Chen Wan and her team swiftly dealt with the group, successfully intimidating the others as well.
The lack of gasoline at several gas stations north of Yuezhou City probably wasn't a coincidence; these people deliberately transferred the gasoline to specific locations to trap outsiders passing through.
With fixed locations, they could easily rob passersby, as they only needed to wait for their prey.
However, Chen Wan and her team were clearly not the naive prey they expected.
In the apocalypse, showing mercy to those with ill intentions only brings harm.
To avoid scaring Yang Yang, Jiang Yanxin had already taken her back to their room.
The room's soundproofing was excellent, so they couldn't hear the commotion outside.
After Qin Ke returned, she sat next to Chen Wan again.
"Are we going to look for a water source next?"
"Yes, once we fill up the water tank, we can continue on our way," Chen Wan replied, driving the vehicle south.
She had just seen a road named Qingshui Road, which usually indicated a nearby river.
So, she decided to follow the road south.
After driving for another five minutes, they turned off the road and saw a long river.
Chen Wan parked by the side and instructed the mechanical arm to draw water from the river into the storage tank.
She also had the system check the vehicle to ensure it hadn't sustained any significant damage, which reassured her.
Ten minutes later, the water tank was full, and the water purification system would filter the water to ensure its quality.
Chen Wan started the vehicle again, asking the system to scan for any large parking lots nearby, as she was still thinking about upgrading the RV.
Since she wasn't originally from this world, Chen Wan asked Qin Ke and Jiang Yanxin, who had returned to the small dining area with Yang Yang, "Do you know of any large parking lots in Yuezhou City that can hold five or six hundred cars?" Qin Ke thought for a moment and shook her head.
They had mostly been in the mountains for missions and rarely came to the city, so they didn't know much about Yuezhou City.
Jiang Yanxin, however, spoke up, "I know there's a large public parking lot near the city center square. It should be able to hold several hundred cars. I parked there once when I was on a business trip."
Chen Wan's heart skipped a beat, and she quickly asked, "Do you remember how to get there?" Jiang Yanxin thought for a moment and shook her head, "We used GPS back then, so I don't remember exactly. But it's near the square, and you should be able to see it if you follow the river."
"Alright, let's go check it out. Upgrading the RV to level 3 requires a lot of cars and crystal cores.
The crystal cores are manageable, but we need to find 300 small cars and 20 heavy trucks, so we need a large parking lot," Chen Wan explained as she drove.
"Is it the same as last time, connecting all the vehicles?" Qin Ke asked, having had experience from the last time.
"Yes, we still need to connect all the vehicles to upgrade. It might be more challenging than last time, but once we reach level 3, the system will have a pre-absorption function, allowing us to absorb vehicles one by one and upgrade them when needed," Chen Wan explained, thinking about the other functions of level 3, which she hadn't asked about in detail since the system would introduce them after the upgrade.
"That's good. Otherwise, it would be too much work to connect all the vehicles as we need more and more," Qin Ke remarked from the passenger seat.
"Yeah, let's first check out the parking lot Yanxin mentioned," Chen Wan replied as she continued driving.
Following the riverside road, Chen Wan drove for nearly half an hour, entering the city center.
She raised the steel plates covering the RV's windows to help Jiang Yanxin navigate.
"Yanxin, do you recognize this area?" Chen Wan asked, pulling over.
Jiang Yanxin glanced around and pointed north to a mall.
She had visited the mall with colleagues during a business trip, so she had some recollection.
"It's behind that mall, not far from the square."
"Alright, let's go take a look," Chen Wan said, starting the vehicle again.
After fifteen minutes, they finally arrived at the entrance to the square's parking lot.
Chen Wan looked inside and saw numerous small vehicles parked tightly together, some even tangled and piled up as if people had tried to flee in a panic during an emergency.
In contrast, the trucks were neatly parked in their spaces.
Chen Wan scanned the large parking area, noting that over thirty trucks were parked across more than fifty spaces—more than enough to meet their needs.
Chen Wan smiled slightly, exchanging a glance with Qin Ke, and said with a light laugh, "We found the right place this time."
"Should we go down now?" Qin Ke was ready to grab her gun, as the trucks were parked separately and needed to be moved together like last time.
"No rush, we still need more crystal cores for the RV, and check how many zombies are in the parking lot. It wouldn't be safe to go down and drive with zombies around." In fact, it wasn't that they lacked crystal cores.
According to the system's conversion method, Chen Wan currently has 3,050 crystal cores and 3 mutant animal crystal cores, with each mutant animal core equivalent to 1,000 zombie cores.
So, she effectively had 6,050 cores.
However, Chen Wan was reluctant to use the mutant animal cores, as they were harder to come by.
Using her usual method, Chen Wan boldly blared the horn at the entrance of the parking lot.
The piercing sound shattered the silence, stirring the still air around them.
Zombies lurking in the parking lot and inside the vehicles began pounding against the glass, then lurched toward the RV from all directions.
The military had only cleared the zombies on the streets once, making them appear relatively safe.
However, they hadn't dealt with those in parking lots or residential buildings. Large malls were the exception, as the military needed the supplies inside.
Before long, zombies from all directions began converging on Chen Wan's RV—but their numbers were still far from sufficient.
There were only about five or six hundred zombies.
"Why are there so few?" Chen Wan blurted out, voicing her thoughts.
Jiang Yanxin, sitting in the back with Yang Yang, was momentarily taken aback.
In the apocalypse, most people couldn't get away from zombies fast enough—yet Chen Wan was complaining that there weren't enough of them.
"Should we head somewhere else to find more zombies?" Qin Ke asked. The number was still far from the two thousand Chen Wan needed.
"I'll circle around this road and keep honking—see if we can draw more out," Chen Wan replied, already pressing down on the gas pedal.
The RV moved along the road surrounding the square, its horn blaring, the sharp sound echoing through the empty streets.
A few survivors hiding alone in nearby buildings heard the noise and peered out their windows, spotting the RV as it drove past, honking incessantly.
One male alpha, lying by his bed, muttered under his breath, "I've never seen anyone so eager to die."
To ordinary people, what Chen Wan was doing would undoubtedly look like courting death.
She was blaring the horn, deliberately drawing zombies from every corner of the street.
At this point, she no longer cared whether her actions attracted attention.
After all, a place like this was hard to come by, and they had no intention of staying in Yuezhou City for long. Once the RV was upgraded, they would leave immediately.
With her continuous provocation, zombies began pouring out from alleyways and corridors, converging on the street.
As their numbers steadily grew, Chen Wan finally felt at ease.
This should be enough, she thought.
Without hesitation, she drove the RV straight into the oncoming horde.
To avoid exposing the RV's secrets, she chose not to use the mechanical arm this time.
Fortunately, level-one zombies posed far less of a threat than mutated animals. Simply ramming through them was enough.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Zombies that lunged at the windshield were knocked aside one after another, while those that fell were crushed beneath the wheels.
They swarmed around the RV, pressing in tightly, but its performance held firm. It could even accelerate on the spot—though at the cost of higher fuel consumption.
Chen Wan suddenly stepped on the gas, sending zombies flying in all directions.
For nearly twenty minutes, she drove back and forth along the road, mowing through the horde without pause.
By then, there were no zombies left standing on the road.
The ground was now covered in the black-purple blood of zombies and their shattered remains.
Only then did Chen Wan turn the steering wheel and drive the RV into the parking lot.
The male alpha who had just claimed that Chen Wan and the others were courting death now stood frozen, completely stunned by the scene before him.
After a moment, he felt a wave of relief.
The people in the RV had effectively cleared out all the zombies in the area, making it much safer for him to venture out and scavenge later.
At the thought of this, he even considered going over to thank them in person—though in the end, he didn't dare act on it.
Chen Wan and Qin Ke did not rush to leave the RV.
Instead, they used the vehicle along with the mechanical arm to push as many small cars together as possible.
That way, they would only need to bring over twenty large trucks later to proceed with the upgrade.
As Chen Wan drove and repeatedly rammed forward, the rows of small cars that had originally been neatly parked were gradually pushed and clustered together
Chen Wan worked row by row, and before long, over a hundred small cars had been tightly packed together.
Using the same method, she had the system tally the number of vehicles.
Once they had gathered three hundred, she parked the RV with its front pressed firmly against one of the small cars.