Chapter 23: Yunyang Base Discovery
Zeng Tian felt that his brain really must be broken.
He took a few quick steps forward, climbed up directly, supported Zhang Cui by the arm, quickly helped him down, and then went up himself.
And then Zeng Tian froze.
Outside could only be described in four words: a sea of people.
How… how could there be so many people?
Not zombies—human beings?!!
—The people of Blue Sea had completely gone wild.
When building houses, they were extremely hardworking.
When killing zombies, it was extremely relieving.
But when they saw so much “meat, meat, meat”…
That thread in every Blue Sea person’s mind called “reason” snapped with a hiss.
Many of them had originally rented firearms just to be safe, but once they arrived at a field full of cattle and sheep roaming everywhere, they completely forgot they were even carrying them.
It was an instinct buried in their genes—making them want to climb trees, break off branches, and use them as spears.
Snares, long sticks, or even just brute force to grab prey—the whole scene was truly primitive and savage.
Cheng Qisheng rested her chin on her hand, watching this scene of wild, feral chaos.
“I knew it would be like this.”
This was the real way for Blue Sea people to relieve stress.
Put them on a vast grassland and let them hunt and chase with their own effort.
After releasing their energy through the pursuit of prey, the people of Blue Sea would feel genuine happiness from the bottom of their hearts.
If they were kept inside a safe city all the time, it probably wouldn’t be long before large-scale depression set in again.
The military had also prepared in advance, driving in with vehicles and barbed wire to seal off the area, preventing zombies from slipping in while the Blue Sea people were excitedly hunting.
They enclosed roughly 1.5 million mu of land—about the size of a whole county—so Zeng Tian’s impression of a “sea of people” was not wrong at all.
The officers dispatched by the military for this mission were standing in the trees, looking down at the scene through binoculars, finally letting out a deep breath of relief.
“The Marshal was right. The way we conduct combat really does need to be adjusted going forward.”
“Yeah,” another officer standing in a nearby tree agreed. “Things are different now. We need to shift from the old model of group combat to letting civilians fight individually.”
When they first arrived in this world, the government had once seriously considered gradually transforming the entire country into a military system.
After all, they were no longer short on battles—there were plenty of zombies outside to fight at will.
But it didn’t take long for the higher-ups to realize that this approach wouldn’t work.
First, if the whole population were placed under a military system, it would not be favorable for the country’s long-term resource management. A single wrong decision could potentially doom the entire nation.
Second, not every Blue Sea resident could accept being strictly controlled.
Following rules in normal society and living under military discipline were completely different things.
During the large-scale recruitment of new soldiers this time, many recruits developed rebellious tendencies under strict control, becoming irritable and prone to anger.
The Bureau of Mental Health Services quickly intervened to investigate, and ultimately concluded that the cause was a reduction in living space.
In the past, on Dark Star, residents had vast living spaces of their own. There were archery ranges, and they could travel to mountains and wilderness to experience nature.
Those with more money could even purchase a “wilderness survival” qualification.
People who bought such qualifications would be transported by professionals to uninhabited grasslands or tropical rainforests, places with no traces of human civilization.
These people wore only a single set of clothes and carried simple stone spears and homemade bows, immersing themselves in wilderness survival for two or three months.
They would drill wood to make fire, build camps, hunt prey, catch fish under waterfalls, wander barefoot through forests, and sit on mountaintops in the early morning to watch the sunrise.
Although this kind of “wilderness survival” was an extreme pleasure reserved only for Blue Sea’s wealthy class, even the poorest Blue Sea residents before the apocalypse were not so deprived that they never had the chance to walk alone in an open space.
Even in large cities filled with skyscrapers, multiple urban parks would still be built.
Ever since discovering the problems among new recruits, the military had kept itself constantly on edge.
What they feared was not that recruits would disobey orders, but that other citizens might also develop similar rebellious tendencies.
With 360 million people crowded into a single city, life was already difficult enough. If internal chaos broke out as well, it was impossible to imagine how disorderly things would become.
Fortunately—fortunately.
Many informed officers in the military could see that ever since the Marshal proposed, and the President approved, allowing residents to freely leave the city and treat zombie hunting as a civilian mission, the atmosphere inside the city had become more and more relaxed day by day.
People smiled more, argued less, and even fights had decreased.
Even scavengers who lacked combat ability and could not expand new territories would feel mentally refreshed just by going out for a walk and bringing back some local wild grass.
Moreover, Blue Sea was obtaining more crystal nuclei as well.
At the same time, the amount of consumed supplies such as food had been steadily replenished.
As civilians dispersed to search for resources, they would often find usable supplies scattered across the ruins—for example, boxes of instant noodles or biscuits—which they happily carried back to eat, naturally saving Blue Sea’s resources.
On a larger scale, these scattered civilians were also discovering a large amount of valuable supplies across the ruined land, enough to be reported up the chain of command.
For example, just yesterday, some residents discovered the underground storage area of a large supermarket.
No one knew how they managed to find a warehouse buried beneath a collapsed ruin.
What was even more impressive was that this group of people had spent several days enthusiastically digging through the rubble. They even called in a petite resident to crawl inside and investigate, and after multiple attempts, they finally confirmed that there really was an underground warehouse down there.
After reporting it, the military gave them reward points and curiously asked how they had known there might be a supermarket storage area underneath.
The residents answered very straightforwardly:
“We didn’t know. We just saw supermarket shelves in the ruins above ground and thought there might be something below.”
“So you dug for days without even knowing?”
“Digging through ruins is kind of fun anyway. You always find all sorts of random stuff—it feels like treasure hunting, so we just kept digging. Hehe.”
That was the Blue Sea people.
When gathered together, they could flatten every region they went through.
But when scattered, no one could predict what they might do.
The key point was that even if they didn’t make major contributions, they could at least sustain themselves, reduce the burden on the state, and sometimes even feed resources back into the country.
Now many military officers had realized that the old military model suited to Blue Sea needed to change.
Perhaps allowing ordinary civilians to freely develop and hunt was the most suitable survival method in the apocalypse.
An officer stared at the residents chasing cattle and sheep and said:
“Honestly… I kind of want to go too.”
Officer B replied, “It’s fine, wait a bit longer. When they calm down. When we first secured this territory, we specifically fenced off another ranch separately. Later, the younger soldiers in the army can also relax a bit.”
Officer A: “?”
“Only the younger soldiers get to relax?”
What, are the not-so-young officers not allowed to relax too?
Officer B: “Hahahaha, I was just teasing you. Look how anxious you got. Don’t worry, we’re all going to join in. The higher-ups sent us down here precisely to let us relax. There’s nothing else going on today anyway. We’ll run around properly in a bit.”
While the two were talking, a family working as a team had just dragged over a cow caught in a snare, successfully turning it into their own prize.
The cow crashed to the ground.
The youngest child in this five-person family—a ten-year-old—suddenly spoke up:
“Mom, the sound is wrong. It sounded like it hit steel.”
“Steel?”
The mother rolled up her sleeves and called to the rest of the family.
“Come on, help lift it together. Maybe it’s a cellar. If there’s stored grain inside, we’ll be rich!”
The five of them pulled hard on the rope and forcibly dragged the cow away.
Beneath it, something that really looked like a steel plate was revealed—like a door hidden underground.
The parents gestured for the children to step back.
They put down the crude bows and arrows used for hunting cattle and sheep, and instead pulled guns from behind their waists.
Together, they forced the door open and aimed their weapons downward.
And then they saw at least a hundred living people—ragged, thin, staring blankly up at them.
The couple froze.
In their minds, the first word that popped up was “weaklings,” followed by “a group of weaklings.”
Then they suddenly realized what they were seeing and instinctively raised their tactical watches toward the group below.
Immediately, joy exploded in their expressions. While still keeping one hand holding a gun aimed downward, the husband and wife embraced each other with their free arms.
“By the God above!! It—it’s a local base!”
“We’re rich! We’ve got enough points to watch VR movies!!”
“We can watch ten times together as a whole family!!!”
Cheng Qisheng, who had been slowly loosening the soil, suddenly lifted her head—
Well, not exactly “suddenly,” since her body coordination wasn’t great; in the end she still raised it rather slowly.
But her mood instantly brightened.
A base?
A virology doctor?!
Twenty thousand crystals?!!!
The nearby Blue Sea residents who had been running around shouting in excitement also caught those words with laser precision. They immediately stopped even their hunting.
Their already highly excited minds were instantly flooded with one thing—points.
“A base? Where? Where?!”
“Where is it?!”
“God above! A base!!! Is it that virology doctor’s base?! We found the virology doctor?!”
“Where? Where’s the base?! Let me see too! I want to see!”
On distant tree branches, several officers observing the crowd through binoculars fell silent.
“…Why do I feel like I’m about to work overtime?”
“You’re not wrong. I read their lip movements—they’re shouting ‘base.’ Looks like they’ve discovered a local survivor base.”
“Alright then… if it’s the base our god is looking for, I’m willing to work overtime.”
The two officers jumped down from the tree—
The branches, having just been stepped on, swayed heavily for a moment under the sudden load, but ultimately held and did not break.
“All units one through nine, follow me. Move out!”
Inside the cold storage, the members of the Yunyang Base were still struggling to process the fact that they had been discovered so suddenly, and hadn’t even figured out how to react when they realized that above them—
With a rustle of motion, countless heads suddenly popped up at the entrance of the underground cold storage, all staring straight at them.
Their expressions were filled with amazement, envy, and curiosity.
Zeng Tian couldn’t help but take a step back under that intense, scorching gaze—only to bump into Yu Zhitian behind him.
Yu Zhitian was holding a child. She met the gazes of the Blue Sea people above and immediately confirmed that it was a language she could not understand at all.
A group of civilians wearing all kinds of clothing quickly parted to the sides, revealing a line of people in uniform military dress.
They, too, were encircling the entrance in a neat formation, all lowering their heads to look down in unison.
Yu Zhitian pinched herself first to confirm this was not an illusion. Only then did she let out a long breath.
“Director, it seems that no matter what’s going on, at least we don’t need to worry about being killed. They have their own rules and their own military. From the way they’re looking at us…”
“We… seem to be some kind of rare species to them.”
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