Chapter 24
After entering October, cold air surges became more frequent, and temperatures in the Huan City area dropped sharply.
Wei Cheng came downstairs carrying a set of clothes. On the sofa, the little child was holding the black puppy and watching cartoons with complete concentration. As he watched, he tugged on the puppy’s drooping ears and provided commentary.
“This one is the bad guy!”
“This one is the good guy!”
“When Little Apricot grows up, Little Apricot has to be a good-guy baby!”
“It’s cold outside, so we need to wear a little more today.”
Wei Cheng walked over. “Guanguan, raise your arms.”
Guanguan’s eyes stayed fixed firmly on the television, but his plump little arms obediently lifted up.
“Stretch out your little feet.”
After helping Guanguan get dressed, he picked up the little black dog too. The dog health gift pack the system had given them included quite a few clothes for dogs. Little Apricot was a short-haired puppy, so in weather like this he needed to stay warm too.
“There, all set. Go look in the mirror.”
Guanguan and the little black dog scampered over to the mirror.
In the mirror stood a chubby little baby wearing a brown knit cap. Underneath, he had on a white wool sweater, with a light blue vest printed with little brown deer and finished with a butterfly collar. His pants were dark brown lantern-style cuffed pants, making the child look even fairer, cleaner, and rounder than before.
The little black dog wore a thin brown hoodie in the same color as his little owner.
“Wow!”
Guanguan spun in a circle, then ran into his brother’s arms to start a dog-versus-me competition. “Who is prettier and cuter, Guanguan or Little Apricot!”
The little black dog barked too, as if very eager for big brother’s answer.
“Guanguan is fair, with rosy cheeks, like a freshly picked little peach. Wearing this outfit, he’s handsome and pretty.”
Wei Cheng was a famous master of balancing praise evenly. He then rubbed the little black dog too. “And Little Apricot’s fur is black and glossy. Wearing a little hoodie like a human child is unbearably cute.”
With just a few words, he had successfully smoothed the fur of both stubborn little babies.
Wei Cheng straightened Guanguan’s hat again and smiled. “When you’re playing outside, you’re not allowed to take off your hat. The wind outside is strong. You might catch a cold and get sick.”
“Okay! Guanguan won’t get sick!”
Just then, the little Peppa-shaped alarm clock on the coffee table rang.
Guanguan quickly grabbed the remote and pressed the red button at the cartoon currently playing.
Big brother had said that every day he could only watch for thirty minutes!
Over the past few days, the temperature had been dropping faster and faster. No one knew when the snow would start falling, so yesterday Wei Cheng and Guanguan had spent the entire day filling the doors and windows of the old house with foam sealant and weatherstripping. Then they had completely sealed the inside and outside of the windows with transparent plastic.
With the weather this crazy, there was no need to open windows for ventilation anymore.
Wei Cheng said, “Guanguan and Little Apricot can play outside. Big brother is going to take down the radiators at home and clean them.”
Small mountain villages like Sun Village did not have central heating. Families with less money could only burn firewood. Very few people would go to town to order radiators and buy tons of coal to use. They saved money, but they suffered for it too. At night, the temperature inside their homes nearly dropped below freezing, and the water in their vats practically wanted to turn to ice.
The radiators upstairs and downstairs in the old house had not been used for a long time. After prying open one radiator cover with tools, Wei Cheng discovered that not only had thick ancient dust accumulated inside, but he also swept out more than ten dead mice.
He immediately took out disinfectant spray and doused everything several times.
There was a pile of sand in one corner of the yard, and on top of it sat children’s toy bulldozers, little dump trucks, and all kinds of little shovels.
Guanguan was having the time of his life. He pushed a little truck full of sand toward the puppy. “Driver Little Apricot, your cargo has arrived!”
Little Apricot shook his little head and bit at the truck. The first try failed, but on the second try he managed to drag the little truck away with a wobbling gait.
It was also at that moment that the little black dog’s drooping long ears suddenly stood up.
Guanguan clearly noticed it too. “Baby Little Apricot, your ears!”
He scooped up the little dog and ran into the house. “Big brother! Big brother! Look at Little Apricot!”
At that moment, Wei Cheng had just lit the stove. He wiped his hands on the towel at the side. “What happened to Little Apricot?”
When Guanguan looked down again, the ears that had just stood up had already drooped again.
“Little Apricot’s ears stood up just now!”
“Really?”
Wei Cheng was a little surprised too. Back then, the pet doctor had said that black wolfdog puppies had large ears, and they might need some proper guidance before they would stand up quickly.
But he had never raised a puppy before and truly did not know how to “guide” Little Apricot.
Little Apricot’s dog face looked blank and innocent, like he himself did not know what had happened.
Guanguan bounced him a little in his arms. “Little Apricot, stand your ears up and show big brother!”
The little black dog tilted his head. Both big ears trembled, and suddenly one ear slowly stood up. The right ear still drooped. Just when the two brothers thought the dog had failed at standing his ears, the right ear suddenly sprang up too. Both ears stood upright, neat and proper, like a pair of giant black bat wings.
Guanguan was wildly excited and held the puppy up high. “Wow! Little Apricot, you’re a baby donkey!”
The little black dog shook his head and stuck out his tongue.
Wei Cheng was happy too. A puppy with upright ears could avoid many ear infections and other bacterial problems, so this really was something worth celebrating. He said, “Extra food! Little Apricot gets extra food today!”
Guanguan’s eyes turned into stars. “Can Guanguan get extra food too?”
“Of course. Guanguan gets to order today.”
“I want to eat fragrant little chicken!”
Since the weather was getting colder, Wei Cheng felt they should eat more hot food to warm themselves, so instead of buying ready-made roasted chicken or chicken wings from the mall, he went into the fresh section and picked out some little chicken legs along with side ingredients, then brought them to the old house to make chicken hotpot.
Guanguan volunteered to help big brother wash the little potatoes.
Wei Cheng first soaked the chicken to draw out the blood, then marinated it. He put the chicken legs into hot oil and fried them until they were lightly browned and fragrant before taking them out. Then, using the remaining oil in the pan, he stir-fried scallions, ginger, garlic, and a spoonful of chili bean paste.
Though Guanguan was still very little, he did rather like spicy food. But for the sake of his delicate stomach, Wei Cheng only added a tiny bit of hotpot base to increase the fragrance.
As the temperature in the pan rose, the rich-smelling base had already released a beautiful red oil. Only then did Wei Cheng return the browned chicken to the pot.
After adding water and simmering it for about ten minutes, he gradually added tofu skin, lettuce, shiitake mushrooms, crab sticks, shrimp, potatoes, various meatballs, and glass noodles.
Once he estimated the timing was right, Wei Cheng also tucked two bricks of instant noodles into the hot pot to simmer.
Standing on tiptoe, Guanguan said, “Guanguan knows this! It’s square-square noodles!”
Back at the welfare home, Director Wang had never let the children eat instant noodles, because in the older man’s mind, instant noodles were extremely unhealthy food. So during those days of collecting supplies, Guanguan had stared longingly at all the different flavors of instant noodles.
Wei Cheng did not correct him. Smiling, he poured the steaming chicken hotpot into a ceramic bowl. “That’s right. Let’s eat!”
Outside, the wind howled, making the trees sway and creak, while inside the old house, the heating stove had been running for quite some time, leaving both upstairs and downstairs wonderfully warm.
The bubbling chicken hotpot was brought to the table.
Wei Cheng picked out some chicken and instant noodles for Guanguan. “You’ve been wanting to eat this noodle-noodle, right? Here, try it.”
Guanguan twirled and twirled the noodles with his chopsticks until he had gathered them all up, then opened his mouth wide and ate the whole bite at once.
The already soft, fragrant noodles had now soaked up the rich sauce. Guanguan ate them while bobbing his head and puffing out breaths of hot air. “Big brother, big brother, square-square noodles are so delicious! The little chicken legs are delicious too!”
Wei Cheng took a bite of the tender, flavorful chicken leg meat and was quite satisfied with his own cooking too. “Mm, it tastes good.”
While Guanguan took his afternoon nap, Wei Cheng brought the small low-noise generator to the storage room and connected it to the household wiring. Fuel-powered generators produced deadly carbon monoxide while operating and also came with a certain risk of electric shock, so they absolutely had to be run outside the living space.
Wei Cheng was extremely skilled with operating generators and connecting them to household circuits. That was because in his previous life, when he was only ten, no one wanted to bring a child along to do missions. Old people and children who could not contribute to the base received only one piece of bread a day to survive on. If he wanted to live at the base, he had to find work and earn points. Later, using half a pack of cheap cigarettes he had scavenged, Wei Cheng managed to get a job doing odd work in the machine room.
The moment the indoor lights flicked on again, what Wei Cheng thought about was how happy little Guanguan would be when he woke up and saw the lights glowing.
After that, he returned to the room and took out some wilderness-survival gear he had stocked up from the safe house, getting familiar with it one piece at a time.
Some of it he had never touched before, like the hand-crank solar radio.
After hand-cranking it for nearly four or five minutes, he successfully powered it on, and while exploring it, he also found its lighting function.
The instructions said that AM was for domestic news and talk radio, and the antenna did not need to be extended during tuning. FM was for music and traffic radio, while SW was mainly for international broadcasts. For both FM and SW, the antenna needed to be extended when tuning.
Wei Cheng studied it with great interest for quite a while, yet all that came from the radio was static.
—
In only a single week, the temperature dropped sharply once again.
Just a short while ago, Guanguan had still been outside in a little sweater playing in the sand. But over the past two days, he had already changed into thick snow boots and an extreme-cold down coat.
The thermometer showed that the outdoor temperature had already reached -20°C.
At first glance, that temperature might not seem extreme, but the key point was that today was only October 12.
Before the apocalypse, this would still have been the season for buying your first milk tea of autumn.
A cold wave made zombies move more slowly, so Wei Cheng and Guanguan decided that this time, they were going to completely finish the system mission to kill 500 zombies.
In a few days, when the blizzard began, zombies would be lying all over the place wherever they fell. The unseen danger was the most dangerous of all, because no one could know whether under the white snow at their feet there might be a zombie’s gaping bloody mouth waiting.
Wrapped up like a chubby little ball, Guanguan sat in the passenger seat and asked, “Big brother, are we going to the road with lots and lots of cars again today?”
He still wanted to continue treasure hunting!
Wei Cheng looked at the navigation display and frowned slightly. “But there aren’t any zombies on the highway anymore.”
Every nearby destination by the road showed its danger level as None.
All the zombies had gathered in two places. One was Huan City No. 76 High School, where several hundred zombies had rushed half a month ago. The other was Changde Town, which was much closer to Sun Village.
Huan City No. 76 High School had a danger level of Extremely High.
Destination — Changde Town
Distance: 53 kilometers
Current population: ? (function not yet unlocked)
Number of zombies: ? (function not yet unlocked)
Danger level: Relatively High
Wei Cheng made his decision at once. “We’re going to Changde Town. We finish the mission and leave immediately—absolutely no staying.”
There would only be more and more zombies, and making money would get harder and harder. They could not keep delaying this anymore.
Guanguan patted his little cat mittens. “Okay! Once we finish this job, Guanguan quits!”
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