Chapter 247 Exclusively published on Jinjiang Literature City: The Scramble for Goods and a Tour of the Cruise Ship
After finishing his communication with the new emperor, Lu Xuan learned from the village chief that nothing was wrong with the Huo family army camp, except that their greenhouses were gone, just like theirs. So he didn't bother with that for the time being.
He turned to the other villagers and explained the situation. After they realized they couldn't stay there any longer, they looked at each other in bewilderment.
The women, still trying to soothe their eyes, clearly showed their reluctance to part.
Having lived here for so long, they had long considered this place their new home and thought they would spend the rest of the catastrophe here. They never expected to have to leave so soon.
Everyone was filled with mixed feelings and countless thoughts, but no one said anything like "Can't we stay?" They simply asked, "Shall we leave now?"
Wu Cheng then asked, "Where exactly are you going? What are your plans?"
Lu Xuan said, "Perhaps before the sea recedes completely, we will have to live at sea for a period of time. During this period, we will need some supplies. This place was originally land and has no marine resources. The best option is naturally to go to the deep sea, where the resources are abundant."
The villagers, who had witnessed firsthand how many fish could be caught in a single net at sea, nodded in agreement.
"However," Lu Xuan changed the subject, his gaze returning to the swift and deep water below, "before we leave, we should try our best to recover as much of the loss as possible."
Zhang Chengming and the others' hearts skipped a beat, and they exclaimed excitedly, "You mean—!"
A moment later.
The Lu family's No. 1 ship was launched into the water. The hunting team, along with some of the guards, a total of more than forty people, put on diving gear and jumped into the water with a 'plop' 'plop' sound.
Lu Xuan, as the leader, led the way and led everyone down about ten meters. Finally, through the murky water, they could vaguely see the shadow of the greenhouse.
To increase visibility, it's best to wait a day or two until the water is less murky before coming down.
But the longer they delay, the worse the situation will become. They are racing against time and cannot afford any further delays.
They fell into the water in the newly planted area.
The hillside area only has about a hundred acres, while the rest is on two other hilltops. The scale is too small, and the chances of it being preserved under the impact of the tsunami are slim, so there's no need to waste time.
On the other hand, in the new planting area, there is enough land, and the greenhouses are not built in large groups of thousands of acres, but are built in groups of ten acres apart, so there is a high chance that they will survive.
Sure enough, when the group walked along the completely destroyed greenhouses, they saw many greenhouses that were still intact and whose crops inside were not flooded. They were quite large!
[Great! There are still greenhouses that haven't been damaged!]
My food supply! Rice, wheat, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes—!
[What do you mean "your"? It belongs to the streamer and the villagers.]
[Regardless of whose it is, it's good that it wasn't completely destroyed! I see that some parts of the streamer's orchard are still intact.]
The able-bodied men who followed cheered and pumped their fists when they saw the undamaged crops. Then they all looked at Lu Xuan, asking him with their eyes how they were going to get in.
Once they get inside, the seawater will flood in, and the greenhouses that were originally saved will also fall.
Lu Xuan: It's simple, just prepare an isolation area.
Lu Xuan gathered his supernatural power to create a closed space that covered them all. Then he collected the water in the earthen wall space into his storage space and smashed an entrance into the greenhouse.
And here we are, in no time?
Everyone took off their goggles, oxygen tanks, and other equipment and put them aside. Looking at the thriving crops in front of them, they exclaimed happily, "Everything's doing great! That's wonderful!"
Li Jing's expression relaxed. "I thought all the food was really gone. Thank goodness."
They didn't waste any time talking. Lu Xuan quickly used his wood-type ability to ripen the crops that were still a little short of maturity, and brought out multiple harvesters, tillers, and agricultural robots to work.
Lu Xuan handed over the necessary machinery to everyone and said, "Go and find all the greenhouses that are still intact and harvest them as soon as possible."
Once the farm machinery has started working, their only responsibility is to collect the harvested crops.
A group of people swept through the greenhouse plots one by one and quickly recovered a large amount of grain.
During this time, Lu Xuan also went to the greenhouse area that had been flooded.
The mushrooms in the mushroom house had long been washed away by the water, so we'll skip that.
Bamboo shoots in the bamboo forest can be dug up quickly.
As for the grain-producing areas.
The crops growing on the surface were all destroyed beyond saving, but the crops in the soil, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yams, were still intact even though the branches and leaves were swept away by the water, and they could be harvested.
Besides the farmland, one should also take care of the orchards and lotus ponds under one's own name.
Although the lotus pond was also flooded, the lotus roots, potatoes, and sweet potatoes were buried and undamaged, so they could still be dug up and eaten.
The orchard was in a rather unfortunate location, with most of the area located on the outskirts of the new planting area, so the damage was considerable. In the end, Lu Xuan only managed to save a little over two hundred trees.
All varieties were lost, and replanting was the only option.
But compared to total loss, salvaging one-fifth is some consolation.
During the harvest season, people from various towns and cities came to help.
Lu Xuan sold these people a total of over 100,000 sets of diving equipment, hundreds of boats of different sizes, and countless mobile cabins, tents, and other camping equipment.
·
The group spent most of the day frantically harvesting before returning to the ship with a large amount of food and plenty of usable greenhouse materials to rejoin the others.
Li Tie pressed on, "How was it? How many were saved?"
Lu Xuan: "Approximately two million catties."
That is about one-third of the original harvest.
Losing two-thirds of their strength at once was a painful blow to Li Tie and the others.
But then I thought, being able to save two million catties is already much better than the expected complete crop failure.
Because some people's greenhouses were completely destroyed, this batch of grain is not suitable for distribution according to the original ownership.
Before Lu Xuan and the others arrived, Li Tie had already discussed with the others that the grain they had salvaged would be divided equally according to the amount of land each family owned, or in other words, the number of superhumans they possessed.
With all the supplies retrieved, the villagers had no reason to linger any longer. After taking one last look at the hilly area, which was now unrecognizable, they prepared to leave.
The sea is rough and there may be other dangers. The size of the boats used during the rainy season is no longer sufficient.
Taking other elements into consideration...
Lu Xuan searched through the system's online store and spent 500 million yuan to buy a luxury cruise ship with a capacity of tens of thousands of passengers.
Lu Xuan brought out the super-large cruise ship after the villagers arrived at the sea area where they used to fish.
Everyone looked up at the enormous vessel, nearly dropping their jaws in astonishment.
"This is too big, too tall!" Li Tie gasped. "How many people can such a big ship hold?"
Lu Xuan said, "No matter how many people it can hold, only a little over a hundred people from our village will live there in the future."
Grandpa Zhang clutched his chest, somewhat unable to bear it, and said, "We'll stay here? Isn't that too extravagant?"
Lu Xuan retorted, "Do you want to be on a small boat and get capsized by the waves?"
Grandpa Zhang: "..." Of course not.
Lu Xuan: "Boats are meant for people to ride on, and besides, the village has plenty of public supplies, so paying for lodging shouldn't be a problem."
He looked at the others, "Don't you want to go up and take a look?"
"I want to! I want to! Brother, I want to go up!" Lu Chen was the first to raise his hand and shout loudly.
"I want to go up too!" Xiong Dabao exclaimed right after him.
Seeing this, the other children excitedly shouted that they wanted to get on the big ship.
The elders weren't really unwilling; after the initial shock, their faces now showed eagerness, wanting to see how magnificent such a large ship would be.
After the gangway was connected to the ship, everyone excitedly boarded the cruise ship.
Everyone found everything fascinating, and even Lu Qing asked Lu Xuan with great interest, "Ah Xuan, how is this boat different from the boats we rode on before?"
Lu Xuan had just changed ships and only glanced at the cargo area. Based on his experience riding modern cruise ships before the apocalypse, he said, "Cruise ships are mainly for leisure. There should be many entertainment facilities inside, and the rooms will be bigger and more luxurious than the ships we used before. You can find out the rest by going inside."
The others hurriedly said, "Then quickly show us around."
They themselves wouldn't dare; such a large ship could easily lead to getting lost if one wasn't familiar with it.
Next, Lu Xuan led more than a hundred villagers on a grand tour of the cruise ship.
Leaving the deck and entering the first floor, you'll find an extremely spacious hall. The interior is decorated in a Western style, with crystal chandeliers and circular strip lights illuminating the entire hall.
Further inside, there is a food court and empty shops without any merchandise.
The village's newly purchased boat has five floors but no elevator, while the cruise ship has as many as twenty-five floors, so an elevator is naturally essential.
The villagers, riding the elevator for the first time, were filled with curiosity, and the children kept pestering their parents to let them ride it again and again, treating the elevator like a new toy.
The second floor has economy class, single cabin, double cabin, and triple cabin, with several hundred rooms in total.
Li Tie clicked his tongue in amazement and said, "This one floor alone is enough for our whole village to live in."
Lu Xuan smiled and said, "The rooms here are too small, there's not enough room to move around. There are better rooms upstairs."
Economy class rooms have small windows and limited space. They're fine for short stays, but not very comfortable for extended stays of several months.
More than half of the cabins on a cruise ship are spaced across several decks, which contain restaurants, entertainment areas, shopping areas, and so on. The price standards are also based on the guests on the corresponding deck.
Going up from the second floor, the next residential area is the sixth floor, which features comfortable rooms with large windows, better lighting, and more views. Some rooms even have a balcony, effectively increasing the living space.
Above the tenth floor, there are residential areas every few floors, and the higher the floor, the higher the standard.
The content in the areas interspersed throughout is even richer.
The restaurant and banquet hall are large enough to accommodate thousands of people; the shopping area, which is currently vacant but occupies an even larger area than the restaurant, is also there.
There are also indoor playgrounds, cinemas, arcades, holographic game rooms, gyms, bumper car tracks, and go-kart tracks;
Archery range, shooting range, golf course, rock climbing wall, vacuum experience chamber;
The indoor swimming pool with a glass roof and large floor-to-ceiling windows, hot spring pool, sunbathing area, and an indoor botanical garden that occupies most of the floor.
In addition to the interior, cruise ships also have outdoor swimming pools, some of which are even equipped with wave generators, allowing tourists to enjoy the fun of surfing safely.
Throughout the visit, the villagers, like Grandma Liu visiting the Grand View Garden, kept exclaiming in amazement at their unfamiliar surroundings, wishing they had eight pairs of eyes to look around, as if they couldn't get enough of what they saw.
When Li Tuo, Chen Rong, Xiong Ximao, and others passed by the entertainment area, they were eager to try it out on the spot.
In the end, Li Tie stopped them, saying that there was no rush to experience it, and it was more important to get a general understanding of the ship's layout first.
Cruise ships are large and have many facilities, so their energy consumption is naturally considerable.
However, neither Lu Xuan nor Li Tie, who controlled a large amount of public resources, cared much about these things.
As for using public resources to directly purchase the cruise ship, a few individuals have indeed considered this idea.
But when he asked about Lu Xuan's price, he gave up the idea.
Forget it, such a big ship will only be useful during a catastrophe; it will mostly be idle afterward. There's no need to spend so much food on it.
By the time everyone had toured the cruise ship, it was already quite late.
Lu Xuan said, "Everyone, find a room to sleep first. We'll meet at the restaurant on the first floor tomorrow morning and then we'll discuss the rest."
The village children were already yawning from exhaustion, some even fast asleep in their parents' arms. The adults, having also experienced a lot of stress today, were equally tired, so they didn't say much and simply chose a guest room floor to go their separate ways.
Lu Xuan led his family up to the twentieth floor and settled into the presidential suite with the best ocean view.
After the other two adults and two children in the family were settled into their rooms in the suite, Lu Xuan finally relaxed and lay down on the bed, secretly letting out a sigh of relief as he opened the system backend.
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Author's Note: Regarding the use of interplanetary round-trip scrolls.
I've been agonizing over the exact time to go to the Covenant, and in the process, I realized I've already missed the best time (during the rainy season when there's less activity)! [Crying emoji]
Inserting such content into the subsequent plot can easily cause confusion and make the reading experience difficult.
So I've decided to go back and write it out later and add it to chapter 243!
It's still uncertain how many words will be written (maybe 10,000 or 20,000 words), but for those who follow the updates in real time, no further payment is required, so it's practically free (those who want to wait for the story to be completed will have to pay for the extra words as usual).
I'll add a note in the author's notes and chapter titles when I publish it, so please remember to check back then!
(Write a little bit every day, maybe I can finish it within a week...? [glasses])
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