Chapter 99: The Pathfinder Trio
The three of them set off, in a hurry. Li Zhuang rushed all the way, and the car bumped along the damaged road. The three people in the car wore seat belts and held on to the handles tightly to ensure that they would not be hit on the head suddenly. Although they were dizzy from the shakes, they had to say the speed was much faster. After more than an hour, they saw the gate of the Qingyuan City security base.
The Qingyuan base is composed of a high-end villa area and surrounding residential areas before the end of the world. Now, after being cleared by the army, a high wall has been built to form a safe base.
After a month of military garrison, the base has begun to take shape, with a two-person-high wall and a row of soldiers with guns blocking the gate. The people queuing to enter are well-organized, without any rogues.
Outside the base is still the refugee area, which is a certain distance away from the gate. Under the dim sky, the bustling crowd is blurry, but just listening to the sounds from a distance it doesn't seem so lifeless.
As soon as the car stopped, Ning Yuan in the back seat opened the door and went out to dry heave twice. He took a bottle of water from his bag and drank it, which relieved the discomfort. He turned to Li Zhuang, gave him a thumbs up and said, "It wasn't this exaggerated when I was learning to sit in a swivel chair on an airplane."
Li Zhuang nodded to accept his compliment, raised his chin towards the gate of the base and gestured, "Go and get some information."
Ning Yuan nodded and said to Lu Weiyi who was sitting in the passenger seat, "Cover it up quickly. Even if we can't see it clearly, your clean face is too obvious."
"I know, I know." Lu Weiyi waved his hands at him impatiently.
After the people walked away, Lu Weiyi calmly took out an ear-length wig under Li Zhuang's inquiring gaze, and put it on his head neatly while Li Zhuang was stunned.
"You..." Li Zhuang was speechless for a moment, then he smiled and said in a powerful tone.
Lu Weiyi was good-looking, and if he had short, neat hair, it would be hard for him not to attract attention when he entered the base. But at this moment, his thick bangs blocked his forehead, and his ear-length hairstyle made him look a little dull. In addition, he took out a pair of black-framed glasses, covering his beautiful eyes. Looking at him again, he really was just an ordinary woman.
In this end times, for a woman to be with two men, it seems reasonable to keep it clean.
"Who did you learn this from?" Li Zhuang looked Lu Weiyi up and down and thought he was dressed pretty well.
"Self-taught" Lu Weiyi is a little bit boastful.
Of course this was definitely a lie. This was something Zhuang Mingxu had helped him put together in his previous life when they went to another base together. Zhuang Mingxu said that this would completely cover up his shining points. In the last days, when he went to the mall to collect supplies, he remembered it when he saw the wig shop. He didn't expect to use it so soon.
After a while, Ning Yuan came back. He saw a woman sitting in the car from a distance. He was a little stunned until he got closer and found that it was Lu Weiyi. He didn't know what to say for a moment. Lu Weiyi didn't wait for him to adapt and asked directly, "Have you found out?"
"Yeah." Speaking of business, Ning Yuan didn't care about anything else and nodded. "The base now has some kind of identity card, which is distributed to the people living inside and exchanged for supplies. One person needs 200 kilograms of flour or rice, and ten kilograms of water. If the other food is of different weights, a temporary parking fee will be charged for the vehicle after entering, just like the parking spaces before the end of the world. Two kilograms of rice for one night, I guarantee that no one will steal it, but the safety of gasoline cannot be guaranteed."
"What can we exchange?" Ning Yuan asked Lu Weiyi. After all, apart from three backpacks, they didn't put anything else in the trunk. The supplies all depended on what Lu Weiyi took out.
"Of course it's water." It's a great deal to use this free stuff as a substitute for rice and flour.
As Lu Weiyi spoke, he put a large bucket and a can of mineral water into the trunk, and also put some instant noodles, bread and other miscellaneous items in it, and threw some things in the empty space on the back seat.
After Ning Yuan got in the car, the three of them drove to the gate of the base. There are two entrances to the base. Trucks carrying goods drive into one of them from time to time. Ning Yuan said to a truck that entered from that side, "Those entering from that side are the residents of the base. They are all out looking for supplies."
"There are new people here." The base stipulates that entry and exit are closed from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. It is almost closing time and there are not many people waiting. After three or four minutes, it will be their turn.
Two men in military uniforms came to the car, holding a book, "Register, are there only three of you? Ordinary people or people with special abilities? How do you pay the fee?"
"They are all ordinary people, paying with water," Li Zhuang replied.
"Use water?" A look of surprise flashed across one person's face, and then he returned to normal in an instant. Water is obviously in short supply now. Although the regulations allow payment for water use, no one has done so recently.
"Yes, I happened to get three barrels when I came here. It's better to hand them over to avoid being remembered by others." Ning Yuan smiled with his white teeth.
Now the three of them had no power or influence. If they went in with a few buckets of water, who knew how many people would see them. It was the best option to hand it over. The two nodded, took out some instrument, knocked it a few times, and asked, "Name."
"Li Zhuang"
"Xu Sa" Lu Weiyi uttered in a low voice, and the other two looked at him at the same time with surprise in their eyes. Lu Weiyi calmly adjusted his glasses and had no reaction at all to the fact that he had betrayed his good friend.
"..." Ning Yuan also wanted to learn to say Lin Yimu, but when he thought that Lin Yimu's name might be known to others, he immediately changed his words and said, "Liu Rui".
Now Lu Weiyi and Li Zhuang both turned around to look at him. After all, Lu Weiyi mentioned Xu Sa's name because the two of them were about the same height, but Ning Yuan and Liu Rui were quite different in height. Ning Yuan looked like an obvious adult, while Liu Rui looked like he had not yet grown up.
The two soldiers didn't care. They just took a picture of their faces and found it was not clear. They put away the equipment and took the three thin nameplates that had just been printed and said to the three people, "The photo is not clear. Take the nameplates to the base population registration office tomorrow during the day to apply for a replacement. Where should we put the cars? Will they be centrally managed or can we do whatever we want?"
"Concentrate," Ning Yuan said, taking out two kilograms of rice from his side, and got out of the car, opened the trunk, and asked them to get water.
When the two men saw the three buckets of water, they didn't even check whether the rice was enough. They just weighed it and put it away. One of them handed out vehicle documents, and the other took out a testing instrument and took some water from the bucket. After three beeps, he nodded to the other man and waved to the person who was blocking the door and controlling the railing to enter.
"Come in," the obviously happy man said to them, carrying a bucket of water. "There are people inside who specialize in introducing the situation at the base. They can handle everything by exchanging supplies."
"Okay, thank you."
As the railing rose, Li Zhuang stepped on the accelerator and they entered the base. The big base is not like the small base which is pitch black at night. There are troops stationed here, and the living infrastructure is relatively complete. Many places can be seen brightly lit at night. It is not like before the end of the world when there were electric lights everywhere and there was no shortage of electricity for household use.
The residents living near the road also have various lighting facilities, including oil lamps, candles, and torches. At a glance, you can roughly see the main road.
"Turn right." As soon as he entered the base, Ning Yuan ignored the people who came up to him and gave direct instructions.
"Looking for a place to live?" Li Zhuang turned and asked.
"Well, there should be a temporary residence. Let's drive towards the Longmen villa area first and live near the villa. It will be convenient for us to secretly look for Wu Yue at night." After many hardships, he finally returned to Qingyuan. Ning Yuan felt relieved. Looking at the familiar scenes around him, he was obviously excited. "See, the one with the most lights? That's Longmen Villa. We will live there from now on."
In the past, the villa here was only used for occasional gatherings, or for a two-day weekend vacation to relax and stay here. They never came here at other times. In the later period of their previous life, they had been living in Kyoto. Lu Weiyi didn't have a very clear impression of this place. When he heard Ning Yuan's words, he looked up and saw that in the darkness, there was obviously light everywhere. It was obvious that the people living there were living well.
After the car drove for more than ten minutes, Ning Yuan pointed to a place on the side of the road with the word "hotel" written on it and said, "Let's settle down here tonight."
This store should have been a hotel before the end of the world. It is a small building with several floors. When you get closer, you can see the vertical sign "Orange Hotel" on the door. There should have been neon lights, but now it is out of electricity.
Li Zhuang looked around and didn't see any centralized parking lot, so he parked his car in front of the hotel.
There was a solar-powered lamp in the lobby on the first floor. There were two people at the front desk, a man and a woman. They were not dressed very cleanly, but compared to the dusty people outside, they were much cleaner. When the woman saw someone coming in, she said indifferently, "Stay in the hotel? How many rooms?"
"One room," Ning Yuan said.
The woman looked up at the three of them and said, "Register your nameplate."
Li Zhuang handed over the nameplates that the three people had just received. The other man kept his eyes on the three of them, especially on Lu Weiyi, with obvious ill intentions on his face.
Seeing this, Lu Weiyi lowered his head and hid behind Li Zhuang. Li Zhuang met the man's gaze directly, smiled, and at the same time inadvertently moved the triangular knife in his hand that was covered in black blood. The man's expression restrained slightly and turned to look at the woman's registration form.
After registering, the woman handed over the nameplate and said, "Five packets of instant noodles per night. Only the room is provided, other things will be paid for separately. Room occupancy will be at 12 o'clock, and renewals must be processed before that."
"Is there hot water?" Although they brought meat buns, after running all day, Ning Yuan felt that it would be good to be able to make a bowl of instant noodles.
"Tsk" the man sneered, and Ning Yuan then realized that water is very precious nowadays.
"You'll have a feast even if you fall asleep," the man said sarcastically. Ning Yuan didn't care and took the nameplate and the room key with 304 written on it handed to him by the woman.
"Turn right on the third floor," said the woman.
"Thank you. Is there any parking lot nearby?" Ning Yuan took out a piece of chocolate from his pocket and handed it to the woman.
The woman's expression eased a lot. "Turn right when you get out the door. You'll need a parking permit outside Longmen Villa."
"Okay, thank you beautiful," Ning Yuan said, looking at Li Zhuang, "Let's put down our supplies first, I'll go park the car, you go back to the room with him and have some rest."
Ning Yuan was more familiar with this place, so Li Zhuang didn't say anything. He gave him the parking permit, went out, put all the things in the car into two snakeskin bags, and took them out, then went up to the third floor with Lu Weiyi.
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