Chapter 16: Moving Away

Chapter 16: Moving Out

Boxes, radiation, launch shafts.

With these three elements combined, Chen Jian's brain simply couldn't imagine what else might be inside.

At that moment, the other members of the Holy Blood Squad gathered around, and upon seeing the huge metal box, their faces lit up with delight.

"There must be something inside."

Xu Lie leaned close to the box, sniffed, and said:

"I smell a familiar metallic odor, exactly like the shells used by the Machine God Sect."

".The Machine God Sect wouldn't possibly be using lead bullets, would they?"

Chen Jian shook his head speechlessly and said:

"There's likely something inside, but the danger far exceeds your imagination."

"It's not a question of whether to open it or not, but whether we can survive after opening it, should danger arise."

"What's inside? A trap?"

Xie Liu, standing nearby with arms crossed, said, her face already showing a hint of tension.

"Can we survive?"

That statement weighed heavily, especially after witnessing a four‑person squad, without finding the weakness of a level‑four monster, rely on sheer strength and firepower to literally beat it into submission.

To be fair, even the elite of the Machine God Sect would need at least a hundred of their best, plus their prized giant cannon, to achieve such an effect.

Yet they were merely four ordinary people, lugging gear they couldn't even understand, and they got the job done.

And now, their leader says opening the box might get them killed.

It could very well be true.

She glanced at Xu Lie, and before he could speak, she added:

"Don't even think about moving it!"

"Last time, because of your meddling hands opening a box, we almost died in Jiang City!"

".But I did find this pistol, after all—still worth it."

Xu Lie's voice dropped; now he dared not decide, only able to look pleadingly at Chen Jian.

This feeling was actually quite foreign to him—after all, as a Holy Blood, he always walked over ordinary people.

But now?

Even opening a box requires foresight and hindsight.

There's nothing to be done; they're just stronger, and if you disagree, you can only hold your tongue.

But the question is, he really wants to know what's inside.

Xu Lie was torn apart inside, while Zeng Yi and Li Shi remained calm.

They had their own combat system, didn't over‑rely on gear or weapons, so their craving for novelty wasn't that strong.

What they really cared about was just one thing: whether the contents were worth money.

Thus, the decision fell to Chen Jian alone.

"Open it, the risk is too great."

"Don't open it."

"In this world, a top‑tier weapon lies before you—can you resist not opening it?"

He looked at his other squad members and asked:

"What do you think?"

Lei Jie spoke first:

"The box is too heavy; if we want to take it we must open it, just to take the contents—but I don't advise opening."

"If what's inside turns out to be nuclear fuel rods, it's straight to GG."

"Even if it's a tactical nuclear warhead, we have no way to deliver it; bringing it back would at most serve as a deterrent, which isn't much use."

"Better to leave it here and dig it up when needed."

"But we need to find a way to bury it properly, so others don't dig it up and accidentally set it off—that would be a real mess."

"Indeed." "I agree."

Shen Yue and He Shuo nodded in turn; opinion instantly unified.

Chen Jian stopped babbling and gave a decisive order:

"Let's get to work—first lift this thing up and put it on flat ground."

"Understood."

All four sprang into action, each grabbing a corner of the box and straining to lift it.

But the lead crate was simply too heavy, their gear plentiful, and for a moment they couldn't find a proper leverage point.

Li Shi, watching from the side, hesitated a moment, then asked:

"Want a hand?"

Chen Jian nodded instantly; the other walked to the lead box, wrapped his arms around it, and hoisted it up.

Chen Jian stared, mouth agape.

After a pause, he said:

"No need to bury it."

"We'll just take this thing to Jinling! I'll cover the shipping."

An hour later, the two squads, eight people in all, left laden with their haul.

The Holy Blood Squad had gathered mostly what they considered valuable equivalents—small bits of gold and silver, intact metal tools, batteries or battery‑like objects, and a tangle of wires and miscellaneous junk.

According to them, these items could fetch a good price in the settlement, especially batteries—if functional, a single battery could be worth dozens of grams of gold.

This actually matched Chen Jian's expectation, after all, in this world such things can no longer be produced, so a premium is normal.

But Xu Lie had hauled back a huge pile of plastic, which left Chen Jian puzzled.

He hadn't said what the plastic was for, only that the Machine God Sect would buy it at a decent price.

Chen Jian could only assume they were after recycling, but the question remained: did they even have the technology for that?

He couldn't figure it out.

Compared to the Holy Blood Squad's loot, Chen Jian's team's scrap was relatively normal.

Aside from the magnets and coils needed for later power generation, they'd found a broken engine; its bearings were rusted but still within usable limits.

Xu Lie wasn't wrong about the monster nest being the richest resource spot in the area.

The people killed by the monsters, along with the supplies they carried, were largely transferred here.

In the apocalypse, most people would carry important items on their person.

The whole logic could be said to be utterly smooth.

Unfortunately, they did not find any usable weapons or ammunition.

According to Chen Jian's estimate, even if weapons existed, they would surely be buried in the lowest layer.

Because the earlier someone was killed, the more weapons they would have carried—this is inevitable.

To obtain these weapons, one could only wait until later, when there would be heavy machinery or enough manpower, to dig up the graves archaeologically.

Leaving the burial ground, the eight of them made their way smoothly out of the tunnel.

When they saw the sky again, the sun was already high in the heavens.

At this moment, the sunlight was no different from what Chen Jian had seen in his own world; a star with nearly five billion years of life left gazed down in silent contemplation upon the humans scurrying like ants upon the earth, and the rise and fall of those ants' lives, relative to the star's history, was but a fleeting instant.

Chen Jian lowered his head, regretting slightly that he had not brought the solar panel that had just been issued from above.

But now was not the time to ponder that.

Their equipment was out of power, their food had been exhausted, and he needed energy more than his gear did.

So, he patted the shoulder of the staggering Xu Lie and asked:

"Do you have anything to eat?"

Xu Lie jerked his chin toward a nearby monster carcass and replied:

"Yes."

"Well, there it is."

(End of chapter)