War Truck in the Apocalypse

Chapter 8: A Thunderstorm Arrives

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation

Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

After bathing, Shen Cong felt refreshed, and all his gloominess disappeared. 

He looked into the mirror so that he could see the current image he presented. 

He had already shaved off his entire head. No one would see him, and having hair was completely unnecessary. Being bald made things easier for him too. 

His face was originally covered in stubble, but he shaved all of it off. Now, Shen Cong, who was twenty-two years old, returned to his clean and handsome look. 

But even though he managed to train up his muscles, he still looked rather thin. 

Even so, endless strength was contained within his body, which stood at a full 177 cm. The changes brought by Activity continued day by day, and Titan could absorb the wandering Activity in the world before giving it to Shen Cong as well. Shen Cong could also eat fanged wolf meat to get some Activity. 

It had improved his overall physical constitution. His strength, speed, nimbleness, stamina, and senses had all been strengthened. He was now as strong as a bull and could finish a 100 m dash in eight seconds. His nimbleness was so good that he was better than those who practiced gymnastics, and his stamina was so great that he never felt tired. If anything moved, it would not be able to escape from his hearing and vision either. 

But his willpower, which was linked to his mind, seemed to be a region that Activity was unable to influence, and Shen Cong had to rely on himself to train up his willpower. He needed it to strengthen the communication link between himself and Titan, which would in turn allow him to be able to control and command Titan as if it were his own limb. 

As Shen Cong persevered in using his mind to guide Titan into absorbing the wandering Activity to train day after day no matter what happened, Titan managed to accumulate an increasing amount of Activity. 

Half a month ago, when the destructive storm had just stopped, Titan’s Activity had not been able to cover its entire body. At that time, only 20% of the truck possessed Activity. 

But now, at least 85% of Titan’s body was filled with Activity. 

Shen Cong was currently guiding Titan into performing Alloying with some of the remaining circuits and devices which possessed rather complicated structures. 

Alloying was the process of infusing something with Activity. The component and essential structural properties of the component itself would not change even after Alloying. This meant that whatever electrical appliance would have the same capacitance, and diodes would remain as diodes. Their functions would not change either. At most, they would just gain the ability to repair themselves, and their power would also increase by a large degree. 

If Shen Cong guided them with his mind, however, he could slowly remold the components. 

This meant that as long as Shen Cong’s willpower was strong enough and his knowledge reserve was great enough, he could evolve all components until they reached their perfect form. 

In other words, Titan possessed the possibility of evolving nonstop. 

As long as Shen Cong persevered, he could even evolve Titan into an aircraft carrier.

Of course, that was just Shen Cong’s theory. Right now, he did not even dare to mould some of the more complicated components, because that would require a lot of knowledge. Even if an amazing person could turn stone into gold, they would not be able to create a computer out of nothing. The operating principles in computers, the structure of each device, and the set up of the system were not things that a person could just imagine without appropriate knowledge. 

Hence, Shen Cong was really just guiding Titan to evolve its basic structures, such as modifying its external armor into a streamline design and switching the unsturdy parts into sturdier metal. 

At the same time, he proactively led Titan to perform Alloying so that Activity would cover the entire truck and connect together so that it would become one. Once it happened, he would not need to worry about the machine wearing down naturally. 

‘And I have a feeling that when Activity fully covers an entire object, a change will occur. It might result in a breakthrough,’ Shen Cong thought. 

That feeling came out of the blue, and it could only be considered as something that came from his sixth sense. He could not find any reason to explain it. 

In truth, the world had been destroyed for nearly two months. Aside from discovering some of the uses for Activity through trial and error and some mutated monsters, Shen Cong still knew nothing about the post-apocalyptic world. 

Where did the meteor shower come from?

How was the world like now?

What was the reason behind the mutations?

What kind of existence was Activity?

Where was the path leading to the future?

The answers to all those questions remained unknown, and they were all waiting for Shen Cong to slowly find them, but the prerequisite for it was that he had to survive long enough. 

*****

All the bottled water that Shen Cong could not take away from the underground storage of the drinking water plant was shifted to the first cubicle, and he locked it. He also placed a longwave transmitter inside so that he could determine the location of the place. 

Then, he filled the entrance with sand and debris once more. 

He was now prepared to leave Wuwei County Town, since it had already been reduced to ruins. He would head to Hefei, the provincial capital, because he wanted to find some diesel there. Now that the apocalypse had arrived, survival became his most important goal, and resources became the target that caused him to run around like a busy bee just trying to locate them. 

Smoke gushed out of the exhaust pipe. 

The motors rumbled. 

Melodious music drifted out of the stereo, and Shen Cong hummed along softly. 

“On a dark desert highway,

“Cool wind in my hair,

“Warm smell of colitas,

“Rising up through the air,

“Up ahead in the distance,

“I saw a shimmering light…” [1]

Titan moved northeast, where the sun was, and left the ruined Wuwei. 

Shen Cong sat in the driver cab and listened to the familiar song while he watched the scenery along the way on the monitor screen. He could not help his mind wandering a little. 

Two months ago, the place had still been bustling with life and its streets crowded with people and cars. But now, all that was left were broken walls that were buried under sand and shattered stones. 

Rumble…

Suddenly, the ruins of a large building collapsed when Titan passed it, and dust rose up into the air. 

‘This should be Century Tower.’ 

Shen Cong slowed down his truck and cast a glance at the ruins of the building before he compared it to the map on the radar. He was then able to tell that he was next to the Century Tower of Wuwei. Located beneath it was the hardware street, and Shen Cong often came to it to purchase all sorts of spare parts and accessories that were of different models.

He stopped for a while in the area, but soon, Titan began moving forward again. 

Shen Cong looked at the direction in which he traveled and subconsciously began muttering to himself, “If I continue forward, I’ll reach Fate of Stars…”

Very soon, he arrived at the ruins of Fate of Stars. Yet it could not even be considered that, since it was destroyed to the point that it was just a flat piece of ground covered with shattered stones. Not a single bit of the bustling area filled with six-storey apartments situated closely to each other could be seen. 

Shen Cong had special feelings toward Fate of Stars, because he stayed in it for more than ten years. When his parents earned money by transporting goods using trucks, they bought an apartment in Fate of Stars, and Shen Cong, who had been living with his grandparents in a village while going to school nearby, moved to Fate of Stars as well. This was the apartment that their family had bought, but when his parents passed away, Shen Cong sold off the apartment. 

His parents left seven houses for him, and he sold all of them so that he could raise money needed to modify Titan. 

If the apocalypse had not arrived, he would have been a crazy person who just spent all of his parents’ money. 

The irony was that right now, his actions had been an act of great foresight. 

He looked around the place to search for traces of his apartment, but he soon gave up. “Ha… There’s nothing to feel sentimental about. I should go…”

After a moment, the ruins of Wuwei disappeared from Titan’s display screen. Shen Cong and his truck drove into a land full of yellow sand once more. 

There was no GPS or BDS, so Shen Cong relied purely on a compass and the map on the radar to adjust his position and figure out where Titan should travel. 

If anyone else traveled in a place filled with only yellow, they would go insane, but fortunately, Shen Cong was not a normal person. He was already used to enduring this type of loneliness. 

He shut his eyes to rest while he focused his mind on Titan. 

85% of Titan had reacted to his mind and were occupied by Activity, and Shen Cong’s mind could move around like a fish in water among all the Activity occupied parts.

He gathered up all the Activity to charge toward the remaining 15% unoccupied territory so that he could perform Alloying with them. 

This was meticulous work. Shen Cong had only managed to occupy 85% of Titan with Activity after nearly two months’ worth of work. 

But now, with fanged wolf meat to replenish his Activity, he should be able to speed up his progress. 

Activity was the greatest surprise in the post-apocalyptic world. 

Suddenly, beeping sounds blared on the dashboard in warning. 

Shen Cong opened his eyes swiftly and saw the compass on the dashboard giving him a warning. It had been pointing to the north steadily, but now, it was spinning around madly. It did not point to an accurate location. 

‘Something happened!’

Shen Cong immediately thought that something dangerous had happened, which was the normal reaction of someone with a persecution complex. Immediately after, he saw that the light on the display screen to his right had become dim. Of course, this did not mean that something had happened to the display screen. Instead, the video captured by the surveillance had become darker. 

He quickly pressed a few buttons to adjust the height of the surveillance camera so that it pointed at the sky to the right. 

There, he saw a black mass of clouds charging toward him from the horizon in the distance. Lightning cracked among the dark clouds, and the image it presented was just as shocking as the arrival of a thunderstorm. 

‘A thunderstorm!’

Shen Cong instantly connected this with the apocalyptic storm that had raged for a month. 

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He immediately made Titan stop and had it stretch out the eight expendable jacks. They stabbed into the shattered stones and sand to secure Titan in place. 

Then, Shen Cong lowered the 15A radar, closed the air vent, and shut down the power sources that would easily attract lightning. He raised the lightning rod and made sure that the bottom of it was positioned deep in the ground. 

He turned off the ignition and waited for the storm to arrive. 

Once he was done with preparations, the originally brilliant sun was covered by dark clouds, and the bright sky instantly turned dark. 

It was, at that moment, even darker than night.