Chapter 170: The Convenience of System Upgrades

In the distance, those faint green pinpoints of light are the eyes of wolves.

He Yuzhu makes a rough count; there are at least a hundred of them.

A wolf pack of this scale, if they could all be killed, would be enough for the troops to eat meat for two days.

The canyon is extremely narrow, which is to his advantage, as the wolf pack can only attack from one direction.

What He Yuzhu is worried about right now is not his own safety, but that once his gunshots ring out, the wolf pack will be startled and scatter in all directions.

He takes several sandbags from his space, quickly piles up a makeshift firing point, mounts the M2 Machine Gun, and installs a belt of 150 rounds of ammunition.

After a moment of hesitation, he puts the machine gun away again.

If a wolf were hit by this weapon, it would inevitably be turned into minced meat, which would be a waste of effort.

Switching to a Rifle is safer, but the magazine only holds 8 rounds and requires frequent changing. However, this is not a problem for him; after all, he has the help of his space. Currently, there are tens of thousands of rifles lying in his space, and to deal with emergencies, he had long since loaded hundreds of rifles with ammunition for a rainy day.

The wolf pack seems to have sensed the danger and no longer gives He Yuzhu time to think.

They growl in low voices, their glowing green eyes flickering like ghost fires in the night, and they pounce with chilling killing intent.

"Come on—" He Yuzhu takes a deep breath and pulls the trigger.

"Bang!" The lead wolf falls to the ground in response to the sound.

"Bang, bang..." The gunshots ring out one after another.

Almost every bullet kills a wolf; it is not that his marksmanship is godlike, but that the mountain path is too narrow and the wolf pack is too dense.

After firing eight rounds, he quickly switches to a second rifle.

After a few rounds of shooting, more than thirty wolves have fallen on the path, but the pack continues to run wildly toward him, stepping over the corpses of their companions.

As the distance closes, He Yuzhu switches to using a Submachine Gun to spray fire.

After the twenty rounds are emptied in an instant, he immediately switches to another gun.

"Damn it!" Several gray wolves growl and leap into the air to pounce!

"Come in—" With a thought from He Yuzhu, all the wolves within three meters are collected into his space.

After several consecutive times, the wolf king on a distant dirt slope senses something unusual, lets out a few long howls, and turns to flee. The wolves that have not yet closed in also retreat accordingly.

He Yuzhu raises his gun to continue shooting, but the wolf king runs too fast and soon runs out of the Rifle's effective range.

The battle ends, and he has harvested over seventy wolf carcasses.

Although each wolf yields about fifty catties of meat, the total is enough to sustain the troops for two or three days.

He Yuzhu does not continue hunting, not only because it is already dark, but also because he feels there are no more large animals here. So, he returns to the camp overnight with his spoils.

"Zhuzi, what did you get?" He Daqing hears the sound of the truck and hurries out to meet him.

"I ran into a pack of starving wolves just as I entered the mountains. They wanted to make a meal out of me, but I didn't expect to be the one to finish them off instead." He Yuzhu's mouth curls up slightly.

Seeing the seventy-plus wolf carcasses on the truck, He Daqing breaks into a cold sweat: "Zhuzi, did you kill all these? Are you hurt?"

"Yes, I used a rifle for all of them. I'm fine, I shot them from a distance!"

"That's great! The soldiers will have meat to eat tomorrow." He Daqing immediately gathers men to skin and butcher the wolves.

"Dad, wolf meat has a strong earthy smell; how should we handle it?"

"It's a coincidence, my Siqiang actually taught me a trick. You have to soak the meat in water for at least a day and change the water frequently. When stewing, add plenty of ginger and scallions to make braised wolf meat, and the taste won't be bad." He Daqing is full of confidence.

Dozens of soldiers surround them, all shocked to see the truck full of wolf carcasses.

"Comrades, hurry up and skin the wolves! You won't be working for nothing tonight; everyone gets a wolf skin to use as a mattress. This stuff is very warm." He Daqing orders loudly.

He Yuzhu no longer worries about the aftermath and goes straight back to the Cave to rest.

After daybreak, new problems follow one after another.

The Second Regiment of the Shanxi Independent Division arrives, adding over two thousand people to the camp.

Now there are over six thousand people in the valley, including the wounded, and the daily consumption of grain is enormous. The current reserves cannot even last a single day, and He Daqing is full of worry.

"The grain is almost bottomed out, and we have two thousand more people. What are we going to do?" He finds He Yuzhu to complain.

He Yuzhu looks at the distant mountains and smiles bitterly: "Dad, relying on the mountains to eat is hopeless; I have to go raid for grain."

At this moment, Chang Hongying comes to find He Yuzhu: "Zhuzi, we have added two thousand more people; is there enough grain?"

He Yuzhu shakes his head: "Our area of operation is too small; there's simply nowhere to procure grain. What about your unit? Why didn't you bring any supplies?"

Hongying sighs: "The Independent Division was targeted by the enemy as soon as we moved out. We were able to get here quickly by taking advantage of a time gap before the encirclement was completed. The Second Regiment moved slowly; they were only able to break out because the Third Regiment fought to the death to block the enemy... They've had it hard; we can't let them go hungry. We have to find a way!"

"I think you should be the Regimental Commander; why are you the one taking the lead in everything?" He Yuzhu jokes half-heartedly.

"Who told me to be the part-time deputy regimental commander? Our Regimental Commander, he only cares about fighting..."

"It seems we can only act late at night, ambush the enemy, and 'borrow' some grain while we're at it!" He Yuzhu says with a smile.

"I'll go with you; what do you need me to do?" Hongying asks.

"Pick a few good Machine Gunners to be responsible for covering the retreat, have Li Xiang bring the Bazooka... and select a few others with good skills who can take out sentries." He Yuzhu instructs.

"Good, I'll go pick the people right away." Hongying agrees.

Late at night, He Yuzhu takes Hongying, Wu Shitou, Li Xiang, and more than ten others to drive out of the mountains.

They park five miles away from the enemy camp, leave two people to keep watch, and the rest follow He Yuzhu to approach stealthily.

He Yuzhu discovers a small hill next to the enemy camp and estimates that there are hidden sentries set up there.

Charging in blindly will surely cause trouble, but his broken system's detection range is only three meters, which is extremely inconvenient in a battlefield environment.

He Yuzhu asks in his mind: "System, if I want to strengthen the enemy detection function, for example, to expand it to fifty meters, how much gold do I need to pay?"

The system responds: "Host, the detection function has three levels: 9 meters, 18 meters, and 54 meters. 9 meters requires 90 Small Yellow Fish, 18 meters requires 180, and 54 meters requires 540."

He Yuzhu asks again: "Does this mean I can collect enemies into the space from 18 meters away?"

The system replies: "No. The gold required to expand the collection range increases geometrically: increasing from 3 meters to 9 meters requires 100 Small Yellow Fish, and the maximum weight for a single collection increases to 10 tons; increasing to 27 meters requires ten thousand... the collection weight can reach 100 tons..."

"Then why did the first upgrade only cost 10 Small Yellow Fish, and subsequent ones require so much?"

The system: "Because the initial settings were all basic configurations at the time of the system upgrade."

He Yuzhu was speechless.

If he were to expand the 3-meter collection range to 27 meters, it would require one thousand catties of gold, which would mean all his "zero-dollar shopping" over these years had been for nothing. This system was truly a rip-off.

To ensure tonight's operation went smoothly, he gritted his teeth and decided to first increase the detection distance to 18 meters. Expanding the collection range would have to wait for another day.

With a thought, 18 Big Yellow Fish in the space automatically disappeared with a "whoosh." It seemed this system was quite intelligent; it had actually automatically converted Small Yellow Fish into Big Yellow Fish.

The system prompt sounded: "System unlocking, please wait patiently..."

Before long, He Yuzhu's body trembled slightly, and then, in the darkness within his line of sight, all objects within 18 meters that posed a threat to him began to glow with a red light.

At this moment, he could already clearly see the hidden sentry in the pit ahead, which was covered by weeds.

It seemed that spending money really did have its benefits.