Chapter 9
Number One sat quietly in the bathtub, allowing the keeper's fingers to massage the top of his head.
As the massage continued, a strange feeling rose from his tailbone, climbing up along his spine until his scalp felt numb.
He couldn't help but close his eyes in comfort.
This was an experience he had never had before. Even among the other cubs in the brooding center, he had never seen anyone receive such careful care from the keeper -
of course, the other cubs might not want it either.
In the brooding center, the keepers were not welcome, and the cubs were not kind to the keepers. When they were mad, they would hurt the keepers, so each keeper didn't stay for long.
In the past, No. 1 was indifferent to all these things, and didn't think much about whether the keeper stayed or left, but now...
he liked this new keeper.
He felt very comfortable staying with him, and he wanted this keeper to stay, and didn't want him to leave like the other keepers.
At this time, the pair of palms on the top of his head began to wipe down with fine foam. The soft fingers fell on his cheeks, and the fingertips rubbed lightly, then slid down to his fragile neck.
No. 1's back stiffened slightly, and he subconsciously opened his eyes.
What appeared in front of him was the handsome face of the young man.
His skin was very white, with a jade-like luster under the light, his eyelashes like crow feathers drooped slightly, and his gaze was light and shallow, as if he didn't care about anything in the world.
Number One stared at him blankly, feeling the friendly and comfortable breath on the young man, and slowly relaxed.
He was like a kitten with the back of the neck pinched, motionless, gentle and quiet, and he had an inexplicable trust in the keeper in front of him.
There seemed to be a voice in his heart telling Number One that this keeper was trustworthy and would not hurt him.
Soon, the keeper's palm left his neck and fell on his back, scrubbing hard to wash away the stubborn dirt on his body.
"Wash your feet yourself," said the keeper.
Number One lowered his head. White bubbles were floating on the surface of the bathtub. The originally clear water had become turbid, but he could still vaguely see his dirty feet.
Although they had been rinsed once, black stains still remained on them.
Number One's little face was slightly hot. He quickly stretched out his little hands, held his feet, and obediently rubbed off the dirt.
After a while, the dirty feet revealed their original white color.
The child raised his head and looked at Su Ci with a pair of big eyes, eagerly, as if asking for praise.
Su Ci took a look at his results and patted his head in appreciation.
The child, who was praised for the first time, widened his eyes slightly. The slightly bright light in his black and red eyes seemed to be more lively.
Number One lowered his head slightly, and touched his head secretly with his little hand.
"Wah la la——"
Su Ci grabbed the showerhead, and the water flowed down again, washing away the foam on the child's body. Next, he changed the water again and washed him again.
Number One lowered his head again and rubbed his feet vigorously, not even sparing the tiny dirt hidden in the cracks between his nails.
He was very serious, so he didn't see that the palm of Su Ci's hand that was gently caressing him was shining with a faint golden light, and the golden light fell on his skin and merged into his body.
Number One was unaware of this, he just felt that it was very comfortable to soak in the water, and his whole body was warm. The cold pain in his body that tortured him day and night could not be felt at this moment.
Perhaps it was too comfortable, he felt his eyelids getting heavier and heavier, slowly, the child's head tilted, and the whole person fell into the bathtub.
Just when he was about to hit his head, the thin white palm of the young man supported his little head steadily.
Su Ci looked at the child who was sleeping on his palm with his eyes closed. The golden light on his palm dissipated, and the spiritual power attached to the palm was also taken back into the body.
However, his frown did not relax.
He just checked the child. This kid is not only malnourished, but also has many hidden injuries in his body. He is also corroded by some extremely twisted and negative energy.
Such negative energy...
The eerie red mist and the wailing of the earth appeared in his mind, and Su Ci's brows furrowed even more tightly, and of course his hands did not stop moving.
By the time the child was washed from head to toe and carried out of the bathtub again, he was already soaked.
Su Ci habitually wanted to wipe off the water stains on both of them, but when he sensed the limited spiritual power in his body, he stopped.
He carried the child to the cupboard and opened the door. Some daily necessities were neatly arranged inside, basically left by the previous keeper.
He took out a clean bath towel from inside, wrapped the child, and then walked into the drying room.
Three minutes later, when they came out again, they were already dry and refreshed, except that their fair skin was a little red from being roasted.
Su Ci walked barefoot on the warm and comfortable floor and carried the child to the bedroom.
Although humans in this era are a little unsophisticated about food, they are doing well in other aspects.
Su Ci tapped the wall lightly, and the induction light on the bedroom ceiling automatically turned off, leaving only a night light at the head of the bed, emitting a soft light in the dim room.
After searching in the space button for a while, he finally took out a clean shirt and casually put it on the child, and then Su Ci stuffed him into the quilt.
The child slept on the bed, with only a small head exposed.
The short hair was slightly yellow, but it had become fluffy and soft. After washing, the originally pink and white skin was exposed, shining in the light.
Su Ci couldn't help but touch his head, and felt that it felt good.
"It's much better this way."
After settling the little guy, Su Ci got up and left the bedroom, and came to the window again, and opened the curtains with a swish.
The blood moon outside the window had been blocked by red clouds. The wall of the nursery was inlaid with street lights, emitting bright light, which was enough to see even without moonlight.
Su Ci looked at the scenery outside, his figure gradually becoming lighter and fainter. When he raised his hand and lightly touched the wall, he actually merged into it.
The next moment, he came to the yard between the nursery building and the wall, and at the window of Room 303, a figure was still standing there.
The nursery building and the wall were covered with surveillance cameras, guarding the nursery without any blind spots, but when the sensor ray passed over Su Ci, there was no reaction, and no alarm sounded.
Su Ci scanned the surveillance camera, then retracted his gaze and focused on the red mist in the sky.
At night, the concentration of the red mist in the base was obviously much higher than that in the daytime, and it could be vaguely seen without switching the angle of view, but inside the building, it remained at a level that was almost zero.
It seemed to be restricted by some rules.
Su Ci stretched out his hand, and a ball of red mist gathered and floated on his palm. He closed his eyes and sensed it carefully.
The surveillance camera seemed to detect the increase in the concentration of red mist in this area. The induction rays kept scanning, but nothing was found.
After a long time, Su Ci opened his eyes and raised his eyebrows in surprise.
This is actually spiritual energy.
But it is mixed with resentment, despair, tyranny and other negative energies, and it has long been unrecognizable.
This red mist, unlike the warm and harmless spiritual energy, is extremely aggressive and will actively infect all living things.
If a practitioner absorbs it directly, he is likely to be infected mentally, and eventually lose his mind and become possessed. Ordinary people who stay in such red mist for a long time will also be passively absorbed into the body and gradually corroded.
At this time, the red mist that was originally gathered by Su Ci began to spontaneously condense towards the center, gradually forming a small vortex.
The speed of this vortex continued to increase, and the concentration of the red mist continued to rise in silence, and in a blink of an eye it reached a point visible to the naked eye.
"Ding! Ding!"
The nearest surveillance camera sounded an alarm.
Su Ci frowned, waved his hand, and dispersed the red mist vortex, and the alarm of the surveillance camera also stopped.
Not long after, footsteps were heard outside the wall, and soon several figures appeared on top of the wall.
Seeing the dark red uniform that almost blended into the red mist, Su Ci thought of Xun Xiaoyu during the day, and knew that it was the people from the Operations Department who had arrived.
This was a team of six.
Three people stayed on the wall to be on guard, and the other three formed a triangle, jumped into the courtyard, and came to the vicinity of Su Ci, where the vortex had just been generated, to patrol.
Su Ci stood there and watched them walk by him, and one of them suddenly turned around and looked in his direction.
Under the mask, there was a pair of sharp eyes.
"Captain Yan?"
The companion next to the man called him, and then gathered with the remaining person, observing the empty courtyard warily.
Yan Ping stared at Su Ci's direction for a long time. Just when Su Ci thought he was exposed, he retracted his gaze and put down his raised gun.
"Nothing." He shook his head, "Did you find anything?"
"Everything is normal."
"Except for the high concentration of pollutants, no other abnormalities were found."
It is normal for the concentration of pollutants to increase at night, but it is rare for it to exceed the warning value and cause an alarm...
Yan Ping's eyes were thoughtful, "Observe for a while, don't let your guard down!"
"Yes!"
The action team patrolled the yard and the surroundings again, but found nothing. Seeing that there was no danger, they finally left.
Su Ci stood there all the time, and only moved two steps to the side when they were about to touch him.
Watching their figures disappear over the wall, he retracted his sight, came to the back of the nursery building, looked around, and finally chose a corner where the light should be good during the day.
He gestured with his hands, then stepped lightly on the ground, and a spirit shield with a radius of about one meter that could block all prying eyes rose from the ground.
Su Ci looked down at the ground, with a faint golden light flashing in his black eyes.
He was originally suspended above the spirit shield, and as the golden light flashed in his eyes, he tapped his toes lightly again, as if stepping on the water, and waves rippled out.
Tick-tock -
as if there was a crisp sound, the hard and flat metal ground under the spirit shield suddenly shattered and dissipated, revealing the slightly blood-red soil underneath.
The golden light in Su Ci's eyes dissipated, and his body slowly sank, passing directly through the transparent spirit shield, and his toes landed lightly on the exposed ground.
When his feet touched the ground, his brows wrinkled.
He squatted down and gently stroked the ground with his palm.
The dry and hardened soil had almost no fertility. It seemed to be infected by the red mist and was faintly blood-red.
Compared with the vibrant and endless vitality before he fell asleep, it was hard to believe that this was the same land.
When his palm touched the ground, Su Ci felt the anger and sorrow of the earth more clearly. In addition to confusion, there was a bit of heartache in his eyes.
He sighed, and a faint light lit up in his palm, injecting his own spiritual power.
When he removed his hand, the deadly resentment that had accumulated in this small piece of land for who knows how many years finally dissipated slowly.
The blood-red color faded, and the hardened soil loosened, revealing its original brown-yellow color, even mixed with a bit of black, which was very suitable for planting.
However, Su Ci's brows did not relax. It was a
drop in the bucket.
He could not use this method to revive the entire planet.
And his power came from the earth, and the earth's weakness also affected him...
Su Ci pursed his lips and stood up.
The young man turned over his palm, and saw a few fine powders appearing on his white palm, which was the pollen stained on the handkerchief he had given to No. 5 before.
He tilted his palm slightly, and the pollen grains gently fell into the ground under his feet.
The pollen grains were too small, and they disappeared into the soil, making it difficult to identify their specific locations with the naked eye.
Su Ci didn't care. He stared at the ground under his feet, his bare feet exuding the beauty of jade, and gently moved down again. He saw a faint golden light, which spread out like ripples again.
This time, he hummed softly, like a spring breeze.
"Earth, you give birth to all things--"
This hum was ethereal and distant, as if it came from ancient times, bringing some mysterious and unknown power to awaken the sleeping land.
I saw a little light in the soil under the spirit cover.
The light was very weak, like an old light bulb that was accidentally found in a pile of debris. Even under the stimulation of the electrode, it could only flash the last few weak lights in its life, and then the filament broke, and the light faded away powerlessly.
The land calmed down again.
The land, which had regained some fertility due to the injection of Su Ci's soul power, turned gray and dark again. Fortunately, with the protection of the spirit cover, the blood-red death energy did not invade it again.
If it is well cared for, there may be a chance to recover.
Su Ci bent down, fiddled with the soil with his fingers, and soon found two dark brown grains.
These are two seeds, teardrop-shaped, full of grains and smooth surface, and you can tell at a glance that they are of good quality.
Looking at the two seeds, Su Ci sighed softly.
There are so many pollen. If it were in the past, once this magic was used, there would be more than just these two seeds.
Those pollens would turn into seeds within a few breaths, and then take root and sprout, grow into a small forest, and then bloom and bear fruit, with the branches full of the most delicious and sweet fruits, inviting him to taste them.
It's not like now, there are only two poor tree seeds?
As Su Ci was thinking this, the color of the land under his feet seemed to become even darker, as if it sensed his disgust and fell into self-isolation.
Su Ci paused, stretched out his hand and patted the ground as if to comfort him.
Then, he dug a small hole in the mud and buried one of the tree seeds in it.
This was a spiritual seed that he had nurtured using his soul power and the power of the earth. It contained a strong life force. During the growth process, it would absorb nutrients from the land and also feed back spiritual power to the land.
They complement each other and coexist and win together.
Of course, it is not an easy task to make the spiritual seeds take root and sprout.
Su Ci had never planted land before, so he tried hard to recall it in his mind, then got up and went back to the dormitory, fetched a bucket of water, and evenly poured it on the mud under the spiritual cover.
The dry land was moistened, emitting a faint pleasant breath, and the dormant spirit seeds seemed to be slowly waking up.
Feeling that breath, Su Ci's mood finally improved a little.
He took out another can of food from the space button, and after eating it, he threw another into the empty can, dug some soil to fill it in, and then picked up the bucket and flashed back to the room.
The figure standing by the window, his dull eyes regained their agility, and he didn't know when he had a bucket in his hand, and in the other hand, there was a can filled with soil.
Su Ci put the can on the coffee table, then carried the bucket back to the bathroom and took a bath himself.
When looking for clothes for the child to wear, Su Ci found a box in the space button, which was filled with clothes of various styles.
He picked out a set of pajamas, put them on, and slowly walked to the bedroom door, looking inside.
The child was breathing steadily and was still sleeping soundly.
Su Ci returned to the living room again, sat on the sofa, and saw the communicator on his wrist. Thinking of something, he put his mental power into the space button again, and soon found a ball called a light computer.
He held the ball and studied it for a while, then pressed the switch.
The originally silent metal ball suddenly lit up, flashing cool light effects, suspended in the air, and at the same time a transparent light curtain popped out of the ball.
Su Ci collapsed back on the sofa.
The ball automatically adjusted so that the light curtain was always in front of Su Ci's line of sight.
"Ding ding - facial recognition is successful, the optical computer is starting up."
"Startup completed, took 3 seconds 22."
"Su Ci, good evening, I am your smart elf, Xiaoqiu."
A very cute child's voice, gender cannot be distinguished.
"Ding ding - network signal detected, automatically connecting... connected successfully."
"Warm reminder: This signal is under official monitoring, please use with caution."
"Detected that the communicator has been paired, connecting... synchronizing communicator information... synchronizing completed."
After a series of information popped up, the optical computer finally stopped.
Because the communicator was connected, the interface of the communicator automatically popped up on the screen, and Su Ci curiously clicked in to take a look.
There are many dialogue boxes in the chat interface. The top one is a group chat with "Base No. 24" written on it. No one is talking in it. The last message was around 6 pm, showing:
You were pulled into the group chat by "Administrative Office-Guo Hui", and the base's intelligent computer has changed your ID to "Cub Breeding Center-Su Ci (Intern)".
Su Ci flipped through it with some curiosity and found that before taking him to the Administrative Office to report, Shi Yjiang had sent a message in the group chat to tell the people in the Administrative Office.
This communication is quite convenient.
Guo Hui...
Su Ci's mind emerged with the woman wearing black-rimmed glasses and her hair combed neatly on her head. It seems that this name is written on the nameplate on her chest.
At this time, a message reminder popped up on the communication interface.
"You have a new message."
Su Ci clicked it, and a new window popped up.
"Medical Purification Department - Gu Qingchen" requested to add you as a friend - from the group chat "Base No. 24".
[Accept] [Reject]
Gu Qingchen?
Su Ci clicked to accept and approved Gu Qingchen's friend request.
As soon as he approved, Gu Qingchen's private chat window popped up. The other party's avatar was a cartoon character wearing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He lowered his head slightly and pushed the glasses to the bridge of his nose with his index finger.
Medical Purification Department - Gu Qingchen:
[Su Yangshi, good evening.]
[I am the resident doctor of the Medical Purification Department, Gu Qingchen.]
Su Ci can't type, but the optical computer supports voice input.
He replied with a good evening, then looked at his profile picture and found that it was a snow-white long-haired cat with one yellow and one green eyes, very beautiful owl eyes.
At this time, Gu Qingchen's message came again.
Medical Purification Department - Gu Qingchen:
[Keeper Su, the treatment of cubs No. 2 and No. 4 has been completed. Please go to the Medical Purification Department on time at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning to take them back to the nursery.]
Su Ci then remembered that when No. 2 and No. 4 were taken away in the afternoon, the people in the Medical Department did tell him so. Su
Ci: [Okay]
On the other side, Medical Purification Department.
Gu Qingchen looked at Su Ci's reply and saw that he didn't seem to have anything to ask. He couldn't help but touch his chin and pulled out the small group that had just been closed.
Gu Qingchen: [There shouldn't be any problem at the nursery]
As soon as he showed up, the already lively group started to flood the screen with messages again.
Jiang Zhong Xiao Shitou: [How did you know, old Gu? I heard that the alarm went off there, and Captain Yan even took people to check it out]
Lao Chentou: [If there was really any danger, the alarms would have gone off at the entire base by now. The fact that everything is calm proves that nothing is wrong. Young people, don't scare yourself]
Gu Qingchen curled his lips. This happened at night, before most people go to bed. It is indeed a bit irritating, and it is normal for everyone to be nervous.
However...
since the AI only notified the people from the Operations Department to check it out, and this new keeper is so calm, then there is probably no big problem.
Just as Gu Qingchen was thinking this, he saw the dialogue box of the keeper Su pop up, and his heart jumped.
Could it be that something really happened?
When he opened it, he saw the other party asking: [Doctor Gu, do you know where to get fertilizer? ]
Gu Qingchen was stunned. He had never encountered such a problem before, especially when a new keeper asked him this.
This Su Ci, he should have come into contact with the cubs, right?
He encountered the cubs going crazy on the first day, wouldn't he be panicked? Although the cubs were not seriously injured in the fight this time, it was said that the restaurant of the nursery was severely damaged.
He just saw the maintenance team complaining in a small group, saying that No. 2 can now control fire, and their maintenance work will become more and more difficult in the future.
And... from the discussion of the maintenance staff, this breeder seems to be in poor physical condition, right?
Gu Qingchen had questions one after another in his mind, but he still replied calmly: [Raiser Su, what do you want fertilizer for?]
Su Ci replied slowly: [Growing flowers]
Gu Qingchen: "..."
This breeder is quite leisurely... But has he not figured out the situation of Hell Star yet?
He could only edit his reply: [The environment of Hell Star is special, and it is impossible to grow crops. 】
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