Armored train in the apocalypse

Chapter 339 Death
That night, two small gangs were visited by goats.

They received a warm welcome from a small gang, making so much noise that the surrounding residents couldn't sleep.

However, it did not cause any panic. For veteran scavengers who have experienced the apocalypse, the day when gangs stop fighting each other, mutated beasts stop crawling in corners, and jumpers stop falling from the sky is the day they should be afraid.

The next day, the recruit camp had more than two hundred more inflexible live targets.

The train conductor glanced at the damage and then tossed the detailed report to Shu Wei.

He took it upon himself to insert women without understanding the train conductor's preferences.

It can only be said that he met his end in a righteous way.

The impact of the whole incident was limited to a very small area, but the news that the train conductor had gained a goddaughter quickly spread throughout the train.

but--

Business as usual.

Su Han blended into the train very naturally, like a drop of water falling into the ocean.

My current job is to help Yu Yue process ingredients in the food truck.

Evolved beings have a much larger appetite than ordinary people. Even if Yu Yue only takes care of Su Huan and occasional meetings and meals, the amount of food she has to deal with every day is enormous.

However, after Su Huan advanced to the third rank, his body seemed to have obtained some kind of meal replacement in the energy, and his appetite decreased instead of increasing. He only ate three meals a day to satisfy his taste buds.

This well-behaved and sensible girl won Yu Yue's complete affection.

Unfortunately, there are simply too few normal people on the bus.

Time quickly passed to the end of August. The eight thousand new recruits were divided into groups, and the zombies that had been crowding the north side of the Iron Wall had thinned out considerably.

It is worth mentioning that the first school since the apocalypse, the Zhijin Armed Academy, has officially opened.

In Zhijin, all children under the age of ten are required to attend school, regardless of whether they have parents or not. The school provides food and lodging and offers certain age-appropriate jobs.

Working outside without permission, skipping school, being caught and shot, employing children under ten years old for shooting, concealing one's age for work and shooting, obstructing enrollment and shooting, poor academic performance... none of these apply.

In short, there are no laws in Zhijin; the train conductor's will is the only truth.

There is no punishment for violating the truth, only the death penalty and target practice.

Zhou Qing was somewhat uneasy about the harsh methods, but was soon overwhelmed by the swarm of children.

By the end of August, Zhijin's permanent population reached 120,000, but children under the age of ten accounted for only 2%, or just over 2,000. If you exclude those with parents who are still in swaddling clothes and cannot walk or talk, there are only about 1,400 children.

After all, the school provides food and accommodation, and any parent with a sound mind would be willing to send their child there.

Even the very few who, after being visited by goats, decided to support the new policy.

Even more stubborn, He Jie personally invited them to visit the new recruits' shooting range.

With the full support of the armed forces, Zhou Qing managed to gather more than a hundred teachers of all ages and successfully start the new school year.

The school is directly affiliated with the city hall, with the city hall providing support in the early stages, and the college taking on its own responsibilities later.

This period is one month, which is when the scale of the coarse grass planting can support the consumption of all teachers and students in the school.

【Coarse Powder Grass】has an extremely short growth cycle of only one week, but it consumes too much regional energy and soil fertility. It needs to be planted with 【Fertile Soil Heart】 and corpse fertilizer. The method of directly burying energy crystals on the train to accelerate growth is a bit too extravagant for a grass-based academy.

Besides teaching knowledge about the pre-apocalyptic world, the school spends half its time teaching about evolution.

General knowledge, basic attributes, vitality, skill combinations, class system, material gathering, mechanical manufacturing, firearms use, computer skills, wilderness survival, mutant beast identification, combat...

The amount of knowledge they need to learn has not decreased; on the contrary, it has increased and become more intensive due to the changes in the environment.

"How to acquire power" will become a lifelong research topic for them.

These children, all under ten years old, may not be of much use now, but they are the seeds that the train conductor is leaving for the world ten or twenty years from now.

Perhaps "hope" would be a more appropriate term.

……

By mid-September, Professor Ma had successfully developed a miniaturized communication device, which was reduced to the size of a smartphone. However, its communication range was limited, equivalent to that of a civilian unlicensed walkie-talkie. It could make free calls within 3 kilometers, and its stability was extremely poor. Even a third-tier powerhouse like Su Huan might not be able to cut off the communication, but he could definitely disrupt it.

If the "energy amplifier" obtained on Guanchao Island is activated, Su Huan will be unable to disrupt it even within a ten-kilometer radius.

Only evolved beings specializing in general energy manipulation can intercept it.

Breakthroughs in communication technology have enabled two projects currently in preparation to progress rapidly, especially the "Hive" all-domain miniature unmanned combat platform.

As a project that had been in preparation for a long time, the biggest challenge was not the platform or the drones, but communication.

To achieve the true reconnaissance and combat effectiveness of the "Hive," drones must be freed from the cable attached to their rear ends.

Because of the involvement of universal energy, all the underlying logic of communication had to be rewritten, which was the most troublesome thing. Fortunately, the breakthrough in communication technology gave everyone hope.

The design project, which had been almost stalled, was rapidly improved over the next ten days.

All members transferred to Professor Ma's electronics lab to work towards further miniaturizing the communication device.

However, existing communication devices can already do many things. For example, Yu Jing's research on power armor has finally freed the Guardian-2 from dependence on Black Kite and equipped it with the train's own communication equipment. Power armor users can finally rely on built-in communication to make tactical arrangements on the chaotic battlefield.

Some are happy and some are sad.

When Luo Jingyi was about to take action, he realized that he was a lone commander. The only thing the train could provide was strong military support and the supercomputer behind it.

So he spent half a month interviewing more than 2,000 people, and pieced together a team of 8 core members and 160 peripheral members from various laboratories to form an artificial intelligence team.

As of mid-September, I had only just taken over Xiao Ai's care.

Modular design is also required to meet the different needs of each laboratory.

To cope with these complex demands and the ever-increasing workload, the number of staff in all departments of the train has been expanded at an alarming rate, providing Zhijin with an extremely ample demand for positions.

Those with ability should use their abilities, those with technology should use their technology, and those with nothing can still evolve by consuming a couple of universal energy crystals.

The power supply system within the site has also been completely improved.

Thanks to the perfect design by Professor Wang Duoyu and a group of planning and logistics talents, the "small" Zhijin station remains as bright as day even late at night.

Hundreds and thousands of vehicles carrying various plundered supplies enter Zhijin 24 hours a day and are then put into the factories that work around the clock. Every day, tens of thousands of evolution materials are extracted and synthesized, and engineering vehicles are repaired to begin restoring the city.

The armed corps, along with the recruits, thoroughly searched the site like sieves, driving out various mutated beasts and zombies from the dark corners under the bright lights.

All kinds of supplies were collected and integrated, ready for a large-scale trading market in October.

Gunshots, engine roars, and the clamor of the crowd brought life to this long-silent city.

Amid everyone's high level of enthusiasm, the third phase of the armed train renovation project was also rapidly advanced.

First, the main body of the vehicle uses a new type of "second-tier" hybrid metal as its skeleton, incorporating a large amount of materials such as "whale bone," "tungsten metal," "second-tier zombie materials," and "second-tier mutated plants." They even gave this metal a fitting name: Second-Tier Dragon Bone.

Its hardness and toughness have reached their peak. It can withstand small-caliber shells head-on without deforming and large-caliber shells without breaking. Most importantly, because it incorporates a large amount of Tier 2 materials, it is even lighter than steel.

The train armor required too much material to be completely replaced with Tier 2 armor, so only one layer was added on top of the original.

The outermost layer is Tier 1 steel armor, followed by composite armor (Tier 1 blue steel + Tier 1 plastic + Tier 1 blue steel), the innermost layer is extremely thin Tier 1 titanium steel, and then a layer of ironwood is applied for insulation.

Because it uses only Tier 1 synthetic materials, only about 40% has been replaced so far.

The hydropower renovation, especially the water circulation system proposed by Professor Wang Duoyu, has been initially completed, with a comprehensive recycling efficiency of 80%. In extreme cases, such as a completely closed environment, this figure can even reach 92%, reaching the level of the space station.

This is mainly thanks to a temperature and humidity control system that was dismantled in Zhijin. It can recycle sweat and breath moisture, which is the main part of water resource recycling besides sanitary water and urine.

With this temperature control system, the directly related atmospheric circulation system is also 20% complete, with a large portion involving energy circulation still under design.

He Jie, who was strangling zombies, brought back several oxygen chambers from the city hospital, pushing the progress forward by another 10%.

"I heard this thing can extend lifespan?"

Su Huan patted the metal shell in front of him and asked curiously.

Shu Wei was replying to messages on her tablet when she heard this. She raised her eyelids slightly and said coldly, "No, if it could extend lifespan, you would never see it in a hospital."

"Then this is a..."

"We'll move the hyperbaric oxygen chamber in and modify it into an emergency oxygen chamber. If the oxygen generation equipment on the vehicle breaks down, this will help us last a little longer."

Su Huan asked with slight doubt, "Is this thing difficult to manufacture?"

Shu Wei sighed inwardly, feeling that she should give the train conductor a little lesson.

"In theory, we have lost all industrial manufacturing capabilities. The reason we can produce now is twofold: firstly, not all people have died, and secondly, we are standing on the ruins of past cities. If we lose our existing cities, even with our technology and the ability to compensate through evolution, our industrial level will regress to that of a hundred years ago."

"So serious..."

Su Huan frowned. He thought that even if the train couldn't make it to the end of the world, it would at least have the foundation for self-sufficiency.

"What if it were in the city?"

"The level of technology and industry before the apocalypse is our limit. If we can't make progress on the path of evolution, we will never break through. This is from a human perspective. From a train perspective, we should never think that we can break through the traditional level of technology."

"The old level of technology was built up through decades of peace and the hard work of several generations. There has been significant progress in all basic disciplines, and a large number of talents have been accumulated in all walks of life. With the strength of Donghuang before the apocalypse, projects like the modification of armed trains could be carried out simultaneously in the hundreds or thousands, with precision control at the minute level..."

The rest of the sentence was left unsaid, but Su Huan understood the difference in their conversation.

It's not a multiple, it's an exponent.

The construction of industry requires the superposition of countless conditions and factors: a peaceful environment, the hard work of several generations, and stable inheritance... but collapse can happen in an instant.

Although the transmission routes of academic qualifications are similar to those of AIDS.

But knowledge does not.

If you don't know it, you don't know it; it can't be passed down to one generation.

Su Huan stopped dwelling on the issue; each generation has its own tasks to complete.

All he had to do was kill those idiots behind him.

What projects are we going to inspect next?

"The plan to split up the three phases of renovation, and the materials prepared for the October auction."

Su Huan thought for a moment, "Let's look at the splitting plan first."

The train splitting plan is a new idea proposed during the renovation. It does not mean completely dismantling the train, but rather designing some of the train carriages to be detachable.

On the one hand, it reduces the power pressure on the train, and on the other hand, the disassembled carriages can be converted into engineering vehicles to help the train pass through special terrains, and also facilitate later modifications.

Su Huan walked ahead with his hands in his pockets, an invisible energy barrier appearing on his black shirt, shielding him from the wind and sand.

The distance between each step was measured with a ruler, carrying a terrifying precision.

He is using this method to adapt to and adjust to his enormous presence.

Have I changed at all recently?

To verify, Su Huan asked casually.

Perhaps because he asked so casually, Shu Wei, who was busy with her work, answered just as casually.

"Yes, I'm not as insecure as I used to be."

The train conductor's raised foot no longer fell.

Shu Wei's light gray pupils froze, and after realizing what she had said, fine beads of cold sweat appeared on her smooth forehead.

Damn it, what nonsense is she spouting?

A huge shadow and a sinister aura enveloped her, and the air, besides the sandstorm, carried a faint sweet scent.

Like blood rust.

"I didn't expect you to have such insightful observations."

Su Huan's voice was calm, like the prelude to impending danger.

Sensing the familiar aura, Shu Wei's pores opened slightly, and the fine hairs on her body stood up as if attracted. Before the train conductor could make a move, Shu Wei spoke first.

"problem occurs."

Su Huan gave a half-smile, "You'd better really be in trouble."

Shu Wei calmly tilted the tablet up and zoomed in on a picture on it.

"The factory director died a quarter of an hour ago despite all efforts to save him."

The picture shows the scene inside the medical carriage of the train. An elderly man is lying on the white hospital bed, wearing pajamas and casual clothes. He is not wearing a breathing mask and his eyes are slightly closed, as if he is asleep.

Su Huan was taken aback by this answer. Arcs of electricity flickered in his black pupils, as if a crack had appeared in the night sky.

But after a short while, it fell silent.

It was as if the light had never appeared; the night enveloped the earth and remained there forever.

There was only one dismissive answer.

"understood."

(End of this chapter)