Chapter 172 - 171: Gazing at Plums to Quench Thirst

Chapter 172: Chapter 171: Gazing at Plums to Quench Thirst

"T-twenty... twenty thousand people..."

The few people standing beside Lin Fan traded uncertain glances. Even Liu Bin had a dazed look on his face as he mumbled the number.

That number was a little beyond what they could handle. Even if they brought all their food supplies, would it be enough to feed that many people for three days?

And that wasn’t even considering the long, harsh winter that was coming in just four months.

Clothing and fuel would be problems, too.

Assuming those people could even survive that long, the harsh winter would be more terrifying than any zombie.

All the food reserves in an old residential complex like the one Lin Fan lived in, scraped together, would probably only be enough to feed twenty thousand people for a few days.

As time went on, the area around the quarantine zone would be picked clean of supplies. The people inside would have no choice but to risk venturing further out to scavenge. If they were lucky, they might find a few warehouses or supermarkets. After losing more people along the way, they might just be able to scrape by through the winter.

As for waiting until next spring to start farming...

Irrigation, fertilizer, security...

Even though Lin Fan didn’t know the first thing about farming, he knew it wasn’t something that could be accomplished overnight. No matter how advanced they were, not even some alien-tech sweet potatoes could feed twenty thousand people from a single incubator of seedlings.

"We wouldn’t harvest many of the tubers themselves this season," Ye Qingzhou explained to Lin Fan, "but it’s not just the sweet potatoes. The vines and leaves are also edible. They’re highly nutritious and easy to preserve..."

"Besides, the fact that sweet potatoes reproduce asexually means this batch of cuttings can grow exponentially in a single season. In our current situation, if we want to get the most food from the fewest people and the least amount of farmland, sweet potatoes are pretty much the optimal solution.

"As long as we can survive the initial famine, we can plant sweet potatoes and legumes next year. Then the settlement can basically become stable..."

"Sigh... but that’s for next year. This winter..."

Lin Fan felt his own methods were far more efficient than Ye Qingzhou’s, but his was a predatory form of survival. ’In essence, I’m no different from the other survivors picking through the ruins.

’My hunting grounds are just bigger, and my prey is more... unique.’

Even though he found Ye Qingzhou’s plan to save everyone with sweet potatoes a bit unrealistic, he couldn’t offer a better alternative.

Their sweet potato plan still hinged on the survivors making it through the first winter by scavenging. And farming enough to feed ten or twenty thousand people would obviously require a vast expanse of arable land.

The armed force required to maintain basic security for that farmland would have to be enormous.

But as Ye Qingzhou had said, only once all of that stabilized could they possibly establish a self-sufficient safe zone.

It represented an effort to rebuild civilization, an attempt to bring order back to this land.

What would truly get people through this winter, in the end, was hope.

"Fuel isn’t actually that scarce. As for food, we have maps of all the strategic reserve depots. The problem is, most of what’s stored there is unhusked grain and corn. Even if we could find a way to transport it back, it would still require a massive amount of labor to process."

Ye Qingzhou knew these sweet potato seedlings wouldn’t yield enough food to get ten or twenty thousand people through the winter, so she had prepared some short-term plans as well.

"So, in essence, this all comes down to how we deal with the zombies..."

Lin Fan nodded and said thoughtfully,

"As a port city, Linjiang isn’t fundamentally lacking in coal or food supplies. The problem we need to solve is how to retrieve them..."

"Exactly. That’s why I said your ability to preserve crystals is probably more valuable than you realize. And for Awakened Ones, aside from all their various powers, the sheer improvement to their physical condition is, by itself, priceless for humanity as a whole."

As Ye Qingzhou started talking about her actual field of research, she suddenly grew animated, her eyes shining with increasing brightness.

"Although my research hasn’t made much headway so far—I can’t figure out how these powers manifest and function inside the human body, or how they can boost physical performance several times over without significant changes to a person’s appearance... But I believe that only by unlocking these secrets can we find a way to end this disaster for good."

"So is that the objective of your entire team?"

Lin Fan asked quizzically.

"When we first set out, our team had a single mission: get Cyan Bird, who we believed at the time to be the only Awakened One, and our entire group to the Linjiang University quarantine zone as fast as possible. They have more equipment and a larger armed force there."

Ye Qingzhou concisely summarized their objective in response to Lin Fan’s question.

"But not long after we set out, we picked up Tan Wei’s group and that doctor, Liu Hui. We discovered that Awakened Ones weren’t unique but were appearing randomly.

Back when shortwave communications were still working, we didn’t hear about anyone like that at the Linjiang University quarantine zone. But we believe Awakened Ones must have appeared there by now, and that they’ve already started their own research.

So, in the short term, the importance of a single Awakened One like Cyan Bird dropped significantly. In contrast, the importance of the sweet potato seedlings and the few agronomists we brought with us just kept increasing."

Lin Fan could completely understand that mindset. ’After all, before Wang Yuanhua showed up, I also thought I was the only one. I assumed the key to becoming an Awakened One was tied to me personally, and I spent a long time studying that green health bar because of it.’

Wang Yuanhua’s appearance taught him that becoming an Awakened One was more like a random lottery pull among the survivors, and the realization was a huge relief.

"If your goal was to get to the quarantine zone as fast as possible, why did you risk going through the horde on the outer ring road? Why did you have to come to this specific gas station?"

He didn’t know their exact route, since he’d never been to Jishan. He just figured it would have been more convenient for the convoy to stick to the outer ring road. So he asked, confused as to why they would risk entering the city proper.

"We lost our only fuel tanker in the battle before last. So, before our most recent fight, we siphoned the fuel from almost all our vehicles to make firebombs and set the road ablaze to stop the zombies from chasing us."

Hearing Lin Fan’s question, Ye Qingzhou began to recall the whole sequence of events.

"We searched for gas stations using a map, but the ones we found along the way were either too small and already empty, or they’d been blown up and burned down. So we set up camp just outside the outer ring road and deployed a drone for reconnaissance."

"You have a drone? Is there a signal? Does it even work?"

Lin Fan was taken aback when he heard the familiar term "drone."

He didn’t have a drone himself, but he’d heard others in his residential complex talking about it. Early on, someone had tried to use a drone to scout the situation downstairs. They could barely control it while it was still inside the room, but the moment it flew out the window, it would immediately lose signal and crash.

As a result, Lin Fan had yet to see a single intact drone since the apocalypse began.