Cave Refuge

Dong Tianyu didn't know what kind of emotions he was experiencing as he left the warehouse.

Identifying different types of goods earlier sure opened his eyes. He didn't expect other people to have such varied tastes.

Among the several warehouses he visited next, only one stored a large amount of pet food; the rest had just a smattering of items.

Come to think of it, it makes sense. This location is rather secluded. Besides the low rent, there aren't many other advantages. It's also not in some industrial hub. All these contribute to the current situation.

"Riding my beloved rocking horse, never worrying about traffic jams~"

Humming a tune, he left this storage site in high spirits.

His next stop was the Tobacco Bureau and the cigarette factory.

Although the two aren't far from each other, they're actually separate entities. One is about production, the other about market regulation, much like a power station and a power grid; they may sound related, but they are independent of each other.

Really, there isn't much to say about these two places. The supply of cigarettes in the Tobacco Bureau's warehouse isn't as vast as Dong Tianyu had imagined, it only occupied less than one-fifth of the warehouse.

Upon reflection, he figured it wasn't because someone confiscated it in advance, but because they didn't usually store a lot here. After all, these aren't the type of goods typically stockpiled; once produced, they move quickly.

Contrarily, Dong Tianyu was overjoyed with the supplies at the cigarette factory's warehouse; not only were there finished products, but also half-finished ones like cut tobacco.

Since there was plenty of space inside the Shadow Space, he swept away all the contents of the warehouse.

He'd planned to bring a few machines from the production floor to the Refuge Centre, but when he finally entered the production area, he was taken aback. The equipment was of the large, fully automated integrated variety and occupied a significant area.

Not that there was no room for it in the Cave Mansion, but these machines didn't seem to fit. When he tried using his transformation ability, he found it would cost 100 survival points.

Seeing this, Dong Tianyu, who had little to no interest in cigarettes to begin with, decided against the idea and let the Cave Mansion disassemble and absorb it.

Looking at the other production lines in the workshop, Dong Tianyu pondered a while before deciding not to incorporate them into the Cave Mansion for disassembly and absorption.

Why didn't he take in the remaining production lines and use the Cave Mansion's ability to decompose and absorb them to reduce the survival points needed for upgrading?

For reasons like this, Dong Tianyu would still preserve as much as possible of things that would be difficult to rebuild in the future, even if they were already damaged.

By the time he left the cigarette factory, night had begun to creep in. Although the Logistics Park wasn't far off, Dong Tianyu decided to head back.

His priority now was to maintain his twice-daily training sessions rather than scavenging for materials. In Dong Tianyu's view, enhancing his personal abilities was far more critical.

If the first three levels of Qi cultivation were about refining one's body with Spirit Power, then from the fourth level onwards, he could start experimenting with the external release of Spirit Power.

Whether it be the execution of a hundred mystic arts or the use of spells, either way represented external output of Spirit Power.

On the way back to the Refuge Center, Dong Tianyu took a detour to visit the nearby petrol stations.

Even though most of the vehicles outside were scrapped, remember that the generator within the Refuge Center was still operational. Thus, despite having borrowed a lot of fuel from one of the gas stations, he felt it would be a good idea to visit a few more for contingency's sake.

Along the way, Dong Tianyu spotted many abandoned vehicles, but he didn't collect any of them.

When he initially left the Refuge Center, he had planned to find a suitable car and bring it back for a tech-to-mystic conversion.

Unfortunately, he didn't come across any vehicle that struck his fancy. The types he saw were all too common.

Had he had an abundance of survival points, he might have acquired a car for conversion as a stopgap, but he discovered—after some trial—that even the smallest of cars would require 50 survival points for such a transformation, compared to the 10 points for the Flohma conversion.

Dong Tianyu, who earlier couldn't conceive of a way to exhaust his thousands of survival points, now found spending even a fraction of them burdensome.

Before this excursion, Dong Tianyu had in mind what type of vehicles he was looking for.

His first choice was an amphibious camper, which for now was a pipe dream. Even in a second-tier city like Pengcheng, campers, if any, would be no larger than an Iveco. Blue-plate box trucks—let alone rare amphibious campers—were hard to come by, much less eight-wheeled twin-steer heavy-duty trucks.

His next choice was high-roof paneled vans similar to those used by the post office. Despite these models' unattractive appearance, their cargo capacity was no smaller than that of blue-plate box trucks.

If all else failed, he'd settle for an urban SUV.

Compared to the full-size, off-roading type, city-based SUVs might not be as all-terrain, but they were more comfortable to drive—and besides, they were a dime a dozen. Dong Tianyu lost count of how many of these types he'd decomposed and absorbed during his West City Avenue cleanup.

While Dong Tianyu was leisurely making his way back, he suddenly saw quite a few people braving the cold to clear the road.

At this point—right on the city highway—he realized the chill didn't pose much of an issue to the Officials, who now had the manpower to clear the roads.

Their way was fairly brutal and not at all elegant.

They just drove front-end loaders to push the haphazardly parked vehicles off to the sides of the road, in a fashion not unlike that of snowplows.

Seeing this, Dong Tianyu realized the Officials had detected the cessation of the electromagnetic pulse, meaning the undamaged electronic devices were now back in working order.

Or maybe it meant master craftsmen were already hand-winding all kinds of electronic components.

Seeing the flurry of activity over there, and given that he hadn't thought of how to interact with the Officials, Dong Tianyu steered clear of Main Avenue, instead choosing a side street, and sloped off.

Pondering the intelligence from his previous life, Dong Tianyu realized how little he knew about the outside world, having stayed in the community shelter the Officials set up alongside his parents.

Having no thorough understanding of the current situation, Dong Tianyu didn't get in touch with them directly. From his perspective, now wasn't the right time to make contact. The situation was still stable; he needed to wait a while longer.