Chapter 24

As the population of the shelter rose, the place gradually grew livelier. Moreover, those survivors who had seen the walls rise from the earth felt shock, but they also felt a sort of honor that they were members of this shelter.

In the future, a new shelter would be established here, and more and more survivors would come. They would be the first generation of builders.

“This is the place. It seems like there’s a shelter here.”

Outside the vacation villa, several people appeared. Their clothes were ragged, and they appeared like survivors fleeing a disaster, but their words betrayed the truth.

Their leader held an M4 Assault Rifle and a Type 54 Pistol at his waist. Looking up at the vacation villa, he said, “The boss had us searching for a missing team. The investigation revealed that this team’s route would take it past this shelter, and from what we know, Green Shade Shelter has already been wiped out. But it seems…”

He squatted down and inspected the clues around him. “There are clear signs of survivor activity around here, so we might be able to find clues we’re looking for in that shelter.”

“You’re right, captain, but how do we go about investigating? Should we capture some important figure among the survivors and interrogate them?” someone proposed, but he himself quickly rejected the idea.

There were only four of them, and they weren’t experts. Only two of them were Awakened, and while traveling to here from Lindong, they had lost two of their team members. In comparison, the team that had gone missing had had several Awakened Tier 3 experts in its ranks.

If even a team like this had inexplicably gone missing, they felt that they needed to be extremely cautious.

This was true, even though they didn’t think that the missing team had anything to do with the survivors of Green Shade Shelter.

Everyone turned to Old Third. Old Third was more quick-witted and had always been the brains of the team. He probably had a solution.

As expected, Old Third, a man wearing glasses, softly chuckled. “Our objective is to find clues on the missing team, so there’s no need for us to quarrel with the survivors of Green Shade Shelter. In other words, we’re survivors too.”

Seeing that no one understood what he was saying, Old Third threw aside his rifle and pointed at his tattered clothes. “Look at me. Am I not a fleeing survivor?”

When fleeing survivors saw a shelter, they would very logically want to go in, and once they were in the shelter, things would get much easier, whether it was interacting with an important individual in the shelter or seeking clues from other survivors.

This method of searching for clues had no risk.

The others smiled, seemingly already seeing mission completion.

Upon entering the shelter, they saw ruins all around. This place truly had been assaulted by a demon flood, proving that their intelligence was correct. This meant that their chances of finding some clue had increased.

Everything they saw next appeared to all be within Old Third’s expectations.

They had disguised themselves as survivors who had come upon this shelter, and when they found ‘their kind’, they immediately put on expressions of joy that were tinged with wariness. It wasn’t long before they were guided by a survivor farther inside.

The survivor guiding them was Wang Zhou. Having been a witness to the armed group being wiped out and the miracle of the walls, he could be considered an old senior in the shelter, and all of them had a greater sense of belonging toward the shelter.

Considering that more and more survivors would be coming to the shelter, Tang Yu reckoned that he needed someone to take on the duty of a guide, someone who could introduce to survivors the rules of the shelter, flaunt a little of the shelter’s power, register the survivors on the books, and other such miscellaneous tasks.

Of course, it wasn’t that complicated right now. They simply needed to guide survivors and give them an introduction. But when the shelter got larger, an entire series of regulations and steps needed to be carried out: registration, inquiry of expertise, work arrangements… The current duties already gave Tang Yu a headache. Setting up a detailed process required a specialist, and he hoped that a talented survivor would appear soon.

Among the earliest survivors that he had saved along with Chen Haiping, Wang Zhou was more intelligent, more bold, more… capable of boasting.

So he had been made the guide.

As he led these survivors, he had a smile on his face.

Several days of ample food had caused him to gradually gain weight. To use his words, he now had some of his former graceful bearing.

Wang Zhou pointed at the buildings around him. “You can see that many of the buildings around us are destroyed. What does this mean? It means that our shelter has been through a fierce battle. It means merit! Just like how the scars on a warrior’s body represent glory, these scars on our shelter are evidence of our power.

“You have to realize that it was a demon flood, demonized beasts as far as one could see. But the people of our shelter managed to hold it off. You might not believe me, but the sight of the shelter’s experts charging in and out of the demon flood… tsk, tsk, it really gets the blood boiling. If I were an Awakened, I definitely would have lost my patience and charged into the fray with them.”

Wang Zhou elegantly spun a tale of utter nonsense.

The men behind him glanced at each other in surprise.

This was a lot of information to take in! And it was far too different from the information their bosses had given them. Wasn’t it said that the shelter had been wiped out by the demon flood, with its chief Wang Tai fleeing with his men? But now it was several experts charging in and out of the demon flood? And they couldn’t be considered inexperienced. They had seen numerous experts back at Lindong, but were there any that could charge into a pack of demonized beasts? No!

But what they didn’t know was that although Wang Zhou was essentially speaking nonsense, deep down, Wang Zhou believed that if Chief Tang and his experts had been present for the demon flood and they had those imposing walls, fending off the demon flood wouldn’t have been impossible.

The vacation villa wasn’t very big, and on the way up, Wang Zhou constantly stopped like he was a tour guide explaining the sights. They soon reached the steps leading up to the villa area. Here, they were able to see the majestic walls lurking like some enormous beast.

“See that? See that?!” Wang Zhou pointed out the walls, his face saying, ‘You didn’t believe me because you’ve seen too little.’

“This is our shelter’s strongest defense line, the ten-meter walls! This wall completely encloses the villa area. No matter which direction the demonized beasts attack from, they’ll all be blocked by the walls. Not to exaggerate, but our shelter isn’t even afraid of a demon flood!”

Wang Zhou was bursting with pride.

The most terrifying thing about a demon flood was the number of demonized beasts, a dense mass that charged forward. Even if gunfire could deal with them, it couldn’t stop the momentum of the demon flood. A regular defense line wouldn’t be able to last long before being drowned out by the demon flood.

But walls were different!

Ten meters was even higher than a three-storey building. Without any sort of foothold, the majority of demonized beasts would never be able to climb over walls of this height. Even the small number of terrifying beasts that could leap over the walls were no longer as threatening.

So long as the demon flood was kept out by the walls, the remaining survivors could stand on the walls and fire down on them. This way of dealing with the demon flood was much easier.

The four team members disguised as survivors had at first felt a sense of superiority over the fact that they had come from a large shelter, but when they saw these walls, they were instantly struck dumb. They stood in a daze, their minds a blur as they stared at the imposing walls.

The Lindong Shelter, as a shelter boasting several hundred thousand inhabitants, naturally had walls under construction, but those walls required a significant investment in manpower and resources. But here? Even if these walls covered a smaller area, he found it impossible to imagine how walls of this height could be constructed.

The four of them exchanged doubtful glances.

With walls like these and some formidable defensive power, fending off a demon flood wasn’t impossible.

Moreover, these walls didn’t seem like something that could be constructed quickly. In other words, the information that Green Shade Shelter had been wiped out several days ago had become very dubious.