The battle ended swiftly, completely in contrast with the stalemate they were in when they encountered the mutated humans last time.
The 30 infantries, who entered the town, did not suffer any casualties, and only one unlucky guy was shot in the leg by a recalcitrant mutated human. The bullet happened to pass through his artery. Although the blood gushing out was quite frightening, the combat medic was quick to rescue, and the man was no longer in a life-threatening condition.
A total of 35 mutated humans were killed including 29 who died from electromagnetic pulse cannon and six of which died from of assault rifle and sniper attacks. Five were captured, and although mutated humans would rarely take the humiliation of being captured by a human lying down, under that overwhelming firepower, instinctive fear prevailed over the ridiculous pride.
A total of 721 human captives were rescued. If the bodies outside the town were all dead, the population of the town should be 779 before the mutated humans came.
There were bullet holes the size of a bowl throughout the exterior buildings outside of the town, and collapsed concrete buildings could be seen everywhere. Half of which were destroyed by the mutated humans.
The Fishbone Base infantry maintained the order of the queue as they recorded all the rescued townspeople and then provide them with the nutrient supply that originally belonged to them.
The five Tigers didn’t drive into the city but stopped at the bridgehead of Zhufeng highway. A few soldiers were carrying concrete bags to build five crude bunkers.
This move was very intriguing.
All the Shenxiang townspeople had one thought hovering in their mind: do these people want to stay here?
They had a sense of foreboding.
…
Type-51 helicopter landed about a half kilometer away from the town in an open space. Jiang Chen, clad in kinetic skeletons, jumped down from the top. Cheng Weiguo, along with the mayor of the town, greeted Jiang Chen and saluted after seeing him.
“Did you finish the census?” Jiang Chen cut to the chase.
“It’s done.” Cheng Weiguo handed a tablet to Jiang Chen for him to check.
Jiang Chen swiped the screen while he perused the statistics.
Population: 721, captive mutated humans: 5.
Seized: 24 machine guns, 72 various models of rifles, 100 thousand rounds of bullets, 1 shoulder-launched missile, 5 surface-to-air missiles, 5 recoilless cannons, and 40 rounds of ammunition. And there were 40 sets of C-type steel armors, though most of them were destroyed in the explosion.
Looking at these batches of firearms, Jiang Chen was secretly stunned.
Oh boy, these firearms reserves could catch up with the entire assets of the Fishbone Base!
It could be seen that these mutated humans invested a lot in this outpost, but now all of these belonged to Jiang Chen.
These firearms would remain here, but he ordered the armors to be shipped back. Although these lumps of irons were of little value to humans, nevertheless it’s still pretty good to reforge them. Fishbone Base could use more C-type steels. With about ten tons of steel, however, modifying them into two armored vehicles wouldn’t be a problem.
In addition, there were also hundreds of preserved mutants cadavers which appeared to be the food of mutated humans, since only they could eat something this toxic. However, so as not to waste anything, Jiang Chen still ordered Cheng Weiguo to throw these into the organic extractor to produce some nutrient supplies. With the ratio of one mutant to 100 nutrient supplies, it could easily extract 10,000 nutrient supplies.
Including the 30,000 in the storage, he temporarily did not have to worry about the rations of more than 700 people.
What excited him most was the construction materials that he seized. The mutated humans left a huge amount of cement and steels in the warehouse which were originally used to build an outpost, but right now, they were in his hands.
With these batches of prefabricated construction materials, Jiang Chen could easily stretch out reinforced concrete defensive line along the shore.
He returned the tablet to Cheng Weiguo, said a few words, and the latter received the order at once and left.
Then Jiang Chen finally turned to look at the mayor, who had been standing there and smiled amiably at him.
Seeing that Jiang Chen was looking at him, the mayor quickly bowed, “The honorable Fishbone Base leader, Mr. Jiang Chen, on behalf of all the survivors in Shenxiang town, I would like to express our utmost gratitude and sincerity to you.”
“Don’t worry about it…Do tell, what’s your name?”
“Deng Bin.”
“Okay, Mr. Deng Bin, I want to go to the town hall now. Do you have time to take me there?”
“My pleasure.” Deng Bin bowed again.
To be honest, as the mayor, their “savior’s” behavior after eliminating the mutated humans made him very uneasy. At the moment, however, they were wielding guns, and the entire military power of the town was wiped out after the onslaught of mutated humans. Not possessing confidence nor knowing what to say, he could only meekly follow Jiang Chen on the side.
With hands in his pocket, Jiang Chen looked at the surrounding buildings while walking on the road leading to the town hall.
The reek of blood lingered in the nose and did not fade away even after a long time.
Along the way, he didn’t say anything which actually made Deng Bin somewhat uncertain.
After hesitating for a moment, Deng Bin looked at Jiang Chen and asked tentatively, “In just three days, they already slaughtered more than 60 of us. Truly grateful to you—us survivors from Qingpu. If there is anything we can help you with, we’ll do our absolute best.”
“I’ve already said not to worry about it,” Jiang Chen, however, didn’t directly answer. Instead, he only responded in a brief sentence before no longer speaking.
While Deng Bin’s heart was still apprehensive, the two had arrived in front of the town hall.
To his surprise, the leader of the mysterious organization didn’t seem to have the intention to go in; rather, he just stood in front of the town hall.
Did it deserve to be called a government building? It was aesthetically built, and based on the damage, it could be considered the only intact building in the entire town.
“Say, was there a person called Lin Chaoen who came to your place before?”
Deng Bin was a bit stunned for a moment, as he didn’t expect Jiang Chen would suddenly ask this irrelevant question.
Frowning, he tried to recall carefully and answered, “There seems to be someone like that…he came from Jia City.”
“Did he not say anything to you? Like how the mutated humans would be here?” Jiang Chen asked casually.
Looking blankly at Jiang Chen, Deng Binyao shook his head and said, “No, he only stayed in our town for a night before leaving hastily.”
Hadn’t said anything?
[That’s extremely odd. If they desperately wanted to prevent the mutated humans from invading Wanghai City, there is no reason not to alert the people here, so that they can make early preparations. Or at the very least, build some defensive structures.]
Jiang Chen slightly knitted his brows as he carefully scrutinized Deng Bin’s eyes.
[It doesn’t seem like he’s pretending at all.]
“How did you remember him…what I mean is, is there anything special about him that made you take a closer look at him?”
“Hehe, there was one. Because the people passing through Zhufeng highway were usually lone travelers from Jia Cty, they come here to dig a few components or microchips from military equipment. These things would sell well anywhere in the mainland. The worst-case scenario is that they would go to Liuding town to buy a few boxes of canned fish to sell when they returned, and then the price could at least double. However, only Lin Chaoen came back empty-handed.”
“Has he only been here once?”
“Yes, he seemed to have taken another route when he went to Wanghai City.”
Nodding thoughtfully, Jiang Chen became lost in thought.
Deng Bin, standing on the side, was trying to figure out the expression on Jiang Chen’s face but couldn’t manage to read the slightest useful information. He couldn’t understand why Jiang Chen would suddenly ask about the lone travelers. Was there any deeper meaning in this?
While he was speculating, Jiang Chen spoke again, but this time it was to ask a different question.
“Let’s talk about something else. What do you do to earn a living?”
More than 700 people were not a small number. It’s not the city center, so there were not enough zombies to provide organic matter that could be used to extract nutrient supply. Although there were quite a number of mutants here, they were usually powerful. If they ever hunted mutants, they didn’t exactly look like a well-equipped group of survivors.
“We planted some crops on the farms outside the town to extract nutrient supplies,” Deng Bin looked at Jiang Chen in the eyes and said cautiously.
The fruit of the mutant plants could not be eaten, but it could be used as an excellent raw material for the extraction of nutrient supplies. Many survivors in Qingpu would also plant such crops on the roof and go to the Sixth Street to exchange for crystals or nutrient supplies.
“Oh? What is the degree of soil contamination here? What about the radiation?”
Seeing that Jiang Chen seem to be showing no interest in the nutrient supply in the warehouse, Deng Bin felt slightly relieved and muttered, “It seems to be 9…and 20.”
With regards to this, he didn’t have to lie about it. The two numbers were easy to measure. The radiation value could be measured by EP, and the soil contamination would only require to take a sample and then to drop two drops of reagent.
“9? Very good!” Jiang Chen suddenly laughed and then reached out and patted Deng Bin on the shoulder, “From this day onwards, you’ll be in charge of the farm.”
Deng Bin paused while looking completely dumbfounded. He couldn’t understand the meaning behind his words.
“Farm? Me?”
Jiang Chen smiled, looked at him and said, “That’s right, who else would it be?”
Swallowing his saliva, Deng Bin was still bewildered and asked, “If you want those mutated fruits, we are willing to pay tribute to you—”
Those things were not worth money at all, and not to mention the price of organic matter was declining. Even with the price two months ago, one ton of fruit could only extract 100 nutrient supplies which could be exchanged for ten crystals. The reaper rifle alone in their hands was worth 20. Thus, they didn’t need to care about this small profit.
Jiang Chen raised his hand to interrupt him.
“You misunderstood me, we don’t care about those rotten fruits that you planted.”
It was the truth, Fishbone Base didn’t need nutrient supply.
“Then you mean—”
“Am I still not direct enough? Former mayor, I need you to take care of my farm for me.” There were two words Jiang Chen emphasized and they were “former mayor” and “my”.
Upon hearing this, Deng Bin’s face instantly paled, his eyes widened, “You, you want to occupy our homes, you can’t do—”
“But we can, the mutated humans are going to cross this river, and I will prevent that from happening, and so we’re here.”
“But all of them are dead now…” Deng Bin had difficulty speaking.
Jiang Chen looked strangely at Deng Bin, he smiled and said: “Are we having a misunderstanding here? You think we are here on a special trip to rescue you? I am sorry to tell you, but we are only fighting against the mutated humans. And this place is only the outpost I captured from them. Moreover, in accordance with the rules of the wasteland, since I saved you, you are all my captives.”
Deng Bin’s lips trembled and couldn’t utter a single word. His previous thought was they were saved, but in the end, it was just a change of ownership.
Seeing that he had no reaction, Jiang Chen could also not care any less.
“They will be back. Furthermore, there would be more of them, but I will defend here.”
Stamping his foot, he pointed towards the ground beneath his foot.
“And from now on, this is my colony.”