Chapter 18: Ah Ye
  Lin Xi doesn’t need a companion.
  He frowned and his eyes stayed on the other person’s tag.
  The tag was stuffed into her clothes but from the shape outlined, it was vaguely the shape of a bone eaten by a dog.
  She doesn’t seem to want anyone to recognized her tag and also looks more like a skinny tomboy.
  The tomboy still held on to it, the little freckles on the tip of her nose seemed to be threatened, as if Lin Xi didn’t agree, she wouldn’t let go either.
  In the end, Lin Xi didn’t answer or refuse.
  The woman’s eyes lit up, she randomly packed the quilt, stuffed it under the tree to hide it, and picked up her iron bucket.
  The iron bucket was thicker than her waistline and almost took up most of her body.
  However, she was not too cumbersome at all. She carried it with a smile and followed Lin Xi every step of the way.
  The two went out of the city gate together and came to the foot of the city wall.
  The sand was already full of people at this time. After the fight last night, the ground was covered with the stumps of giant toads. The mutants had already occupied their respective territories and began to cut and separate the fats on the alien’s bodies.
  In this era, oil resources are scarce and the fats on the alien species will become one of the fuels to replace oil. Mutants extract energy from fat bodies for body fuel, power generation, and maintain the technological civilization left over from the Holocene.
  In this city, fat is also the raw material for the transactions between mutants. People dig up the limbs of the mutants killed by the “giant claw” and exchange them for basic necessities and shelter through earthen houses.
  As a result, the strong mutants occupied the most fat corpses. The mutants with teams also circled the territory and divided labor in an orderly manner to extract lipids.
  The remaining old, weak and sick mutants had no way to snatch it from the rest of the mutants, In the worst place, slowly scraping the barely visible fat under the skin.
  The wasteland is blowing with sand, the mutants are making a living in the desert at the corner of the city wall.
  Lin Xi and the woman also came to the stump of a giant toad.
  This stump is the leftover that has been eaten by the “giant claw” and the inside is almost rotten. It is the place that other mutants have picked.
  The young man with the windbag took a few glances, then took out the knife to cut the fat body.
  The woman did not dare to come forward.
  She saw the green archaea on the dregs and stood outside hesitating for a while.
  But without fat, she would have no food or water for today.
  “Let me get one for you.” Lin Xi suddenly said and began to walk towards the stump.
  The woman was anxious and quickly pushed up her iron bucket.
  “I don’t want much, just give me half a catty.” she said.
  Lin Xi looked back at the tomboy.
  The tomboy giggled nervously at him again.
  Lin Xi lowered his eyes. He raised his knife, took out a piece of white fat from the remnant and threw it into her bucket.
  The weight of the fat mass is just half a catty.
  The tomboy’s smile froze.
  She knew the meaning of the mutant in front of her, which meant “give you half a catty, you can now get out of here”.
  But she also found that the mutant was very skilled at digging fat blocks.
  Today’s food is negotiated, but what about tomorrow and the day after tomorrow?
  The woman’s feet seems to be rooted at place and didn’t want to leave.
  She looked at Lin Xi’s back and began to seriously think about her future.
  At this moment, the crowd in front suddenly heard a terrified cry.
  “Run! The group of rodents are here!”
  Rodents are also Xenogeneic. They are the evolution of mammalian mice, almost ten feet tall.
  In the desert, these rodents usually travel in groups, seeking out the carrion of other alien species.
  Similarly, they will prey on humans when they want delicious meat.
  The woman’s face changed, she turned her head quickly. Before she could see the group of mice clearly, the screams of the mutants in her ears had already exploded in the crowd.
  A huge rat crawled onto the giant toad’s body, grabbing mutant on his forelimbs, its teeth kept biting on its prey. In a short while, he ate the upper body of the mutant.
  Next to the giant toad, there are 30 or 40 swarms of mice crossing the border like locusts, looking for food around.
  The mutants who first discovered the rat group escaped by chance. The slow-moving mutants were captured by this group of small mutants and used as a pre-dinner meal.
  Almost half of the mutants died at the scene. Their blood, internal organs, and limbs were all over the place, as if the giant toad reappeared and fell into earth again like last night.
  The woman backed away in a panic but the group of mice had already found her and Lin Xi’s direction.
  “Ah, ah, ah—don’t come here! Don’t come here!” She picked up the iron bucket and swung it over but instead fell to the ground by inertia.
  The mice rustled around.
  “Don’t eat me, don’t eat me, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die…” The woman began to hold her head again in despair.
  On the verge of death, every nerve on her body became sensitive. She felt the bloody breath of the rodent close at hand and felt the claws of the animal scratch her face, she even heard a sharp blade cutting through her flesh.
  Death follows like a shadow.
  She waited in fear but the pain never came.
  Next to it was the sound of heavy objects falling to the ground.
  She was so frightened that she opened her eyes timidly.
  A huge mouse head fell before her eyes.
  There was archaea surging in the cut surface of the rodent’s neck and a person stood in front of her.
  This person was wearing a windbag and a small knife in his hand. It was the young man who came with her.
  He blocked the archaea that shot out like a spurt of blood in an instant for her.
  The woman’s throat was hoarse and quickly opened her eyes to look at the other person’s back.
  However, there are more dense rodents rushing over.
  The young man in the windsock didn’t seem to see it and held the knife tightly to meet the swarming rats.
  When a rodent came near, he killed it.
  After a while, more than a dozen mice were disemboweled under his knife.
  The woman was stunned.
  The aliens were also become afraid. They felt the horror of the human being in front of them and began to spread out gradually.
  All of a sudden, there are fewer people and fewer alien species remained.
  The corpse collection of the giant toad suddenly seemed empty.
  The woman swallowed her saliva in hindsight and hurriedly looked at the mutant who saved her.
  But the mutant didn’t intend to continue the pursuit. He threw the knife in his hand, drained the blood from the knife and turned around to collect the fat again.
  His technique was very accurate and fast. After a while, the 30-pound iron bucket was already filled with the raw materials.
  But he still didn’t stop and took the bucket from the nearby dead mutant.
  After ten minutes, he cut another barrel of fat blocks and continued to look for next bucket.
  The woman sat on the ground and watched dully. After a while, she finally reacted, got up and walked over the area infected with archaea and began to collect the buckets of the dead.
  She put them at Lin Xi’s feet.
  Lin Xi glanced at it.
  The woman grinned immediately.
  “Hey, big brother, I’ll help you out.” She repeated again, showing a row of white teeth shyly and friendly.
  Lin Xi: “…”
  There are hypocrisy appeared in women’s eyes.
  Lin Xi frowned. He didn’t answer but also didn’t refuse.
  Three hours later, he had decomposed most of the giant toad corpse and extracted the rodent’s fat block, enough for twenty iron buckets.
  An iron bucket is a month’s food for a normal human being and now these things are enough for a person to spend a year in the city prosperously.
  The woman looked envious for a while. Before she left, she somehow pulled out a scooter from a pile of dead people and laboriously carried these iron buckets full of fat blocks into the car.
  This was originally a man’s job but this time, Lin Xi didn’t take any further action.
  He pressed his stomach alone, propped himself on the corpse of the alien beside him, leaned over and retched.
  What he vomited was still water. When he couldn’t vomit any more, he vomited blood and then got up randomly.
  The tomboy couldn’t help but be stunned as he moved and watched.
  She hesitated for a while, then took out a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it over.
  “This is clean.” She thought about it and said.
  Lin Xi’s movements paused and did not answer.
  The woman grunted and slowly put the handkerchief back.
  “My name is Ah Ye.” She introduced herself and asked again, “Brother, you are amazing! What should I call you?”
  Lin Xi still didn’t speak. With a pale face, he got up and grabbed the scooter on the ropes and began to pull the goods.
  Seeing this, Ah Ye hurried over to push the cart.
  “Since you don’t want to say it, I think you have white hair and call you Brother Bai, okay?”
  Lin Xi still didn’t answer.
  “Brother Bai!” Ah Ye called again immediately.
  Lin Xi turned his head slightly.
  The two of them returned to the city one after the other and came to the hall of the earthen house.
  The dwarf boy was still in the hall and received their buckets.
  He counted the raw materials that Lin Xi brought this time and settled a total of five gold coins and seventy silver coins for Lin Xi.
  “As expected of you.” He seemed to have expected this result.
  “Can I change this for something?” Lin Xi ignored it and asked.
  “Of course.”
  The dwarf boy turned around and opened the huge cabinet behind him, presented the exhibits one by one.
  “What do you want?” Amid the dazzling array of goods, the dwarf asked without interest.
  On the shelf, gold and silver jewelry reflects colorful light and there is a cold glow, as well as human clothing and food commodities, almost everything.
  In contrast, Lin Xi’s complexion appeared gloomy.
  “I want seeds.” He had a pale face and cracked lips. “Seeds that van be sown in spring and autumn, a cold and drought tolerant seeds.”
  “That’s a bit expensive.” There are not many plants that can survive.”
  Lin Xi directly pushed forward five gold coins.
  The dwarf took out the supplies immediately.
  Five packets of seeds.
  Lin Xi opened it. His current face was very sick and his hands began to tremble but he still checked carefully the seeds one by one.
  Every grain seemed precious to him.
  While he’s checking his goods, the dwarf decided to take care of another small customer.
  He came to Ah Yee.
  The tomboy’s things are much simpler but she proudly sold 30 silver coins: “I want a clean water, clean food, and a clean bed.”
  This time her iron bucket was also filled with fat. During her “intimate conversation” with brother Bai on the road, the other party did not take her bucket as his own.
  She feels like a nouveau riche now and doesn’t want to live a life of fear outside anymore.
  She was happily browsing the shelves, and suddenly found a crystal test tube on the right corner.
  “What is that?!” Her eyes lit up again immediately.
  The test tube was shiny and filled with blue liquid, like the color of the rumored sea of ​​freedom.
  “It is the experimental reagent from the other side, number DL18-09.” The dwarf reached out and put the reagent in front of the guest.
  Ah Yee took the reagent and looked under the light, she saw the crystal blue from the glassware.
  “It’s beautiful!” she sighed sincerely, “Can I buy it?”
  However, someone interrupted her shopping.
  “That’s the test item of the mutants of the second generation of the other side. None of the people who tested the DL18 reagent survived. You can only buy it as an ornamental item but you can’t break it.” The cold voice of the person who replied was Lin Xi on the side.
  Ah Ye was stunned for a moment, only to see that her “Brother Bai” had already inspected his seeds. He covered his abdomen with one hand and carefully wrapped the seeds with the other.
  Ah Ye frowned, and immediately returned the things back.
  “Why would anyone create mutants in this world!” she muttered in a low voice, a little resentful.
  “Be content, mutants can make humans linger and live for another hundred years, thanks to the gift of human aliens.” The dwarf boy said with hanging eyes.
  “Why a hundred years?”
  “The infection failure rate of women is 100% and mutants cannot reproduce.”
  She had heard of the infection failure rate of women, but she could not understand other things.
  She didn’t intend to stay longer here.
  She felt that once the silver coins were fully used, there would be no second time. She thought that it would be better for her to hug Brother Bai’s thigh.
  Brother Bai has 70 silver coins left.
  Ah Ye thinks that she might still be able to rub some again.
  She thought, looking at the white-haired youth with a windbag on his hand with a smile.
  But the next scene made her stunned again.
  She saw Lin Xi shaking hands, took out a syringe from his pocket and injected himself intravenously.
  But that couldn’t stop his trembling body. He tried hard to stand by holding to the wall of the counter but his body slowly slipped along the wall.
  His windbag also slid down, revealing a beautiful face with fine cold sweat all over his forehead and neck.
  “Brother Bai, what’s wrong with you?” A Ye was shocked and quickly supported Lin Xi.
  “Water…water.” Lin Xi lowered his head and panted heavily, he said only two words with difficulty.
  Ah Ye was confused.
  At this moment, the dwarf boy stuck his head out and laughed.
  “His nutrients have been drained and he has to restore some storage, otherwise he will not be able to live longer.”
  “What?” Ah Ye was stunned, “What should I do?”
   “He put it in his water and let him drink it.”
~~~~~~~
Edited: 7/20/22
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