Chapter 163: Hell Black Chrysanthemum

Lin Xian’s gaze swept over Shu Qin’s convoy. He was familiar with most of the people inside, having met many of them at the Quguan bonfire mutual aid meeting. However, their numbers had dwindled along the way.

Survivor convoys were mostly formed by small groups of refugees who had banded together. Initially, they were strangers, but after facing numerous life-and-death situations and spending a long time together, they naturally became familiar with one another.

Under the common crisis of survival, huddling together for warmth became the only choice. But similarly, when faced with their own life and death, not everyone possessed the same spirit of sacrifice as the Iron Guard Brigade.

Lin Xian pondered for a moment. Integrating so many people would inevitably bring greater survival pressure to the team, but it could also unleash stronger combat effectiveness. This depended on both the core leader of the team and whether the people within the team could work together with one heart.

He could see that Shu Qin, as the leader of the convoy, protected her team members like a matriarch. But the Infinity had faced numerous crises along the way, and he couldn’t possibly look after everyone.

“I welcome everyone to join, but I must say a few things first. A train is an enclosed space, not as flexible as a car. Although it provides a greater sense of security, once a problem occurs, it can trigger a chain of troubles.”

“I know that each of your vehicles is a family or a group of relatively familiar friends. But once you join the Infinity, everyone is a single entity. So, I don’t like having small cliques or people who don’t consider others on the train. If there are such people, I will directly kick them off the train. Or you can consider it now. After all, once you’re on the train, we will abandon many of these vehicles, and there will be no turning back.”

Lin Xian’s words earned him nods of approval from Chen Sixuan and the others.

The train could take on more people; these were decisions Lin Xian could make. However, the Infinity had made it this far thanks to the concerted efforts of all its team members.

Once the number of people increased, it would form a small society. The train was like a moving city. If the team lost its previous closeness, it would be a disaster when facing danger.

Shu Qin nodded in agreement. She naturally understood. Her gaze swept over the crowd behind her. “Captain Lin is asking for your opinion. If you want to join, speak up for yourselves.”

She understood Lin Xian’s intention. Joining a team was equivalent to entrusting your life to others’ decisions. It was a matter of personal life and death. The merger of the teams was not something she could decide on her own; the decision still rested with each individual.

“I agree! I want to follow Sister Shu Qin and join the Infinity!” A girl who seemed to have an outgoing personality was the first to raise her hand.

Lin Xian looked at her. The girl quickly added in a flustered manner, “My… my name is Miao Lu, everyone calls me Lulu. I’m in charge of logistics and food in the convoy, and I also know some basic nursing.”

“I agree too!”

A short young man who had been in charge of opening the door earlier also said loudly, “Lü Chang. I don’t have many skills, but I run fast and I’m a good shot.”

“Me too!”

“My name is He Fang.”

“Zou Yunyao.”

“Zhou Yixuan!”

“Our Zhong Jiahao family also agrees!”

“Me too!”

The crowd began to respond in unison. Lin Xian listened carefully to each person’s introduction, getting a better sense of them.

Chen Sixuan looked at Lin Xian, a hint of pleasure in her eyes.

From her first contact with Lin Xian, where he displayed a cold and decisive demeanor, to experiencing numerous perilous disasters along the way, she could clearly feel that Lin Xian’s philosophy of survival in the apocalypse was constantly changing.

At first, he was extremely wary of even opening and closing the train doors. Now, he was willing to accept a team of thirty people. This was enough to show that Lin Xian’s mental fortitude had grown much stronger.

“Lin Xian,” Chen Sixuan looked at the surrounding environment and said, “what’s our plan now?”

“Leave the city first.”

Lin Xian said decisively, “I was originally planning to refit the train in Jiazhou City, but given the current situation, we can only leave the city as soon as possible and get rid of these crows first.”

Originally, seeing the bright sun in Jiazhou City, he had planned to properly upgrade the Infinity here. In addition to scanning the robots at Yubei Spaceport One, he had also managed to obtain some useful accessory blueprints.

For example, the spaceport’s automatic blast-proof doors, the traction unit’s sentinel monitoring system, the maintenance workshop’s lifting platform base, and so on. With these things, he could design a dedicated car as a weapon station, spend time manufacturing a 1130 close-in weapon system, and even build an engineering robot to help with precision welding and maintaining the ammunition supply chain.

However, these plans had to be disrupted by the appearance of the sky full of crows. Even behemoths like the Silver Star and Dragon Mountain One hadn’t stopped here. One could imagine that those crows might be even more troublesome after nightfall.

So, Lin Xian planned to directly tow away the two trains Shu Qin had found in this maintenance workshop, escape the city first, and deal with the situation after they were out of danger.

“Then we’ll also drive and follow you on the tracks!” Shu Qin said.

Lin Xian nodded. For now, they could only leave Jiazhou City this way. The train only had one car that could be used to load vehicles. The other two trains were a passenger train and a freight train. It was impossible for so many people to abandon their vehicles and escape on the Infinity.

“Everyone, get ready. We’re leaving in 30 minutes.”

Lin Xian immediately gave the order.

“Okay,” everyone responded in unison.

A tense atmosphere began to spread. Lin Xian immediately began to unload the locomotives that were being hoisted for maintenance and attach them to the back of the Infinity, to be used for devouring and modifying the train later.

After finishing all this, Lin Xian returned to the train. Just then, Director Ding called him to car number three on the communicator.

“What’s wrong?”

“Two issues I need to sync with you on.”

Ding Junyi was currently hunched over a microscope, observing something. Without looking up, she said to Lin Xian, “This parasite has a clear photophobia, which is consistent with the characteristics of nocturnal Aberrations. It has no visual system.”

“If it’s separated from its crow host and exposed to sunlight, its activity will rapidly decrease.”

“You mean these corpse crows are more dangerous in the dark,” Lin Xian knew he had guessed right.

“Yes. In the dark, these black nematodes use crows as carriers to attack survivor convoys. Then, they fall onto the vehicles and will bite through the survivors’ vehicles at an extremely fast speed, devouring the people inside as well.”

Lin Xian frowned upon hearing this. “They can devour anything?”

“From the current marks on the porthole, their devouring power is quite strong. Our train’s high-strength alloy should slow them down, but if there are too many of these worms, they will definitely pose a huge hidden danger to us.”

“I didn’t expect it to be so troublesome.”

“There’s good news too,” Ding Junyi said calmly. “Besides not having sight or smell and only being able to hunt by detecting air vibrations, or sound, I also discovered its second weakness just now.”

“What weakness?”

“Fire.”

Ding Junyi turned to look at him. “It’s afraid of light and fire. I cut off a section for a fission experiment and found that it contains some kind of flammable substance. If ignited, it might cause a deflagration.”

Lin Xian immediately understood. “That’s much more effective than using guns.”

“What’s the second issue?” Lin Xian continued to ask.

Ding Junyi raised her hand and pointed to her right. There was a plant cultivation chamber, where the Hell Black Chrysanthemum was emitting a deep red glow.

“I’ve been monitoring the growth of the No. 1 Blood Calamity Plant. In a short period of time, this flower has changed twice.”

“Once was after we escaped from Underground City No. 9.”

“The other time was last night.”