Chapter 188 Resource Inventory

Inside the main control room, the air was filled with a dull smell that had been pent up for a long time.

Su Wanqing closed the notebook at hand and put the jade bracelet into her sleeve.

Xiao Ran looked around, picked a few people and said loudly: "Come here now, everyone, divide into groups of three, and count the food, water, and medicine.

Give me everything in standard definition and report back in half an hour." His voice was not loud, but every word was clear and decisive.

The remaining dozen survivors stood up and divided into three groups. Xiao Ran stuffed paper and pen into the hands of the three group leaders and said, "Check the water room, kitchen, medicine cabinet, and industrial cold storage. I have the key to the storage room. Contact me anytime if you need anything."

Lin Che quietly settled Xiao Ling down and stood up to join the medical supplies team.

Su Wanqing stayed at the door, quietly counting how many people were left.

Lu Zhao sat aside, with a data cable plugged into the port under his sleeve, staring quietly at a USB flash drive, and occasionally typing a few lines of commands on the portable terminal.

Xiao Ran led the way to the warehouse. He pushed open the iron door and counted every box of canned food, bread, and nutritional compressed blocks.

Each finger movement was slow and meticulous. Two followers were marking the correct characters on the notebook.

Some people couldn't help but mutter, "How long can these last in a fully enclosed state?"

"It's calculated clearly." Xiao Ran didn't stop, squatting down to check the numbers, "Write the net consumption data clearly - not only the number of people, but also the daily circulating energy percentage under the barrier."

Half an hour later, the three groups reported their data one after another. The water management team held their notebooks and looked unhappy: "There is only enough drinking water for 28 days, and one third of the backup water tank and purifier have been used up."

The kitchen team laid out all kinds of dry food, cold chain and compressed rations, and found that they were 10% less than originally planned. Some of the thermos cans were leaking, "probably because they were broken when they were moved before."

Everyone was silent for a moment.

Over at the medical team, Lin Che finished calculating the list with his head down and spoke, “There is a sufficient amount of basic antibiotics, but the special emergency medicine and high fever antidote are only enough for emergency use, at most three serious cases.”

He pointed at the lines of code and said, "There is less than one box of mobilization agent and intravenous maintenance fluid left. It should have lasted for two months, but now with such a high consumption environment, it can't last for thirty days."

After listening to this, Xiao Ran closed the notebook and called all the people from the three groups to the control room.

There were a few men in the crowd who looked uneasy and were talking in low voices to each other.

When everyone arrived, Xiao Ran took the main control terminal and the energy consumption curve of the fortress was displayed on the screen.

He got straight to the point: "I've looked at all the data. There were supplies that Team Leader Su had stockpiled before, but in this barrier, the energy loss has increased by nearly half. The newly added air circulation, power condensation, and main control barrier - these will consume twice as much as the original plan."

He tapped the clock on the panel. "Conclusion: All resources can only last for 28 to 31 days at the current supply."

Someone below was getting anxious, and a male voice asked, "So you don't have any other options? What do you mean we can only hold out for this period of time? Didn't they say this place is safe and self-sufficient?"

Xiao Ran glanced at him, turned back and said in a low voice, "It's the same for everyone. The situation now is special. If the energy source can't be replenished, the shield will stop, and the military and those things outside will rush in together, we will all be finished."

The crowd fell into a nearly frozen whisper. Another person suddenly asked, "What's going on? Why are we stuck in this damn place? Didn't we say before that the fortress is the safest place?"

Lin Che turned his head and looked at Su Wanqing. Su Wanqing slightly folded the jade bracelet in her hand and said in a hoarse voice: "The shield is a special device. It cannot be activated without our own people. We are now completely blocked and no one can contact us."

A female survivor questioned quietly, "What's going on outside? What's with that golden light?"

The air became tighter. Xiao Ran turned and stared at everyone, and said in a deep voice: "Everyone is safe now, mainly thanks to the main control equipment. This shield is our only line of defense. But it is also the reason - energy consumption has increased, and all machines have to run non-stop. You have to understand that the speed of material consumption is not the sum of day and night. One day less is one day less, there is no luck at all."

Zhou Ming, who had been silent in the team, stood up and said angrily, "I say, in the final analysis, why did we end up like this? We can't hold out for long with just a few of us. But shouldn't someone tell us the truth - why were we able to slip away from the army before? And that... monster girl - did she bring about this misfortune?"

He pointed his finger at Lin Che and Xiao Ling on the sofa. Lin Che said nothing, but just moved a little closer to the sofa.

Su Wanqing raised her eyebrows slightly, but said nothing.

Zhou Ming's voice became louder and louder: "Speak clearly, don't hide it! If she is really the experimental subject that the military is looking for, why should we accompany these 'special' people to take risks? If she can attract zombies, why not send her out now - in exchange for a chance to survive!"

Several people around began to respond in low voices. A short-haired man shook his head: "He has a point. Many of us here just followed him. We shouldn't take the blame for others."

Someone echoed: "Even if the barrier can keep out the outside world, don't save her in the end, and then we will run out of food and die of thirst."

The atmosphere suddenly became tense. Xiao Ran narrowed his eyes, walked in front of Zhou Ming, lowered his head and poked the conference table with one finger: "If you say this again, do you think I have no rules? It's not your turn to set the pace here. The zombies are about to rush in. Do you think the military will care about your lives? You want to go outside, you can, try opening the door now. If you want to be alone, you can ask for it at any time."

Zhou Ming slammed his hand on the table in anger: "We are just telling the truth, it's not all your fault."

Xiao Ran stared at him for a while, then turned to the other survivors and spoke every word clearly: "Whoever instigates trouble again will be the first to be cleared out. Inside the shield, we are in the same boat, there is no distinction between you and me. Before we get out, do as I say."

After a brief silence, five or six people still had their mouths twitching, with hesitation and dissatisfaction in their eyes.

Su Wanqing whispered and winked at Lin Che, who nodded and quietly protected Xiao Ling to his side.

Xiao Ran scanned the list, put away the list, and led everyone to disperse. After the crowd left one after another, he knocked on the table with his knuckles, bent over and approached Su Wanqing, and whispered: "There are a few things that don't match - two boxes of dry food are missing half a box, there is a half-day gap in the cold chain area, and the fire medicine account is not clear. A box of water purification cards and three tranquilizers are not recorded. Have you checked?"

Su Wanqing shook her head quietly and tapped the notebook with her pen: "I only took the medical kit and the ration pack, and didn't touch anything else. Do you suspect someone stole it?"

Xiao Ran lowered his voice, "It's not that he's starving, it's just a coincidence that he missed an account. The items were all sold in bulk, but only one or two items were missing each time, it's just a coincidence. It's not a spontaneous theft - we can't rule out the possibility that someone is planning to steal from inside, maybe they were sent by Li Ming."

Su Wanqing lowered her eyes, "Is there anyone left with us at dawn?"

"It's hard to say. People are confused now." Xiao Ran rubbed his temple. "Especially when supplies are tight, every extra checkpoint should be considered a risk point. You keep a close eye on the duty list. Critical stocks are only taken from the command cabinet and checked every day. No one is allowed to take them unless it is an emergency."

Su Wanqing nodded and slowly closed the notebook. The jade bracelet on her hand became slightly hot.

Lin Che walked over from the medical team and lowered her voice, "Do you need me to do a night patrol?"

Xiao Ran said, "It's necessary. If they all hide, we can't find out anything openly. We can only start from the number of times and who reported the clue first."

Lu Zhao smiled quietly in the main control corner, inserted the USB flash drive he carried with him into the terminal interface, and a few lines of code flashed silently.

He tried to switch various encryption parameters, but the main interface always popped up a hard encryption warning instantly - "Special authorization required, master key not read in, logic lock not unlocked."

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Xiao Ran looked at him: "How is it?"

Lu Zhao held a toothpick in his mouth and thumbed through the directory tree of the USB drive. "The encryption Han Xue left is not ordinary, it's stricter than military ones. There are no keys to several logical areas inside. Traditional decryption methods are useless. We need to use some kind of biological factor as the core verification."

Su Wanqing asked softly, "Can you see anything useful?"

Lu Zhao did not answer directly, "There is a hidden piece of data, and it was not loaded completely. When I was deconstructing the fragments, I detected a faulty image file."

Lin Che stood behind him, "What are the details?"

Lu Zhao casually opened a window and clicked on the still frame that popped up. A completely white space vaguely appeared on the screen, with an operating light on the table and the profile of a child covered with a silver surgical sheet, with a number written on his face.

There is a logo in the lower left corner of the image that reads "Project Orion."

The child's outline was very similar to Xiao Ling's current one, but he was obviously younger.

Lu Zhao swallowed again, "The rest is encrypted gibberish, the data has not been completely decrypted. This kind of encryption string requires a lot of time and special algorithms, even a supercomputer chip would have to try it over and over again."

Su Wanqing felt a chill in her heart. "Keep checking. Find as much as you can."

There were strange noises outside the house from time to time, and the light in the fortress gradually dimmed. Xiao Ran stared at the record paper in his hand and silently counted the consumption figures.

I heard the creaking sound of the door of the medicine room. The water team was moving the last bucket of spare clean water to the spare area.

Lin Che handed over the medical team's detailed list. "Patients who lack fluids, lack heat sources, and are prone to infection need special attention."

Xiao Ran put the list in his arms and said, "The focus of defense tonight is on the warehouse. You two keep an eye on the experimental area. If anyone moves anything again, report to me immediately."

Su Wanqing nodded, agreed, and turned to the main console. Lu Zhao plugged in the data cable, frowned in front of the lines of garbled characters, occasionally switched algorithms, and permission error prompts popped up on the screen one after another.

The data stream beside him was filling up the screen with randomly jumping numbers. He almost unplugged the data cable several times but there was not much progress.

Lin Che in the back was checking the rooms one by one. Xiao Ling sat on the side wrapped in a blanket, in a daze.

Su Wanqing went over, hugged her in her arms, and asked casually, "Are you feeling uncomfortable today?"

Xiao Ling shook her head and said softly, "I don't feel hungry or not."

Lin Che helped her cover the corner of the blanket and checked each item according to the procedures in the booklet.

Fill in each item slowly, avoiding the sight of people around you.

The outside room gradually quieted down. In a corner of the conference room, a few people were still talking in low voices.

Someone asked, "What if there is really nothing to eat in the future?"

"How about surrendering to the army outside while the barrier is still strong?"

Xiao Ran remembered all these voices in his heart, did not look back, but just silently made a mark in his heart.