"Quite the unique look you've got there." Angor looked at the girl walking out, his mouth twitching slightly.
Xu Xiaoyou remained expressionless. Clinging to her head like a koala was a thin, small figure with a mouth full of shark-like teeth, currently using her head to grind its teeth.
"Did you get her out or not?"
"You're bleeding."
"I'm asking you, did you get her out or not?"
"Is this really okay? Your head is gushing blood!" Angor's eyes were filled with horror.
Noticing he had lost his composure, Angor coughed dryly and his expression softened.
"Since you've brought her out, I'll fulfill my promise. She's yours now."
Xu Xiaoyou reached out her hand toward Angor. "I'm taking a bit of a loss on this deal, so you should offer some compensation."
Angor wanted to say something, but after glancing at the girl's spurting head, he ultimately held back. After leading her to the front of the shop, he lay back in the rocking chair behind the counter, bit down on a pipe, and took a long, satisfying puff.
"Pick one item from here and go."
Xu Xiaoyou nodded, her gaze searching the shop. Finally, she looked slowly up along the counter...
Slap—
Xu Xiaoyou's hand landed on the piggy bank cash register on the counter.
Slap—
Angor's hand slammed down on top of Xu Xiaoyou's.
The atmosphere fell into an eerie silence.
"You didn't say I couldn't pick this."
Veins throbbed on Angor's forehead. "Please, have some shame."
In the end, after some bargaining, Xu Xiaoyou left the slave shop carrying a large bag of '85% animal protein' dog food. Looking at the design on the dog food bag—the innocent and radiant smile of a human toddler crawling on the ground—Xu Xiaoyou smiled slightly.
But then a thought occurred to her: this packaging might not be emphasizing the warmth of a 'loving home' but was simply informing the buyer of the raw materials used to make the dog food. The smile on Xu Xiaoyou's face vanished.
Kids, this isn't funny.
Anya seemed to have exhausted herself from the fuss and eventually fell asleep on Xu Xiaoyou's back. Her small hands were wrapped around the girl's shoulders, her head resting against the girl's back, and her little face pressed tightly against the nape of the girl's neck. She held on very tight, as if terrified the girl might suddenly vanish before her eyes if she wasn't careful.
"Home..."
Hearing the light, purr-like snoring and the faint murmur right by her ear, Xu Xiaoyou's expression grew a bit gentler. The two walked forward through the alleyway. The occasional wind blowing from the darkness made Anya's little face tremble, causing her to hug the girl's body even tighter. She opened her bleary, misty eyes and tilted her head slightly, seeing a dirty, weathered vagrant in the corner of her vision.
What exactly is home?
Anya was still too small to understand such a question.
A long time ago, back where Mother was. In winter, snowflakes danced across the sky and the temperature on the snowy plains plummeted. Whenever the cold nights arrived, the wolf pack would gather together, pressing their thick fur against their fellow pack members to warm each other and survive the long night.
What Anya loved most during those times was snuggling tightly beside her father and mother. When that fluffy feeling enveloped her, everything felt safe. She would no longer fear this dark, cold world, and she could fall into a peaceful sleep as soon as she closed her eyes.
Home is a warm place, Anya thought.
And the girl before her felt very warm.
【The bond between Anya and you has deepened.】
Seeing the prompt box appear, Xu Xiaoyou was slightly stunned. She glanced sideways at the ragged vagrant, looking into those cloudy, weathered eyes, lost in thought.
A few coins dropped into the begging bowl in front of the vagrant. His dust-covered eyes twitched slightly, like a spent candle flickering back to life. When he looked up, his vision had cleared through the mist of his eyes; at the end of the alley, a blonde girl was carrying a small figure on her back, walking further and further away.
..........
If one were to ask where people in the city yearned for most, it was undoubtedly Sector 1. Here, the streets were clean, and traffic flowed along well-planned aerial routes. Bridges crisscrossed the city, and buildings stood like forests. The glass curtain walls were like towers reaching toward the sky, and at a certain point, the boundary between day and night became blurred as one looked up.
The wealthy businessmen were well-mannered, and it felt like even a random dog caught on the side of the road here could fluently speak multiple languages.
Whenever the tram passed through this area on the city-circling tracks, especially at night, witnessing the neon nightscape flowing between the magnificent skyscrapers never failed to evoke sighs of admiration.
Even the poorest vagrant would instinctively puff out his chest when hearing the name 'Domino District.'
Thanks to this area suffering less damage during the war, Universal Heavy Industries had taken the largest piece of the pie. Under well-organized order, the post-war economy had been rapidly rebuilt, developing into the most prosperous area of the entire city. The GDP of the 'Domino District,' an ecological park centered around the Universal Building, alone accounted for over eighty-five percent of the entire city's output.
Under the shadow of the Universal megacorp, violence and bloodshed no longer thrived, yet the forest grew even denser. Here, more advanced hunters no longer plundered weak prey; instead, they used a more elegant word—exploitation.
"Universal Enterprise Employee, ID 1793—Xu Nian. Your employee apartment has been assigned and can be activated via your ID card. After activation, a monthly rent of 1,500 credit points is required. If you have objections to the housing configuration or extra requirements, you can file an appeal on the Universal Heavy Industries official website. According to Article 153 of the Universal Regulation..."
Riding the upward elevator, the screen of her phone lit up. Xu Xiaoyou gave the information a brief scan and rolled her eyes.
She had to pay rent for an assigned employee apartment. She already had a rough initial impression of the company she was about to join.
However, for fifteen hundred credit points a month, being able to live in a three-bedroom apartment with full infrastructure and exquisite decor—and in Sector 1, where security was most stable—could indeed be considered an employee benefit in some sense.
"Sule joy! Bursting with fruit pulp and Vitamin C, bringing you a drinking experience like no other! Take a sip when relaxing, take a sip when tired at work, take a sip during happy times. A bit more Sule, a bit more joy!"
La la la la la~ cheerful music
Anya opened her small mouth wide at the holographic advertisement in the elevator.
"Oh, you can't drink that," Xu Xiaoyou said, taking the girl's hand as they stepped out of the elevator. "If you drink too much of it, you'll become brain-dead."
Anya tilted her head, her ears twitching slightly as a '?' surfaced.
Xu Xiaoyou didn't have the heart to destroy the child's thirst for knowledge, but she didn't know how to explain it to her. She had long heard that this kind of drink had 'sleepwalking fish' added to it.
That was a type of urban eldritch creature born from people's fantasies of 'beauty,' shaped like a fish inlaid with gold and covered in insect-like feelers. Adding it to drinks could make people feel mentally pleased and excited. Small amounts refreshed the mind, while large amounts produced hallucinogenic and dizzying effects.
In the more technologically advanced hive cities, this type of eldritch creature already had a complete industrial pipeline, and the production process was quite simple: catch a group of poor souls who had lost all hope in life and put them in a factory; use electric shocks to make their cerebral cortexes produce blissful hallucinations; and they would continuously produce sleepwalking fish.
These mass-produced sleepwalking fish were shipped to factories in countless hive cities, crushed and ground, and then extracted to become a golden liquid, becoming one of the most common beverage additives.
Countless authoritative studies showed that this liquid gold was harmless to the human body, yet in the dark shadows beneath the great skyscrapers, numb and idiotic 'sule joy brain-deads' with stiff movements resembling zombies could be found wandering every year.
Rate on N.U.
