Chapter 90: Busy Farming in the Last Days

Aug 22 2023

Since the matter has been settled, the next step is to start cooperating. The results of the negotiations completed at this meeting are beneficial to both the T base and the S base. Ke Chenglei and Feng Xing stayed in S base for two days and were in a hurry to return on the third day, but before leaving, residents approached them.

It wasn’t a complicated situation. S City and T City were originally brother cities in the same province, not too far apart, and the two regions had frequent exchanges before the end of the world. Many people had relatives and friends there.

The resident who found Ke Chenglei and Feng Xing was an old man. He had a sister who married in T City and wanted to ask them to deliver a message and see if she was still there.

“If she is still there, please ask the leaders to give me a message. Thank you, thank you.”

Ke Chenglei and Feng Xing took the message. Ke Chenglei said, “Grandpa, we can’t guarantee this. The population of the T base is not large, and the person you are looking for may not be in the base.”

“It’s okay,” the old man waved his hand. “I just want peace of mind. If I can find her, it’s best. If I can’t, I won’t force anything in this day and age.”

The old man was worried. His family had died in the zombie attack, and his only remaining blood relative was his sister. He was a native of S base and still lived in his ancestral home. He could live comfortably by earning some information points. He knew that the living conditions in T base were not as good as those in S base, so he planned to find his sister to avoid letting his family suffer outside.

Ke Chenglei and Feng Xing promised to help and then set off back to T base. They had already agreed with Ji Cha that they would prepare to deliver the goods and people according to the agreement in about two days, and they would first bring back one-third of the food this time, and the rest would be taken when their people arrived.

Ji Cha was very happy. He had been looking forward to the relevant technical personnel from T City coming over to start the fish farm on a large scale, thus officially driving the operation of the entire aquaculture chain.

Even in times of peace, reserve food is a very important thing, not to mention that with the threat of zombies outside and everyone’s basic needs just barely being met, it’s crucial to store and produce good food. This will never change no matter when.

Two days later, as expected, a convoy arrived in S City and two technicians that Ji Cha needed also arrived. They had agreed that the technicians would be temporarily transferred and would return after a certain period of time. However, there were no strict rules on the duration of their stay, as T City could provide for anything they lacked, even fish.

Since they were here, they should start production as soon as possible. The earlier, the better.

“To increase aquaculture, the first thing that needs to be solved is the problem of dissolved oxygen in the water. Insufficient oxygen in the water can greatly affect the growth of fish. The density of fish in live water aquaculture can be much larger than that in pond aquaculture. The key now is to see how to solve this problem.”

But theory and reality are two different things. Simple and feasible things in theory become difficult in today’s environment.

There is flowing water outside of S Base, but even the drinking well water within the base needs to be tested every day to ensure safety. Not to mention that the external rivers may have passed through many areas and may carry unknown viruses, which are basically uncontrollable. Moreover, viruses are secondary, if there are any mutated species in the flowing water, it will inevitably threaten the fish fry in the aquaculture area.

Ji Cha and several technicians discussed this for an afternoon, but besides some technological improvements in the closed pond aquaculture that they already had, there is still no consensus on how to handle aquaculture in flowing water.

So much so that when Ji Cha went to bed at night, he still remembered this matter and couldn’t fall asleep, tossing and turning.

Liang Jincheng finished his work and came back, thinking that Ji Cha would have fallen asleep, but he didn’t expect to find him still awake. So he simply turned on the light in the room and asked, “Were you waiting for me?”

Both of them were busy during the day, and apart from sleeping together at night and occasionally having lunch together, there was basically no time for them to meet recently.

Ji Cha was stimulated by the strong light and quickly covered his eyes, and his words were very uninteresting: “I was thinking about raising fish.”

Liang Jincheng sat down by the bed, about to laugh but stopped by his words. He leaned over and covered Ji Cha underneath him, blocking the light source. Ji Cha took his hand off his eyes and frowned with worry, “I still have two days of work left.”

“But now it’s time for you to rest,” Liang Jincheng pressed him down onto the bed forcefully.

Their clothes were quickly thrown under the bed.

“You’re not letting me rest…” Ji Cha mumbled, but the second half of his sentence was stopped by Liang Jincheng.

The night passed.

Early in the morning, Liang Jincheng went out and the first thing he did was to instruct the guards at the door to tell the technicians at the fish farm that they had the morning off. The guard complied and Liang Jincheng went to the canteen to buy breakfast and brought it back home.

Ji Cha had been busy for the past two days and only slept when it was almost dawn. Today, he slept until noon.

However, the ample rest clearly had an effect. Ji Cha felt refreshed and clear-headed, and his thinking on the problem was noticeably clearer.

“We have two types of fish, one is mutated and the other is not. Mutated fish have stronger resistance and are not afraid of mutated sources of infection. If we can control the flowing river channels and manage them in sections, wouldn’t it be better?”

“How do we divide the sections?”

Ji Cha thought for a moment and said, “Use a net with a certain mesh size to divide the river channels into sections, and raise different types of fish in each section according to their attributes. Set up a filtering system at the outermost part of the river to filter out any possible sources of infection.”

“Such as zombie humans and zombie animals.”

“That’s possible, but wouldn’t it be a lot of work?”

“What we’re afraid of now is not the amount of work, but the inability to solve the problem,” Ji Cha said. “But this is just a preliminary idea, not the final result. How to implement it in the end will still need everyone to discuss based on the actual situation.”

Before the real action of dividing the river or any modifications to the river channel, the first thing to do is to ensure the safety of the perimeter of the base. The river area is not entirely within the base’s walls, after all, the flowing river is not enclosed, and placing it within the walls will create a channel for the outside world to enter, which can easily be exploited.

But since they now need to use the river channel, it is inevitable that the number of external workers will increase, and safety must come first.

Translated on ho lo lo novels dot com.

“Just adding sentry posts outside will do. Set up some rest points next to the posts and arrange some troops for defense and patrol outside,” Liang Jincheng felt that this was not a problem. “The other side of the river was already part of the expansion plan of the base. These sentry posts will not only be used for aquaculture in the river in the future, but they will not be wasted. It’s just that we are building them in advance now.”

Liang Jincheng spoke up, and there was no need to hesitate about this matter.

Adding sentry posts and establishing work points both require some time. Ji Cha does not need to worry about planning in this area, and he finally has a little bit of free time.

The base regularly searches the outside world, not only for resources and equipment but also to explore the situation outside.

The recent focus of the search is on the city of S and nearby hospitals. The medicines in the hospitals have already been ransacked, and what the base wants are not herbs but some valuable medical equipment inside.

Before the apocalypse, many medical equipment worth millions of dollars are now lying in the ruined hospitals like garbage. Small bases don’t have the ability or the will to move these things, so the expected items are basically all brought back.

However, no matter how hard they try, the base cannot reach the pre-apocalyptic hospital standards. The lack of medicines, materials, and professionals make it impossible for the base to perform even simple surgeries, only able to do some relatively simple bandaging and disinfection treatments.

Even with a step-by-step approach, it is completely hopeless to restore the pre-apocalyptic state within several decades, and this is still the situation of the most stable and powerful S base known so far.

One day, when the vehicles coming to and from T base brought exchange materials as usual, they also brought a message different from the past.

The old man who had entrusted Ke Chenglei with a letter last time unexpectedly received a reply. He was both surprised and delighted, and wanted to bring his sister to live with him, but was unsure whether the base would approve, as both of them were elderly and didn’t contribute much to the base. He also knew that the conditions for accepting new people outside the base were becoming increasingly strict, and the number of elderly people accepted was not high.

Although it was cruel, this was the end of the world, and unnecessary sympathy had to be eliminated under the premise of limited resources.

The old man still had old-fashioned thinking, and first wanted to go and report to Liang Jincheng. However, when he got there, he found out that Liang Jincheng was not there and he wasn’t sure when he would be back.

Feeling disappointed, the old man started to head back, but halfway there he ran into Ji Cha.