Chapter 8: First Encounter with Survivors
"Report!"
"Ah, Guang Qiang, what's wrong?"
"Chief, there's seafood fried noodles and Yangzhou fried rice here! Which one would you like to eat?"
Gu Chengyuan had just finished tallying today's gains and closed the system interface.
Pu Guangqiang came over, holding two steaming paper meal boxes.
By this time, it was completely dark. Pu Guangqiang, who was already dark-skinned, seemed to blend into the darkness, making his figure indistinguishable.
But his large eyes, staring at Gu Chenyuan, were exceptionally bright.
"I'll have the Yangzhou fried rice! I'm not used to eating things that swim in the water."
"Oh, right, Guang Qiang, you don't dislike seafood, do you?"
Pu Guangqiang grinned, revealing his large white teeth, and said somewhat happily:
"No dislike, no dislike! Chief, I quite like eating it."
"That's good. You should eat quickly too. Go tell your Squad Leader to arrange the rotation of the sentries. We'll board the vehicle and depart after another half an hour of rest!"
"Yes!"
After Pu Guangqiang left, Gu Chenyuan held the self-heating rice in his hands and began to eat.
The system Boss was quite generous. The Squad's supplies included new-style individual self-heating rice, with significant improvements in variety and taste.
Not only were there various fried noodles and fried rice options for the main course, but the self-heating pack also came with drink mixes, chocolate, chewing gum, energy bars, dried fruit, and more.
The taste couldn't be called delicious, but compared to other survivors who might still be starving and afraid,
Gu Chenyuan could only sigh:
Luxurious!
Half an hour later, after the sentries withdrew and the entire elite Infantry Class had boarded the vehicle, Gu Chenyuan began to issue the next mission.
"Soldiers, through your bloody battle this afternoon, we have advanced nearly ten kilometers along Xishui North Road! We have completed the planned combat mission with high standards!"
"We are now the final seven kilometers away from Yezhou University! Because it's dark, I've chosen to rely on the armored vehicle to advance!"
"During the advance, unless absolutely necessary, all personnel will not dismount to fight the zombies!"
Saying this, Gu Chenyuan raised his hand to look at the time displayed on his tactical watch.
20:15
"We will strive to reach Yezhou University before nine-thirty! And find a resting point before eleven!"
"Take this time to rest during the journey! Junpeng, as the driver, still needs to stay alert. The situation at night is complex, and you need to be even more vigilant than during the day!"
"Depart now!"
Received!
Boom~
As the deep and powerful six-cylinder diesel engine roared to life,
The over eight-ton mengshi 3 armored assault vehicle slowly started, driving into the darkness ahead.
...
...
At the intersection where Ye Da Road meets Xishui North Road,
A Maybach S680 with a severely deformed front and a flat left front tire lay awkwardly in the middle of the road, surrounded by a throng of zombies.
The culprit that caused its predicament was a small mud transport truck that had flipped over and crashed into the green belt not far away.
Three people sat inside the Maybach. The burly middle-aged man in the back seat was impeccably dressed, his hair neatly combed. His face was hidden in the darkness, making his expression unclear.
But his frequent glances at his watch were enough to show his inner anxiety and restlessness at this moment.
The burly man in the driver's seat had a rough and weathered face with a bruise the size of a baby's palm, clearly left over from the earlier car accident.
His eyes revealed ferocity, occasionally scanning the horde of corpses surrounding the car, seemingly calculating how to attack.
Sitting in the passenger seat was a young Secretary in a neat suit, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, and possessing a refined demeanor. His emotional control was on the verge of collapse, his face filled with panic and fear.
The three of them sat there, with different expressions, feeling the car body shake as the zombies pushed against it.
In the silent car, the only sounds were the thudding that penetrated the vehicle and the grating scratching sounds like fingernails on a blackboard, each sound seeming to claw at their hearts.
And almost every time they turned their heads, they would come face-to-face with the zombies outside the window, their mouths wide open, dripping with pus.
In this atmosphere of despair that was irritatingly oppressive, it was the young Secretary who first lost his composure and spoke in a suppressed voice:
"Boss An, are the rescue personnel coming?"
Everyone in the car knew this was essentially a rhetorical question, because normally, if there was a minor car accident, the traffic police would arrive within ten minutes.
But today, it could be said that all the buffs were stacked!
Not only the car accident involving them and the surrounding vehicles, but they had also witnessed more than one murder with their own eyes!
One of them was the driver of that mud transport truck.
He had finally managed to crawl out of the overturned driver's cab alive, only to be surrounded by these zombies and gnawed into a pile of broken bones in an instant.
They started the car, wanting to escape, but the engine was broken. Not only did they fail to escape, but they also made noise, attracting the zombies to surround them!
This caused them to lose even the chance to open the door and escape on foot!
"What should we do? If I knew what to do, I would have run away already! They're not the hoodlums from my high school days, I could fight my way out of that!"
Listening to Chairman Cai Anxin's crude remarks, the driver and Secretary had long been accustomed to it and showed no surprise.
Despite Cai Anxin being the head of Hongtu Group, with a market value of nearly ten billion, always presenting himself as a strategist and a cultured general in public,
Those who knew him well knew that he had a very strong 'social' side in private.
He loved reminiscing about the days when he ruled the school in high school.
It was as if the proudest achievement of his life wasn't building a ten-billion-dollar group, but becoming the Boss of that high school!
Speaking of him, he was also a legendary figure. He started as a hoodlum in middle school, became the school Boss in high school, earning the nickname 'Overlord'. By rights, he should have been following a 'Crows Zero' script.
But after graduating high school and retiring from the army, he immediately embarked on a life of extraordinary success!
From starting small, selling fried potatoes with friends near Night University, to the Hongtu Group with a market value of ten billion today, it took him less than twenty years!
"When facing a major event, one must remain calm! At worst, death, damn it!"
"And even if I have to be afraid of death, I'm ahead of you! I'm afraid for my ten billion fortune and over a dozen mistresses!"
"You have nothing, what do you have? You have nothing! What are you afraid of?"
"If you die, you don't lose anything. I'll lose a lot! I can at least work for another twenty years! So many beautiful girls! Damn it~"
Although the young Secretary was mentally prepared, he was still left dizzy by the torrent of insults.
However, after being scolded like this, his inner fear was greatly reduced.
"I never noticed before, but getting scolded by the Boss is quite stress-relieving?"
"Boss, why don't we open the door and fight our way out!" A Bin, the driver next to him, suddenly spoke.
He was brought in by Cai Anxin after he became successful, having previously driven mud trucks on construction sites.
The two were high school classmates, and A Bin was Cai Anxin's former follower and his absolute confidant.
His 'certificate of loyalty' as a confidant was fighting with Cai Anxin and a group of social hoodlums in their second year of high school.
During the fight, the other subordinates ran away when things went bad, but only he stayed with Cai Anxin and was brutally beaten on the ground by over a dozen people.
According to Cai Anxin's recollection, that was the only time in his life, being a strong-willed person, that he was beaten so badly he wanted to kneel and beg for mercy.
"Are you an idiot! It's full of zombies outside, how can we fight! All you do is play with women and look at the landlady!"
"If these zombies scratch you, you'll turn into a zombie too!"
"Do you have the confidence to get out of this many zombies unscathed? Rushing out and turning into a zombie is death, failing to rush out is even worse, do you understand 'lingchi'? Being eaten alive!"
Hearing Cai Anxin's scolding, the fierce-looking strong man A Bin scratched the back of his head somewhat innocently and said aggrievedly:
"Boss, you know my high school grades were never very good! And I don't understand foreign languages, I can't understand those foreign movies, they're not as interesting as domestic ones!"
"Do you believe I'll slap you twice right now?"
"You can't understand the foreign movies on legitimate video software, but you watch those European, American, Japanese, and Korean websites with more enthusiasm than anyone else!"
"Listen to me! Just stay in the car and don't think about anything. If rescue comes, the three of us will live together! If not, we'll die together!"
"A coffin worth over 5 million, while it's a bit small for me, for you two kids to have this kind of treatment, isn't it also bringing glory to your ancestors and dying in the right place?"
As soon as he finished speaking, the Secretary, who had been silenced by the scolding in the passenger seat, suddenly cried out excitedly.
"Boss, look, there's light!"