Chapter 82 Number One Sticky Rice Cake
After dinner, as Xu Nanwei slung her bag over her shoulder and prepared to leave, she said, "I'm going now."
"Okay. Be careful. We'll pick you up after school. Wait for us at school, and don't run around until you see us."
Classes ended quite late, and it was always worrying to see a young girl walking alone in the vast underground city at night. It was only a little past seven o'clock, and the underground city was still bustling with people. Two hours later, there would be hardly anyone on the streets.
Yu Miaomiao and Lu An also experienced the anxieties of being parents.
"You really have nothing to say?" Xu Nanwei paced back and forth at the door, reluctant to leave. "I just feel like there's something strange about you guys. Are you planning to take in a new team member, the one outside? I wouldn't object."
Yu Miaomiao and Lu An burst out laughing. It turned out that the little girl had been absent-minded during dinner because she was thinking about this.
Look at the little girl's puffed-out cheeks, she looks like she's saying, "I'm a little jealous, but I won't admit it."
"Our team has requirements for recruiting new members. They must be more capable than Nanwei to be qualified to team up with us."
Yu Miaomiao explained with a smile that nothing of the sort had happened before Xu Nanwei went to school with some doubt.
Xu Nanwei had just left when there was a knock on the window in the backyard.
Through the glass, I could see Ji Mu with a smile on his face.
"I have a bold idea, can I talk to you about it?"
After observing for a while, Ji Mu realized that Yu Miaomiao did not intend to drive him away, so he boldly tried to tell Yu Miaomiao his request.
"Can't."
Yu Miaomiao didn't want to hear any bold ideas; she felt they were all daring conspiracies and schemes.
"I want to work for you! I can farm and guard the house for you. Food and lodging are all I need, no pay."
Ji Mu didn't care whether Yu Miaomiao wanted to listen or not, and blurted out his request. He had nowhere to go and no relatives or friends. The only person he could talk to in the underground city was Uncle Ding from Ni Family Garden. He could never go back to Ni Family Garden.
"No. I was only planning to let you stay for one night, and you're pushing your luck. Get out of my yard right now."
Yu Miaomiao felt incredibly regretful at this moment, as if she had provoked a persistent pest... She had to quickly stop him from trying to stick to her.
The little boy vanished with a smile, silently returning to the corner to hug his dog and leave. But out of the corner of his eye, he kept glancing towards Yu Miaomiao's window.
Seeing that Yu Miaomiao closed the window without any mercy and even drew the curtains, the little boy just hugged Raymond and continued to squat in the corner without leaving.
As agreed, I picked up Xu Nanwei from school that evening, and the three of us went to a newly opened night market in the underground city for a late-night snack.
This is the first attempt by the underground city to open up an area for its residents to try their hand at starting their own businesses. The first business to open is a small restaurant that specializes in late-night snacks and is called Nighttime Bistro.
Picking up the menu from the late-night eatery, all three fell silent.
[menu]
[Mushroom Skewers - 0.1g Sub-crystal/skewer]
[Stir-fried Mushrooms with Dried Earthworms - 0.4g Sub-grain/serving]
...
It's basically a mushroom feast and high in protein...
One person ordered five skewers of mushrooms. I have to say, the owner's skills are pretty good. Sprinkled with cumin and chili powder, it tastes just like the roadside barbecue stalls before the apocalypse.
the next day
Pushing open the window, there appeared once again the persistent young comrade Ji Mu.
Yu Miaomiao was too lazy to waste words with him, so she directly used her mind control to throw him and the dog out of the yard.
I have important things to do today. I need to go to the training ground to complete the shooting training in the dungeon and get my certification.
With more than an hour to go to the training ground as agreed, Yu Miaomiao went into her spatial dimension to check on her Hulk.
"So, have you figured it out yet?"
Li Yi continued to refuse cooperation and communication until Yu Miaomiao brought out a plate of bullets and a hammer.
Nonviolent non-cooperation, right?
Let him experience what it's like to resist strict discipline today.
Yu Miaomiao asked, "Do you know how you mutated?"
Li Yi's inner thoughts: I don't know, I don't know, I just don't know. I'll ask you a hundred times and you still won't know.
Then, an iron hammer appeared above Li Yi's head in the glass house, suspended in mid-air.
Yu Miaomiao smiled slightly and said, "You just said it five times. Right?"
Li Yi's inner thoughts: What, five times?
Before Li Yi could even understand what "five times" meant, the heavy hammer came crashing down from the top of his head, smashing his skull with each blow. Li Yi was left dizzy and disoriented, howling in pain.
Having been starving for days and without tasting any metal, Li Yi had no strength left to resist Yu Miaomiao's heavy hammer attacks.
Yu Miaomiao used her mental power to urge the heavy hammer to strike five times before stopping, and then asked, "Did you remember something now?"
Li Yi's inner thoughts: I don't know... I just don't know.
"twice."
And so, two more hammer blows.
Li Yi broke down... He finally understood that if he said he didn't know, he would be hit hard.
He shouted in a panic: "I know, I know!"
If you still don't know, you're about to get your brains hammered out.
"I originally lived in the research institute's staff quarters. I was renting the apartment. The old professor who rented it to me and his family had immigrated, so they rented it to me cheaply. Not long after I moved there, the apocalypse happened. About half a month after the apocalypse, my neighbor who lived across the hall suddenly knocked on my door. He said he wanted to trade a bottle of Coke for half a bowl of rice."
Li Yi recalled the scene at that time.
"He was wearing a baseball cap and a mask, so I couldn't see his face at all. All I could think about was Coke. I hadn't had any water for three days... You know, after the apocalypse, the water and electricity were cut off not long after..."
Yu Miaomiao said impatiently, "Get to the point."
"The important part! Here comes the important part!" Li Yi was afraid that the next blow would hit him on the head.
"I grabbed the Coke and closed the door without giving him any rice. At that moment, not a single grain of rice could be wasted, so of course I couldn't give it to a stranger. I was so thirsty that I immediately opened the Coke and started drinking. After drinking more than half of it, I noticed that the Coke bottle was leaking."
"After that, I had a fever for three days, and I thought I was going to die. But I pulled through, and after I pulled through, I found that my blood had turned green..."
"The more I thought about it, the more something seemed wrong. I thought I had been poisoned. When I thought back on everything that had happened, the only thing that really bothered me was that neighbor. It was strange that he wasn't angry at all when I took his Coke, and he didn't even knock on my door again."
"So you think someone tampered with the Coke?"
These points largely overlapped with Yu Miaomiao's guesses. Yu Miaomiao had always felt that there was a mastermind behind all of this, that someone deliberately created Li Yi, and that the cola Li Yi drank at the time likely contained extracts from mutated vampire bats, which caused him to become a hybrid mutant.