41 The Developing Fishbone

Chapter 41: The Developing Fishbone

Translator: _Min_Editor: Lis_, Rundi

Fishbone Food Corporation

With a crooked fishbone symbol pinned on the mansion’s main door, the new survival camp was born on this piece of wasteland in Wanghai City.

In the morning, the fatigued survivors woke up to a delicious aroma.

It was the smell of food.

Zhou Jiexi wore a white chef apron as she cooked congee with cabbage and ground pork in a pot. The survivors meekly lined up to obtain their breakfast rations.

Even in their wildest dreams, they wouldn’t have believed that they were given breakfast.

Only when full would they have the energy to work, which is why Jiang Chen didn’t skimp on food expenses. Although nutrient supply would sustain them, once it hit the stomach, it felt sour without providing enough energy. Regarding the survivors’ menu, he asked for advice from Zhou Jiexi before he made a reasonable meal plan.

Congee in the morning, rice at noon with a large serving of a side dish, and for dinner, the same as lunch except with occasional noodles instead of rice.

Also, people who made exceptional work progress would receive points. The points structure was implemented by Jiang Chen after careful consideration because he understood the concept well. It rewarded outstanding work based on construction progress to promote similar standards. With these points, the survivors could exchange for instant noodles, crackers, or even canned food luxuries.

Jiang Chen temporarily gave Lu Huasheng the responsibility of distributing the points and then reporting it to the storage manager Wang Qin to confirm. They were set to receive one point per day. The cook Zhou Jiexi was awarded based on the quality of the cooked food, and as for Du Yongkong, Jiang Chen personally took care of his points.

Food was worth little to him.

But for the people who previously endured the pain of starvation, it was a severe understatement to say that Jiang Chen was generous.

God, this must be heaven, is what almost everyone was thinking.

After quickly finishing breakfast, everyone gathered in the empty front yard. Excluding the people with assigned roles, everyone else followed Jiang Chen’s order to separate into groups of four. The individuals specialized in construction acted as the team leaders for their task in building the base. Lu Huasheng, who had severe dark circles, took the full sensory diagram that he completed overnight and explained tirelessly to the team leaders.

Some teams were responsible for producing the anti-corrosive concrete while others were focusing on the nanotubes used for the body of the wall. The nanotube poly-material used to construct the wall was at least two times stronger than a normal concrete wall.

The building team silently took the construction materials and snuck outside to avoid alerting the zombies. Slowly, they stretched out the metal wire separators. Another group shot the zombies with the metal wire separators and dragged the bodies away to burn—this was to avoid possible diseases and zombies from evolving.

After hearing about Jiang Chen’s base development plans, Lu Huasheng decided to use the phased method to expand the base.

The first step was to expand in the direction of the underground sewer system and control the exit to it. The construction teams would use the three-story luxury buildings outside of the mansion as the base and construct a wall around it, surrounding all of the smaller buildings within the proximity. After reinforcing the defense, they would then start building the secure corridor outwards, between the underground exit and the base wall.

The overall design philosophy was to effectively utilize the abandoned buildings in the area as well as the nanotube poly-material wall to connect them together. This transformed the abandoned buildings into natural fortifications. They could not only be used as households but also as weapon-equipped watchtowers. After completing the primary structure, more nearby buildings could be included as well.

With a clear plan, the construction outside of the mansion was fully underway. Pleased, Jiang Chen looked at the survivors working diligently before returning to the mansion and heading towards Yao Yao’s room.

－

“It’s basically done. Haha, although it pretty much copied a mobile game that was popular in the year 2031, it meets most of the criteria that big brother set!” Yao Yao hopped along as she dragged Jiang Chen beside the table. She then took out the cheap phone worth less than one thousand dollars and pressed the start button.

Skeptical, Jiang Chen opened the game icon named <New Era> under the scrutiny of Yao Yao’s exceedingly high expectations.

Jiang Chen was completely stunned.

This is a mobile game?!

No, it wasn’t that the game Yao Yao created was terrible, but…

it was too perfect!

The combination of RPG adventure game elements and SLG building elements meant that players could choose to become adventurers with flashy spells, characters that focused on ruling the land, or merchants exploring the seas. People could write their own history in this open world. This was not an advertisement for a poorly designed game, but the actual in-game content!

Indeed, it was an open world with sprawling maps. On computers, it would be nothing, but on the mobile platform, this would be considered a miracle in the current industry.

The game even had three-dimensional graphics.

Even if this game was built for a PC, it would be still be considered perfect.

Of all the games Jiang Chen played before, only <Skyrim> could compare.

All in all, the game’s perfection made him question if the phone would even be able to run it.

“Ahem, Yao Yao, did you upgrade the hardware on my phone?” Jiang Chen asked with a bitter smile. He didn’t want a game that was unplayable on all phones. Even if the game was impeccable, it was useless if nobody was able to play.

“Of course not.” Yao Yao sensed Jiang Chen’s slight displeasure as her eyes suddenly became sorrowful. “Yao Yao specifically considered the phone’s hardware level and used D++ language to package the game into 256 MB with an automatic program to process when the game initiates the game—”

“Stop stop stop, I don’t understand. Just briefly explain how it works.” Jiang Chen interrupted Yao Yao’s explanation.

“Mhmm! To put it simply, even with the phone’s minimal hardware performance, it is able to support this type of massive online game. It’s just that it would be a higher server requirement because I used cloud computing inside which means that the majority of the data processing is going to happen on the server itself. Therefore, the user and CPU would not need to handle too many calculations, which also solves the security problem.”

Yao Yao proudly shook her tiny head as she continued, “To handle the calculations required, I already built a server for big brother. The specific process is written inside the document.”

Despite his inability to understand completely, he could tell that it basically used the server as a larger processor. Therefore, the user only needed to input information and extract the processed information.

“But wouldn’t this increase the user’s data cost?” Jiang Chen was doubtful.

“Hehe, Yao Yao has already considered this. The information exchanged between the server and the user is written by a special code that not only contains a lot of information but packages the data into a small file! It is significantly more efficient compared to the games installed on big brother’s phone. A day of data usage is only 10 megabytes.”

10 megabytes of data was indeed minimal. Jiang Chen was shocked as any other game would have incurred a lot more data.

“So, did Yao Yao help big brother out?” Yao Yao blinked her large, doe-like eyes as she looked hopefully at the shocked Jiang Chen.

“Haha, Yao Yao, you’ve helped me out tremendously!” Jiang Chen suddenly hugged Yao Yao and gave this cute loli an affectionate kiss on the face.

Yao Yao’s adorable face suddenly turned a dark red as she buried her head.

“Yao Yao, if you want anything, tell me, okay? I will definitely do my best.”

“Hmm? Umm, anything is okay?” Yao Yao didn’t know what to answer with as she stuttered.

“Mhmm! Anything, as long as big brother can do it.” Jiang Chen squatted down and held onto Yao Yao’s shoulder as he nodded. At the moment, he was emotional and wanted to reward this adorable girl.

Yao Yao panicked as Jiang Chen kept pressing. Her sweet eyes looked around the room anxiously as her face transformed into a red balloon. At any moment, it seemed as though steam would come out.

“I, I want…” Yao Yao’s mouth faintly opened as her eyes looked shakily at Jiang Chen.

“You want?” Jiang Chen leaned closer towards Yao Yao and gazed carefully at her eyes, waiting for her answer.

“I want…”

In the end, perhaps it was too exciting, but Yao Yao’s head flipped back, and she drowsily fell.

Fortunately, Jiang Chen managed to catch her mid-fall to stop her head from banging into the floor.

He still didn’t know what Yao Yao wanted.

－

Taking the reprogrammed server and the game, Jiang Chen went to Sun Jiao’s place.

“You’re about to leave again?” Sun Jiao rolled her eyes as she continued to whip her SK10 assault rifle. “How long are you planning on disappearing this time?”

“Not too long. I’ll be back within one month by the latest.” Jiang Chen hugged Sun Jiao’s smooth waist. “Don’t miss me too much at night.”

“Pervert.” Although she said that, Sun Jiao didn’t look annoyed at all. Instead, she leaned up and kissed Jiang Chen on the lips. “I’ll take care of this side, so come back early.”

Sun Jiao and Yao Yao’s EPs were also installed with the slaves’ microchip managing software. Jiang Chen made the decision because someone needed to manage these survivors while he was gone. This subprogram allowed Sun Jiao and Yao Yao perform his duties as master. Although this permission could be retracted at any time, Jiang Chen trusted both of them, so the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

“If you have time in the afternoon, teach those guys some shooting skills unless it is dangerous. And also, try to establish a closed corridor between the base and the tunnel; this is critical to the safety of the trade route with the Sixth Street.” Jiang Chen explained some of the important items related to the base development. Although he could return between both worlds in an instant, once the base construction was stably on its way, he had to spend part of the effort on expanding in the modern world.

In the future, he hoped to train Sun Jiao into someone who could manage the daily affairs of the base.

Sun Jiao seemed to have realized that too; however, she didn’t stop Jiang Chen from leaving.

Not only did Jiang Chen mature, but Sun Jiao was also growing through their relationship. Compared to the audacious girl that constantly desired Jiang Chen, she began to calmly and maturely express her love differently.

She believed Jiang Chen, and she knew he would never leave her here.

“Mhmm, I know.” Sun Jiao reached out to fix his collar.

“You’ve changed.” Jiang Chen grabbed her hands as he gazed into her eyes affectionately.

“Hmm? Am I prettier or uglier?” Sun Jiao rolled her eyes. Just as she wanted to pull her hands away, she realized that he was holding on to them tightly.

Her face began to blush.

“Of course prettier.” Accompanied by Sun Jiao’s surprised yelp, he pushed her onto the bed.

For some reason, the moment Sun Jiao fixed his collar, he fell in love. It was as though the person in front of him was his wife. This newfound feeling made his blood pump.

Or perhaps it was because he hasn't relieved himself in a while.

The door was slammed shut.

The affection in the room began to merge into the sunny morning sky.