Get mad, get hurt, and make money to support your family.

"...... going out again?"

Jing Zihua's hair was freshly permed and tied in a high ponytail, with a few strands of slightly longer curly hair hanging down in front of her forehead, making her face as clean and beautiful as jade.

She leaned over the gas tank and half-joked, "You're working so hard, you're getting paid for it?"

Chi Xiaochi replied with a smile, "Of course I did."

As the two adults talk, Jing Yiming holds the fuel gun in both hands and shakily shoves the end of the gun into the filler to refuel Chi Xiaochi's motorcycle.

Chi Xiaochi cocked her head at him childishly.

Jing Yiming raised his head, looking back at Chi Xiaochi with admiration and the cleanest of stars in his eyes.

Chi Xiaochi rested one elbow on the dashboard, patted Jing Yiming's head, and said in a long, drawn-out voice, "Make money - support your family."

Jing Zihua said, "Don't fight for your life."

"Well, that's good." Chi Xiaochi swirls open the thermos of spirits and takes a sip.

"Well what?"

Chi Xiaochi smiles, "Nothing."

He worked so hard, so that Jing Zihua and others, who used to fight for their lives and live and die in the past, could sit comfortably at the back and advise him, "Don't work so hard.

He drove the filled-up car out of the gas station.

Their fuel, at first, was supplied by the gas station where they first hid.

Later, they found this small town backed by a natural oil field on one side.

A new gas station is built, and Jing Zihua is still the manager, as he has been for two generations.

Leaving the gas station, without waiting for his vocal summons, his boss paced gracefully out of the shadows and rubbed his ankle warmly.

Chi Xiaochi grips the clutch: "Boss, let's go."

The panther leaps into the backseat, crouches over it, and nuzzles the tip of his nose against the nape of Chi Xiaochi's neck, his hot breath tickling Chi Xiaochi a little.

They sailed slowly through the daytime marketplace.

The people on the street had long since become accustomed to such a spectacle.

Everyone knows that Ding Qiuyun's family has a leopard with a particularly tame temperament, and that it doesn't get angry even if a daring child comes to touch it.

He even plays catch with the kids on the street while waiting for Ding Qiuyun.

A few people even greeted Chi Xiaochi with, "Team Ding, walking the cat."

Chi Xiaochi blurted out, "Yeah."

The big cat behind him did not evolve intelligence like other creatures, and did not get angry when he sniffed, but instead wrapped his tail around one side of Chi Xiaochi's thigh and gently licked the back of his neck, licking Chi Xiaochi so hard that he almost drove the car into an S-shape walk, "Driving driving driving driving, go home and play again."

The panther didn't mess with him anymore, resting her head lightly against his back and rubbing it as if she were pampered.

Chi Xiaochi praised the good boy.

Unbeknownst to him, the panther kissed his spine lightly through his shirt, top to bottom, one by one, gentle and charming.

Chi Xiaochi is out looking for supplies again with his regular small team.

This time they will go to a city farther away, the very city Ding Qiuyun fled with his parents.

Before leaving, Ding's father and mother came to say goodbye as usual.

The old two were in high spirits and urged him never to run to the house, it was not clear what was going on there now, it might have turned into a world of creepers, so it was best not to go near it so easily.

It was snowing outside as they left the small town.

In this snowy weather, the motorcycle is easy to slip, Chi Xiaochi also afraid of his boss running tired, even the boss with the motorcycle on the back of the truck.

On the way, Sun Yan was using his truck to collect a weak radio signal, and he sang along with a song that was so silky and rambling that he didn't mind, bobbing his head and enjoying himself.

Sun Bin hunkered down in the passenger seat and dozed off; he'd been busy half the night yesterday repairing lines that had plummeted to a halt on the East Side.

Chi Xiaochi had nothing better to do than to hold a damaged semiconductor and remove a felt carpet of parts.

Yan Lanlan leaned over, "Team Ding, there are specialties in the arts, so save this for Sun to toss around."

Chi Xiaochi fiddled earnestly with the old circuit board, "I can do this. Someone taught me."

Coalman seemed interested in the parts as well, taking his claws and gently picking at them, separating them into piles and piles.

Chi Xiaochi gave a tsk and patted his paw, and he behaved well, resting his face on Chi Xiaochi's knee, guarding his master, his watery eyes fixed on him and never moving away.

There was a bold young man fiddling with the boss's tail, and he was good-natured enough to ignore it.

The truck was racing down the deserted highway when suddenly a misty song came from beyond, just in time to brush against the truck.

By the sound of it, it's "Happy Birthday."

What is it that sings in the desolate streets of this cold, post-apocalyptic world?

Out of curiosity, Yan Lanlan opened the small peephole and glanced out, and gasped.

"Stop the car!" Yan Lanlan raises his hand and knocks on the peep window, "Dasun, stop the car!"

As soon as Sun Yan stepped on the gas, Yan Lanlan opened the door of the truck and jumped out without waiting for the car to stop, as his teammates looked on in bewilderment.

There was some fresh snow on the ground, and it crunched and squeaked.

She ran to the source of the sound that was still moving forward.

And the source of the sound that was traveling against them heard the footsteps behind them and turned his head.

...... is a small guide dog looking for Xu Jingyuan.

It's a much different place today than it was two years ago.

The little guide dog's front paws were broken, and his snowball body was covered with a gray, unwashable shade that made him look like a dirty dungaree.

It looked like it had been torn by a wild animal as food, and the tail was torn down to a small, bare section, like a rabbit's tail, which was a rather comical appearance.

It walks with a limp, the tune "Happy Birthday" playing through its belly speakers.

Only its one pair of eyes remained as clear as the old days.

The little guide dog remembers Yan Lanlan and nods in a gentlemanly manner, "It's you, the lady at the gas station."

Yan Lanlan is running a little out of breath, but when he reaches the little guide dog, he doesn't know what to say for a moment, and his mouth puffs out huge clouds of hot air.

Looking at it like that, I can tell by thinking about it that it didn't find its little master.

Yan Lanlan weighed his words and gave a bright smile, "The song is very nice."

The little guide dog said tamely, "It's Missy's tenth birthday."

Yan Lanlan let out an "ah", "Are you celebrating her birthday."

The little guide dog said, "It's not just that. I think the people who have birthdays today, when they hear the Happy Birthday song, will poke their heads out of their rooms and cars to look at me, so that I might be able to find the lady."

Yan Lanlan's heart fluttered.

She noticed that in order to keep his balance, the little guide dog had stepped his injured front paw on a small, bulging snowbank.

She said, "Your paw is hurt."

The little guide dog lifted his front paws and said honestly, "It won't hurt."

"Come with us." Yan Lanlan extended an invitation to it, "We can fix you. There are plenty of AIs in our area that are friendly to old humans like you."

The little guide dog asked hopefully, "Is there a lady named Xu Jingyuan?"

Yan Lanlan is silent.

She couldn't lie in the face of those eyes.

The little guide dog also understood what the silence meant, and shook his head gently and lightly.

"I came from there." The little guide dog turned back and looked insistently toward the end of the vast road ahead, "I'm going to the front, and maybe I'll pass by your place again, and then, we may see each other again. See you later, Ms. Gas Station."

Yan Lanlan gave an ouch as he watched the little guide dog turn around and walk away again.

The little guide dog turned back.

Even knowing that what he was about to say could potentially hurt the loyal little guide dog, Yan Lanlan was ruthless and said, "She left you behind in the first place and hasn't gone back to look for you in all these years, so she probably doesn't remember you anymore."

The little guide dog stood in the cold wind, his gray fur torn into a ball by the wind that held the snow particles.

Its big black and white eyes gazed at Yan Lanlan for a moment, and then it grinned as if it were smiling sweetly.

It says, "She may forget me, she may have forgotten me, she may have a new guide dog. ...... But I have to make sure with my own eyes that she is OK without me. That would put my mind at ease. Thank you for your concern, Ms. Gas Station."

With that, it gracefully owed Yan Lanlan a bow and turned to step into the blowing cold wind.

Yan Lanlan stood frozen in place.

The little guide dog came and went in the snow just as he had two years before, as if it were an illusion that only appeared in the snow.

But the fading sound of the music always echoed in Yan Lanlan's mind.

At the sound of Sun Yan's horn, Yan Lanlan Fang Cai came back to his senses, ran back under the truck, and leapt into the truck with his footpegs.

As she lifted the curtain, she glanced back again.

The little guide dog's plum-shaped paw prints were buried a little by the freshly fallen snow.

She pursed her lips once and dug into the wagon, bringing in a flurry of snow.

When she sat down, Ding Qiuyun asked her, "Acquaintance?"

Yan Lanlan dusts snow off his overalls, "Pinkie ...... Well, acquaintance."

In the post-apocalyptic world, such pure and sincere feelings actually came from a machine that was installed with an emotional AI.

The AI taught it how to show favoritism, how to perform its duties and be loyal, but probably never taught it what it should do after its owner disappeared.

It's doing everything it wants to do right now.

Yan Lanlan told the story of the guide dog to the team members in the compartment.

Everyone was speechless for a long time.

And it was only after the speech that Yan Lanlan realized that he had met the little guide dog twice and had never asked his name.

It wasn't practical to turn around again now, so she launched herself onto her pillow against the rumbling, vibrating walls of the carriage.

Chi Xiaochi finished repairing the semiconductor and then rested on the coal boss's soft belly, holding it in his hands and playing with it.

He thought about the story Yan Lanlan had told him and how he would behave when he met Gu Xinzhi later, and the truck's lurching was so regular that before long he was curled up on the leopard's belly, sound asleep.

Seeing Chi Xiaochi sleeping soundly, the leopard self-consciously surrounded itself as a fortress, properly enclosing its master and gently wrapping its tail around Chi Xiaochi's waist.

Chi Xiaochi slept all the way into town under the loving care of his big cat.

The once bustling metropolis has been transformed into a half-empty city.

What makes it half a seat is that there are still signs of animal activity here.

Two years down the road, animals that couldn't adapt to their environment died, so the crowd wasn't too surprised to see an ostrich run parallel to the truck for a while before turning right at the intersection and parting ways with them.

They raided a few empty malls and there was still some food left inside that hadn't been looted, and the naturally refrigerated environment extended the shelf life of the food again.

They found toothbrushes and toothpaste, a few winter bedding items, pots and pans, and packed it all up and shipped it to the car.

Yan Lanlan was also girly enough to pick up a box of face masks.

After searching, they were also rewarded with a surprisingly large number of surprises.

--There is a pile of intact boxes in the corner of the warehouse. Due to the high ground on which they were stored, they were not even submerged in water.

Unwrapped, it turned out to be more than a hundred bags of corn kernels, with a net weight of two tons.

For the past two years, they have never been able to grow viable corn, and this pile of corn to take back with them would be a complete antidote to their cravings.

Finding rations to fill their hunger, they went to several hospitals in the city.

After some searching, the team was rather downhearted.

The three dispensaries had long since been emptied, with only a few leaks in the nooks and crannies. Besides, two years had passed and some of the medicines were no longer edible.

Chi Xiaochi, however, didn't give up, going to the largest downtown hospital and abandoning his search for the pharmacy in plain sight to go straight to the drugstore.

The door to the drugstore was locked, and the lock was an old-fashioned one.

Everyone has pounced a few times and carried corn for half a day, and now they're all disillusioned.

Sun Bin suggested, "Team Ding, let's go, the animals in this city are running around, in case we run into any mutated monsters ......"

Before he could finish his sentence, he was hit from all sides, and was knocked into Sun Yan's arms with an ouch.

Chi Xiaochi saw that the door of the pharmacy was unusually strong, heavy and wide, with traces of smashing and prying and even fire.

He broke the eye of the lock and looked at it, confirming that the lock should not have been picked, living like a hard hickory, everyone knows that the kernel inside is delicious, but can only look at the ocean.

He asked 061, "Mr. Six, help me test if there's any screw-ups in there."

061 answered succinctly, "Yes."

With 061's words in mind, Chi Xiaochi has taken a piece of cake.

Chi Xiaochi crouched down in the eye of the lock for a while, took out a pin from his jacket, bent it with his teeth, poked it into the eye of the lock, first picking off the red rust inside, then changed his head, and pushed the pin into the eye of the lock, grinning gently, with his ear pressed against the cold iron door, fiddling with the core of the lock.

The team is used to electronic locks, but they can't do anything about the strange old locks, and they don't even quite understand what Chi Xiaochi's actions mean now.

The crowd didn't react until that door creaked inward.

When they came back to their senses, the players were shocked, "Holy shit, Team Ding, it's okay."

Chi Xiaochi tucked the twisted curved pin back into her coat pocket and calmly said, "I was taught that."

Everyone went crazy when a bank full of medicines appeared in front of them.

As everyone was moving boxes of medicines that could be of use to the trucks without even looking at the production dates, Chi Xiaochi found a long-frozen, iron-blue body in the corner of the pharmacy.

The body was male, dressed as a staff member with a work tag on his chest, the very same caretaker of the pharmacy.

This kind of freezing and starving to death on the road down, the crowd has seen too much over the years, has long been strange.

Upon entering, Chi Xiaochi noticed something blocking the lock side of the door, a half-broken key, and when he went through his pockets, he found the body's pockets with a broken key head that fit just right, and a crumpled up ball of paper.

Chi Xiaochi unfolded the ball of paper, which was filled with the names of various supplies, each with a horizontal bar drawn behind it, followed by the corresponding medication given.

The light blue water pen marks are the exact same color as the ink left on the tiger's mouth of the corpse's right hand.

Chi Xiaochi thought that after the disaster, this person, probably wanting to utilize the resources nearby and hoard them, wrote a note to the people who came to rob the medicine, asking them to search for supplies for themselves according to the note.

However, in a life and death situation, all the constraints of the law on a person disappear without a trace, and who still talks to him about equal exchange.

In the face of looting, the medicine keeper in a hurry to hide in the pharmacy, and take the key to unlock the door, who want to force too hard, the key folded in the lock, but in turn blocked his own way of life.

He spent the rest of his time, I'm afraid, guarding this hoard of medicines, spending the last days of his life in fear, amidst the angry shouts and slamming doors of the medicine snatchers.

Chi Xiaochi reached down and pressed his stomach, finding it horribly cold and hard and bulging.

Looking at the empty pill plates and pill boxes scattered around him, he had clearly swallowed a large amount of drugs close by in a situation of extreme hunger, which in turn had harmed his own life.

He let out a small sigh and took the piece of paper filled with supplies and covered the Medicine Keeper's dead face.

They moved half of the medications which almost filled a heavy duty truck compartment.

The team was so happy that they couldn't see their teeth, and were thinking of simply hitting the road before it got too dark to save any trouble.

Still, their Diners insisted on going to a mall near the drugstore to look around some more and see if there was anything available.

People are used to listening to him, and besides, supplies don't bite the hand, so naturally the more the merrier.

So there was no objection from anyone.

Yan Lanlan asked cheerfully, "If we find anything good, we won't have a place to sit."

After a unanimous discussion, they decide to throw Sun Bin down if there is not enough space, and Sun Bin panics and argues that he is so skinny that he doesn't take up any space at all, much to the amusement of everyone.

Chi Xiaochi thought, "Not much, just to go and pull the animal back.

Chi Xiaochi sits in the car while two young men across the street smoke cigarettes.

He stroked the warped curved pin in his pocket with one hand, cradled the newly repaired semiconductor in the other, and a smile played faintly at the corners of his mouth as he thought of the teacher who had taught him so many things.

After thinking for a while, Chi Xiaochi suddenly spoke up and said to the two young men, "Got any more cigarettes."

The two men with cigarettes in their mouths were confused.

Yan Lanlan was also astonished, "Team Ding, when did you start smoking."

At that moment, Sun Yan stopped the car slowly.

They got to the front of that mall.

Chi Xiaochi waved his hand at the gesture, stepped over Coalman, who had been lying obediently on his side, and laughed, "Forget it, just say it."

...... is nothing more than a sudden reminder of the past self that always had a cigarette in his mouth.

With this thought, he lifted the heavy curtain.

No one reacted to the sound of gunfire when a loud bang rang out.

Chi Xiaochi took two steps backward from the force of the action, looked down at the right side of his chest, and his body wobbled paper-thin as he planted himself forward and tumbled out of the bucket.

Chi Xiaochi half fainted, only heard 061 a trembling "Xiaochi", and then his voice was drowned out by the sound of gunfire like peas.

Sun Yan became furious, pulled over Sun Bin in the passenger seat, and wrapped his head with his down jacket, "Fuck you! There's an ambush here!!!"

But before he could pull the top-fired gun out of its toolbox, he heard an almost feral growl that shook his instinctive legs.

A pure black flying blade leapt out of the car, selected a ruined car spewing fire, and dove in headfirst.

Only blood and flesh bloomed and flew in all directions, splattering the only three remaining windows of the junked car with a fishy red in an instant.

Before the screams even had time to sound twice, the man's headless corpse was flung out horizontally and slammed straight into a side wall.

A dark shadow slipped ghostly out of the window, quickly stalking to the next point of fire as the ambushers shot in bemused flurries.

Seeing the corpse stains on the severed corpse, a thought emerged from the squad members in unison:

A new human being?

Too late to wonder why there were so many Neo-humans hiding in front of this seemingly run-down mall, Sun Yan, red-eyed, shot down an exposed Neo-human with a single shot, fished another phaser out from under his seat, and twisted his head around to yell, "...... Lanlan! "

Yan Lanlan understood the situation, copied out his gun, and directly engaged the other side in a firefight.

The ambushers could not have imagined in any way that the other side would actually have far superior overwhelming firepower and a godly, ferocious and abnormal berserker beast.

Chi Xiaochi woke up from the pain again, his head is a little unclear, in front of the eyes of a piece of black star mosquitoes flying shadow.

He felt himself being picked up.

The car was so besieged that Yan Lanlan, who had risked jumping out of the car, was unable to carry him to the car, but had to half-carry him, fighting his way back towards the interior of the mall.

I don't know how long it took, but the gunfire stopped.

His ear was pressed to the ground so he could clearly hear familiar footsteps pacing in from the doorway.

He barely managed to open his eyes, and what he saw in them wasn't the boss he knew so well anymore.

-- In the afterglow of the setting sun, Panther's mouth was full of blood, dripping from his pale silver whiskers, and the muscles at his waistline were stretching out one by one, pulsing as fiercely as severed arteries.

He didn't have time to clean up his grooming before he rushed to Chi Xiaochi's side, sniffing his chest.

Chi Xiaochi endured the sharp pain and pulled the front flap, "Don't be afraid ...... I'm not hurt."

Padded there was a shirt with iron plates clamped to it, a simple bulletproof suit of sorts, and the slug was jammed into the steel plate at the location of his heart, which had been deformed.

Seeing the bullet that hadn't entered, the panther looked relieved and fell to its knees directly beside Chi Xiaochi, its eyes a misty blue that didn't match the blood-red color of its body.

Chi Xiaochi stroked his blasted spine of fur and coaxed him in a small, pain-inducing voice, "Boss, boss."

He lowered his head, not daring to hurt him with his force, but only daring to bite hard at Chi Xiaochi's hair.

While the man and the leopard were embracing each other tightly in one place, a surprised and a hint of frightened male voice came from behind them, "Qiuyun?!"