some youths to help unload the vehicles.
Ye Liuyun brought back quite a few food bricks from Pengcheng. Although they were just ordinary food bricks, there were three whole truckloads of them.
These three truckloads of food bricks would, at the very least, keep the camp’s survivors fed for over a month. With some rationing, two or three months were not out of the question.
Besides the food bricks, Ye Liuyun also took out something resembling a radio box, which was said to be a radio delivered from Kyoto. It had a special signal-receiving device installed within. Supposedly, as long as it was on Blue Star and not below ten meters underground, it could receive signals from anywhere.
In addition, Ye Liuyun somehow also procured a batch of walkie-talkies, and even a small radio base station. With this device, direct contact within a three to five-kilometer radius of the camp via walkie-talkie became possible, instantly resolving the camp’s communication issues.
Ye Liuyun returned this time with a lot of critical information from Pengcheng.
Firstly, their return to Pengcheng had been very timely because, due to the earthquake, the West City District Headquarters which had dispersed was being re-established.
If anyone did not report for duty within the specified time, they would be directly replaced according to the succession system, with the deputy taking over and subsequent positions moving up in turn.
On top of that, the Pengcheng Government had spread the news that they had reestablished contact with Kyoto. They had timely relocated back to the East City District before the earthquake and had even directly withdrawn the East City District Command Post.
Moreover, the Officials had obtained some technology from an unknown source, using it to set up numerous signal relay stations in Pengcheng and even produced mobile phones similar in size to the old brick phones.
These mobile phones had a myriad of functions initially, but they were eventually pared down to retaining only the core function of making and receiving calls. Even so, Pengcheng had managed to restore basic communication.
Additionally, during the earthquake when transportation should have been temporarily suspended, Pengcheng saw frequent appearances of transport aircraft, specifically the latest models capable of vertical takeoff and landing like helicopters.
It was the arrival of these transport aircraft that brought ample food supplies to Pengcheng, bolstering the Airdrop Faction within the Pengcheng Government and giving them more confidence in their speech.
In Pengcheng, the only contribution that could be made was using the Bugs Clan to produce a nutritional supplement which allowed ordinary people to possess the physical qualities of a Martial Artist without the need for strenuous training.
Just like in Saxon County, where the number of Giant Scorpions surged due to the earthquakes, their numbers had increased more than before.
The situation in Pengcheng was more or less the same; with each violent earthquake came a multitude of emerging Bug Nests.
Every time a Bug Nest appeared, many unsuspecting ordinary survivors perished.
And now, just as Dong Tianyu had once speculated, the Bugs Clan seemed to be increasingly unafraid of Martial Artists, although no cases of them actively attacking Martial Artists had been reported yet.
However, many of the Bugs Clan had already begun to ignore the deterrence of Martial Artist patrols and had started to silently ambush ordinary survivors in the camp.
Normally, with the increase in the number of Bug Nests, Pengcheng’s hunting troops were able to capture more and more of the Bugs Clan. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
Under these circumstances, the nutritional supplement, originally available only to Pengcheng’s upper echelons, would eventually drop to an extremely low price as the number of Martial Artists grew.
Once the price fell to a certain level, Pengcheng would experience an explosive increase in the number of Martial Artists.
The rise in the number of Martial Artists would mean that most camps would not lack for them, and because of the low-priced nutritional supplements, it would also reduce the food consumption of many ordinary Martial Artists.
If no external forces intervened, the situation in Pengcheng was bound to improve progressively.
When the Pengcheng Government reported that the insects from the Bug Nests could be used to produce a product allowing ordinary people to attain the physical qualities of a Martial Artist without exercise,
the Imperial Court did not pay much attention. After all, there were no Bug Nests in Kyoto that specifically targeted ordinary people, so the senior officials did not care about the nutritional supplement matter.
However, although the few at the top of the Imperial Court disregarded the effects of the nutritional supplement,
those below saw the potential business opportunities - the chance to attain the physical condition of a Martial Artist, without training, by merely consuming a drink.
Once one had the physical qualities of a Martial Artist, by simply practicing any Cultivation Technique, one could quickly become a Martial Artist.
After confirming this situation, many eagerly went to Pengcheng to verify the truth. Different forces from Kyoto sent personnel to conduct various tests,
and once the effectiveness of the nutritional supplement was confirmed, those people wanted to take the Bug Nests back with them to propagate on their own. But when the queen bugs were taken away from Pengcheng, they quickly became feeble and, the farther they were moved from Pengcheng, irrespective of how many experiments were conducted, the queen bugs would die once they reached a certain distance from Pengcheng. Even if they did not die, they would enter a state of starvation and cease laying eggs to hatch larvae.
Pengcheng also produced documents confirming that humans were currently unable to domesticate these queen bugs of the Bug Nests for artificial breeding.
However, precisely because of the queen bugs’ behavior, Pengcheng gained an irreplaceable specialty product. With the nutritional supplement as this special product, Pengcheng was no longer in dire need of supplies.
Yet, although Pengcheng now seemed to have hope for economic revival, the Bugs Clan no longer feared Martial Artists. So, as Dong Tianyu had initially speculated, life for ordinary survivors in Pengcheng remained very dangerous despite the constant patrols of Martial Artists around the camps.
While it had not reached the point Dong Tianyu ultimately speculated about, where the Bugs Clan in the nests would actively attack Martial Artists, the situation in Pengcheng had become less secure. The decision to relocate had indeed been farsighted.
