Night of Despair

Chapter 83: Gloomy

“This is indeed a good idea…” Yu Hong nodded his head in agreement.

“By the way, have you received any recent news or intelligence?” he thought of the Language Person who had been quiet for a long time and suddenly asked. Two weeks had passed, and in a few more days, his self-restorative talisman array would be fully enhanced. If the Language Person came back during these days, it would be dangerous.

“Just as we predicted, that thing went elsewhere. A small outpost was affected, and several hundred people died,” Li Rushan said helplessly. “Now the higher-ups have started planning merges of the outposts, because they found that as the nights get longer and the days get shorter, the scale and danger of the Black Disaster are also continuously increasing.”

“…I noticed that as well. The days are getting shorter; I thought it was just seasonal change,” Yu Hong spoke gravely.

“Of course not…The changes are much more significant than seasonal variations,” Li Rushan sighed. “Also, what do you think about the proposal I gave you earlier? The idea about building outposts centered around you.”

“…Seeing this trend, let’s just focus on saving ourselves first… Why bring this up all of a sudden?” Yu Hong asked, puzzled.

“Yesterday, I went out and encountered a few loners who came to dig for luminous stones; they were quite capable. As you know, those who dare to wander outside these days are no ordinary people. I also met a strong fellow who led a group of survivors, running from the disaster; their food is almost gone, so I recommended they temporarily hide in Baiqiu Village,” Li Rushan replied.

“So, what then?” Yu Hong asked.

“See if you’re interested. I’ve stored quite a lot of food from the supply team; actually, if it weren’t for Language Person, dealing with common troubles would have been quite easy for us,” Li Rushan said.

Yu Hong nodded. Indeed, if it weren’t for the exaggerated threat of the Language Person, he wouldn’t be so exhausted and desperate to enhance the strength of his talisman array.

“Think about it. After this wave of attacks, many people have started to lead others and live independently. Having more people can indeed lead to problems and attract exaggerated attacks that are hard to cope with,” Li Rushan said. “Moreover, I’m currently making jerked meat and dried mushrooms alone, and I can barely keep up; production is very low. We need more hands to help. As nights grow longer, insufficient sunlight might eventually make solar power useless, and we will have to rely more on bioenergy; candle production must also continue.”

“With no sunlight, trees won’t survive, what will you use to make candles?” Yu Hong said exasperatedly.

“You’re right…maybe I should consider setting up human-powered generators or biogas as backup lighting sources…” Li Rushan sighed. “Anyway, think of a solution. We can’t always rely on the supply team. The supply team is encountering increasing difficulties in their operations, and the intervals between their visits are also becoming longer. If we run out of food and they haven’t arrived yet, we’ll have a serious problem.”

“….This is indeed a problem,” Yu Hong nodded.

“Let’s leave it here for today. Your water supply system will arrive in a few days, and I’ll notify you then. I also got some cellular frequency communication devices; we’ll be able to communicate directly without having to run around. This time, I spent all my savings, determined to completely reinforce our dwelling! I even got some items from the Sunshine series…uh, never mind, I’m leaving,”

“I thought you said you couldn’t afford the Sunshine series?” Yu Hong suddenly questioned.

“You heard it wrong; that’s wrong. Alright, let’s end it here for today, Nana, say goodbye to uncle.”

“Goodbye, uncle.”

Bang.

Old Li dragged his daughter into the stone house and directly bolted.

Leaving Yu Hong speechless and alone outside.

“This guy!” He frustratedly smashed the stick on the shabby grass and turned to walk outside the courtyard.

It was evident that Li Rushan could only get a few items from the Sunshine series, probably due to a quota restriction; even with money, he couldn’t just buy them at will, which is why he was so stingy.

After leaving the post office, Yu Hong returned to the cave.

As usual, he checked the countdown progress of the large talisman array in the courtyard, confirming there was no problem, then continued digging out new chambers.

His safety house cave was actually connected to a small mountain, and the cave itself was slightly elevated above the ground. So, digging additional chambers was essentially slightly below the ground level at most, not reaching the lower black worm layer.

Yes, Yu Hong himself had named the thickness between the ground and the black worms as the surface layer, with the black worm layer below it for easy remembering.

Puff.

A large crate of broken rocks was carried out by Yu Hong and dumped in a corner of the courtyard.

He glanced at the sky and turned back to continue digging.

After a while, another large crate of broken rocks was emptied out.

Yu Hong, drenched in sweat, moved his hands and arms and began using the extracted stone blocks to reinforce the courtyard walls.

The courtyard wall was now half a meter high, built entirely from the stones he had dug out these past days.

With so many stones dug out, the new chamber was nearly finished.

After allocating the stones, Yu Hong turned back to the cave and stepped down into the corner hole.

He quickly entered a somewhat irregular square chamber.

The chamber was cold and dim, lit only by the faint green light from the atomic lamp left in a corner, the sole source of light.

Yu Hong clapped off the dust from his hands and walked around the chamber, roughly estimating its volume by his steps.

“It feels much larger than the cave above, at least twice the size of that cave. This size is just about right, it could serve as an activity room or storage room, and later I can carve out new individual rooms.”

He then began engraving new talisman arrays on the cave walls to ensure that no shadows could enter here.

The chamber, located in the belly of the mountain, had no other entrances; presumably, the shadows had not discovered this place yet.

But ventilation points had to be established nevertheless, so it was imperative to establish a connection with the outside world…

“Once the water system is set up here, it will be fine, but the energy issue… Without electricity, the supply system can’t operate… This is a big problem… If the nights keep getting longer, the lighting will definitely become increasingly insufficient…” sighed Yu Hong, feeling helpless.

Blood Tide had introduced new Biters, which was already troublesome enough. Now problems were starting to appear with the solar power generation. It wasn’t just him facing this problem, but all other Hope Cities as well.

However, some Hope Cities could utilize hydroelectricity, geothermal power, nuclear power, wind power, fossil fuels, and so on. But he was just one person, with no foundational knowledge of these things, and the facilities and engineering materials were far too inadequate. The surrounding environment couldn’t be harnessed either.

“If only I could get a nuclear reactor for power generation…” he had discussed with Old Li, who mentioned that some Hope Cities were powered by miniature nuclear generators, no bigger than a pressure cooker, barely sufficient to support the daily electricity needs of a small area of residents.

He sighed and continued to carve the talisman array on the wall. Soon, the entire wall was covered with dense, milky-white arrays.

Clang, clang.

The wooden barrel used for holding ink powder was now completely empty.

Yu Hong tapped the barrel with a spoon, scraped the insides, and knocked it a few times, but he only managed to scrape out half a spoonful, not even enough to complete a single talisman array.

“Looks like I need to head to the mining area again… all the Large Pyroxene Stones are gone, and the small pyroxenes are used up too. I need to get some to strengthen the external talisman array, then work on getting some Large Pyroxene Stones.”

Now, he wasn’t directly strengthening the Large Pyroxene Stones as that actually wasted more time. Yu Hong had figured out that the correct approach was to grind the small pyroxenes into powder and then strengthen them—it was simpler and faster that way.

Since the Large Pyroxene Stones needed to be ground into powder anyway, there was no need to inscribe runes on their surfaces before transforming them into Large Pyroxene material.

Since they had to be ground into powder regardless, manually grinding ordinary luminous stones would also save on strengthening time.

After testing this method multiple times, he found it to be effective, even managing to shorten the process of strengthening Large Pyroxene ink powder from three days to just over two days.

Yu Hong breathed out and walked back down the stone steps to the cave, lit a fire, and cooked a pot of rich soup, which he enjoyed heartily.

Then, watching the sky outside turn completely dark, he collapsed onto his soft sleeping bag and fell into a groggy sleep.

The bright white light couldn’t keep the fatigue-induced drowsiness at bay.

In his blurry dream, Yu Hong seemed to hear voices echoing around him. It sounded like Chen Huiru, and also like Li Rushan, among others—familiar, unfamiliar, happy, painful.

The voices grew more numerous, more chaotic, until finally—

Bang, bang, bang!

Yu Hong shot awake to the sounds of someone pounding on the door.

He looked toward the door and peered through the gap in the slit window, where a streak of bright white daylight indicated that it had been daybreak for a while.

“Is Teacher Yu there?” A deep, resonant voice came from outside.

Yu Hong sighed and slowly got up, moving his limbs.

By now, the cave’s fireplace had long since gone out, and although the lights were still on, the temperature had dropped to a chilling cold.

“The temperature is dropping… I need to think about staying warm… If I catch a cold or get a fever at this time, it could be a big problem,” he muttered, rubbing his hands together, feeling a slight warmth return.

He walked to the front door.

Swoosh.

The peephole slid open.

Revealed was the bald, big face of the butcher, Xu Fan.

The paint on his face had been washed off, his eyes round and tinged with a light brown hue, much like a tiger’s. His nose appeared somewhat flattened, perhaps from having been broken, and there was a scar from stitches on one corner of his mouth, giving him the typical demeanor of a horror movie butcher.

No wonder he was called the Butcher.

Silently, Yu Hong waited five seconds before responding.

“You guys have finally arrived; I’ve been waiting a long time. You delayed much longer than the agreed time.”

“Ah… ran into some issues, hard to explain,” Xu Fan responded with a helpless expression.

“Move back and wait for me outside the yard, and remember not to linger in the yard; it’s dangerous,” Yu Hong cautioned, adhering to the five-second reply rule.

Xu Fan nodded, stepped back, and jumped down the stone steps, retreating outside the yard.

Observing that he had indeed moved away and increased the distance, Yu Hong then changed into his reinforced polar bear suit, picked up the repaired Blue Whale suit, and opened the door to go out.

He had considered staying inside to avoid danger. Although this strategy could work against shadows and Blood Tide, confronting a person, especially an exceptionally experienced field combatant like the Butcher, would be different. Staying inside the cave just provided too many ways for the enemy to easily trap and kill him. @@novelbin@@

For instance, just one poison gas bomb would be difficult to handle. Although his suit had a gas mask, the water, meat, mushrooms, and wild vegetables inside the cave would inevitably get contaminated.

Therefore, when dealing with people, it was safer to confront them outside, in a more spacious environment.

Of course, even though he intended to go outside, he didn’t forget to bring his enhanced pistol, along with paper and pen for writing.