CH 54

The grilled fish chunks were cooked until golden yellow and sprinkled with enough seasoning. The aroma was so tempting and crispy that it mercilessly crawled into the stomachs of the people who were generating electricity like lab rats. One of them ran and cried, and tears and snot dripped down with saliva.

With a “drip,” the machine detected his slowing speed and instantly popped up a warning: “Warning, your power output is insufficient. Do you want to enter rest mode?”

Resting time was only two hours a day, and at night, the hamsters running on the wheel collapsed on the big bunk beds, wishing they could sleep forever.

Over these past few days, the men who had attacked Noah base and wanted to capture the women inside as slaves had tasted the feeling of being constantly tortured by the machines. If they were even slightly slack, the machine’s tricks would make them hate their laziness.

The man who cried out could not stop. Looking at one of the men with a scar on his face, who was once full of trust, now only had dissatisfaction and anger. “If it wasn’t for you instigating, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Sob, sob, sob. I saw them already starting to select people outside the camp. If I waited a bit longer…”

The accused man coldly stared at him and continued to run, not wanting to speak.

The hamster wheel would squeeze out every bit of energy from you. When a person was exhausted, they naturally could not think about conspiracies and tricks. Therefore, instead of arguing with this person, it was better to save some energy and run a few more laps to finish generating today’s electricity and rest in time.

Every ounce of his strength, crying out now, only added more pain and prolonged the agony.

In the midst of their dispute and bickering, a little child holding fried fish passed by the door. The man who had just cried ran to the fence and reached out his hand towards the child, with eyes filled with longing: “Little girl, little girl, please let me smell it. I’m really hungry!”

They, the laborers, eat rations that are dry and hard, filling but not appetizing. Their mouths taste like birds.

Xiao Ai, the child carrying a fish fillet passing by the fence, looks curiously towards the direction of the fence. She meets the eyes of a pair of beasts that shine brightly with desire because of their thirst. Xiao Ai is startled and takes a step back involuntarily.

Behind her is her sister who came looking for her and witnessed this scene. She looks at the man kneeling in the shadow of the fence, who looks so hungry and dability userate that he is drooling, and she reaches out to touch Xiao Ai’s head, gently bringing the fish fillet to her lips.

The delicious taste makes Xiao Ai forget the twisted face she just saw. She takes a bite, but on the other side of the fence there is a wailing cry like a funeral, and the man over there is crying out, “Inhumane! Not only do they force us to work day and night, they are stingy with our food too…”

Xiao Ai silently glances over there and looks at her sister with understanding. The base is good to their group of children, allowing them to have separate rooms to live in and to have enough to eat and wear to keep warm. But Xiao Ai knows that not everyone is so lucky.

Outside in the wasteland, there are many children who starve to death. Although the food they eat is hers, it is also allocated to them by the base.

The woman looks at Xiao Ai’s sensible, clear eyes and lovingly touches her head – she can no longer have children. She had a miscarriage this year, but did not have time to rest and was continuously used by those bastard dogs. Her body has been destroyed.

So when she sees these children, she is especially patient with them, but when it comes to the men locked up, she says they should be killed instead of being used as waste.

Fu Yanzhou was holding a fish fillet and looking for a quiet place to finish eating before leaving, but he happened to witness the whole scene from beginning to end.

Before… he didn’t have much profound insight into the changes in social order after the apocalypse, because he had been avoiding crowds and living in a vacuum of ivory tower-like research environment.

But since the arrival of Noah…

A hint of gloom flashed in Fu Yanzhou’s eyes.

**

Shen Cheng’s earnings today were quite good.

She carefully observed the demands of customers throughout the day and found that the purchasing power of young girls accounted for the majority of her earnings.

This was something she hadn’t noticed before.

When Shen Cheng set up her stall, she often encountered bargaining aunties, and she was not good at dealing with them. Sometimes she couldn’t get away once she was entangled. Bargaining aunties who love to take advantage of others are not actually her target customer group. Today, Shen Cheng adjusted the level of her stall, just like some experienced stall masters, even the background and the cart were made in macaron colors. In short, it looked like it was tailored specifically for young women.

The aunties basically just looked and left.

Instead, her target customer group was attracted.

Shen Cheng redesigned the fruit plate this time, creatively wrote “calories” on it, hand-drew words like “low sugar”, “weight loss”, “fitness special”, “won’t make you fat”, and deliberately paired it with fruit that had similar “functional” characteristics. She tied up her hair with a net, stood beside the cart looking clean and neat, and the price was also clear at a glance.

This style turned out to be appealing to young customers.

Upon completing their workout, several male customers noticed the informative notes about specific fruits that she had displayed next to her stall. It was surprising for them to see a young girl running the stall with such confidence and knowledge. They saw that she was a young girl setting up a stall and decided to buy a plate out of sympathy. Finally, Shen Cheng experienced the satisfying feeling of selling out and closing the stall early.

When she got home… she had earned several hundred yuan!

Woo hoo, this advice from the godlike cub really worked!

At this moment, Shen Cheng was no longer agonizing over the 300 yuan she had spent earlier. After all, now that she had found a money-making goose, spending some of the cash didn’t feel as painful.

When she logged into the game, the projection time of her body had already arrived.

Shen Cheng looked at the small print next to the “projection” category:

[This feature is only for temporary experience, and new experience packages will be launched in the future. Please stay tuned.]

After a small smiley face, it was probably the game developer’s sarcasm;

[Future experiences will be unlocked based on the player’s willingness to spend money. Spend 998 yuan and take the main character home!]

“…What kind of shameless dialogue is this?”

Shen Cheng was sure that if she had seen such a direct “spend money quickly” statement when she first downloaded the game, she would have immediately given up and not played.

Isn’t this basically saying “hurry up and recharge your account so we can develop more game features for you to experience?”

Translated on ho lo lo novels dot com.

This game company was so money-grubbing. How could anyone say that they wouldn’t spend money and just grind through the game?

Sheesh!

However, now that she had been playing for a long time and had actually developed real feelings for her virtual pet, combined with the “don’t abandon the game” agreement she had signed with the company, Shen Cheng thought for a moment and decided not to criticize them.

She clicked on the protagonist and found a new prompt appeared in the game:

[Your main character appears to be engaged in a conversation. Please remain quiet and observe to confirm the direction of the game.]

Li Weilan is indeed talking to Fu Yanzhou.

It is no secret that Fu Yanzhou, who suffers from social anxiety, likes to stay indoors at the base. When he finally stepped out of his laboratory, Li Weilan guessed that he must have something to say.

But what he didn’t expect was that Fu Yanzhou, who suffers from social anxiety, hit him with a straight ball as soon as he opened his mouth: “I want to study your ability. But I need your cooperation.”

Li Weilan’s face changed slightly.

He never expected this.

The painful experiences of the past flooded into his heart, the wounds that were repeatedly opened, the blood gushing out, the moaning, the pain, the bright red…

The memories of black and red intertwined like a tide, even though it was only a few seconds, made Li Weilan’s eyes faintly filled with pain.

“What do you know?” His voice and breath were a little unstable.

“I remember you,” Fu Yanzhou’s voice was mechanical and flat, he said dryly, “Code number 0325. You are one of the influencers closest to the meteor impact point. You are also the only surviving subject of the experiment.”

Li Weilan’s face changed.

Fu Yanzhou could feel the anger, darkness, and hostility exploding from him for a moment. His lips trembled a bit before he continued: “Dawn light is a failed study. But my proposal was not originally…”

“Your proposal?” Li Weilan’s voice changed slightly.

“My proposal,” Fu Yanzhou nodded awkwardly.

His gaze was calm, like a bottomless lake: “I’ve seen their experiments. That was not what I wanted. So I left.”

Long, dead silence.

In the end, Li Weilan said nothing, turned around and slammed the door shut before leaving.

A new task prompt appeared on the dark orange screen:

[The main character’s emotions are too unstable]

[Your cub needs your comfort. Please ensure your cub’s mental health.]

Having witnessed the entire conversation, Shen Cheng felt a heavy weight in her heart.

Fu Yanzhou may have been one of the researchers that Li Weilan had not met before, and may even have been one of the leaders of the research. It was inevitable that Li Weilan would hate him after learning all of this.

Before comforting him, Shen Cheng thought for a long time about how to handle the aftermath.

She knew that comforting someone in deep pain was often futile. What could really solve the rot and pain was cutting off the decayed flesh and letting the pus and blood out.

The base really couldn’t do without Fu Yanzhou.

Without him, the base’s technology tree would have to be temporarily frozen.

But the second research staff member could be found easily, while there was only one cub.

Moreover, in this matter, the cub had a sufficient position to directly expel or even fight Fu Yanzhou, but he did not do so.

He could choose to suppress his anger for the sake of the base, but as his mother, Shen Cheng could not take his understanding and goodwill for granted.

When you raise a sensible cub, you must repay him with more care!

So Shen Cheng gently rubbed his head and blurted out, “Let’s let Fu Yanzhou go.”

Sandy: Just 998 yuan and you can take cub home? I’ll triple the price, send him this way. Thank you #smirk