Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 41

Everyone worked together to clean up the pots and pans, washing them with well water and stacking them neatly in the area for public supplies.

After finishing, the group gathered in the courtyard again to continue the meeting they hadn’t finished that morning. The April sun was still gentle, warming their bodies comfortably. It was quite pleasant.

Tang Yu quickly got into a meeting mindset. She said, “The third item on the agenda is to assign tasks for everyone. I’ve tallied it up, and there are five urgent matters at hand: building houses, clearing land for farming, setting up roads, water, and electricity, making tools, and stockpiling food. These five tasks will all take a lot of time and can’t be postponed, so it’s best to carry them out simultaneously. I have a proposal. We have twenty members, so why don’t we form five groups of four, with each group taking on one task.”

Jin Ye also spoke up, “Everyone can choose what they’re good at, with the most experienced person serving as the team leader. For example, I have a skill for drawing blueprints, so I’ll join the tool-making group. Aunty Zhu is experienced in cooking and recognizes many ingredients, so she can join the food group. The team leader can be elected by the group members themselves.”

Aunty Pang asked in surprise, “You know how to draw blueprints?”

Jin Ye smiled and nodded. “But I can only draw based on existing objects. I can’t draw things I’ve never seen.” Her basic skill, “Tool Blueprints,” came in handy.

But basic skills weren’t as powerful as innate abilities. They required the player to put in actual effort to use them. For instance, to make a plow, Jin Ye would have to spend half a day studying its structure before she could draw a blueprint for everyone to use. Still, this was already better than most people.

Someone asked in a low voice, “What if I don’t know how to do anything?”

Jin Ye smiled. “If you don’t know now, you’ll learn. Choose a group you’re interested in and learn from the experienced members. In the future, you’ll become a master in your own right.”

Xiao Li relayed Jin Ye’s words verbatim. The calm and encouraging words put everyone at ease.

Tang Yu added, “During the practical work, if we’re missing any tools, just write them down, and we’ll look for them the next time we go into the city.”

“Okay!”

With a clear direction, the aunties immediately sprang into action. They asked each other about their skills and coordinated the assignments. In just ten minutes, the five teams were formed.

Building houses required a lot of lifting and carrying, so the four aunties in this team were all strong and sturdy, including Aunty Pang. She had been quick and efficient when dismantling things in A-City, sweeping through places like a whirlwind, so everyone playfully pushed her into the position of team leader.

The four people clearing land for farming were led by Granny Mei. The others were aunties from rural backgrounds with farming experience. There was also a twelve or thirteen-year-old girl who was taken on as an apprentice under Granny Mei’s guidance.

Li Xishi and her daughter both joined the group for roads, water, and electricity. The aunty who wanted to raise fish was also in this group, and the leader was Aunty Huang, who had experience repairing electrical appliances.

Jin Ye became the leader of the tool group, and Lu Lu also joined this group.

Tang Yu and Xiao Li joined Aunty Zhu to form the food group, with Aunty Zhu leading these two youngsters.

Aunty Zhu initially tried to refuse, saying in a panic, “How can the village chief be a team member? The chief should be the leader.”

Tang Yu smiled. “Our camp doesn’t have high or low positions. Everyone has different skills. When it comes to a specific field, the most experienced person should have the most say. You know more than I do, so you’re the most suitable for this position.”

Finally, she had Xiao Li relay a message to all the members: “I’m only the temporary village chief because I initiated the camp. It’s just a title. If I don’t do a good job in the future, I can be replaced at any time. On a daily basis, just treat me like a little sister and call me Xiao Tang.”

Only then did Aunty Zhu accept the task.

Zhou Zhou had originally wanted to form her own group to research her medicines, but for some reason, she ended up in the food group’s line.

Tang Yu teased her in the camp’s group chat: “What? Too lonely by yourself?”

After joining the camp’s group chat, Zhou Zhou could now understand Tang Yu’s words. Hearing this, she wasn’t angry and simply replied gently, “When you go out to find ingredients, take me with you. I want to see if there are any useful medicinal herbs around.”

Good grief, she was truly dedicated to her research.

After the groups were formed, each team leader led their members in discussing the upcoming schedule. Jin Ye and Tang Yu moved between the groups, offering a suggestion or two from time to time.

The meeting ended around two in the afternoon. With nothing else to do, everyone rolled up their sleeves and got straight to work, embarking on the grand project of improving the camp.

First was expanding the housing. After discussing it, Aunty Pang and her team decided to build a few wooden houses first and make a wooden bed for everyone. The mountains were rich in timber, so the raw materials were readily available. Building wooden houses was the best option at the moment.

The last time Tang Yu and the others left the camp, they had taken note of the pine, fir, and cypress trees on the mountain. Therefore, Aunty Pang “borrowed” Tang Yu to lead the way and find the trees.

Building houses required wood that was lightweight, stable, and not prone to warping, making fir wood the most suitable for the frames. Tang Yu followed the previous path and quickly led the house-building group to the shady slope of the mountain.

Looking up, rows of fir trees stood straight, rooted in the ground in large patches. Each tree was about thirty meters tall. The trunks had almost no slanted branches, stretching straight towards the sky. Their conical crowns layered one on top of another, growing exceptionally well.

Aunty Pang grabbed a saw and immediately threw herself into the work of felling trees. Inspired by her, the members of the house-building group eagerly rushed into the forest.

In truth, none of these women had experience in building houses or felling trees. But those willing to use their heads quickly figured out a method. They worked in pairs, sawing or chopping one side of a tree to create a wedge-shaped notch. Then they moved to the back of the notch and sawed horizontally. When the cuts met, the tree would fall in the direction of the notch.

The camp had no electric chainsaws. The saws the team members were using were ordinary handsaws. Cutting down a tree was not easy and took about half an hour.

The felled trees had many branches and leaves. The aunties cleared away these small branches, and a log was thus formed. They didn’t move the logs, leaving them where they were for the whole village to move together when everyone was free.

Tang Yu watched from the side for a while, silently adding “chainsaw” to her list, figuring she had to bring one back the next time she went into the city.

During this break, Tang Yu tried using her “Material Search” basic skill. She opened the game panel and found that using this skill required inputting target information. After she opened it, a scanning box appeared. Tang Yu aimed it at a fir tree. Once the target was registered in the system, a prompt popped up: “Set as target.”

Tang Yu clicked “confirm.” Instantly, a low beeping sound echoed in her mind, complete with 3D surround sound effects. This sound was different from the mission alert tone; it was a persistent and slow, low hum, not urgent or as piercing as the mission alert.

Tang Yu tested it. When she moved away from the fir grove, the beeping frequency decreased, and the interval grew longer. When she got closer to the fir trees, the opposite happened.

Tang Yu understood. This thing was a radar.

The radar could be turned off. Tang Yu took this opportunity to take pictures of the nearby pine, cypress, and bamboo. She darted through the woods, inputting all the new trees and familiar wild vegetables she found into the system.

On her way back to the village, Tang Yu ran into the land-clearing group, who were wandering around near the village.

Near the village, there was abandoned farmland, totaling about three mu, roughly the size of four basketball courts. Because the terrain was uneven, the land was divided into small, irregular plots. These fields had been untended for years, overgrown with weeds, and the soil was compacted. To cultivate them, they would have to spend time deep-plowing and amending the soil.

Since they didn’t have many seeds in the first year, this amount of land was barely enough. If they wanted to stockpile grain in the future, they would have to clear more land nearby.

Tang Yu saw Granny Mei straighten up in the overgrown field and discuss with the person next to her: “The season is already at the tail end of spring planting. It’s a bit late for raising seedlings and sowing, but this year, we’ll plant what we can. Let’s go back, soak the seeds, and plant a little of everything!”

For farmers, time is measured in years. If you miss a certain season, you have to wait for the next year.

Granny Mei led the little girl towards the village, planning to soak the seeds first. They ran into Tang Yu, greeted her, and walked back to the village together.

The remaining two aunties bent over, chatting and laughing as they started pulling the weeds in the field.

Jin Ye was standing in front of a dilapidated house, gesturing at something. Seeing Tang Yu return, Jin Ye teased her, “Haven’t seen you for so long, I thought you’d returned to nature and become a wild woman.”

Tang Yu laughed too. “If anything, I’d be a wild zombie. Hey? What are you gesturing about?”

Jin Ye was holding a notebook and writing something in it. Tang Yu leaned in for a look and saw a crookedly drawn blueprint. They were less like straight lines and more like two-dimensional caterpillars.

“Your drawing skills… I can’t say I’m impressed. Can anyone even make something from this?” Tang Yu commented critically.

“I don’t have any measuring tools, and it’s my first time drawing with this skill. It’s pretty good, all things considered,” Jin Ye retorted. “I’m helping the house-building group study the structure of these old houses, so when the timber arrives, everyone will know how to proceed with construction.”

Tang Yu let out a meaningful “Oh,” then added with a smile, “To build crooked houses? We don’t have wood that’s this bent.”

“No one will think you’re mute if you don’t talk,” Jin Ye glared at Tang Yu.

Tang Yu laughed and ran off. Jin Ye shouted after her, “Bring back some rulers and measuring tapes next time you go to the city!”

The other members of the tool group were also incredibly busy. The aunties first took stock of everyone’s needs and made a list. Things like bamboo pipes for channeling water, bamboo baskets for carrying vegetables, iron traps for hunting, and the cooking stove requested by the food group were all their responsibility.

These items were hard to find in the city. They needed to make them by hand, transforming existing materials into these things.

Bamboo was readily available, and the tool group had people who knew how to weave bamboo baskets, so that wasn’t a problem. The difficult part was tools related to ironwork.

The iron cages they had dragged back could be dismantled to make animal traps. If they had a high-temperature furnace, they could even melt down the iron shelves to make tools like hoes and shovels.

This was where the ten bags of cement came in handy. They planned to use the cement to build two furnaces: one for the food group to cook with, and another for forging iron.

However, these were all things that would take time and couldn’t be completed right away.

Tang Yu went to check on the progress of the water and electricity group. The aunties were tinkering with the gasoline generator Tang Yu had “stolen.” The wires and gasoline were a set, and Tang Yu had grabbed them all at the time. It wasn’t difficult to use; the problem was that they now had a generator but no terminal devices.

Light bulbs? None. Water pump? None. They didn’t even have a power strip. The aunties were dumbfounded and decided to give up on the big machine for now and figure out how to divert water to the farmland.

Using well water for irrigation was definitely not feasible. First, carrying water was too troublesome, and second, the volume of water couldn’t meet the demand. For rice paddies, the fields needed to be constantly flooded during the transplanting period. They couldn’t possibly carry water bucket by bucket.

The reservoir was too far away. Besides, it would mean drawing water from a lower elevation to a higher one, which was impossible without large-scale pumping equipment.

They had no choice but to find another water source.

Li Xishi suddenly remembered, “Since there’s a reservoir, there must be an upstream water source. This mountain is so high, there should be a stream. Let’s go look for it.”

They first returned to the reservoir and walked along its upstream path. Sure enough, in a gully about two hundred meters from the village, they found a small stream. Although it was a bit far, the convenience of the elevation drop made it feasible to run a pipe from upstream to divert water to the village.

Never mind irrigating the farmland; perhaps in the near future, every house could even have running water!