Chapter 261: Roll Out, Armored Train!
All the armed soldiers along with the officers slept soundly until the afternoon of the second day, only getting up to work when the sun was tilting westward.
Gunshots rang out all night on Guanchao Island.
Taking advantage of no rain and good night visibility, Han Kexin led a group of survivors to convert the resort hotel in the middle of the crater into a shelter overnight.
She was from the same batch of crew members as Hu Shuo, but because her building skill was too niche, she had never been put to good use.
Hu Shuo had become purser, while she could only do odd jobs.
Last time during the construction of Shun’an Outpost, she showed her skills and finally gained a foothold.
Becoming level five crew, specializing in designing and overseeing building work.
“Crew Member Han, we’re done over here. Please come inspect.”
A foreman shouted from afar.
Han Kexin popped an apple-flavored hard candy under her tongue, turned to greet Third Brother the overseer, and hurried off.
Third Brother sat at the highest point of the building, chuckling and waving his hand. “Don’t worry, with your Third Brother here, no one dares slack off.”
“Third Brother, your eyeballs are falling out of people.”
A teasing voice came from behind.
Third Brother didn’t need to look back to know who it was. On the entire train, he was mid-level in status, and the only one who could call him Third Brother and joke with him was that kid Zhang Kai.
Back at the logistics center, the four of them were tormented by He Jie every day, forging deep brotherhood.
Though the train conductor was nominally “Old Four,” Zhang Kai was the actual Old Four.
“Bullshit, if I’m not looking at the girl, am I looking at you?”
“My mom won’t do.”
Zhang Kai walked over and sat beside Third Brother.
Third Brother shot him an annoyed sidelong glance. “If you’re bored enough to have blue balls, go rub a tree. What the hell are you wasting on me for?”
“Don’t imitate the convoy leader. The convoy leader looks handsome, his sidelong glances are domineering and dignified. With your mug, it looks like you’re about to burst into the room and kill me in the middle of the night.”
They were all brothers who had carried guns together, and after two sentences, Third Brother felt there was something in his words.
He reined in his expression. “What’s up?”
The sky wasn’t fully light yet, but with no dark clouds, it was an elegant blue hue, casting a somewhat gloomy light on the two rough men.
“…I want to get off the train.”
After hesitating for a moment, Zhang Kai said.
Third Brother was stunned for a second, grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back to sit. “You’re not going north to find your mom anymore?”
Without the light, Zhang Kai’s expression grew even more overcast.
He lit a cigarette, the ember flickering dimly.
“Third Brother, it’s been four months.”
“Bullshit, I have…”
“My mom is that old, she couldn’t hold out long ago.”
Zhang Kai’s voice held no pain, just a relieved calm.
Third Brother irritably scratched his head. Though he was the smartest of the three brothers, that was like picking the general from among dwarfs. His three bros’ parents had died early, so he was fundamentally bad at handling emotional issues.
If Old Da or Old Er had some minor mood, a beating would fix it.
But Zhang Kai this…
“How about trying again?”
“Just deceiving yourself.”
Third Brother’s bull-egg-like eyes widened. “Show off your fancy words to your Third Brother!”
“It’s useless anyway.”
Zhang Kai sighed.
“Soft egg!”
“You cursing me won’t help.”
Third Brother snatched the cigarette from his mouth and took two fierce drags, his expression flickering. “Have you thought about where to run to?”
“Run what?”
Zhang Kai turned his head suspiciously.
“Bullshit, ordinary passengers are one thing, but you’ve at least shown your face to the train conductor. Getting off now is basically running, right?”
Third Brother said coldly.
Zhang Kai suddenly understood. “It’s not like that. You know Wang He, right? The former foreman who got off last time during Shun’an Base construction. Now we’re building a base in Guan Chong City too. I feel like the train conductor needs his own people to stay here. Help me mention it to the train conductor, see if it works.”
Third Brother’s complexion eased a bit.
“If that’s the case, it might actually work. But in this nowhere spot, what are you staying here for?”
“Everyone needs an endpoint. Why can’t it be Guanchao Island…”
“Don’t give me that fancy talk. Speak human.”
“I’m scared.”
Zhang Kai gazed at the distant sky, a streak of red light emerging.
It first spread across the water surface, then swiftly passed over the train by the shore, the piled logs, flowed into the crater, casting the construction site and the peaks behind in vivid red.
……
“Woo…”
The whistle sounded, and the armored train departed Guanchao Island under the joyful or sorrowful gazes of the crowd.
Besides Zhang Kai, more than twenty others stayed, half from the crew and half from the armed corps.
Many in the armed corps had joined just for the good pay, but He Jie’s devilish training broke some inwardly.
The weakest among them were evolvers who could kill, with tough mentality.
But He Jie’s methods were truly perverse.
When a person’s physical strength and will were worn to the limit, many things no longer mattered.
They just wanted it all to end.
Rest one night, fight one night, giving them ample time to choose.
Besides that, there were over a thousand survivors, most scavenged from Guan Chong City, who originally had no place to stay. Now with a safe little island, they were naturally satisfied.
People from Iron Mountain Shelter naturally wanted to go home first.
They could also help the train conductor speed up the schedule on the train. Recently, there were big shortages of materials, ammunition, military uniforms, and other supplies.
Because of linking Guanchao Island and Iron Mountain Shelter, Old Man Tie left his second son Qi Zhendong on the island.
“I didn’t expect you to stay.”
Qi Zhendong turned to look at A’duo beside him.
A’duo wasn’t pretty, but beast transformation gave her a wildness and agility most women lacked.
A’duo said calmly, “If people from Iron Mountain Shelter can stay, why can’t we from New Eden?”
“There’s no New Eden anymore.”
A’duo habitually touched the horn on her head and stared straight at Qi Zhendong. “Even without the priests, you’re still no match for me!”
Qi Zhendong sneered, arms crossed, unleashing the full aura of a tier 1 Manipulator, myriad rays blooming from his shoulders.
Old Man Tie was nostalgic, but not stupid.
People from that era knew better what the barrel of a gun meant.
So almost the entire shelter was centered on one person: Qi Zhendong.
Unfortunately, his speed was a bit slow. When Su Huan arrived, Qi Zhendong hadn’t reached tier 1 yet.
Finally, in the days before departure, he broke through to become a tier 1 Firefly Apostle.
But against the armored train, one tier 1 was useless.
Even the name and main function were told to him personally by the train conductor.
“We shouldn’t be enemies.”
A’duo said after a moment of silence.
Qi Zhendong was unmoved. “That depends on your choice.”
Though the armored train had planted many moles in the shelter, taking this title was nothing bad, and the train wouldn’t interfere with the Qi Family rebuilding Guan Chong. On this point, Old Man Tie had reached consensus with the train conductor.
There was no essential conflict of interest between them.
But he hadn’t expected the train to dump this New Eden woman too.
The reason the train didn’t want A’duo was simple: her ability had no research value, and the train didn’t lack an uncooperative tier 1 evolver now.
“Don’t worry, I won’t cause trouble unless someone provokes me.”
A’duo took one last look at the train, now just a small black dot on the water surface, and turned to leave.
‘The High Priestess’s path was wrong. As modern people, abandoning technology and machinery was the biggest mistake.’
‘Using faith against oneself, machinery against the world—perhaps that’s the only path to the Garden of Eden.’
……
Su Huan sat on the crown pear tree trunk in the cultivation pod, watching the logbook half-illuminated by sunlight, squinting slightly.
He wasn’t surprised by Qi Zhendong’s promotion to tier 1.
The tier 1 evolution wave came one year after the apocalypse, but before that, there were some exceptionally talented evolvers.
The Qi Family Brothers might be such.
Quantitative change leading to qualitative change—nothing big.
What truly surprised him was the other’s profession: tier 1 Firefly Apostle.
A proper gospel system, same origin as his Perpetual Motion Cardinal, both belonging to the Mechanical God Cult.
“Wonder if the Mechanical God Cult can still become a major force in this lifetime with my interference.”
Su Huan closed the logbook and jumped down from the crown pear tree.
“Bang.”
He landed in front of Xiao Zhao.
She nodded in greeting, then hurried toward the bottom of the cultivation pod.
Faint voices came.
“…Supercomputer hardware second check, cooling system test run.”
Su Huan walked forward along the cultivation pod passage. Everyone else had work, only he could stroll idly, which suddenly made him feel fulfilled.
Before he could enjoy this hard-won leisure, Shu Wei hurried up beside him and whispered.
“Supercomputer startup, voltage may be unstable. You need to stabilize it.”
“Fuck!”
……
“April 28th, flood raging.”
“The supercomputer is the armored train’s brain, but this brain occasionally suffers blood shortages.”
While writing, Su Huan suddenly felt the notebook in front of him float up. He quickly grabbed it, but before he could relax, his butt floated up too.
Then everything unsecured in the room began to float.
“Front of the train command platform warning: waves too strong, armored train about to roll. All crew and passengers immediately stop work, grab nearby fixed objects…”
The broadcast voice came belatedly.
Electric light burst from Su Huan’s hand, firmly adsorbing various objects back to their positions.
“Boom—”
Giant waves crashed on the train body, transmitting into the carriage.
Su Huan sighed.
Now he finally understood why other forces wouldn’t station long-term in the storm zone.
In twenty days, the armored train encountered two major storms, the body damaged to varying degrees, and one built-in battery was outright twisted apart—voltage stability would be a miracle.
But the factory director and others had accumulated plenty of repair experience in the tugs with the flood zone.
Like the earlier roll—not only no damage to the body, but it helped unload force. That was the factory director and others’ recent research results.
A knock sounded.
Secretary Shu Wei walked in, put some fallen small items back, and handed over a sheet of paper.
“Armed corps and combat group’s military uniforms fully distributed. New exoskeleton research has progressed, but mass manufacturing needs time. Professor Ma’s communication device is now walkie-talkie sized. Then separate reports from Senior Attendant Elder Three and armed corps’ He Jie…”
Seeing the pile of documents in Shu Wei’s hands, Su Huan’s eyelid twitched.
“Can’t these two dogs say it over dinner?”
Shu Wei’s tone was cool. “They said there was too much to say in one or two sentences, so they wrote formal reports.”
Su Huan was surprised. “Old Three wrote a paper report?”
“Hu Shuo ghostwrote it.”
“…”
“How far to Xiushui City?”
“About a hundred kilometers. We’ll arrive by dawn tomorrow.”
After Shu Wei spoke, she held the documents in both hands, naturally hanging at her thighs.
Though the atmosphere was slightly quiet, after the last incident, Shu Wei always felt a strange connection with the train conductor.
Even silent companionship didn’t feel like sitting on pins and needles like before.
The train conductor tilted his head, saw the wall clock. “Ten o’clock, time to eat. Put these jobs aside for now.”
Familiar with the train conductor’s style, Shu Wei showed no surprise, saying flatly, “You had breakfast at seven, and morning tea at nine.”
“Meaning I’ve worked solid three hours. I know you’re gonna say I count eating time too, but every order of mine concerns the lives of everyone on the train—tremendous pressure on the brain. Uh, why are you locking the door? Why are you undoing buttons? Are you hot…”
Shu Wei strode forward with long legs, undid the collar button with one hand, walked right up to the train conductor, and blocked his mouth from above.
Her cool expression melted instantly, light gray eyes trembling lightly.
“If talking nonsense relaxes you a bit, I think this method can too.”
“Acting on your own.”
Su Huan mumbled.
“Boom—”
The train began rolling again.
At eleven, the train conductor walked out of the room refreshed, but this time without his secretary trailing.
A tall burly man was already sitting in the dining car. The tall solid wood chair looked like a child’s seat under him.
Liang Kuan held an empty military canned food jar in his hand, pinching pretty folds under He Zhenzhen’s direction.
Several such canned food jars were already placed nearby.
He Jie across from him was busy with the same.
Seeing Su Huan, He Jie exclaimed in surprise, “You actually stayed in there till eleven today. I thought you’d gone up a tree to blow wind.”
Su Huan glanced at the murky waves outside the window and snorted coldly.
He sat on his orange cat sofa.
The orange cat blanket had clearly been washed by Yu Yue, carrying a faint fragrance and sunny scent.
The smell on a man as a child is generally determined by his mother.
Whatever the mother smells like, that’s what the family smells like.
That’s what the child smells like.
When grown, it becomes his wife’s scent. Except for faint stink and hormonal heat, he leaves nothing else in this home.
Women are strange; they leave their scent wherever they go.
Bedding, clothes, sofa, water cups…
Su Huan quite liked this sunny scent, so he sat here when idle.
It calmed him.
“What childish crap are you doing?”
The train conductor lazily raised an eyebrow.
