QT: LAC Chapter 124: Eighth World (7)

Chapter 124: Eighth World (7)
Translated by Zombie Shiya of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Sulo

Although Bai Duan seemed to have accepted the idea that his small animals devoured crystal cores, he was still worried about them and didn’tt continue to try to drive Nie LanLei away. After all, he seemed to have a good understanding of animal evolution and could help him at a critical moment?

After a night of tossing and turning, the next day, when the dogs were going out to hunt, Bai Duan followed after them for the first time.

With the addition of Bai Duan, the dogs were obviously very happy. They wagged their tails and surrounded Bai Duan, even their attitude towards Nie Lanlei had improved a lot.

Not long after leaving the yard, other wild dogs Bai Duan was not familiar with joined in. It seems that they had been used to this kind of group hunting for a long time. After all, after the end of the world, many animals ran out of the zoo, followed their instincts and gathered in the western mountains, including some fierce big predators such as tigers, wolves, lions and leopards.

Although these animals could coexist peacefully in Bai Duan’s yard, this did not mean that they would be friendly to each other when they met in the wild. The good result was that when their stomachs were not so hungry, they were more likely to hunt ‘strangers’ as prey, but if they were really hungry, they would probably not ‘sacrifice themselves for others’ and go against their nature.

Therefore, it was a very dangerous thing to hunt food in the forest. If you were not careful, it was easy to become a delicacy in each other’s mouth. Compared with the large-scale predators, dogs were not much superior in single combat. In order to better protect themselves and obtain prey as much as possible, they quickly learnt to work in teams, and made up for the lack of individual strength by using the help of the strength of groups.

Bai Duan and Nie LanLei were far behind the dogs and watched them skillfully kill the small animals in the forest. They don’t look different. But soon, they found that the direction the dogs were heading was not deep into the woods, but around the edges of the woods and near the farmhouses.

Although they had been away from the military base for some time, the dogs had not forgotten their training in killing zombies. Following the rotten smell of zombies, they found the wandering zombies accurately, and knocked them down and bit their bodies. The scene was really very bloody and greusome.

As for the untrained wild dogs, they also imitated the movements of military dogs. Although they couldn’t be as independent as the military dogs, they also helped by raiding the array and cooperated with each other very tacitly.

From time to time, they also encountered zombies, who had Esper powers, and Bai Duan was surprised to find that in addition to the head dog, several other military dogs had developed Esper powers as well. Their instinct of fighting made them quickly learn how to use this power. When facing zombies, they would not lose.

The smell of blood and putrefaction soon attracted more animals. Bai Duan saw flying birds circling in the sky, including medium-sized birds such as crows and magpies, and raptors such as goshawks and vultures. He did not know whether they were also from the zoo or had been attracted here from other places.

In addition to birds, Bai Duan saw the familiar golden snub-nosed monkey. The golden snub-nosed monkey led the monkeys to jump down from the roof, grabbed rocks, iron and other hard things on the ground and smashed them skillfully at the zombies, who were knocked down by the dogs. They smashed their heads open, and then reached out to find the crystal cores.

The monkeys were well-trained to collect all the crystal cores by the golden snub-nosed monkey, which was the main income of the monkeys; while other animals with low organization seemed to understand the wonderful use of crystal cores, and they used various methods to break the skull of zombies, and swallow the crystal cores directly into their stomach.

This kind of zombie hunting lasted for about an hour, and the animals involved were quite rich. Even beasts like lions and tigers also had a foot in the hunt — here, the beasts didn’t attack each other, their only target were the zombies.

More than an hour later, the nearby zombies were basically cleaned up, and the animals scattered in teams of twos to threes to return to the forest.

Bai Duan watched the monkeys and dogs emerge again, and head for the nearby stream under the guidance of the golden snub-nosed monkey and the head dog. The monkeys cleaned the crystal crores which were stored in the golden snub-nosed monkey’s dimensional pocket, while the dogs got into the water, and washed away the dirt on their bodies, then climbed back to the shore while shaking their fur.

The golden snub-nosed monkey divided the cleaned crystal cores into two portions. Then he was surprised to find that among all of them, one was green. He hurriedly lifted it up to Bai Duan and held it in front of him.

The golden snub-nosed monkey’s hair was still stained with blood left by the zombies, but his dark eyes had pure joy, which made Bai Duan feel quite complicated.

He bent down, thanked the golden snub-nosed monkey and held the green crystal core in his hand.

Seeing Bai Duan taking the crystal core, the golden snub-nosed monkey ran back to the stream to begin dividing the crystal cores. Bai Duan didn’t know exactly how it was distributed, but neither the monkeys nor the dogs expressed any objection to it. They calmly swallowed their gain, chewed it and crunched it.

Nowadays, more and more zombies had evolved, so the monkeys and the dogs gained a lot of cores. On average, each animal could get two or three crystal cores, and sometimes even seven or eight.

After swallowing crystal cores, the wild dogs first dispersed. The golden snub-nosed monkey greeted Bai Duan and led the monkeys back to the forest. The dogs returned with Bai Duan, looking at him with pure and confused eyes, as if to ask if he wanted to go back together.

Bai Duan bent over and rubbed the dog’s still wet head, “Then let’s go back.”

The head dog rubbed his head against Bai Duan’s palm and set off on the way back to their home with the other dogs. About having enough to eat and drink, the dogs seemed to have relaxed a lot, which added a bit of wild vitality compared with the orders and prohibitions in the military base.

Following behind the dogs, Bai Duan said, “After I came here, they have been hunting for more than an hour every day, the zombies around here will be wiped out very soon.”

“It’s almost wiped out now,” Nie LanLei chuckled, “I didn’t meet any zombies on my way to the western mountains yesterday. Because most of the food had been taken away, I thought it was your masterpiece.”

“I don’t have that much ability,” Bai Duan curled his mouth. “When I go out to search for supplies, I will try to avoid all the battles that can be avoided. When I see zombies, I walk around them.”

“You are right to be careful,” Nie LanLei agreed, and then the conversation turned, “but they’re killing zombies so often. There must be a lot of the Apocalypse Virus in them too. You must pay attention to them when you touch them.”

“Of course, I’ve been very careful,” Bai Duan was serious.

“That’s good,” Nie LanLei nodded, “as an Esper, you have some resistant to the Apocalypse Virus. If you pay attention, you should not be so susceptible to infection and turn into a zombie easily.”

In fact, Nie LanLei didn’t care if Bai Duan became a zombie. Even if he turned into one, and looked ugly and disgusting.

For Nie LanLei, who had experienced countless worlds and whose taste had been too heavy for him to know anymore, it would not have any effect — Bai Duan’s mental power was too strong, his mind won’t be wiped out by the mutation factor, so as long as the soul in the body was Bai Duan, it was enough for Nie LanLei.

If Bai Duan turned into a zombie, Nie LanLei would certainly stop the drug that inhibited the mutation in his body. So they would be a pair of zombie husbands with a weird taste, together. It seemed that it would be a special experience?

Nie LanLei reminding Bai Duan of that, was mainly him considering that in case he became a zombie, his little lover who had no memories of his previous life might not be able to bear the shock, causing unnecessary twists and turns for their emotional progress in this life; more importantly, it was also a way to ask his lover not to get too close to these increasingly intelligent animals — while Nie LanLei could bear him touching their hair, but stuff like, hugging… That’s absolutely impossible! He didn’t want to be a rival to a group of animals at all!

Looking up at the dog chasing and frolicking ahead, Nie LanLei’s eyes became more complicated. Today’s performance of this group of animals was obviously smarter than he expected. They not only knew how to cooperate with the team of animals of the same race, but also learnt how to match the division of labor across races. It was true that they had become refined!

It may not be long before they could really join in the battle for the position of the future overlord and stand at the same level as humans and zombies.

If the intelligence of animals developed to such a level, it seems that cross-ethnic love would not be an impossible thing, so he would have to nip this sign from the root, and now, also start gradually isolating Bai Duan from the animals.

Of course, Bai Duan didn’t know that the guy next to him was having thoughts that were much ahead of time. All Bai Duan was worrying about was how to deal with the sudden appearance of Nie LanLei, who was not willing to leave.

Bai Duan never thought that there would be another human in his life, but when the other side refused to leave, he could not bring himself to use force, and did not even have the heart to use really cruel words.

This kind of experience was very special for Bai Duan. After all, he had coldly rejected many people since the end of the world, even if they cried and begged on their knees. It seemed that his patience for human beings in his whole life was all on Nie LanLei.

When Bai Duan hesitated over what to do with Nie LanLei, the other side took advantage of this opportunity, and quickly invaded Bai Duan’s life.

He was hardworking and careful, making all kinds of simple but practical furniture, unlike the old furniture in the farmhouse; he also took over the task of cooking, and let Bai Duan say goodbye to his original thought of ‘it’s okay to have enough to eat’. Even using low-cost common ingredients, he could still make excellent delicious food. He guided Bai Duan how to exercise and control his own abilities, and even helped him ‘develop’ his second Esper power, teaching him how to use his spiritual energy, which further strengthened Bai Duan; unconsciously, he also conquered (?) the animals around Bai Duan, even the headstrong and noisy golden snub-nosed monkey, succumbed to his ‘pornographic power’.

When Bai Duan got stuck from all the hugging of the animals, Nie LanLei was always the first one to give him assistance. He could get the golden snub-nosed monkey to scurry away just by glaring at it.

In this way, unconsciously, Nie LanLei was like a spring rain moistening things, invading Bai Duan’s life quietly with tiny things. When Bai Duan finally noticed, he was even used to the existence of Nie LanLei. After a while, Bai Duan found that he could no longer imagine facing the sudden decline of life quality if Nie LanLei decided to leave.

——It was really, “It’s easy to go from thrifty to extravagance, but from extravagance to thrifty? That was extremely difficult”.

After realizing this, Bai Duan never asked Nie LanLei to leave again, and Nie LanLei also naturally stuck around. After asking about the remaining gas in the Jeep, he proposed to enter the city together with Bai Duan to search for materials.

“The big bed has already been made. Now we need a mattress, which is soft, elastic and comfortable,” His tone was serious, but his black eyes sparkled with a flirtatious look.

“…That kind of thing, even the Jeep can’t fit it in, and even if it’s found, it can’t be brought back,” Subconsciously, Bai Duan retorted.

“It won’t fit in the Jeep, but it can fit in it,” Nie LanLei raised his hand and said, “Did you forget there’s someone who has enough room to bring it back?”

That someone was lying on the windowsill under the sun, but then it was hit by Nie LanLei on the head, and hurriedly sat up in a dazed manner.

The golden snub-nosed monkey, “………squeak?”