Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 193: The Team’s Morality Ranking

Back in Mist City, Chu Che and Chen Ye had initially drafted a plan to heavily scavenge the urban ruins before evacuating.

But no plan survives contact with the apocalypse.

At the time, Mist City was entirely overrun by Fog Slaves. Anyone with half a working brain knew a catastrophic event was imminent. Consequently, the moment they linked up with the pink-haired girl and Ding Dong, the convoy immediately burned rubber out of the city limits, leaving absolutely zero time to stockpile supplies.

Fortunately, Chu Che was a highly competent captain. He had been quietly laying the groundwork for an escape route for days.

During their stay in Rong City, Chu Che had slipped out every night, utilizing the Eavesdropping Radio to spy on Wu Jianshan. Unfortunately, Wu Jianshan was an old, paranoid fox. He never monologued, and he certainly never disclosed his true agenda to anyone—not even his highest-ranking subordinates.

While Chu Che failed to intercept any concrete blueprints, he did catch enough stray whispers and logistical anomalies from the rank-and-file Death Cult followers to confirm one thing: Wu Jianshan was harboring a deeply sinister motive.

That was when the secret evacuation plan was born.

When the convoy first rolled into the Second Elementary School, their vehicles were still relatively stocked. Although Wu Jianshan magnanimously offered to cover all the convoy’s meals, a significant portion of their vehicular rations was still quietly confiscated by the hosts. Chu Che knew that if they had to make a sudden, violent break for freedom, the meager rations left in their trunks wouldn’t last a week.

Operating entirely in the shadows, Chu Che approached Uncle Abao, Xiao Wang, Xue Nan, Little Fu, Xu Lina, and Zhou Xiaoxiao.

Thanks to Uncle Abao’s unshakeable reputation, they managed to recruit a sizable chunk of the ordinary survivors. Some were tasked with acting as lookouts, while others actively ran interference to distract the Death Cult followers. From start to finish, over a dozen people were involved in the clandestine operation.

This coordinated misdirection was the sole reason “Operation Rat Cache” succeeded.

Under the cover of darkness, they systematically bled the Second Elementary School’s storehouses dry, smuggling the stolen supplies directly into the convoy’s vehicles.

As for why they didn’t loop Iron Lion into the heist? At the time, the hulking brute still believed Wu Jianshan was his beloved Second Uncle. He would have compromised the entire operation in a heartbeat.

This was also the exact reason why Chen Ye’s Doomsday Pickup still contained a decent reserve of supplies.

However, the absolute motherlode was stashed inside Ding Dong’s enclosed box truck.

It didn’t just hold the gasoline they had previously siphoned; it contained the massive, consolidated hoard from Captain Chu’s entire Rat Cache operation. Because the truck’s cargo bay was entirely windowless and padlocked, an ordinary guard couldn’t gauge the sheer tonnage of contraband hidden inside.

This was precisely why Chu Che had explicitly ordered Ding Dong to prioritize the extraction of that specific box truck during the chaotic retreat.

Furthermore, when Chu Che had told Chen Ye a few days prior that they would “scavenge more supplies after finding the others,” he was operating on a web of contingencies. First, he feared Ding Dong might have been forced to abandon the truck during the bloody shootout. Second, he worried the two women might have been ambushed on the road. Third, in the apocalypse, there was simply no such thing as “too many supplies.” Since they were already mobilized, sweeping the area for more was just standard operating procedure.

Sitting by the campfire, Chu Che laid out his masterful, multi-layered contingency plan in excruciating detail.

When he finally finished his debriefing, Captain Chu casually lifted a cup of lukewarm tea from the folding table and took a slow, agonizingly calm sip.

His posture radiated an aura of profound, unbothered strategic genius—he looked like a modern-day Zhuge Liang reincarnated. All he lacked was a feathered fan. Yet, beneath the stoic facade, Captain Chu’s ears were practically twitching. He was tracking everyone’s facial expressions from the corner of his eye, his entire demeanor screaming: ‘I just pulled off the heist of the century to save all your lives. Well? Where is my applause?’

The pink-haired girl was the first to supply the desperate emotional validation.

“Captain, you’re amazing!” she gushed, her eyes sparkling. “I will never question your leadership for the rest of my life! You are forever my Captain!”

Iron Lion scratched his massive head, offering a foolish, awestruck grin. “Hehe… Captain, you’re seriously incredible. If I tried to think of all that… my brain would probably melt…”

Even Ding Dong’s perpetually frosty expression thawed. A rare, genuine smile touched the corners of her lips, signaling her profound respect for Chu Che’s foresight.

As for Chen Ye…

Even the habitually cynical Chen Ye was genuinely caught off guard. He had to admit, he never expected Chu Che to be this cunning. If Chen Ye had been the captain, he would have relied on brute force and immediate violence; he never would have possessed the patience to orchestrate such a meticulous, comprehensive logistical web under enemy surveillance.

“Captain Chu,” Chen Ye said, raising a thumb. “I’m genuinely impressed. That was a flawless play.”

Chen Ye was never a man to withhold praise when it was earned.

But then, Chen Ye leaned forward, a razor-sharp smirk slicing across his face. “But wait a second, Captain.”

Chu Che blinked, his tea cup pausing mid-air.

“Didn’t you explicitly state that the commander of that camp was your sworn brother?” Chen Ye’s voice dripped with venomous, calculated logic. “The man who saved your life? A man you considered your own flesh and blood?”

Chu Che’s posture stiffened.

“At the time you ordered this heist, you hadn’t unmasked Wu Jianshan’s true nature yet,” Chen Ye continued, his tone turning mockingly inquisitive. “As far as you knew, you were actively robbing your beloved blood brother blind while eating his food. Doesn’t that make you a backstabbing, opportunistic traitor?”

Poked directly in his sorest spot, Chu Che’s face instantly violently flushed dark red.

“Now hold on, you can’t frame it like that—”

“Oh, but I can,” Chen Ye interrupted ruthlessly. He turned to the rest of the shocked campfire circle, spreading his hands. “You all love to lecture me about my low moral standards. Well, take a good, hard look at the real scum of our convoy.”

Chen Ye leveled a deadpan stare at Chu Che. “Next time you all want to spit on me for being ruthless, make sure you save some saliva for the Captain.”

Hearing Chen Ye’s surgical dissection of the timeline, the glowing looks of profound admiration directed at Chu Che rapidly cooled. In fact, a few of the survivors even began eyeing their captain with subtle, unmistakable disdain.

Chu Che glared at Chen Ye, his teeth grinding audibly. “You absolute bastard…”

If one were to objectively rank the moral integrity of the Fairness Convoy, Chen Ye would undoubtedly sit comfortably in dead last. However, Chu Che had definitively secured the second-to-last position.

(The third-to-last spot remained fiercely contested. As for Iron Lion, his morality ranked roughly fifth from the bottom—which, coincidentally, was the exact same ranking as his intelligence. It couldn’t be helped; the Titan Sequence was infamous for trading brain cells for muscle mass.)

Disdain aside, the lure of the hoarded supplies was absolute.

When Xue Nan finally threw open the heavy rear doors of the box truck, the sheer volume of the cargo left everyone paralyzed with shock.

The cargo bay was packed to the ceiling. As the doors swung wide, a minor avalanche of brightly colored plastic packaging spilled out into the mud.

The surrounding survivors surged forward, craning their necks. A tidal wave of gasps and frantic whispers swept through the crowd.

“Holy shit! Look at it all!”

“Mother of God, are those spicy strips?! I haven’t seen a spicy strip in months! I would kill a man for one right now!”

“They’re probably expired!”

“Who gives a damn about expiration dates in the apocalypse?!”

“Is that… are those Oreos? And potato chips?!”

“By the heavens, there’s Coke… gulp… I haven’t tasted carbonation in half a year…”

“White Rabbit milk candy… I’m going to cry.”

The noise level around the truck skyrocketed into a chaotic frenzy. Dozens of people were audibly, frantically swallowing their saliva. Before the world ended, these were the cheapest, most mundane snacks lining the shelves of every corner store. But to the starved, traumatized survivors standing in the mud, this plastic-wrapped junk food was infinitely more valuable than solid gold.

“Captain Chu,” Chen Ye muttered, staring at the avalanche of calories. “Did you completely strip Wu Jianshan’s warehouse to the studs?”

“Hardly,” Chu Che sighed, shaking his head. “You didn’t see the main classroom where Wu Jianshan stockpiled the real reserves. This haul isn’t even a tenth of his total inventory. It’s a damn shame we had to leave the rest behind.”

With the inventory revealed, it was time to divide the spoils.

Unquestionably, Ding Dong and Chu Che had secured the greatest merit in this operation. Without Chu Che’s paranoid foresight, the stockpile wouldn’t exist. Without Ding Dong putting her life on the line to ram the truck through a warzone, the supplies would have been lost.

It was difficult to weigh whose strategic contribution was greater, but in terms of sheer physical sacrifice, Ding Dong took the crown. She had paid for this truck with her right arm.

The pink-haired girl claimed the third-largest share. If she hadn’t acted as Ding Dong’s heavily armed escort during their harrowing escape, Ding Dong would have bled out on the asphalt long ago.

As for Chen Ye and Iron Lion…

Naturally, the two of them sat squarely at the bottom of the priority list. However, successfully tracking down and extracting the two women still counted as a valid operational merit. Thus, while their allocation of the high-tier supplies was the smallest, they still received a cut. The ordinary survivors who had risked their lives to run interference during the Rat Cache operation were placed next in the distribution hierarchy.

Under Xue Nan’s direction, the survivors began forming a human chain, offloading the cargo bay and stacking the goods in a towering mound beside the central bonfire.

As they dug deeper into the truck’s recesses, the junk food gave way to the heavy, foundational staples of survival: thick, industrial sacks of rice and flour.

Chen Ye ran a quick, calculating visual sweep of the canvas sacks thudding into the dirt. There had to be at least a hundred fifty-pound bags in the pile. If it wasn’t exactly a hundred, it was damn close.

In the apocalypse, processed snacks were a luxury, but raw rice and flour were the absolute currency of life. Chu Che had clearly prioritized caloric density and shelf-life when orchestrating the theft.

Seeing the sheer mountain of grain, the massive crowd of survivors finally erupted into wild, unrestrained cheering.