“Chu, the bathroom ……,” Xiao Wu craned his neck and came out of the bathroom, and at a glance, he saw the big orange on the ground, “Eh! Changing, mutant animal!”
He was so scared that he took a few steps back and grabbed the broom, “Brother Chu be careful!”
But An Yinong had already picked up Big Tangerine, its legs were covered in blood and had to be cleaned up properly.
“Don’t worry, Sting won’t just attack you.”
“Sting? Is that the feral cat you said got mixed up?” Xiao Wu’s eyes rounded: the name was all picked out? Just this ten minutes of effort, what the hell happened?
An Yinong had already started combing Sting’s fur. It looked big, but its body was light, and its fur was so compressed that it was skinny and bony.
It was nothing like the stout teddy from before.
Its fur was clean, though, so it should be licked and cleaned often.
“How old?”
“Meow.”
“Huh? Only a year old?”
An Yinong asked as he washed it, learning about it and its preferences through a question and answer.
The cat was born last spring to feral parents. It was also born a mutant and had always hunted mice for food.
Several mutant mice appear among the numerous and hard-to-catch rodents, and it is these mutant mice that Sting loves the most, while other mice are snacks at best.
Sting, a wild cat, didn’t like water much, but because the person who bathed it was An Yinong, he didn’t make a move to resist, only that he couldn’t help but sneeze a few times when blowing in the wind.
Long-haired cats are all high-color, washed, and blow-dried Sting shrugged off his golden fur, his light golden eyes surveyed, his expression was serious, he looked more like a shrunken male lion.
“Can I get a manicure? Won’t cut them, just remove the outer shell of your nails so they don’t get in the way of your hunting.”
Before he could finish his sentence, Sting had already put his paw into An Yinong’s hand with a ‘can’t do anything with you, you fix it’ look.
“Thank you Sting for cooperating.”
“Meow.”
The Sting that was shaking its flowing fur made Xiao Wu’s eyes light up, but the sense of crisis made him shrink back to the corner, “Chu, do you really want to keep it? I’ve heard that mutant animals all eat extraordinarily much.”
The store had been struggling to make ends meet for the past few months, could it still afford to raise a big eater like a mutant animal?
Wake up boss, you’re the one who can only order two veggies even for takeout!
“This is indeed a problem, looks like I need to find a part-time job.” An Yinong looked at the time, without realizing it was one o’clock, half of the lunch was eaten, but the rest of the dishes were balled up into a ball, really don’t want to eat.
“Xiao Chu ah …… ouch!” The boss’s wife next door was startled, she hugged her pet dog tightly, “What is this ah?”
“Just fixed the contract of the pet, called shocking.”
“Oh, you just received a pet?” Sister Zhang automatically translated this, “Why is it so big ah, mutated?”
She scrutinized it for a moment, “Where did you pick it up, why can’t I pick it up?”
“Sister Zhang, mutated beast, you also pick it up ah?” Xiao Wu asked with a trembling voice.
“Joking aside, Sister, I used to be a wolfhound breeder. Don’t look at them as fierce-looking, recognizing their masters. Besides, look at this child, and how well-behaved he is in Xiao Chu’s arms. It just so happens that my factory has been infested with rats lately, and I’m looking for a good rat catcher to calm the place down.”
After a while, Sister Zhang sent the notice posted on the street to An Yinong: “In the last two days, someone has come to clean up the neighborhood, and there is an inspection from the higher-ups. Your cat hasn’t been registered yet, right? Hurry up and register it, or else you’ll be arrested as a feral cat.”
An Yinong looked at it, it was tomorrow. It said that it was someone from the city coming to inspect and clean up the animals and plants that might mutate, those who have animals and plants mutating at home go and register as soon as possible, if you harbor mutated animals and plants and don’t register them, you’ll have to bear the consequences.
“Thank you, Sister Zhang, I will go in the afternoon.”
“Okay, I’ll leave as soon as I’m notified.”
As soon as Sister Zhang next door left, An Yinong put on his thin down jacket, “I’ll take Sting to register first, and you take a look at the store.”
“Chu you just decided?” Xiao Wu said flash marriage is not so fast, right, after two days of regret how to do it? But this is his boss, what can he say, of course, it’s a blessing, “Then Brother Chu you come back early.”
Back door.
“This is the gas, this is the brake.” An Yinong who had never ridden an electric donkey before was familiarizing himself with this mode of transportation, he was wearing a helmet, his expression was serious and grave, and a little nervous.
It wasn’t nervous about the electric donkey, it was about going outside and feeling the world.
He wouldn’t have had this kind of emotion before, because it wasn’t even his world, good or bad he could accept it.
Going to trace the past a bit, and reconnect the disconnected wires? But how to connect? Even if he meets an old friend, will there be anything left for them to talk about?
Or should he just treat it as a new birth and stop dwelling on it, just like all the previous worlds?
“Meow.” Sting jumped to where he stepped on his feet and tilted his head up to look at him, seemingly worried about him.
“Sorry.” He rubbed his furry face, “Let’s get going.”
The Mutant Beast Management Association was at the back of the administrative office building, and to enter it, you had to go in through the back door. An Yinong stopped his small electric donkey, locked it up, and walked inside while holding Sting, who couldn’t fit in the cat package.
On the display board next to the management association, a public service announcement of ‘Send mutant beasts to the Mutant Beasts Management Association’ was still playing, and a big star was talking about the correct way to deal with mutant beasts at home.
An Yinong was dumbfounded.
He forgot what this person’s name was, and only remembered that there was a variety show where this young man came once as a companion, and there was no dialog or footage throughout.
So now he was a famous movie star? And had filmed public service announcements related to mutant animals.
If he had lived until now, would he have been exposed to these mutated animals and plants, mutated people, and a society that had also changed?
“What a strange feeling.”
An Yinong had a strange feeling of being cut off it was one world and it had only been ten years, but he was like a fusion of two worlds and two eras.
Everything he knew belonged to the old world’s old era, while the problems and life he had to face belonged to the new world’s new era.
Shaking his head, he swept the past out of his mind, which led him inside with Sting in his arms.
Inside sat a young woman, tapping away on her computer with her head down, she saw An Yinong and lifted her glasses, “Here to register a mutant beast?”
“Can you tell?”
“Such a big cat, had to be carried in, at a glance it’s spoiled, how could it not be registered?”
The registration of mutant beasts was quite complicated, besides what could be seen with the naked eye, Sting was also taken by An Yinong to do tests, such as speed, strength, bite, reflexes, five senses, and so on.
In the end, the mutant rats were also utilized to do experiments, animals were most likely to reveal their abilities when hunting.
“It can pass through a pipe with a diameter of ten centimeters? The body can change size?”
There were so many things that went wrong during the test, and finally, the tester concluded, “This cat has entered the second stage of mutation, and the current test results are that the smallest it can shrink to the size of an egg, and the largest is its current size. The possibility of continued mutation cannot be ruled out. The overall ability is evolving towards hunting. It’s strange, cats that evolve towards hunting are usually not so docile.”
The staff thought it was strange, but the world was a big place, so she didn’t say anything, and after taking a picture, taking the blood and entering it into the gene bank, and binding it to An Yinong’s identity, she handed him the breeding certificate with Sting’s picture and the anesthesia collar.
“If anything changes during the period, or if you encounter difficulties, you can call us. Don’t believe those nonsense rumors on the internet, what with restricting pets’ freedom and doing illegal experiments …… These people are either stupid or bad.”
She frowned, looking deeply troubled by the rumors, “And ……”
Before this could be said, a man rushed in with a wail, “Help!” Immediately behind him rushed in a large dog half a man’s height, looking like a Doberman with eyes that turned red.
An Yinong sensed something, and he was about to go over to pacify it, when that skinny and svelte front desk staff flipped out from behind the desk with an elegant hurdle move, quickly holding the out-of-control big head, pressing down on its head, and sticking in a shot of anesthesia.
She was extremely fast and her shot was accurate, and in a blink of an eye, the red-eyed German Shepherd was under control. This action, it was all called a martial arts master.
The staff were either practicing martial arts or were mutants of the same.
The man had already spread out on the ground in fear, and once he saw that the dog was subdued, he branched out again, “Dog thing, still trying to bite me.”
“The dog’s state is not normal, what did you inject him with?” An Yinong identified a needle eye on the big dog.
“Hey, who are you?” The man’s eyes flashed and he made a stinky face at An Yinong.
“If you want to know, just go get a blood test.”
Hearing An Yinong’s words, he finally panicked a bit, “You want to scare me? Just take a test, if you don’t find out, you’ll compensate me for the mental damage and loss of time?”
“OK.” An Yinong agreed.
This sharp strength, see the man’s face changed, he looked to the staff: “Hey, hurt the dog, should not be immediately euthanized?”
The staff looked at the dog for half a day, and already saw what was going on, “Then we have to respect the animal rights as well don’t we, test it first, was it injected with any illegal prohibited drugs.”
She and An Yinong sang in unison, scaring the man out of his wits, and had to admit that he had injected the dog with a drug that could supposedly stimulate the potential of the animal’s second-order mutation.
This was done only to sell it for a higher price.
“Does a guy like that deserve to own a pet?” The man was taken away for purchasing and using illegal banned substances, and the staff skimmed his lips.
“This kind of thing happens often?”
“You mean things where the owner abandons the pet? It’s as much as pets abandoning their owners, isn’t it.”
“Huh?” An Yinong didn’t understand.
“All mutated animals have further developed their brains, some say they’ve become selfish, but I think they’re just following their nature to be more willing to think for themselves. Wanting better pets and better owners is all normal, morality is what goes against nature.”
The staff member spread his hands, “So in the future, acquiring a pet will no longer be a matter of wishful thinking on the part of the owner, it needs to be a ‘two-way run’, just like you and your cat. Times have changed, and we all need to adapt to these changes properly before we can do so.”
An Yinong looked over at Sting, who was looking at him while licking his paws.
“Tsk, when will I have my mutated pet?”
The sour staff turned his head to look at the dog on the ground, “The medical team will be here soon, I don’t know how much drug that person injected if it’s too much, I’m only afraid that his body will be damaged because of it.”
The dog was injected with anesthetics, its body couldn’t move, but its consciousness was still there, its red eyes looking at them. An Yinong could hear the sound of pleading for help under the out-of-control body.
He half squatted down, his hand stroking its forehead, “It won’t, I want it to be healthy and free of disasters.”
Ten minutes later, the mutant animal breeding license with the number obscured was sent to his peer group.
“New member of the family, Big Orange Sting.”
Several people in the group were blown out, “Mutant animal?”
“Where did you steal and abduct it? The face is so good, and what’s rare is that the eyes are also light gold, just like a lion cub.”
“Just because he took one more look at me in the crowd, he was kidnapped by me.” An Yinong laughed as he tapped the words, then he closed his cell phone and carried Sting, who was wearing a collar, to the front, “Let’s go home.”
The outskirts of a second-tier city, familiar streetscapes, unfamiliar stores, and a slightly cool spring breeze blew on his face.
The apricot blossoms on both sides were in bloom, and when the wind moved, the petals rained down.
This used to be the life he wanted most, a career he loved, a family to keep him company, a healthy body, and the comfort of riding his bike through the bustling markets.
Perhaps it was more important to cherish the moment than to force what had faded.
“Thank you, Seven.”
“What?” The system asked stupidly.
“You’ll know later.” An Yinong saw the apricot blossom rain floating in front of him, his hands gripped the handles and there was a smile on his face, “Sit tight, I’m going to speed up!”
The small electric donkey carrying one person, one cat, and one unity passed through the shade of the trees, falling all over the petals of the gradient pink flowers.
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