Four days later.

They had searched all the suburbs of Taiping City. Almost all the survivors who could be brought out had been rescued, a total of 801 people.

The deeper they went, the fewer survivors there were.

Including the train’s original slaves, there were now over 1,000 slaves on the train.

As for the city center of Taiping, the collapsed high-rises were too severe, and the terrain was too harsh. Even the Stellar had difficulty getting in.

But that was beside the point.

The Stellar was now number one on the "Regional Leaderboard," with a power value of nearly 4,000, completely crushing the second-place train. And it had reached the top as a Level 2 train. For the past few days, the Train Radio had been in an uproar.

And Chen Mang, based on his calculations over the past few days, had a rough idea of where the survivors of Taiping City had gone.

The data didn’t lie.

Even if the power values of all the trains on the "Regional Leaderboard" were calculated based on the number of survivors, the total was only just over a hundred thousand people. So, after ruling out the possibility of an extremely high mortality rate, the most likely explanation was...

After the apocalypse, most of the survivors of Taiping City had been randomly teleported.

Teleported to other regions.

This would ensure that even sparsely populated regions had an initial population of survivors for trains to recruit, preventing train captains in those areas from wandering for days without finding a single person.

A train without survivors, like a train without an Energy Stone, would eventually break down.

That explained why there were so few survivors in Taiping City.

By now, it was dawn.

Chen Mang was piloting the Stellar across the wasteland at high speed. The "Resource Detection Radar" was constantly scanning for nearby resource points. He had built eight new standard carriages to transport these slaves.

But this was not a long-term solution.

He couldn’t possibly install Level 3 armor on all eight carriages; the cost was too high. His current resources wouldn’t support such an extravagance. Eight slave carriages posed too many risks, greatly affecting the train’s flexibility.

He planned to stuff this new batch of slaves into refrigerators.

But crafting a Level 10 refrigerator with the "Universe Within" effect required 4,500 units of iron ore.

With so many slaves, he’d need at least four more refrigerators, which would cost 18,000 units of iron ore.

And right now, he only had...

1,000 units of iron ore.

With so many slaves, not only did they eat more, but housing them was also a problem. He’d have to recruit a few more guards, too. Ten guards were not enough to maintain order. Over a thousand people were no small number.

Piled in a plaza, they could fill it.

Finally—

Beep, beep, beep

As the Resource Detection Radar beeped, he finally found a Level 1 iron mine on the wasteland. Although he was a bit disdainful of Level 1 iron mines now, a mosquito was still meat, and right now, he needed that mosquito meat.

Soon!

The 200 "old" slaves on the train began to disembark in an orderly fashion, hoisting their pickaxes and heading into the mine to start a new day of digging. They hadn’t mined in days, so for these slaves, it was a long rest. They were now full of energy.

As for why he didn’t have the new slaves do it...

The train didn’t have enough spare iron ore to craft new Level 2 pickaxes. Crafting a Level 2 pickaxe required 10 units of iron ore. Equipping all 800 new slaves with a pickaxe would require 8,000 units of iron ore.

After nightfall.

When the old slaves emerged from the mine with their pickaxes, they brought back 2,400 units of iron ore.

This amount wasn’t even enough to craft pickaxes for the new slaves. It wasn’t that the slaves were slacking; it was just the nature of a Level 1 iron mine. Unlike a Level 2 iron mine, where one unit of Level 2 iron ore was equivalent to ten units of Level 1 iron ore.

The efficiency was the same, but the output was ten times higher.

The next day, at dawn.

Chen Mang used the 2,400 units of iron ore from the previous day to craft 240 pickaxes, which he distributed to 240 new slaves, allowing some of them to join the old slaves in the mine. That day, they brought back 4,000 units of iron ore.

The new slaves’ work efficiency was noticeably lower, due to a variety of factors, including their mentality and physical condition. But that was fine; they would be slowly trained.

On the third day.

The 4,000 units of iron ore from the previous day were turned into 400 new pickaxes, which were distributed to 400 new slaves.

That day, they brought back 7,000 units of iron ore.

Although it was a Level 1 iron mine, the output was now almost on par with his daily output from the Level 2 iron mine at the bottom of the Apocalypse Abyss. Before the goblins arrived, the daily output from that Level 2 iron mine was just over 10,000 units of iron ore.

On the fourth day.

Chen Mang took out over a thousand units of iron ore and crafted another hundred-plus pickaxes. With that, all the slaves now had their pickaxes, and the mining progress accelerated.

That day, they brought back 8,000 units of iron ore.

On the fifth day...

There was no fifth day. After the fourth day, the mine was depleted.

The output of a Level 1 iron mine wasn’t fixed, but it was generally around 20,000 units of iron ore.

Including the cost of food and water over the past few days, the train now had 9,000 units of iron ore. It still wasn’t enough to craft four Level 10 refrigerators. He had to continue searching for Level 1 iron mines.

On the wasteland.

The Stellar sped toward an unknown destination, the "Resource Detection Radar" constantly running.

Lao Zhu walked into the carriage and began to report the daily consumption details to Chen Mang.

"Boss Mang."

"Right now, all our Tier 1 and Tier 2 survivors have two meals a day. Each person eats twenty slices of bread and drinks four bottles of water. They sweat a lot doing hard labor, so they get dehydrated easily."

"Ten slices of bread cost one unit of iron ore. Ten bottles of mineral water require ten slices of bread, which is another unit of iron ore."

"That means each slave’s daily consumption is 2.4 units of iron ore."

"With over 200 slaves, plus the guards, that’s a daily expense of 500 units of iron ore."

"Now, with the new slaves, their Tier 3 treatment is ten slices of bread and two bottles of mineral water a day. Their daily consumption is 2 units of iron ore. With 800 people, that’s a daily consumption of 960 units of iron ore."

"Your initial instruction, Boss Mang, was that whether we have a mine to dig or not, the food rations are fixed. They won’t be reduced on non-mining days."

"That means—"

"Every day, even if the Stellar does nothing, we wake up to a fixed consumption of 1,460 units of iron ore."

"If we don’t find a mine today, that’s a pure loss."

"When we had fewer slaves, it wasn’t a problem. But now, with so many, if we don’t have at least 10,000 units of iron ore in reserve, and if we can’t find a mine for a few days, this batch of slaves will starve to death."

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