Chapter Ninety-Two: The First Plan

Li Qiang had overlooked a very important point: the insect hordes from the sky, and the special breeds among them, were not to be trifled with. Still, as a rule, one such special insect would appear only once in every hundred. That was at least enough to let one breathe a little easier.

But the insect hordes that came from above were far more dangerous. They wheeled through the heavens with terrifying speed, and unless one possessed locked-on missiles, there was little hope of striking them down. Yet in the apocalypse, every electronic device had already been ruined; the world’s power had been crippled, and everything depended entirely on oneself.

Yang Fan, however, had a solution.

After he pointed out this hidden danger, Li Qiang immediately fell silent and frowned deeply, as though turning something over in his mind. Yang Fan did not waste words and went straight to the point.

“First, we need to deal with the cold. If the inheritors of the apocalypse system go outside now, they will never last long. Among the apocalypse merchants, there is something called a Fire Pearl. It is produced by Flamefire Insects and can keep a person warm for seven days. One pearl costs twenty apocalypse coins, but if bought from an apocalypse merchant, it costs thirty. Now I want to ask you: how many inheritors of the apocalypse system do we have here?”

“I haven’t counted exactly, but there should be more than six hundred.”

“Six hundred?”

Yang Fan frowned. He had not expected there to be so many. But that was not the most important matter. Stroking his chin, he began to plan in earnest.

The first issue was protection against the cold. The second was food. The third was combat supplies. None of these could be lacking.

As for food, Li Qiang said they could hold out for at most five days. Yang Fan then told him to investigate and confirm the exact amount at once. After another hour had nearly passed, Li Qiang finally determined the true numbers.

There were only three hundred and twenty inheritors of the apocalypse system. However, there were six hundred and forty others with considerable combat ability, all soldiers. Added together, that made a total of nine hundred and sixty fighters.

Yang Fan’s first order was for everyone to hand over all the apocalypse coins they carried, without a single unnecessary word. The same applied to the others: every coin had to be turned in. As for Li Qiang, Yang Fan explained that he possessed the ability to use a portable marketplace. After some hesitation, Li Qiang immediately ordered everyone to surrender their coins.

Eight vehicles, nearly three thousand people in all, turned over more than one hundred thousand apocalypse coins. It was a fortune, enough for Yang Fan to outfit a hundred elite soldiers with excellent gear. When he saw that sum, even he nearly wavered. If not for Xiao You, the Yang Fan of the past might truly have done something reckless.

After forcibly suppressing that temptation, Yang Fan began to make his plans.

First came the Fire Pearls. Naturally, he would need to buy nine hundred and sixty of them and distribute them according to headcount. Once worn on the body, a Fire Pearl did not radiate heat outward; only the wearer could feel its warmth. At thirty apocalypse coins each, that came to twenty-eight thousand eight hundred coins. But with Liu Qiaoqiao’s twenty-percent discount, he would save a full five thousand seven hundred and sixty coins, bringing the total expenditure down to twenty-three thousand coins.

Of course, Yang Fan was only calculating for now; he had not actually purchased anything yet. He decided to wait until the twentieth day before buying them.

The next matter was weapons. After Li Qiang took stock, it turned out that among the nine hundred and sixty people, only five possessed silver-grade weapons, himself included. There were one hundred and sixty-five bronze-grade weapons, and everyone else was using white-grade weapons.

Those were merely tools somewhat sharper than ordinary blades and spears, with no attribute bonuses whatsoever. As for weapons, any bronze-grade piece in the hands of an apocalypse merchant cost somewhere between sixty and one hundred eighty apocalypse coins. One could look, but not afford them.

Li Qiang did mention that they had quite a few weapons, along with several heavy ones. However, ordinary firearms had little effect on insect hordes, because bullets lacked the penetration needed to pierce their shells. Even if they did pierce them, the damage was still limited—unless one had several Gatling guns and could unleash a frenzy of fire upon a low-tier insect.

But the insect hordes moved in swarms. Unless one could buy a laser gun from an apocalypse merchant, there was little use thinking further about it. The starting price of such a weapon was five thousand coins, and one had to be at least level two to purchase it.

Still, Li Qiang did give Yang Fan a pleasant surprise.

They had artillery—more precisely, a sniper cannon. Such a weapon could indeed deal with insect hordes in the sky, though ammunition was scarce: only a little over fifty shells.

There were many miscellaneous items as well, and plenty of firearms, but most of those could only be used to frighten people. Once one’s physical ability exceeded that of an ordinary person by more than tenfold, pistols and the like became almost nothing to fear. At more than twentyfold, even bullets striking the body would not cause particularly severe injury.

Thus Yang Fan’s suggestion was to sell these items and convert them into apocalypse coins, then prepare for the future. Li Qiang thought it over and agreed only to sell part of them. Too much would not do; after all, at times, people were even more terrifying than mutated beasts or insect hordes.

As the saying went, two fists could not beat four hands. No matter how formidable one was, when faced with a mad crowd, only bullets truly mattered.

Yang Fan agreed with that and accepted Li Qiang’s condition. A portion of the weapons would be sold—but not to those gouging apocalypse merchants. Instead, they would be listed on the trading platform. There would surely be many willing to buy firearms.

For instance, a Type 67 pistol priced at three hundred apocalypse coins was not merely half the price of the apocalypse merchants’ offer, but at least a third cheaper. It was immediately snapped up. As for the weapons that followed, nearly every one was bought soon after being listed.

This alone showed just how many ruthless people there were, or perhaps just how many rich people.

Those able to buy these weapons were surely small groups in the case of pistols, while larger weapons would be purchased only by those who had opened especially good treasure chests and thus had the means to afford them. In this way, Yang Fan sold off a large quantity of weapons and obtained nearly eighty thousand apocalypse coins.

That was because this was still the early apocalypse. If it were ten days later, such things would have depreciated sharply. Firearms were useful enough against zombies and lone mutated beasts, but against insect hordes, they were nothing more than scrap.

With that, their funds rose to one hundred and eighty thousand apocalypse coins. Yang Fan quietly skimming off thirty thousand was no great problem, because one hundred and fifty thousand was more than enough—though, of course, those thirty thousand were not simply stolen outright; they were absorbed through Liu Qiaoqiao’s eighty-percent discount.

Li Qiang was not a fool. He watched everything closely. Though he did not say much about the prices, he still asked about them, pretending to be casual. So everything Yang Fan did had to be explained clearly to him.

And so, a simple plan was about to be put into motion.