Apocalypse Chapter 7: Fortress in the Mountains

Chapter 7: Fortress in the Mountains

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

After picking up the driver at the highway exit, Jiang Rong sped towards their hometown. An hour later, the road leading to the mountain valley came into view.

The previous path could only accommodate one vehicle, but now it had been widened to twice its previous size. Construction trucks coming and going had pressed the soil on both sides flat and smooth, allowing even heavy trucks to pass through unimpeded.

At the end of the road stood a grayish wall, with several cars parked outside.

From the outside, this courtyard seemed out of place compared to its surroundings. While the mountain valley was filled with the sounds of birds, fragrance of flowers, and the bright spring sunshine, this courtyard was entirely constructed with concrete. The walls were unusually tall compared to other courtyards, each interval adorned with a surveillance camera. Not only that, but sharp glass shards were inserted above the walls, deterring anyone from attempting to climb over.

Seeing such a structure, the onlookers couldn’t help but murmur: “The owner’s taste… seems a bit off. Building a prison-like structure in such a beautiful scenic area, while other villas and courtyards have so much taste and charm.”

However, this was not something they needed to worry about. Their task was simply to install the shelves properly. If they passed inspection early, they could even take advantage of the opportunity to travel at public expense.

The courtyard gate faced south, and to accommodate the jujube tree, the road to the south had only been hardened by two meters on its previous foundation. This road could accommodate cars entering the courtyard, but not heavy trucks. After the driver got out of the car, he scratched his head and said, “Boss, looks like we can only unload the cargo outside. Do you have a forklift?”

This shelving company specialized in customizing shelves for large supermarkets. In the past, they would drive trucks into the site, allowing them to open the truck’s cargo bay for operations. However, Jiang Rong’s terrain clearly didn’t allow for this. If it were small shelves, the staff could manually handle them. But the truck was filled with customized alloy shelves, which were obviously too heavy to move manually.

Jiang Rong had anticipated this. He nodded slightly, “Wait a moment.”

Everyone saw Jiang Rong walk briskly into the courtyard, and soon a bright orange forklift emerged from within. The driver was none other than Jiang Rong himself. Unexpectedly, the refined-looking Jiang Rong had quite a skillful hand with the forklift, handling it confidently as if it were a toy.

In no time, Jiang Rong had loaded a pallet of shelf components onto the forklift and drove into the courtyard, with everyone following behind.

Upon entering the courtyard, everyone was first stunned by its size. Roughly estimating, this courtyard was over three hundred square meters. For city dwellers, having such a large courtyard meant it had to be utilized well. At the very least, they could have made a rockery or a pond, or left some space for flowers and grass, right?

However, there was no landscaping layout in the courtyard, not even any decorative patterns on the concrete underfoot. This made the already charmless house appear even uglier.

Of course, the courtyard wasn’t empty. There were plenty of building materials piled up near the walls. Most of the materials were covered with plastic sheets, concealing what was inside.

The entire building had only one floor above ground. Sharp-eyed individuals noticed something flashing on the roof. Upon closer inspection, those flashes were solar panels. Judging by the number, there were quite a few of them on the roof.

Sounds of construction echoed from the wide-open doors and windows. After a few hammering sounds, the place fell silent again. Shortly after, a construction worker emerged from the door, looking disheveled. He glanced at Jiang Rong with a helpless smile, “Oops… broke it again.”

Jiang Rong smiled wryly, “Did you forget to change the drill bit again?”

The house was made of high-grade concrete, and although water and electrical pipes had been embedded earlier, some knocking and drilling were inevitable during the actual renovation. While the sturdy house could protect those inside, it wasn’t very friendly to ordinary electric drills.

A regular drill could easily drill a hole, but the walls and floors of Jiang Rong’s house could easily grind down ordinary drill bits. Although Jiang Rong had warned them beforehand, the construction team still didn’t believe it, resulting in quite a bit of trouble.

If it were the construction team that had previously worked under Jiang Rong, they wouldn’t make such mistakes. However, to avoid exposing the location of the house, Jiang Rong deliberately hired a construction team from out of town. Similarly, the company building the shelves and cold storage units was also from another province. Additionally, the drivers delivering the goods were selected from logistics parks, seemingly either not in good health or temporarily in D City.

To reduce the risk of exposure of the house, Jiang Rong had been stressed out during this period.

Jiang Rong’s house didn’t have much aesthetic appeal from the outside, it was cumbersome and ugly, making people not want to look at it twice. But one thing was beyond doubt: it was very sturdy.

Jiang Rong drove the forklift straight to the southwest corner of the house. It was only then that everyone noticed a steel gate over three meters wide in the southwest corner. This gate was extremely heavy, and someone unfamiliar might mistake it for a bank vault door.

In the eyes of everyone, this might be the only highlight on the entire outer wall, but if there were professionals present, they would find that compared to the adjacent windows, this gate was child’s play.

Every window on the outer wall was much thicker than ordinary glass. The frames and hinges outside the glass were low-key in color but visibly sturdy. Once the windows were closed, no sound or movement would be heard from inside.

Each heavy window had a protrusion, hiding steel-made curtains inside. Simply press a button inside the house, and the iron curtains would quickly drop to cover the windows.

However, nobody paid attention to these details. After scanning around and finding nothing novel, they continued to follow the forklift.

The shelves were too long, so Jiang Rong had to adjust the fork direction before smoothly entering the gate. Behind the gate was a spiral downward corridor. Following the spiral downward, the first exit corresponded to the spacious underground floor.

Unlike the drab and inconspicuous outer layer, the basement was painted with latex paint on all sides, and bright lights hung from the ceiling. The nearly four hundred square meters of space was well-lit and comfortable, unlike other basements that were dark, damp, and stuffy. It was bright, spacious, and comfortable, hardly any different from being above ground.

The spiral corridor continued downward, leading to the basement. The basement didn’t differ much from the ground floor, except that Jiang Rong had arranged a cold storage with a capacity of sixty to seventy cubic meters and the house’s electrical system down there. Thus, there were three fewer large shelves downstairs compared to upstairs.

Jiang Rong transported the shelf materials directly to the basement, and after confirming the construction plan with the installation personnel, the workers began measuring and installing the shelves. Professional construction teams were different; they worked in an orderly and coordinated manner. With the materials in place, it didn’t take long for them to assemble a tall shelf.

This batch of customized shelves was six meters long, one meter wide, and five point four meters high, with four layers from top to bottom, each layer perfectly fitting a pallet of goods. The shelves being installed were the foundation of Jiang Rong’s stockpile. Without shelves, the scattered and disorderly items would be a waste of space.

Seeing the workers busily engaged, Jiang Rong didn’t stand idle either. Like a diligent ant, he shuttled back and forth between the basement and the parking lot with the forklift.

The spiral underground passage made him a bit dizzy, but Jiang Rong had already grown accustomed to it. Whenever he brought something from outside to the basement, it meant a bit more survival time for him and his son after the crisis.

Installing the shelves was a big project. Although Jiang Rong’s basement couldn’t compare to a large supermarket, nearly forty shelves still took the installation team close to a week.

After the shelves were installed, Jiang Rong received another call from the cold storage company.

Last month, when he was building the house, he could afford to slack off and wander around. But starting this month, that was no longer possible. He had to keep an eye on the progress of the renovation and various equipment installations in his hometown at all times. This house was the fortress where he and his son survived after the Great Crisis. He would rather spend more effort before the crisis than leave any loopholes after.

Renovation was exhausting work, even for Jiang Rong, an interior designer. He had too much to do, and he had to handle everything himself. He wished there were 48 hours in a day to do things even better.

Seeing the stockpile in the basement gradually increasing and the interior decoration on the first floor taking shape bit by bit, he felt both happy and anxious. His time was getting shorter, and there were still many things he hadn’t had time to stockpile.

A month of consecutive busyness had made Jiang Rong noticeably thinner, but his efforts paid off. In early May, the interior decoration of his house was finally completed, leaving only the final stockpiling and moving tasks.

After seeing off the renovation team, Jiang Rong carefully inspected every room in the house. Except for several bathrooms and the kitchen, which had tiles, the rest of the interior boldly used solid wood. This batch of solid wood was sourced from his original supplier’s warehouse, mainly consisting of sandalwood and pine. Since they had been in the warehouse for a long time, most of the harmful substances had dissipated.

The whole house was filled with a faint scent of wood, which was refreshing. For safety reasons, Jiang Rong still opened every window in the house to let in fresh air.

After opening the heavy windows, the sound of rain pattering outside reached Jiang Rong’s ears.

The damp smell of soil entered his nostrils, making Jiang Rong feel a bit trance-like.

It’s raining? In the past life, there hadn’t been a drop of rain in C City for several months before the crisis. Looking at the wet ground in the courtyard, he came back to his senses: he wasn’t in C City now, he was in his hometown. With many mountains around and a nearby reservoir, rain was naturally more plentiful here than in C City.

The consecutive days of exhaustion made Jiang Rong feel tired. Seeing the rain, the weariness that surged through his body made him unable to control his eyelids from drooping. Well, today’s tasks were already finished. Let him take a brief nap in the midst of his busy schedule.

As the rain outside grew heavier, a layer of white mist quickly rose in the courtyard. The excellent drainage system quickly sent the rainwater out of the courtyard, and there was no standing water anywhere in the spacious courtyard.

Jiang Rong fell asleep on the large sofa in the living room. If it weren’t for Chu Qiang’s call, he might have slept until the evening. Rubbing his eyes sleepily, Jiang Rong groped for his phone and answered, “Hello.”

Chu Qiang’s hearty voice came through, “Still not done with your work? Don’t you want your son anymore? Hurry up and come get your little rascal. If he stays at my place any longer, my parents will kick him out of the house!”

Hearing about his son, Jiang Rong sat up abruptly from the sofa, “I’m coming, I’m coming. I’ll pick him up tonight.”

Chu Qiang laughed heartily, “I’m just kidding. My godson is behaving well. If he stays any longer, I won’t bear to give him back to you. I guess your work is almost done. I’ll give you a call. Since you’re done, come to my place for dinner tonight. My mom cooked your favorite dishes. Take your time on the way back, we’ll wait for you to start dinner.”

Jiang Rong agreed and then remembered something important, “By the way, have all the doors and windows in your old house been replaced?”

At the mention of this, Chu Qiang became enthusiastic, “Yes, they have been replaced. You get what you pay for; they’re different from those cheap ones.” When Jiang Rong customized the windows, he also ordered a batch for Chu Qiang’s house. After the construction team finished work at his house, they went straight to Chu Qiang’s home.

At first, Chu Qiang was muttering about Jiang Rong spending money indiscriminately. But when he saw the customized windows, he was thrilled. If conditions allowed, he even wanted to replace the windows of his house in C City with bulletproof glass.

To express his gratitude to Jiang Rong, Chu Qiang added, “Oh, by the way, last time you said you wanted to find a reliable fitness coach, right? I found one for you. When you come back, I’ll take you to practice.”

Jiang Rong agreed, “Okay.”

Although it was a bit late to start exercising now, a good physique couldn’t be built in a day. He believed that as long as he learned the methods, becoming a muscular man was just around the corner.

 

 

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