The horde of corpses was still pounding on the isolation door, but the several-ton door was not something they could shake. Feng Jun got off Lao Ba's back and checked the isolation door behind him.
He knocked on it a few times with the gun stock; its solid feel reassured Feng Jun considerably, as this massive door at least couldn't be moved by human strength.
Li Lu found the power switch on the wall behind the door. The underground Refuge facility of this building still had power running. After activating the generator, the ceiling lights flickered a few times, and then the dark surroundings gradually brightened.
From the architectural design, it appeared to have been a parking lot previously, with several scrapped cars still parked against the wall.
Bounty Hunters like Li Lu are very common in the wasteland. Some, like Li Lu, are lone wolves, while others are partners in two or three-person teams. More often, they are Bounty Hunter squads of a dozen or so people.
The most common jobs these Bounty Hunters undertake are related to ruins, such as recovering mechanical equipment from a building, intercepting rare Mutants, or collecting Mutated Creatures samples from a certain part of the city center.
Often, after receiving a mission, they might stay in the ruins for more than ten days, so every Bounty Hunter has some secret strongholds in the ruins to hide from zombies and serve as temporary Refuges.
This underground parking lot was a Refuge Li Lu discovered in the ruins. The parking lot was very large, but much of it had collapsed during the war.
The area Li Lu led Feng Jun into was only a small part of it. Li Lu discovered this place during a mission; the Refuge's power system was still intact, and Li Lu restored the isolation door's operation after simple repairs.
Since then, Li Lu had cleared out the zombies and Mutated Beasts within and made this underground space her foothold in the ruins.
Li Lu patted the heavy door and said, “The isolation door weighs five tons; the zombies can’t open it. They’ll disperse quickly after losing their target.
We need to enter the subway from here, then cross half of Shangqing City, and only then might we find that subway station.”
Feng Jun nodded. Shangqing City in the Doomsday had a very complex subway and sewer system. Although they might encounter some Mutated Beasts and insects within, it was the best way to avoid zombies.
This collapsed parking lot space happened to have a vertical shaft connected to Shangqing City's sewer pipes, allowing Feng Jun and Li Lu to enter the subway lines through the sewer pipes.
Opening the iron door pressing down on the vertical shaft, Feng Jun stood on the side and looked down. The dark, bottomless shaft was too deep for the parking lot's lights to illuminate clearly.
Li Lu made a 'please' gesture. Feng Jun swallowed, looking at the opening just wide enough for him and Li Lu to pass through, and asked, “What about Lao Ba and Lao Jiu?”
“What else can we do?” Li Lu rolled her eyes at Feng Jun. “They’ll wait for us here. Although the subway space is large enough, they can’t maneuver underground. The rest of the journey will depend on our two legs and the gear in our hands.”
Feng Jun, who had already bent down and touched the shaft opening, suddenly straightened up. “You’re more familiar with it, you go first. I’m a bit afraid of the dark.”
Li Lu gave Feng Jun a disdainful look, then flipped over and entered the vertical shaft.
After Li Lu entered the vertical shaft, Feng Jun summoned Lao Ba and Lao Jiu. After powering them down, he put the two mechanical dogs into his storage space.
What a joke! These two dogs are super cool, aren't they? And carrying them isn't a problem for me at all. Then Feng Jun quickly entered the vertical shaft and started climbing down.
After climbing down about twenty meters, Feng Jun finally entered Shangqing City’s underground water pipes. Unlike modern sewers, the sewers built by the Ming Empire in the future were very wide.
In the middle was a river channel for sewage, and on both sides were platforms for people to walk. The entire sewer was nearly ten meters wide, with an arched top, completely unlike the narrow sewage pipes of today.
Although it hadn't been cleaned or maintained for nearly a hundred years, the flow of sewage ensured this sewer system was still functioning.
Li Lu was already waiting below. Seeing Feng Jun slowly descend, she couldn't help but complain, “Why are you so slow? Can’t you do things a bit faster?”
Feng Jun patted the dust off his shoulders and said, “Alright, next time I’ll make you feel faster.”
“Tsk, that’s the only place you’re strong.” Li Lu didn’t continue bickering with Feng Jun. She opened her projection and started moving according to the navigation route, and Feng Jun followed suit.
The dark sewer had no lighting equipment whatsoever. Occasionally, a few emergency lights were on, but they couldn't illuminate more than a few meters.
However, fortunately, both of them were wearing lightweight mechanical exoskeletons. Their accompanying helmets had clear night vision systems, and with the release of two small Hummingbird reconnaissance UAVs, their vision in the dark was not hindered at all.
Zombies were rarely encountered in the sewers; even if there were any, they had mostly fallen into the sewer by stepping on empty manhole covers.
They traveled almost unhindered, but Feng Jun also saw many strange creatures.
Rats with eyes all over their heads, fist-sized snails hanging upside down from the ceiling, and strange creatures that would open their petals and emit colorful light in the dark when approached.
They even encountered a group of zombies covered in mushrooms. These zombies stood blankly in the walkways and river channels on both sides, each with several glowing mushrooms growing on them, looking very eerie.
When Feng Jun saw these zombies, he originally wanted to shoot directly, but Li Lu pressed his gun barrel down. “These zombies are already a hotbed for fungi; there’s no need to waste bullets.”
Li Lu led Feng Jun directly past these zombies. The zombies stood still like puppets. If they were this close to zombies on the surface, the zombies would have long since pounced and bitten them.
But these zombies just stayed put, showing no reaction to the two passing by.
Feng Jun pulled out his electromagnetic vibration dagger and gently poked a mushroom. A pale blue fluorescent liquid flowed out.
The zombie still stood still like a puppet. Feng Jun then cut open a zombie's arm, and it was crawling with pale blue mycelium.
It seemed these zombies had indeed become a hotbed for fungi, just as Li Lu said.
Feng Jun was very interested in this discovery and raised the dagger in his hand, preparing to cut open a zombie's head to see what was inside.
At this moment, Li Lu, who was ahead, turned back and saw Feng Jun dawdling behind. She turned around and said angrily, “What are you doing?”
Feng Jun waved the dagger in his hand: “I want to cut open the zombie's head and see what’s inside.”
Li Lu had already passed through the zombie horde and stomped her foot in anger ahead. “If you don’t come out now, I’ll break your legs when we get back.”
Hearing that Li Lu was somewhat angry, Feng Jun quickly picked up his pace and passed through the zombie horde. However, before leaving, he plucked a few mushrooms from a zombie and put them into his storage space.
The average depth of Shangqing City's sewers is between thirty and twenty meters underground, and the subway system goes even deeper, with an average depth between fifty and eighty meters.
The Refuge is even further, below five hundred meters underground. The advantage of this design is that even if the city is hit by one or two nuclear bombs, people can still live in the underground shelters.
After this brief interlude, the two quickened their pace and soon arrived at an underground maintenance station. Here, there was a stairwell connecting the sewer to the subway tunnel.
Li Lu skillfully pried open the long-sealed iron door and descended several flights of stairs to a subway maintenance point.
The subway's condition was better than the sewer's; in fact, the subway here was of a higher standard than the sewer.
Because the subway was built later than the sewer, its space was more spacious than the sewer's.
After entering the subway, Feng Jun found many tents and sleeping bags on the subway tunnels and tracks, along with a lot of domestic waste and many human remains.
These remains clearly showed signs of being shot, including not only adults but also many children's skeletons.
Feng Jun even saw a pile of children's skeletons pressed beneath a pile of adult skeletons. It seemed a massacre targeting civilians had occurred here.
Feng Jun, who had grown accustomed to seeing corpses in the Doomsday, was somewhat moved upon seeing the ground covered with these skeletons.
The postures in which these skeletons lay dead could not have been from zombie bites; they could only have come from wartime shootings.
Feng Jun quickly learned the story from Li Lu. As a Bounty Hunter, she frequently visited city ruins and was naturally very clear about what happened during the war.
In 2192, the United States of America, leveraging its advantage in space fleets, once occupied most of Earth's near-Earth orbit.
In the early stages of the war, America was consistently pressing against the Ming Empire and the Soviet Union. Like the America in the present world, America in this world was also a country that constantly preached freedom and democracy.
However, when their soldiers descended onto foreign soil, they brought not freedom and democracy, but only ruthless slaughter.
Although various countries had already extensively built underground Refuges before the war, with depths increasing from five hundred meters to one thousand meters, Refuges with complete supply environments always had limited capacity.
When war came, the facilities that could provide Refuge and safety for most of the population were mostly the sewers and subways.
These vast tunnel systems could accommodate a large number of poor people for Refuge. On June 22, 2192, orbital paratroopers from the United States of America carried out an orbital insertion on Shangqing City.
Although the Ming Empire's near-Earth defense forces resisted desperately, they still could not stop the American forces, who held the advantage in near-Earth orbit.
Space cruisers deployed four heavy orbital airborne brigades. Their landing pods, which they descended with, are still stuck in the streets of Shangqing City to this day.
Due to the infiltration of corrupt officials and traitors, it wasn't until the orbital capsules crashed into the city ground that Shangqing City issued a Refuge notice to all civilians.
Refuges were far from enough, so the subway became the best Refuge for a large number of citizens.
The subway was designed with triple protection; its heavy blast doors, once lowered, could withstand a direct impact from three hundred tons of equivalent explosives.
However, they could not stop American soldiers wearing power armor.