In the apocalypse, I hoarded goods and handed over my storage space to the government.

The smoke of battle still lingered in the square.

Su Ran stood calmly amidst the mess, hands in her pockets.

Bai Lu slowly raised her right hand, her five fingers slightly bent, and flicked it upwards.

An invisible spiritual force, like a vast net, instantly covered the entire square.

Immediately afterwards, the dozens of wasteland awakened beings who were lying haphazardly on the ground groaning were roughly dragged and pulled by an irresistible force.

"Fuck! Let me go! What kind of monster ability is this?"

Someone was desperately waving their severed arm in mid-air.

"Bang! Bang bang!"

The dull thuds of flesh colliding continued one after another.

In the blink of an eye, this group of awakened powerhouses were casually piled together by the white deer.

The thousands of guards on the perimeter, armed with guns, watched this scene with gritted teeth, none of them daring to make a move.

Su Ran took a step and walked to the front of the mountain of people.

"I like to be efficient when I do things."

Su Ran slightly raised her chin, looking at the core control building in front of her.

"Now, this strategic grain reserve is officially under the control of the Great Xia Dynasty. Who will lead the way?"

A dead silence.

Many people in the crowd were still conscious, but at this moment they all closed their eyes tightly and their mouths were crooked, for fear of attracting the attention of this evil god.

lead the way?

Sending out life-saving food supplies for tens of thousands of people?

No one is objecting now, but once these menacing figures leave, the person who led the way will absolutely bear full responsibility!

Seeing the group of foreigners pretending to be dead, Su Ran's eyes suddenly turned cold.

"I just saw you breathing on me. And you, you kept glaring at me..."

He reached out and precisely grabbed the collars of the two men at the edge, pulling them sharply outwards.

"thump!"

Two burly white men, their faces covered in blood, were forcibly dragged out.

"It's just the two of you."

Su Ran looked down at them, her tone leaving no room for argument.

"No! No! Sir!"

One of the awakened individuals, sporting a head of messy green hair, was so terrified that he retreated in panic.

"We have no say in this! Food is the lifeblood of the camp, and the key isn't in our hands at all!"

He glanced at Su Ran's expressionless eyes, then turned to look at the boss who had been dragged into the pit by Ye Xiao, as if he had grasped at a lifeline.

"Mike! Let our boss, Mike, talk to you!"

The green-haired awakened one shouted hoarsely,

"My special ability is cell activation! I have a way to awaken him! Let me awaken him!"

Su Ran raised an eyebrow, took half a step back, and made way for him.

"Cell activation? That should be a decent support-type ability..."

The Great Xia Dynasty is in dire need of manpower, and these support-type ability users have extremely high recruitment value.

Seeing Su Ran's tacit approval, the green-haired awakened one felt as if he had been granted a pardon and hurriedly ran to Mike's side.

His hands emitted a dense green glow as he pressed them firmly against Mike's chest.

A faint light flickered.

A dozen seconds later, Mike, who had been unconscious, suddenly convulsed.

"Cough... Ugh!"

He coughed up a mouthful of black blood mixed with pieces of internal organs.

Thanks to his extraordinary qualities as an awakened being, he was not seriously injured despite his apparent weakness.

Mike opened his eyes, and his vision gradually became clear.

Memories flooded back, and he saw the situation before him clearly.

lost.

He led over forty Awakened Ones and suffered a crushing defeat.

He finally came to terms with reality.

The foundation of the Great Xia Dynasty is something that these wastelanders, who rely on awakened superpowers, simply cannot contend with.

"Boss, boss..."

The green-haired awakened one quickly explained the whole story.

"Why……"

Mike closed his eyes helplessly and sighed heavily, as if he was unwilling to accept it, or as if he was powerless to do anything about it.

"I... will take you there."

With the help of the two awakened individuals, Mike struggled to climb out of the deep pit.

He walked at the front, his once robust body hunched over, with a limp.

Su Ran and the other two followed behind.

After passing through several heavily fortified underground corridors, the group stopped in front of an incredibly thick, heavy metal explosion-proof door.

Mike reached out with trembling hands and typed in a long, complicated password.

"Click... Rumble!"

The dull groan of mechanical gears meshing echoed through the underground passage.

The one-meter-thick alloy explosion-proof door slowly slid open to both sides.

The condensed airflow, carrying the unique dry aroma of aged grain, rushed towards us.

From the outside, one can only sense that this complex covers a vast area, but only by standing here can one truly understand what a national-level strategic reserve means.

Hundreds of giant, temperature-controlled silos, each fifty meters high, are arranged in neat rows.

Automated conveyor belts, dehumidifiers, and temperature monitors are interwoven in mid-air like a spider web.

"Friends of Great Xia..."

A person in charge of camp logistics stepped forward nervously and opened the tablet computer in his hand.

"This...this is the core area of ​​the strategic reserves. There are currently 112 silos in good working order. They mainly store hard wheat, corn, and dehydrated soybeans."

The supervisor swallowed hard, glancing casually at Mike, hoping to get instructions from his boss for the next step.

But he was met with silence.

The supervisor had no choice but to continue the report, even though he was embarrassed.

"Even taking into account natural losses during the storage process, our calculations show that the grain reserves here are enough for our 40,000 people outside..."

He paused for a moment, then gave an exaggerated figure.

"Eat it for a hundred years."

Su Ran nodded slightly, the satisfaction in her eyes impossible to conceal.

The soldiers of the Great Xia Expeditionary Force consumed an astronomical amount of rations every day.

This batch of grain will not only fill the domestic deficit, but also serve as an excellent bargaining chip for Great Xia to establish an advance base in North America.

Mike leaned against the cold wall, his eyes fixed on the silos with a complex expression.

"We lost more than two thousand people trying to take this place."

He looked at everything here, as if reliving the bloody battles of the past, or as if lamenting everything he was about to lose.

"I don't know if zombies also like to eat food, but when we found this place, there were tens of thousands of zombies gathered here."

We used up almost all our ammunition and lost two thousand brothers before we finally cleared this place out.

Su Ran remained calm and unsurprised.

Granaries are always a battleground in times of doom.

Naturally, this will also attract a large number of zombies drawn by the presence of living people.

If you are not strong enough, you may not be able to take the granary and instead become one of the piles of white bones inside.

Ye Xiao also strode over and leaned against the edge of the fence.

He sneered, directly interrupting Mike's attempt to gain sympathy.

"Stop chanting scriptures here, who are you trying to listen to? It's useless!"

Ye Xiao's tone was extremely arrogant, exuding the domineering air of a bandit invading a village.

"Every grain of rice and every drop of water here is now a spoil of war from the Great Xia Dynasty."

Mike's face was ashen, the muscles in his cheeks were taut, and his fists were clenched, but he managed to suppress his anger.

The white leaders who had just been woken up and had barely followed were even more ashen-faced and dared not utter a sound.

Their mental defenses have been completely breached.

At first, Mike thought he could take advantage of his superior numbers to share the food equally with Da Xia, and even wanted to negotiate some conditions.

But now, faced with this unreasonable, overwhelming force and extreme tyranny, they sadly discover that they don't even have the right to make demands.

Aren't the people of Daxia rumored to be very friendly?

Why did I encounter this vicious person?

Mike took a deep breath, pushed away the two people who were helping him, and stood in front of Su Ran.

"Mr. Su...we admit defeat."

Mike lowered his proud head and said in a deep voice,

"Take all the supplies here. We will not resist."

His voice trembled, filled with an almost desperate plea.

"But there are 40,000 mouths outside that need to eat."

If you drain everything, leaving not a single grain of rice, tens of thousands of people will run out of food tomorrow, and the camp will immediately riot!

Mike looked up, his eyes bloodshot.

"I only beg you... to give us three months."

Do not!

Two months' worth of provisions will suffice. Give us some time to organize our men and find work elsewhere!

All the foreigners' eyes were fixed on the young man in black.

The lives and deaths of tens of thousands of people depended entirely on his single decision.

Upon hearing this, Su Ran's lips curled up slightly.

"Foreign friends who are willing to lower their standards are good comrades."

He muttered to himself.

If we had negotiated with them from the beginning, these guys would have taken advantage of our kindness and insisted on keeping half of it.

Now that you've broken their backbone and driven them to the brink, they'll be grateful to you for being able to live for two more months.

This is human nature, and this is the only law of survival in the wasteland.

Su Ran took a step forward, grabbed Mike's broad shoulders with both hands, and forcibly straightened his body.

"One hundred years."

Su Ran softly repeated what the logistics supervisor had just said.

"You forty thousand people occupy enough food to last a hundred years."

Mike suddenly looked up, his eyes filled with fear, completely bewildered as to why Su Ran had suddenly repeated those words.

Are they not even leaving us enough food for two months?

"The Great Xia has never been an unreasonable bandit."

Su Ran's gaze was sharp as she stared intently into Mike's eyes.

"I will not only spare you, but I will also..."

"I also want you to leave enough food to last for three years."

This statement came out.

Mike was stunned.

Even the guards in the distance stared wide-eyed, wondering if they had misheard.

Is there still a chance?

Mike's lips trembled.

three years?

Based on the terrifying combat power displayed by that mech, the people of Great Xia are fully capable of emptying this place, leaving them not even a blade of grass.

Their previously lifeless eyes suddenly blazed with an intense desire to survive.

"Brother Su, I knew it! Why waste words with these foreign devils?"

Just then, Ye Xiao's extremely untimely and arrogant voice rang out.

"Cut them all off and be done with it. So what if there are 40,000 people? Huddled up in the wasteland, too scared to fight monsters, they're just wasting food while they're alive!"

"Take all the grain back to Daxia, and use the surplus to feed the pigs. The pigs will get fat then!"

Upon hearing this, they quickly turned their pleading gazes to Su Ran, fearing that this decision-maker of Great Xia would be persuaded by his companions and really change his mind.

"Mr. Su..." Mike's Adam's apple bobbed, his voice hoarse.

Ye Xiao scoffed and poked his finger directly into the ripped tactical vest on Mike's chest.

"We've left you three years' worth of rations; that's the military pay the Great Xia Dynasty is giving you!"

Ye Xiao pouted, his face full of disgust.

"If you all starve to death, who will clean up this mess in North America?"

"Relying on your useless politicians who only know how to hide underground?"

"Alright, Lao Ye."

Su Ran slightly raised her hand, interrupting Ye Xiao's attack.

Ye Xiao snorted coldly, withdrew his hand, stepped back half a step, crossed his arms, and said nothing more.

The two of them sang in perfect harmony, striking the perfect balance.

Su Ran glanced at the group of dejected wastelanders and asked a question.

"You just lost, are you convinced of your defeat?"

No one spoke up.

"It's okay if you're not convinced."

Su Ran took a step forward and pointed to the towering Cheng Ying mecha behind her.

"Do you really think that if it weren't for these superhuman individual combat weapons, you forty-odd Tier 2 fighters would have won in hand-to-hand combat?"

The awakened one with green hair gritted his teeth and muttered a retort.

That's true.

"Facts my ass."

Ye Xiao couldn't help but curse again.

"With all that fancy footwork you just showed off, even without my mech, I could still cut you down from one end of the street to the other."

Upon hearing this, the faces of the dozens of white awakened individuals around him turned bright red.

Someone pointed their finger at me and called me trash.

Su Ran smiled and didn't respond to Ye Xiao's harsh words.

"Your defeat was not due to a technological gap."

Su Ran looked at Mike, "You lost because of yourselves. You don't even know how to use your superpowers."

These words struck a nerve with Mike and the others.

"That fire-type ability user."

Su Ran casually pointed to a mutant who was clutching his stomach and groaning.

"You dispersed the high temperature of over a thousand degrees into a large area and sprayed it outwards?"

Without compression, the destructive power is less than one-tenth of what it should be.

"And there's that guy who can conjure wind blades by hand."

Su Ran slightly twirled her fingertip and pointed to another person.

"The blade's cutting surface is too large, and the area of ​​force application is so large, what can it cut through? It can't even scratch the skin of an armored vehicle."

"A bunch of idiots who have a mountain of treasure in their hands."

Su Ran delivered her judgment word by word.

"You really need to understand tactical coordination and the ultimate compression of energy."

The concentrated fire from those forty-odd people just now should have destroyed at least fifty percent of the mech's energy shield.

Instead of making a splash that leaves no sound at all.

Mike's eyelids twitched violently.

He recalled the details of the battle just now.

Everyone was just desperately throwing their internal energy outwards, lacking any proper guidance or method.

"We crawled and struggled in the wasteland; it's a miracle we survived."

Mike lowered his head, his voice dry, "Nobody taught us any of this."

"Now, someone is teaching me."

Su Ran continued the sentence.

Mike looked up and met Su Ran's gaze.

"In the early stages of the catastrophe, the Great Xia had already established a complete and comprehensive research system for Awakened Ones."

Su Ran offered bait: "Research on supernatural abilities, energy compression techniques, tactical formation matching..."

This even includes "biological gene evolution potions" capable of breaking genetic locks and forcibly boosting superpower levels!

"hiss!"

A collective gasp of shock erupted from the crowd.

The dozens of wild awakened individuals struggling in the quagmire of the apocalypse began to breathe rapidly.

Evolution potion! System tactical guidance!

These are things they've always dreamed of!

Has the civilization of the Great Xia Dynasty evolved to such an unbelievable level in this apocalyptic world?!

"The Great Xia Dynasty has more than just these."

Su Ran continued to add, "There are also weapons and equipment far beyond your comprehension, plus a continuous stream of logistical supplies."

Mike was an elite from the North American system and had a natural instinct for political investment and the exchange of interests.

The excessively young ruler before us is definitely not showing off national power in a good way; he is displaying his price!

The Great Xia Dynasty intends to use this system, which is like a dimensional reduction attack, to completely incorporate these survivors from the wasteland!

If it's about incorporation, why start a war right away?

Can't we sit down together and discuss the terms properly?

Perhaps, in Da Xia's mind, his tens of thousands of survivors and forty-odd awakened ones are not as important as he imagined.

Mike took a deep breath and spoke again.

"Why are we given these? What do they need us to do?"

"Because the Great Xia Dynasty wants to cleanse the entire world."

Su Ran turned around; he preferred talking to intelligent people.

"The global eradication plan has been launched. Your underground government in North America is irresponsible, leaving you to die on the surface."

"Great Xia is willing to take over! Great Xia doesn't mind cooperating with you, arming you, and teaching you."