Chapter 6: Harvest
Thump~
Thump!
Splatter!
...
Gag~
A muffled sound of a blunt object striking rang out, accompanied by Pu Guangqiang's effort to suppress his dry heaves.
Fortunately, he was quite clever and covered the zombies' head with plastic sheeting in advance.
This caused the red and white matter to only spray outwards onto the dark asphalt road the moment the pickaxe broke through the skull.
If you ignored the bloody, fragmented mess resembling a smashed watermelon, looking down from above, it really did have a touch of Van Gogh's impressionist style!
Hey, you couldn't tell Pu Guangqiang was still a painter! He was just painting with a hammer and a pickaxe!
However, Gu Chengyuan was destined not to appreciate this post-apocalyptic dark painting.
At this moment, he already felt intense physical discomfort, his whole body numb, his limbs cold, and he also felt a bit nauseous.
But he didn't turn away because of this; instead, he forced himself to keep staring.
As if he wanted to deeply engrave the scene into his mind!
The apocalypse will only become more brutal from now on! If you can't adapt, even with the system in hand, you will only be eliminated!
Pu Guangqiang, with a shotgun slung over his back, used the extra plastic sheeting to cover his hand and, after searching carefully through the puddle of red and white paste for a while, suddenly shouted.
"Reporting, Chief, an unknown crystal has been found inside the zombies' head!"
Before entering the armored vehicle to hand the crystal over to Gu Chengyuan.
He also quite efficiently pulled out the water bottle from the pouch on his waist and carefully rinsed the crystal twice.
Gu Chengyuan, who received the crystal, observed it curiously.
The crystal was a very regular rhombic dodecahedron in shape, exquisite and transparent.
It was about the thickness of a little finger, with faint grey misty threads inside, seemingly flowing, giving it a dreamy feeling.
"Tsk tsk~ it's truly beautiful!"
"Much better looking than diamonds with filters added!"
"This is a true blood diamond! Growing from flesh and blood, sacrificed with fresh blood!"
System!
Seeing this, Gu Chengyuan's inner thoughts were largely confirmed, and he immediately called up the system panel again.
As expected, a red dot lit up near the system's money box at this time, and a conversion function was added.
Gu Chengyuan chose to convert.
Ding!
Discovered 'Inferior Biological Crystal Core' x1
Would you like to convert?
"Convert!" Gu Chengyuan didn't hesitate at all, only feeling a slight excitement from confirming his idea.
Ding!
Conversion successful!
Money +5
At this point, the money on the panel reached 7.
Following this, Gu Chengyuan ordered two Soldiers from the alert team, led by Pu Guangqiang, to find the neutralized zombies and search for the cores one by one.
Before long, Pu Guangqiang happily trotted over with five more Crystal Cores that had already been cleaned.
Gu Chengyuan observed each one carefully for a while and found that there seemed to be no difference in size, as if they were all cast from the same mold.
But the grey misty threads inside had extremely subtle differences in shade!
For the subsequent conversions, Gu Chengyuan didn't choose to convert them all at once but did them one by one.
Ding~
Money +2
Money +3
Money +5
Money +3
Money +1
At this point, the amount of money Gu Chengyuan possessed had reached 21.
Through this series of tests, he discovered that the amount of money converted was related to the depth and thickness of the Crystal Core's grey misty threads.
The Crystal Core with the deepest and thickest color converted to 5 units of money.
While the Crystal Core with the lightest color, almost nonexistent, only converted to one unit of money.
Gently tossed the already converted, completely transparent discarded Crystal Core to the rear of the armored vehicle.
"Alert team disperse, maintain a safe distance! I will now shoot the Crystal Core!"
After the three members of the alert team moved to the sides of the vehicle, Gu Chengyuan disengaged the safety of the 191 Assault Rifle and adjusted it to single-shot mode.
After resting both elbows on the vehicle's roof armor, forming a stable triangle, leaning down to brace the rifle butt against his shoulder, and adjusting the rifle body.
Through the 3x QMK-171 White Light Scope mounted on the picatinny rail, he locked onto the zombies' Crystal Core on the ground.
Consciously aiming, unconsciously firing.
Bang~
After a gunshot,
The little finger-thick Crystal Core was instantly shattered, leaving only faint remnants on the ground that looked like crushed glass.
"It seems this zombies' Crystal Core is not as indestructible as described in previous novels!"
"But if that's the case, clearing out zombies might result in significant losses!"
For example, when using light weapons to shoot the zombies' heads, the Crystal Core inside the head might be accidentally hit.
Not to mention heavy weapons, such as grenades, or artillery that might appear later, etc.
Those weapons of mass destruction can clear dozens or even hundreds of square meters with a single shot, evaporating everything!
In this way, using heavy firepower, besides having great destructive power, actually has a very low return rate, and in extreme cases, might even result in a loss!
Therefore, Gu Chengyuan also decided that from now on, unless necessary, he would try to use light weapons for clearing, after all, the early stage is primarily about development, and every bit of resource is extremely precious!