Construction Team

The guy who had been abandoned tried to climb onto the carriage, but Su Huan called out to him.

"Where is your ticket?"

The man, acting like a rabid dog, pointed at Su Huan and cursed, "You're in on it with them! You tricked us into getting on this train, I'll f*** you—"

"Bang."

The corpse hit the ground.

Compressing energy to strike an Evolutionist is a bit taxing, but killing an unevolved ordinary person is a guaranteed one-shot kill.

Su Huan picked at his ear. "A waste of time. If you'd just gotten to the point, we'd be done. Next."

"December 18th, early winter, 26°C-29°C."

"It seems the people have elected a new leader."

--"Conductor's Log"

Su Huan noted the temperature at the hottest point of the day in the log.

There were 1,201 original passengers, but only 624 have returned so far; the rest either died out there or ran off. This is normal.

Su Huan has never been afraid of them running.

The train is like iron, the passengers like flowing water; as old ones leave, new ones naturally arrive, just like that family from yesterday.

Counting the new group of workers, there are 744 people in total.

Another wave might return tonight, but the number won't pass a thousand today.

The crane task was taken by a young man named Gao Zhe; he won't be back until tonight, but Su Huan doesn't intend to waste time waiting around.

He looked at the new names on the roster, then raised his head to size up the group of terrified workers. "I have a job. Who's taking it?"

The workers looked at the corpse on the ground and didn't dare to step forward.

They stood where they were, whispering among themselves.

"Maybe we should just leave."

"Leave to where? There's no food left at the factory, I'm so hungry I could gnaw on a person! This is the only train that's passed by in all these days."

"We can't get out anywhere else, there are man-eating monsters everywhere..."

"There are fewer zombies to the north, let's head out that way."

"There are fewer zombies there, but there are these giant cocoons everywhere. They look evil. You go if you want, I'm not going."

Su Huan had been listening with a relaxed air, but his eyes suddenly sharpened when he heard a specific word.

He pointed at a thin man in the crowd. "What did you just say? Giant cocoons?"

The man was startled and jerked back a step.

But seeing that he didn't suddenly collapse like the other guy, he let out a breath of relief and shouted from a distance, "I mean giant cocoons as tall as a person, they look just like silkworm cocoons."

"How many are there?"

Seeing that Su Huan was only asking questions, the worker grew a bit bolder, stepped forward, and replied, "There are tons of them. They're everywhere—on the road, inside the houses, all over."

Su Huan's expression turned grim.

The "giant cocoons" the worker described were the mandatory path for the second stage of zombie evolution.

Zombies that accumulate enough Pan-Energy will, driven by high temperatures, form a special "Corpse Cocoon." When they break out of the cocoon, they reach the second stage.

They are also known as First-Order Zombies.

Their strength is worlds apart from ordinary zombies, and some with special abilities can even hunt down professional Evolutionists.

In his past life, he had been too busy running for his life to pay attention to the nodes of zombie evolution. He hadn't expected them to start evolving this quickly.

It had only been nine days.

Once this batch of Corpse Cocoons hatched, people who had lost their heavy firepower would truly face the apocalypse!

"This information is very valuable. This is for you." Su Huan took a deep breath and tossed the half-pack of cigarettes he had snatched earlier over to him.

The worker was overjoyed; he didn't care that Su Huan had thrown them on the ground, picking them up immediately to share with his coworkers.

Having heard this news, Su Huan no longer had the heart to coax them slowly. He said directly, "Who is your leader? Step out and speak."

The workers looked left and right, until finally, a man about 1.8 meters tall stepped forward.

Though not particularly tall, his frame was incredibly broad, comparable to Liang Kuan, and his voice was deep. "I am. You said you had a job for us, but given the current situation, we aren't doing it for money."

"I'll provide your meals for three days..." As he spoke, Su Huan suddenly had a new idea and changed his tune. "You work for one day, I provide two meals. If you don't work, you get one. As long as you stay on the train, this promise is valid, but only for those of you here right now."

The man looked honest, but he was sharp. He asked, "I saw you collecting tickets from them earlier. Does that mean you need a ticket to stay on the train?"

"Of course. There's no such thing as getting on a train without buying a ticket."

Su Huan didn't play coy this time; he said it straight.

Speaking to people in their own language and to ghosts in theirs isn't entirely derogatory; it contains a great deal of skill.

Being straightforward with honest people is often less troublesome than playing mind games.

"We want free tickets."

"Free tickets are impossible. You can have free tickets when there is work to be done, but when there isn't, you still have to earn your fare."

Su Huan refused decisively; with 120 workers in total, if he gave them all free tickets, what would he eat later?

Providing meals was already his greatest concession.

The tickets were the leverage he held over the crowd, and even if it were only nominal, he could not simply create a bunch of people with exemption privileges.

The man hesitated for a moment, looked at his fellow workers to the left and right, and gritted his teeth. "Fine, what kind of work? We're all from the steel mill; we can't handle work that requires brains."

Su Huan's expression softened slightly. "It's steel plate work. You're Wang He, right? From now on, you are the leader of these 120 people. If there's anything, I will only look for you. Do you understand?"

Wang He agreed. "When do we start?"

Su Huan looked at the sky; the sun was already leaning west, with a little over three hours left before dark.

No one knew whether that batch of Corpse Cocoon would hatch tomorrow or tonight.

There wasn't much time.

He didn't dare to gamble.

He looked straight at Wang He and said sternly, "Now."

The dark red locomotive gleamed coldly under the setting sun, its 25mm shovel-style armor and the newly added 1.2cm steel plates interlocking into a ferocious battering ram, like an enraged steel rhinoceros.

On the crisscrossing tracks, a group of men in work clothes carried 1.2cm steel plates toward the train, their blue uniforms soaked through with sweat.

Fortunately, they didn't need to weld; they only had to hold them up for a moment, and these steel plates would be "stuck" onto the exterior by a boy in a wheelchair inside.

Someone had tried to pull at them and found them even more secure than if they had been welded.

Consequently, the workers grew even more in awe of Su Huan, who managed the train, and worked even harder.

Su Huan tapped his finger against the outer wall of the carriage, the metallic vibration rippling through the air along with the heatwaves; the thick steel gave him a sense of extremely solid reliance.

He squinted at the window frame, where the cutting lines Yu Jing had drawn with chalk were as smooth as if they had been polished.

The opening in the steel plate was a circle smaller than the window, just enough to cover the blast-proof mesh and tempered glass inside without hindering the window's operation.

Su Huan was very satisfied with this.

Beads of sweat rolled down his Adam's apple into his collar, gradually evaporating into salt stains in the 29°C heat.

Even a slight lick of his lips tasted salty.

"Tell your mother to make the workers' lunch boxes first, and add plenty of oil and salt."

"She's already doing it." Yu Jing climbed onto the roof of the train and poked her head out, her jeans smeared with patches of dirt. "Give me a hand."