Chapter 132 – Raising a Big Cat in the Apocalypse (11)
After hearing Chi Xiaochi’s words, 061 was silent.
However, the little baby leopard crawled out from Chi Xiaochi’s arms and drilled into the sleeping bag.
Soon, Chi Xiaochi felt something creeping in along the hem of his turtleneck sweater, moving in what it thought was a covert manner.
Chi Xiaochi placed a hand behind his head and kept his eyes closed, pretending that he knew nothing about this sneak attack.
When the little guy started trying to get in through the collar, the restriction of the high collar made its task very difficult.
It originally could have ignored the restriction, directly using its paws and pressing against Chi Xiaochi’s neck to crawl inside, but it was very considerate, lifting up its own round b.u.t.tocks and using only its head to make its way inside.
Chi Xiaochi squinted at the small thing on his chest that was moving and wiggling and smiled gently.
After enduring much hardships, a small leopard’s head successfully poked its way out of Chi Xiaochi’s collar.
Chi Xiaochi continued pretending to be asleep.
The little baby leopard lay down flat, stretched out its paws, and touched Chi Xiaochi’s face.
Then, Chi Xiaochi caught it, and resolutely seized its ‘tools of crime’.
Chi Xiaochi tugged on its paws, gently pressing the fleshy paw pad to his lips, half threatening and half joking, “I’m going to eat you.”
The little baby leopard tilted its head and let him pull on its paws as he liked, lowering its head to kiss the corner Chi Xiaochi’s lips.
Its grey-blue eyes were like the sparkling surface of a lake.
Chi Xiaochi was stunned for a moment, then stroked the little thing’s forehead with his index finger, touching the place where he’d just been kissed with his other hand. It was numb and tingling, and he couldn’t help but laugh.
“Are you coaxing me?” He asked.
The little baby leopard stretched out its paws and hugged his neck, stepping on his chest before settling in comfortably.
Chi Xiaochi went to hold the little leopard’s soft belly, inhaling its scent for a while before wrapping his arms around it and going to sleep.
Before falling asleep, he spoke vaguely to 061, “When Boss Coal grows up, I’ll set it free.”
061 said, “It won’t eat you.”
Chi Xiaochi rubbed the tip of his nose against the little baby leopard, “Me letting it go is always going to be better than having it run off one day without letting me know first.”
With that, he went to sleep, immersed in the faint sunshine scent of the little baby leopard.
061 smiled helplessly.
And the little baby leopard squirmed out from Chi Xiaochi’s embrace, moving to clumsily wrap its paws around his head, patting him like a child.
… Don’t worry, it came into being just for you.
As long as you want it to be by your side, it will never leave.
I’ve already broken my promise twice. There won’t be a third time.
Time flew by very quickly because everyone had things to do.
One day, a full two years later, Chi Xiaochi and a truck full of people who’d been out looking for supplies were trapped in the wilderness.
Sun Yan was the one in charge of driving.
He sat in the driver’s seat and lit a cigarette, looking around in boredom. He found half of a sign that said ‘Heart Street Park’ in the waist deep gra.s.s and narrowed his eyes happily, bending his knuckles to knock against the peephole behind him.
Chi Xiaochi, who was lying down in the back of the car, opened up the peephole window that was the size of a pencil box, “What’s up?”
“Captain Ding, look at that sign.” Sun Yan spoke with the cigarette in his mouth, “I brought my younger brother here to buy marshmallows as a child.”
Chi Xiaochi, who’d managed to get a full two hours of sleep, stretched out, “Speaking of your younger brother, has Sun Bin finished fixing the car?”
Without waiting for Sun Yan to pa.s.s on the message, Sun Bin, who was squatting on the edge of the car hood, pulled the screwdriver out of his mouth and said, “Not yet.”
Chi Xiaochi rested a foot against the top of the truck, “When will it be fixed?”
Sun Bin muttered and repeated himself, “It’s no good, it’s no good anymore.”
The little couple trembled even more when they heard these words.
However, the rest of the team was very calm.
If it wasn’t for the fact that everyone knew that Sun Bin had this natural pessimism when it came to fixing things, everyone would probably have believed that the car was unfixable.
A year and a half ago, they’d encountered a group of new humans who’d taken refuge with the AI. The other party had weapons in their hands, and their car had also broken down. The situation had been very critical.
Sun Bin had crouched over the engine, using the front hood to block the flying bullets as he muttered, “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over it’s over it’s over.”
Just when everyone was preparing to fight to the bitter end, Sun Bin suddenly spoke again, “It’s fixed! Big bro, hurry and start the car.”
Sun Yan stepped his foot down on the gas pedal and took everyone to escape from the jaws of death.
After this event, Sun Bin, who’d made great contributions, had been surrounded and beaten up by everyone. The offense was that he’d shaken the morale of the team.
Sun Bin had been very aggrieved, answering very reasonably, “I hadn’t finished fixing the car when you asked, so I didn’t dare to get ahead of myself.”
Sun Yan also spoke out for his younger brother, “He’s been like this since he was a child. After the college entrance examination, he cried and told me that he was done for, it was over, because in the second part of a major question, he only realized he’d made a mistake after he’d come out of the exam hall. He cried and wailed, and I took him out to eat a lot of big meals in order to comfort him. Yet as soon as the results came out, this little bunny actually got 295, and had only gotten that half a question wrong.”
295 – 295 out of a score of 300
Yan Lanlan and the others all expressed that this sounded even more like he needed a beating, and beating him up just then was really worth it.
Sun Bin’s mouth might be mournful, but his strength was trustworthy.
Over the past two years, from staplers to generators, he could repair most items after looking at them, and could even use simple tools and materials to put together a transmitter.
Of course when he was fixing things, it was always accompanied by sounds of ‘Not good, not good’, and ‘It’s over, it’s over’, ‘How is this fixed, why isn’t it working’ as a voiceover. But everyone was used to hearing it and just treated it as his exclusive BGM.
Yan Lanlan was sitting beside him, holding a gun. She had nothing else to do, so she made a gun shape with her fingers and placed it against the back of Sun Bin’s head, “Boy, if you still don’t fix it, you’ll die.”
Sun Bin spoke softly, “Lanlan, don’t rush me. As soon as you rush me, I’ll get anxious.”
Yan Lanlan: “What are you anxious for?”
Sun Bin: “I’m scared you’ll scold me.”
Yan Lanlan: “Don’t frame good people. I don’t f*cking say any dirty words at all, okay?!”
Sun Bin wiped his sweat and put back the cables he’d reconnected. He reminded her, “Lanlan, temperament, temperament.”
He jumped off the hood, shook off the excess oil on his hands, then took two steps back away from the car, “Big brother, start it up.”
The engine roared low, and the headlights lit up instantly.
Sun Yan smiled, “It’s fixed…. F*ck me!”
The light broke through the dark night fog, and Sun Bin could now clearly see that there was a figure about two meters tall, like a tall man wrapped in a black down jacket, standing behind Sun Bin.
… A bear!
It had been standing there behind Sun Bin and observing him quietly for an unknown period of time, just waiting for a chance to attack.
It quietly opened its huge, coffin-like mouth, aiming it at Sun Bin’s head, wanting to bite it off directly!
There was a loud bang of gunfire.
A hot cartridge case was ejected out of Yan Lanlan’s gun, falling to the ground.
Yan Lanlan, who was closest to the bear, had reacted well, firing her gun right away. However, her bullet wasn’t accurate enough and whizzed across the front of the bear’s face. It only made the bear stunned, and then its cold yellow pupils flashed, immediately focusing its gaze on Yan Lanlan.
That look was very calm, like a human examining its prey. It was so full of awareness that it made people’s blood run cold.
Yan Lanlan kicked Sun Bin away with a foot and rolled away on the spot.
Chi Xiaochi opened up the skylight on the ceiling of the truck and immediately supplemented fire, his bullet smashing accurately on its nose.
As the bear started to roar, Chi Xiaochi whistled.
The gra.s.s to one side of them shifted.
A black arrow shot out from within, aiming accurately and ruthlessly at the bear’s neck. There was a flash of snow, and then the black bear’s neck was broken, blood splattering across a three feet radius.
The black bear was in great pain, waving its iron-hard palms, wanting to take down this attacker to die with it. However, the black arrow jumped down and landed on the gra.s.s beside it, blending into the darkness.
It was simply like the most perfect killer. It attacked, cut its throat, then disappeared, its actions clean and neat.
The truck pulled back 30 meters, quietly waiting for the bear that was rolling and thrashing around on the ground to die.
Sun Bin climbed up to the back of the truck, his head dizzy. Yan Lanlan followed behind him, holding up her heated gun barrel and impatient to go over and look out from the roof to observe the bear’s vital signs.
The young couple spoke anxiously, “We should go.”
Chi Xiaochi replied, “There’s no hurry.”
Yan Lanlan was bargaining with Chi Xiaochi, “Captain Ding, this bear is quite big. We can use it to make vests for some of the children. There should still be some material left after that, how about making me a pair of gloves?”
Chi Xiaochi replied, “How about making a pair of gloves for each person. It won’t be enough if we use it to make vests. Those brats all grow faster than the next one, and if we make them clothes today, they may not be able to wear them tomorrow.”
Sun Bin recovered his breath and began to explain all the wonderful ways the bear could be used to the couple, “The bear meat can be made into dried meat, the bear oil can be used for lamps, the bear’s gall can be used as medicine. If we bring it back, it’ll provide us for food for a long time.”
While Sun Bin was explaining, Chi Xiaochi and Yan Lanlan had already finished distributing the bear’s various parts and components.
It continued clinging to life for another 15 minutes before lying still.
Sun Yan knocked against the peeping window, “Ah, Captain Ding, it’s dead.”
The man from the small couple felt that he should do something useful and volunteered to be the first to get out of the car and help carry the bear, only to find himself held back by Chi Xiaochi with the b.u.t.t of his gun on the back of his coat, “What are you trying to do?”
Chi Xiaochi got up, lifted up the skylight cover, and aimed at the bear in the night. He fired again.
The ‘dead’ bear roared out in pain, the sound that was as loud as thunder scaring the man so much he almost sat back down on the ground.
Chi Xiaochi also sat back down in his original spot, “That thing’s really smart, trying to pull off an act like that with me. We’ll wait a bit longer.”
The young man was now well behaved, his heart filled with a lingering fear as he said, “It was also the one calling out from the gra.s.s just now, right?”
Sun Bin pushed his gla.s.ses up his nose and said, “No. Just now, the one in the gra.s.s was ‘Boss’. It made those sounds on purpose in order to let the other predators know that it was targeting us, ‘the prey’. It seems that this bear was too hungry. Otherwise, it wouldn’t ignore the rules the animals have set and come up to steal someone else’s ‘prey’.”
“Boss?”
Chi Xiaochi picked up the thread of the conversation, “Yes, my pet.”
Ten minutes later, the bear twitched for a while, then finally stopped moving for good.
Several strong young men jumped out of the car and quickly carried the bear that weighed over 300 pounds back into the car.
The little couple watched at their joyful appearance; it didn’t look like they were facing a bear at all, it was more like they’d just slaughtered a pig for the New Year.
After dealing with the prey, Chi Xiaochi jumped out of the truck with a gun slung over his back, then climbed onto the motorcycle that was parked to the side. He set it in neutral, then deliberately let the machine make a high-speed roar in order to disperse a group of birds that were resting in the distance.
When he put on his helmet, the vigorous and elegant black shadow pushed aside the gra.s.s and crouched quietly by his side.
He waved his hand. Sun Yan saw his movements through the rearview mirror and started the car, driving over the frozen bear blood and driving out into the boundless darkness.
The scent of the bear wasn’t light. The man in the little pair of lovers was worried that his girlfriend would be carsick, so he lifted up the heavy curtain covering the truck in order to let the air circulate.
When he saw the ‘pet’ following alongside Captain Ding, he was stunned for a moment, sucking in a full breath of cold wind that froze his cheeks.
There was a black panther running silently and faithfully to the right of the motorcycle.
It’s solid and beautiful muscles were streamlined, and watching the muscles bunching up, then relaxing was thrillingly breathtaking. It kicked off the ground and exerted force, every movement n.o.ble, elegant, and steady.
When he saw this scene, the man was like the others who’d seen this scene for the first time, sincerely expression the emotion, “F*ck me, bada.s.s!”
Hard-sh.e.l.led insects smashed against the windshield like grains of rice, the fluid in their bodies exploding as their sh.e.l.ls cracked.
They drove through the middle of the night and arrived in a small county town.
To the young couple’s surprise, it seemed that this place was actually filled with people. There were lights on in every household and some even had electric lights.
Yan Lanlan held up her gun and asked the pair of young lovers, “What can you do?”
The girl pointed to the man, “He graduated from an electric college. I’m a nurse.”
Yan Lanlan beamed, “That’s great. We’re short on experienced nurses. I’ll take you guys to the hospital.”
……Hospital?
What hospital?
The hospital that the young woman imagined was a dilapidated building, where even the gauze had to be dried out in the sun.
However, the truck drove straight into the county town hospital, where the lights were on and shining brightly. There were seven or eight heavy utility vehicles parked there, and someone was even allocated to the parking lot to direct traffic.
As the two young people looked on, the car came to a stop. Yan Lanlan jumped out of the car, then beckoned exaggeratedly, smiling as she said, “Welcome to the utopia of the old human race.”