Sorry for the delay again, did not have access to my laptop while moving apartments and organizing my stuff.

Just as everyone got out of the car to help check the dog, bandage the wound and dig out nuclei, there was movement in the village. Some zombies, dressed in rags and almost naked, ran out while waving their arms.

"Ah! Zombies!" The team, who had not seen zombies for a long time, could not tell if they felt excitement or horror. They brandished the weapons and rushed the zombies that entered their range.

Puppy had heard noise and turned her head over, when she saw the zombies, she immediately jumped into the car…Was this a case of bitten by a snake, afraid of rope for ten years?

Luo Xun did not know if the zombies lived together or if the army did not deal with the zombies beforehand. The monsters were only level one or two, within ten meters of the team, they were put down and the core was dug out.

There were not many zombies in the small village. The runners and rabid dogs totaled only around thirty and were easily dealt with.

They climbed into the car and slowly approached their next goal - the paint factory. The factory was closed and no new zombies appeared. They needed large quantities of certain colors, as for others; they could also pick and choose some.

Collected metal and then searched the other courtyard for a bit. They found some farm tools and other items mostly intact, although some had some problems. Luo Xun found some hardware and an intact freezer. Yan Fei scraped all the metal he could before returning to the road.

There were a lot of trees near the village, many of which had died after the end of the world. Luo Xun's team needed a lot of wood to grow mushrooms. Thus they unceremoniously cut trees one-by-one and placed them in the car.

The team felt lucky that they also found a few trucks near the village. Although many places were rusted due to rain, as long as nothing was wrong with the wheels, Yan Fei could repair the vehicle for use.

They split up into pairs for transport. The trucks were filled with excavated roots, branches and any remaining space was filled with metal devices. The loaded team returned to their new base.

Luo Xun had achieved his main purpose coming out. The entire trunks of several cars were filled with paint cans. Along with the large amount of wood and metal they had collected. The first batch of raw materials for renovation was ready.

With a few cars full of supplies, their speed was evidently not as fast as when they arrived. The team drove until evening and found an empty space. Yan Fei created a temporary metal hut and connected the cars surrounding them.

Everyone sat around the fire. Luo Xun fed the baby and changed his diaper while the others were busy preparing for dinner.

Zhang Yi suddenly turned and asked, "What are we going to do about the crystal cores?"

"The cores?" Luo Xun wrinkled his brow in surprise as he stared at the baby in his arms. "…There is no way now, we could try and find some outside of base, but that would be limited."

Although at the moment there were wandering zombies, the vast majority were mixed into the horde, migrating along with the zombie army. The scale of the horrendous horde was not something ordinary people could handle. The base was holding on until it left before going to pick up nuclei. With a team of around ten people…could win against small groups but how would they survive an encounter with the horde?

The group felt a little depressed. They wanted to leave base to collect crystal cores. It was better than a few teams coming together but what about now? Sure enough, once the zombies reached a certain scale, they could only retreat.

"You can think of a way, such as making traps or waiting until the horde passes and see if there is any harvestable…" Luo Xun held up the child and patted his back. "But we need to be careful. The horde might break the trap…this sort of things is left to chance and be careful not to let passing people fall in." In short, there was a trouble compared to the harvest, which needed to be carefully calculated.

"I say we take care of our base first and say nothing. If we can really expand and increase the yield of grain and vegetables, would it not be easy to get cores at base?" Wang Duo hugged his lover's shoulder but only got rolled eyes in exchange.

No way, at least half the team was an ability user. If they only used vegetables to exchange for crystal nuclei, how much would they need? But they had no other method for the time being, but it was not only Luo Xun and team who were lacking, the base was too.

"That said, last time after successfully repelling the zombie wave, they did not send down too much nuclei." Li Tie suddenly remembered this matter.

There was more silence as the team exchanged helpless looks. Right? After the last zombie left, everyone who took part in the fight was rewarded a fraction of nuclei, as for the rest…it was probably all absorbed internally. Before that zombie wave, one could get a decent number of cores from the exchange booth with fair prices.

But now there was no place to exchange and they had separated from the troops. Luo Xun had been busy with other things so they temporarily had not found a place to exchange.

Night shrouded the earth as the sun slowly rose from the horizon.

The rested people took advantage of the morning light to pack their bags and start on their way. The cars drove across the fields, there seemed to be variant plants on both sides of the road but they were too far away and they were not in the mood for studying so they hurried onwards.

Back at their base, Luo Xun opened the underground passage and drove straight through. They also measured the size of the metal plate in order to make some camouflage. After all, it was not a good idea to have Yu Xinran always cover the entrance with sand.

They drove the car into the passage and the team was relieved to climb out. Yesterday was tiring after moving trees and paint. They were all ready to take a bath, rest and then continue with work.

Back in the respective rooms, Luo Xun had taken a bath and was lying on the ground with a pen in hand writing in a book. Yan Fei opened the door while drying his hair, he walked up to his busy lover and asked, "What are you up to?"

Luo Xun pointed at his book, chin in one hand while twirling the pen in other. "I was thinking…there is so much outside space, wouldn't it be better to use it? Anyway we still have a lot of solar panels and we do not lack metal. Why don't you surround the square with metal and make a place where we can grow things? The mutant plants outside cover almost half the building. If we build a house, we can fool passersby and the roof can still be used to dry things."

"Yes I can." Yan Fei pressed against Luo Xun's back to look at the unfinished drawing. A few buildings had been marked; Luo Xun was planning to connect the buildings into one piece.

"This is space efficient however we need to bring back more metal." He wrapped a hand around the other's waist.

Luo Xun twirled his pen and continued to speak. "This is not a problem, every time we got out we bring back a lot, we also have some material buried outside."

"Ah, we can reinforce the whole place and cover it up with paint."

Luo Xun suddenly paused and looked at Yan Fei whose hands were sliding down his back. Blinking, he innocently asked, "In broad daylight?"

Yan Fei raised an eyebrow, "Got a problem?"

"…The baby's still here." Luo Xun said but he already turned around.

"He's asleep, I just checked." Yan Fei leaned over and pressed down on the man below him.

They had recently been very busy and the couple had not been intimate for a long time. Today's opportunity was rare and the atmosphere was just right, who would let go of this golden chance?