Wasteland Farming, Manual for Raising Human Cubs

Chapter 2 Hope Base
Zhao Xiaoxiu, who had just woken up, was covered in a wrinkled adult shirt, with only her little head showing.

A round head, round eyes, and sparse, matted yellow hair, like a hairy chestnut.

Huo Die squatted beside the bed, staring at her with his eyes. His eyeballs turned white in his sockets, then rolled back again, and he seemed very happy.

Zhao Xiaoxiu didn't know that from Zhao Gang's perspective, the entire planet was gray.

She alone has color.

Especially at this moment, after she had eaten and rested enough, the colorful bubbles came out of her body.

This unique bright color looks particularly charming.

Zhao Gang grinned and smiled at Zhao Xiaoxiu.

A blood-red tentacle only as big as a little finger stretched out from his body and poked Zhao Xiaoxiu's face, which was stained with sleep, with a hint of tentativeness.

The child's face was soft, and when you poked it, a hole would appear, and then it would bounce back.

Zhao Xiaoxiu clearly saw that Huo Die's eyes instantly turned into vertical pupils and flashed twice.

He was quite excited!

Then, the tentacle was fanned away by his big hand like a palm leaf fan.

It was obvious that these tentacles grew out of his body, but he seemed to be unfamiliar with the tentacles on his body.

Zhao Gang raised his hand, extended his index finger, and poked the cub's face once, twice, and three times.
Zhao Xiaoxiu was just a frail three-year-old child. He couldn't handle the force and was poked all over the place by him, falling like a tumbler.

But the living father is completely unaware of this.

Maybe he had never seen such cubs before, so he found it interesting and did it again and again.

The mysterious pupils on that face were filled with human-like excitement and love.

There was only one thought in his mind: Feed her! Feed her! Feed her!
Zhao Xiaoxiu bit her cheek tightly, bulged her eyes, and dared not say a word.

There was a knock on the door.

The evil hand on Zhao Xiaoxiu's face immediately stopped, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Granny Meng from next door called out from outside the door: "Gangzi, hurry up and get some water!"

The old man kept muttering, "Hurry up, the sluice gate will be closed at seven o'clock, and the water is only released once a day. Don't be lazy. Xiaoxiu's hands and feet are black. As a father, you have to pay attention. Wash the baby quickly. The things outside are dirty, so as to avoid getting sick."

Granny Meng put her ear to the door and when she heard some noise in the house, she prepared to leave with the bucket.

After taking two steps outside, he suddenly remembered that his son saw Zhao Gang being carried back by the thugs from the arena yesterday.

He stepped back and asked tentatively, "Is there anything wrong at home?"

After waiting for a long time, a voice came from the room: "Don't worry about me, Granny Meng, you go first."

It was indeed Zhao Gang's voice, and his tone was the same as usual, nonsensical.

Grandma Meng was still a little worried, so she called out to Xiaoxiu. After hearing Zhao Xiaoxiu call out "Grandma", she urged Zhao Gang again to hurry up, and then left.

The survivors of Hope Base live in an unfinished super high-rise building.

The building has a total of forty-five floors.

Because it was an unfinished building, there was no elevator and there were only two large freight elevators used by the construction team.

Therefore, the residential area is only on the floors below the 18th floor.

Floors 18 to 40 are used as storage warehouses for the base.

The top five floors are the building's reserved defense walls, used to resist attacks by mutant birds.

There are four special areas surrounding the unfinished building.

One is the territory of the base’s top management and biological companies, which belongs to the core area of ​​the base.

One is the industrial zone of the Hope Base, where the tools needed by scavengers are produced and sold to the other four bases in exchange for food.

The twelfth year of the end of the world, which was last year.

On the originally vast territory of Country C, the survivors of Country C established five major survivor bases in the east, west, south, north and center based on the natural geographical advantages of each place.

The Hope Base located in the east is backed by a large amount of urban waste resources and mainly makes a living by scavenging and industrial manufacturing.

The five major bases cooperate with each other, and are strongly assisted by the SHASI virus inhibitors and evolutionary agents newly developed by the biological company.

The human beings' life of exile has finally come to an end. The other two special areas in the Hope Base are super garbage stations located within the base's power grid.

and the chaotic shanty towns outside the base’s electrical grid.

There lives a large group of scavengers there, most of whom are not native to Country C, so they are not accepted by the major bases.

Outside the power grid, they are not restricted by the rules within the base and only follow the most primitive rules of survival.

The unfinished buildings at the base that seem crowded and cramped are something that the survivors of the shantytowns yearn for.

However, for Zhao Xiaoxiu, a resident living in the "dreamed-of place".

This unfinished building is really smelly and dirty.

After Grandma Meng left, her father found two empty buckets, picked her up, put her in one of the buckets, and went out.

More than 20,000 people were crammed into the 18-story building, with only one public toilet and one washroom on each floor.

Clean and pollution-free water is provided at the base on a regular basis and in fixed quantities every day, which can only meet basic survival needs.

So let alone taking a shower, even washing your face and brushing your teeth every day is difficult to achieve.

There is a public bathroom in the industrial area, but the high ticket price of 50 points per person is enough to buy 10 bottles of nutrient solution.

As long as they don't do any strenuous work, a bottle of nutrient solution can sustain an adult for a day.

Spending ten days' food money to take a half-hour bath is simply a luxury for people whose survival needs have not yet been met.

So when there are a lot of people, the smell from everyone gathers together, and the power is comparable to that of biological poison gas.

Coupled with the habit of urinating anywhere when there is no public toilet, the entire floor is filled with the indelible smell of urine.

Zhao Xiaoxiu squatted in the bucket and quietly covered her nose with her hands.

As a result, a sour and stinky smell rushed straight to the top of his head, and only then did he realize that his little paws were pitch black, and there were sticky black stains in the cracks of his nails.

Zhao Xiaoxiu: “.”

The base releases water between 6am and 7am.

Although it takes a full hour, there are so many people that if you go too late you won't be able to get water.

When Zhao Gang arrived at the water collection point carrying two buckets and a baby, the queue was already three hundred meters long.

Fortunately, the building manager and his men maintained order, and everyone was relatively well-behaved.

But there are always small conflicts when fetching water every morning.

Not everyone has two large plastic buckets like Zhao Gang.

Some residents cannot even find a bucket for their entire family, so they use mineral water bottles or bowls or other water-collecting containers, which makes the process slow.

The people queuing behind were getting anxious and couldn't help but urge them to come.

It has been thirteen years since the end of the world. No one who survives is easy to mess with. In addition, the pressure of survival is enormous, and people are in a state of mental tension for a long time. It is not uncommon for people to kill each other over a disagreement.

Zhao Xiaoxiu squatted in a bucket that could hold two of her. She looked at the people around her drawing water while secretly observing the living father in front of her.

Ever since he left home and put on Zhao Gang's clothes, he seemed to have really become Zhao Gang.

Whether it is the way they walk or the tone of voice when greeting neighbors, they are exactly the same, without a single mistake.

This ability of imitation made Zhao Xiaoxiu feel as if her biological father was still alive.

But he is not a human after all.

A pointed tentacle as thin as a silk thread stretched out from the back of Zhao Gang's hand holding the bucket, climbed up the bucket handle, and went in front of Zhao Xiaoxiu.

Seeing her staring at his two black claws with disgust, he couldn't help but stretch out his tentacles out of curiosity and approach her two black little claws.

Then, Zhao Xiaoxiu saw the tentacle tremble violently and then shrink back with a "swoosh".

Huo Di immediately looked down at her with a complicated expression and hint of disdain.

Zhao Xiaoxiu chuckled, feeling a strange sense of satisfaction in his heart, 'It seems I'm not the only one who is smelling the stink.'

　New book is here! Welcome to collect and vote, hehehe

　　
　
(End of this chapter)