Chapter 5

Hanah's POV

I walked the entire perimeter along the fence line, not rushing. By the time I finished this loop, this bunker should be a complete topographical map in my mind: which spots were accessible, which could be climbed, which required a detour.

The bunker was embedded inside the mountainside. On both sides, razor wire formed a complete ring starting from half way up the slope. Where the fence met the cliff face, the terrain dropped straight down into a sheer rock wall—loose gravel everywhere, not a single stable foothold to be found.

The northern section was far steeper than the front, with shrubs and trees packed so tightly that even a professional climber with full gear would have to stand there and think for a while.

I'd basically blocked off the human approach. But I didn't relax.

I crouched at the edge of the protection zone, staring at the layers of dead leaves and branches beneath my feet, starting to calculate another question.

Fire doesn't care about electric fences, and it doesn't fear ten thousand volts. I'd thought through the defense methods repeatedly: the most thorough approach would be to clear a large swath of trees upfront, carving out a thirty-meter-wide isolation zone from the protection zone eastward.

The problem was exactly that thirty meters.

Once the trees were cut, a stark, pale scar would appear on the mountainside—visible from the highway on sunny days, visible from the opposite hilltop, visible through any drone camera flying overhead. That wouldn't be an isolation zone; it would be a signboard standing upright, reading: Someone is here. Electricity is here. Goods are here.

I crouched there for a long time before working out a logical sequence: in the apocalypse, the most dangerous thing has never been fire—it's people.

To prevent a fire that might never come, while drawing people right to your doorstep, that's putting the cart before the horse. The trees couldn't move.

So I lowered my head and started clearing the ground surface around the protection zone. The forest itself was damp—living trees don't burn fast. What actually fed the fire was this layer of bone-dry leaves and twigs on the ground. I scraped them away, shovel by shovel.

Beep — Fire hazard detected, reduced.

I didn't stop my hands, continuing to scrape downward.

Reward — No combustion within the cleared zone, permanent!

I stood there for a few seconds, holding the shovel.

The thing I kept worrying about, the system bought out with one sentence. It rewarded the thing that truly mattered to this base: a rule that this entire perimeter would never burn.

I rarely felt this way, let out a rare shout in my heart, then crouched back down to keep scraping.

The biggest hazard was wiped out in one stroke. What remained was all physical labor. Scrape an inch of ground, gain an inch of reward. Reinforce one section of defense, increase strength by one point. The base was becoming sturdier at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Over these few days, the deliveries arrived one by one.

During the day, I wired inside the shelter, nailed up racks, moved materials. At night, I drove to the warehouse to pick up goods.

I had the couriers unload the boxes directly into the warehouse, leave immediately, without saying a single unnecessary word.

An oversized camera was installed at the warehouse entrance. Summer guarded it for me.

Now it's a peaceful era—even without someone watching, most people are too lazy to actively do evil. Besides, inside the door crouched a reinforced black German Shepherd that would make even me step back when it got fierce.

I went over at night, used my space to take the goods batch by batch back to the base. The transit station and the base were connected only by this one night run.

Beep — Warehouse storage detected, full.

100 tons of rice, 1,000 cases of instant ramen, 200 cases of hot dogs and bacon, 100 cases of pickles and canned vegetables, 20,000+ frozen meals. All arrived, neatly stacked in the largest warehouse at the deepest part of the air-raid shelter.

Reward — Super Warehouse! Food storage permanently locked fresh!

The door blinked and transformed into something straight out of a heist movie—a massive bank vault door, thick and matte, the kind that even professional breaching tools couldn't budge. Only my iris scan would open it.

I pushed the door open and looked around. The boxes inside had already been automatically sorted by category. The most important thing was those four words: Permanently Locked Fresh.

I ordered common crop seeds and saplings.

Almost all vegetable seeds could be planted directly to grow. Sweet potatoes and similar crops needed seedlings instead.

All the seeds were very cheap, especially sweet potato seedlings. I ordered a huge batch from the largest seed shop, then asked the owner one question. The owner just handed me a few seedlings for free.

Then there were fruit trees. Best to buy finished saplings, ones with longer tree age.

Fruit tree seedlings took too much time and effort upfront, and fruiting was slow. Buying ten-year-old saplings was very cheap.

A top-grade Red Delicious ten-year sapling cost only $80 to $100.

I bought a large batch of ten-year saplings all at once.

Apple saplings, fig trees, jujube trees, pear trees, mulberry trees, cherry trees, citrus trees, plum trees, apricot trees, walnut trees, chestnut trees, hazelnut trees, peach trees, pomegranate trees, persimmon trees...

Three of each.

To ensure survival while having fruit to eat year-round in rotation.

I bought over a hundred trees total, spent only six thousand plus dollars.

The land area was less than half an acre.That was the empty space on the right side outside my air-raid shelter.

On the left, I built a first-class plastic greenhouse and racks, where I scattered various vegetable seeds.

Leafy greens, cucumbers, eggplants, carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, green onions, kale, green beans...

Many vegetable types could be planted with seedlings, but considering seedling planting only gave one harvest, and next year there'd be no well-bred seedlings, I started from seed cultivation myself.

Fortunately, this was super premium quality farmland. Seeds planted would definitely grow strong without me needing to worry much.

In just ten days, my air-raid shelter had completely changed.

Inside and out, everything was brand new.

As time passed, now only three days remained until the apocalypse.