Chapter 57

"I got it. I was just about to tell you about this." He Xuan didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "This kid said she didn't know us or you, so she didn't want to leave... It didn't work even if I used food to lure her."

Fu Erdie: "..." Yes, the child is now 12 years old. She was only seven or eight years old when she went to City C to play. She was young at that time. How could she remember the relative's sister who went to the park with her one weekend and took a casual photo with her...

If it were Fu Erdie, she wouldn’t be able to remember it either!

The child's grandparents often make video calls with the grandmother and send videos of their granddaughter. Fu Erdie sometimes only remembers them after taking a few glances at them, but for the child, she really has no sense of existence.

But it is good to be vigilant. Although it will be useless if someone kidnaps her, maintaining a vigilant attitude of "there is no free lunch in the world" will usually help her live longer.

Fu Erdie felt like she was having a heart attack when she saw her cousin washing his feet.

A 17-year-old boy is not as sensible as a 12-year-old child! "So has the child returned to his previous residence? What do the bases say?"

He Xuan: "No. We'll use two kilograms of kohlrabi to let this kid stay in the utility room next to the reception for two days. Although it's a utility room, I heard it's much cleaner than ordinary people's residences."

Fu Erdie nodded: "That's true."

He Xuan continued, "Then I gave her a bottle of water that she could drink directly and some potatoes and fruits that she could eat raw, and asked her to take a break for the next two days. I will contact you after I return home. It seems that the base has no intention of detaining anyone, and they want to use this opportunity to establish a long-term trading relationship with us."

"Trading crystal cores? They probably don't have many left." Fu Erdie touched his chin.

"Yes, there are not many crystal cores left, and the remaining crystal cores are used to command the existing psychics. What they want to trade more are steel bars, cement, and technicians who can repair buildings and build city walls."

It was actually the first time that He Xuan realized that a wall built with only earth-type or metal-type psychics would not last long.

No matter how powerful the psychic is, and no matter how thick the earth and metal walls are, if the foundation is not built with piles and the support is not designed scientifically enough, the zombies will still collapse after a few pushes.

"Some psychic bases don't care about the walls because there are people on duty every day. When they see zombies coming and can't beat them, they run back to inform everyone. The function of the wall is not so much to block zombies as to mark out the territory and assist in warning. For example, even if no zombies are seen coming one day, but the wall collapses in a place, it means that zombies have broken in there."

But a truly useful fence that can be used for a long time has to be built by people who know the business.

How to design the location of the piles, what kind of pile depth is required for what kind of soil and rock layer, and how and with what weight should the surrounding land be compacted and leveled after the piles are driven...

All these things require professionals to be responsible.

If Fu Erdie's community wants to expand outward and build a larger outer wall, Professor Zhao should be able to provide guidance. After all, in his long learning and research career, it is common for professors and engineers from different disciplines to meet when working on certain projects. Professor Zhao has more or less knowledge of architecture.

She can be said to be a generalist, but after all, she is not an expert in in-depth research in a vertical field.

For example, when building a system, the framework designer is very important, as she is in charge of the entire structure and direction. However, there are many branches under a framework, and each branch needs to be managed by someone who is professional and vertical enough to fill in every detail and avoid leaks in the system.

What the D City Base is doing now is to tell He Xuan and his team that they actually have a lot of such technicians. Although they are not supernatural beings, their education may be undergraduate or junior college students, or even migrant workers with no education, but after working for more than ten or twenty years, they are professionals who are particularly knowledgeable and skilled in certain aspects. They were ordinary before the end of the world, but now they are very urgently needed and particularly useful.

The base protects 30,000 ordinary people, of whom 500 to 600 have various skills. If Fu Erdie’s community needs it, they can escort these people over to help Fu Erdie complete the infrastructure.

After listening to He Xuan, Fu Erdie's first reaction was that her community didn't need these. With Zhao Shansi, Zhuang Licheng and sports student Pan Feizhou, they could already build a power system for the community. She didn't have many requirements, as long as the entire community, or a few buildings near Building 7, were electrified.

As for the wall - what wall? She wished she could go back and pull back a large number of zombies to provide a snack for the plant cubs.

Alertness is not a big problem. After all, the dandelions in the community are connected together, and there has been experience in alarming before. As long as they have them, Fu Erdie and others can always detect approaching powerful enemies.

However, it is not entirely true that there is no need for more technicians.

For example, the first floor of Building No. 7 had many walls destroyed by the University Town Psychic Team. Now they are being patched up to protect the internal steel bars. When the area of ​​the house is expanded to the entire building, these damaged walls will recover by themselves.

But the upgrade of the house is obviously not that fast. It needs to consume a lot of crystal cores and be trained and pushed and pulled by Fu Erdie for a long time before it can be upgraded bit by bit. If this process is long and the domain is not extended to the first floor, then if there is a problem with the first floor, it can only rely on succulents to hold it up...

Fu Erdie doesn't think that succulents are strong enough to support a wall or a building...

In addition, several other buildings were burned in the previous firefight and also needed people to repair them.

In fact, Professor Zhao and Zhuang Licheng’s technical work also requires many people to serve as assistants.

Fu Erdie hopes that in the future, even if the house follows her around, the family in the community will still have electricity. So for this generator and power system, you need to make a lot of lists, prepare a lot of different things, build a lot of different modules and then weld and assemble them.

It is impossible for Professor Zhao and Zhuang Licheng to be responsible for every job, even welding, which can be done by anyone. Therefore, they still need subordinates.

But the D City Base obviously didn't want to release these professional technicians, and Fu Erdie couldn't do anything to snatch these technicians away.

"Let's give it a try first." Fu Erdie decided, "Tell them that we don't need to build a wall, but we need skilled workers who can repair high-rise buildings. We can tell them about the damage to Building No. 7 and several surrounding buildings in our community so that they can have an idea of ​​the amount of steel bars and cement they need. In addition, tell them that we also need electricians and welders. If there are technicians in power research or students in related majors, they can also come."

Fu Erdie was unsure how many people and related materials would be needed, so she said, "Regarding the latter, just give a brief introduction first. The main purpose of this time is to pick people up. We will discuss with Professor Zhao after we go back, make a list of the people and things we need, and then come back to find them."

He Xuan listened to Fu Erdie and wrote down everything.

"What about the kid?"

"Take the walkie-talkie and go over there and I'll talk to her."

You have to press the walkie-talkie to talk, and the call was disconnected briefly, so the person on the other end must have gone out.

Fu Erdie took this opportunity to walk towards her grandmother.

At this time, my aunt was taking a bath in the toilet with a tub. Fu Erdie lied that there were only two buckets of water in her van, and half of the bucket had been completely blackened by bathing grandma, and half of the bucket would also be needed to bathe my aunt, so my cousin only had a little water to wipe his body.

It wasn't that Fu Erdie was intentionally bullying his cousin, but there were only two buckets in his box truck and it was impossible for him to produce more buckets. He said that he had enough water storage and didn't want to expose his special abilities.

Seeing this, the aunt wanted to give her son the chance to wash his whole body, but was stopped by Fu Erdie.

"He's not a child. His body is much stronger than yours. The sooner you finish cleaning, the sooner you will suffer less from skin diseases."

Seeing that Fu Erdie was not very happy, the aunt was helpless about her child's ignorance, so she could only glare at Cao Yuanbai again and then go to the bathroom to take a shower.

Cao Yuanbai accepted it well and said, "Don't pour out the water from the bath of mother-in-law and mother. Just leave it there. The dirt will settle down during the day tomorrow. I will scoop out the water on top and use it to wash."

Fu Erdie looked at the water in the bucket, which was so dark that she couldn't see the color of it. She endured it and didn't tell anyone about her special ability.

Grandma was sitting in a chair, not knowing what she was thinking. Fu Erdie walked over and said, "There are three other people coming from our base. They took me and Zhang Guya's child and said they were going to look for her. When we unload the goods and pick up the people at the gate of the base tomorrow, we will leave together and leave the resettlement fee of 3,000 kilograms of food for the four of us."

Grandma came back to her senses and was a little surprised: "We ordinary people don't need resettlement fees when we leave!"

Fu Erdie lowered her eyes and said, "Stay. We have enough food, but the base doesn't have enough."

Grandma looked at him lovingly and touched Fu Erdie's soft hair: "Good boy, thank you for your hard work."

Fu Erdie shook her head and showed her the walkie-talkie in her hand: "We will talk to Zhang Guya later. Just help me prove that they are indeed relatives."

"good."

After a burst of signal noise, He Xuan's voice rang out: "Boss, we're in this kid's room."

When Fu Erdie heard the title "Boss", his eyebrows jumped and he quickly looked at his cousin.

My cousin was concentrating on rubbing his feet and didn't pay attention to what was happening here.

Fu Erdie breathed a sigh of relief, pressed the call button and said to the child over there: "Gu Ya, it's me, the sister who took a photo with you in the photo. It's like this..."

Because Zhang Guya seemed alert and calm enough, Fu Erdie told her about his plan to rescue people, and did not hide the fact that he wanted to use her to test the attitude of the base.

Any deception will be beautified to be perfect until it is exposed or understood by the parties involved. But once the parties come to their senses, even something that is obviously beneficial to them will become a thorn that causes them pain.

It would be better to tell her right from the beginning, rather than letting her be grateful for a long time without knowing the truth, and then regret it when she grows up and realizes the truth.

Grandma spoke up to testify that it was really her.

The cousin who was still rubbing his feet beside him also shouted: "And me, and me! Cao Yuanbai!"

Fu Erdie couldn't help it, so she rushed over and slapped Cao Yuanbai on the back: "Can you keep your voice down?"

Cao Yuanbai shrank his neck and quickly made a gesture to seal his mouth.

Fu Erdie took a deep breath, shifted her attention, listened to the breathing sound with signal noise on the other end of the walkie-talkie, and then heard the tender and choked voice of the little girl: "Thank you, sister, thank you, mother-in-law, thank you, brother, sister and aunt..."

Fu Erdie was relieved and had mixed feelings. Because it was inconvenient to charge the walkie-talkie at the base, Fu Erdie agreed to turn off the phone first and meet at the unloading area at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, and then turned off the call.

The little girl's broken yet sensible voice was still lingering in Fu Erdie's ears.

Every time he floated, Fu Erdie wanted to hit his cousin.

In the past, children from poor families had to grow up early, but now only orphans have to grow up early?

Zhang Guya was a left-behind child who lived with her grandparents in the countryside. After the apocalypse, her grandparents passed away one after another, and she was left alone to stumble and suffer, and survived with the large group until today.

He is not a supernatural being, does not have any special skills, does not have any life skills like driving, has little strength and works slowly. He has to work for 16 hours straight every day to complete the day's workload, and then has to eat cold leftovers.

She didn't want to be the head of the family, but there was nothing she could do.

On the other hand, the cousin who lost the money couldn’t drive a car. After all, it was understandable that he was not yet 18 years old. Fu Erdie himself had not yet learned to drive.

But besides not being able to drive and having no common sense, he also doesn't know how to care about people.

But this also has something to do with my aunt's personality.

The end of the world is so hard. You can tell from the way my aunt lets her son take a bath first that in the past six months, she must have given the child some delicious food, some clean water to drink, and some clean cloth to wipe the dirt off her body.

She has endured all kinds of hardships, but when her son occasionally shows consideration and understanding, she is so moved that she bursts into tears: "My child has finally grown up."

Not to mention the end of the world, my aunt was like this before the end of the world. She was often moved by some big or small things her son did, such as giving gifts on Mother's Day.

But the prerequisite for giving the gift is that the aunt gave her son a thousand yuan in pocket money because he wanted to buy shoes.

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He spent more than 900 yuan on shoes, and used the remaining dozens of yuan to buy a bag for his mother.

Fu Erdie looked at her aunt's sigh in the family group, and it really made her scalp tingle.

She thought about it again and again, but still felt a little upset.

Although she founded the community and was the boss, this meant that she needed to be more responsible and control her relatives and friends.

To the outside world, they represent the community "base". To the inside, their relatives and friends can eat and drink well and do nothing, but their attitude will represent Fu Erdie's attitude.

If she went to the community, her cousin would still often agree to do things for others casually, and if she disagreed, she would have to be the bad guy.

The community has some secret strategies and tactics that cannot be revealed to outsiders. If my cousin reveals them, it will be a big trouble.

Moreover, my cousin's personality, which makes him easily arrogant and have an inexplicable sense of superiority when he has a little advantage, can easily make Fu Erdie offend a group of people.

We can't let him go back like this.

Fu Erdie made up her mind and knocked on the toilet door: "Aunt, I think this base is pretty good. Why don't I take you and grandma back first, and then my cousin can stay here for a while."

Cao Yuanbai turned his head suddenly: "Why?! Aren't you here to pick us up?"

Fu Erdie wanted to sneer, but held back: "Actually, our base is not much better than here. At most, we have less work to do every day. If you go there, it will be almost the same as here."

"But I want to be with my mother-in-law and mother!" Cao Yuanbai was shocked and expressed his great incomprehension.

Fu Erdie smiled, "I have a more important task for you. You also heard that our base is going to cooperate with the base in City D, and there should be some exchanges in the future. But I am a little worried. What if the materials delivered by City D are cut corners? Anyway, you are also working as a laborer in the cement factory now, so help me keep an eye on the quality of the cement, and by the way, participate more in the work of cement wall repair and learn some technology. After all, you have nine years of compulsory education and two years of high school, so you won't be so stupid that you don't even know how to paste the wall after one or two months."

"After a while, you will probably have some understanding of these things. Come back with me to the base and you can help with the various steps of repairing the wall. Then I will take you back."

Cao Yuanbai: “…”

He just speaks faster than he thinks, not that he has no brains. It doesn't sound right to me!

He was an ordinary person, right? His mother, grandmother, and even cousin Butterfly were all ordinary people. Why did he have to learn other types of work processes in the cement factory, but they didn't? They were obviously going to abandon him!

Fu Erdie saw the accusation in his eyes and said coldly, "Here, if you get into trouble, your mother and grandmother will unconditionally cover you up. In my place, the relationship between people with special abilities is very complicated. My grandmother and I are direct relatives. Although my aunt is a collateral relative, she is also my mother's biological sister and has taken care of me a lot since I was a child. If you encounter any problems, I will do my best to protect you. But what about you? Apart from doing stupid things from time to time to irritate me and my family, what else have you done? You did something wrong and I need to pay for it, and even my boyfriend needs to pay for it."

"Even though we grew up together and have a good relationship, what about my boyfriend? Tell me honestly, you can do anything. Why should he be responsible for causing trouble for my boyfriend in my base?"

"Let's put it this way. I'm just a clerk at the base who handles some miscellaneous tasks. I rely on my boyfriend for more. He's already done his best to help me take care of a few relatives. Do you really have the nerve to let my boyfriend take care of you when you don't have any skills?!"

Cao Yuanbai opened his mouth and wanted to explain why he needed care.

But after thinking about it, his face turned red again.

Now working at the D City Base Cement Factory, he has been responsible for crushing stones, which is a purely physical task. Now if you ask him what kind of stones he used, how to screen them in the next step, what particle size of stones he needs, and how to calcine them, he has no idea.

According to my cousin, if the base over there needs cement, they can just buy it directly from the base in City D here, and he doesn't need to continue grinding any raw materials.

"Don't you have any physical work for fools over there..." Cao Yuanbai scratched his messy head and felt panicked.

"No." Fu Erdie was relieved to see that he was still panicking and not completely finished, "It's just daily cleaning, sweeping the community, and standing guard. It's not considered physical work, and anyone can do it. Ordinary people in our base are either natives like me who are inconvenient to drive out, or they are very close relatives and friends."

Cao Yuanbai felt that he was a particularly close relative or friend of his cousin, but when he met his cousin's inexplicably cold eyes, he was speechless.

"Xiaodie."

My aunt, who was still cleaning herself in the bathroom, became a little anxious when she heard this.

She was not anxious because her son could not go with her, but because she might cause trouble to her niece: "Otherwise, I will not go back either, and let Mom go back with you. Mom is an old lady and can't eat much. You know her personality and she is easy to get along with. Let Mom go back, I won't go back."

Fu Erdie's attitude towards her aunt and cousin is completely different. She whispered softly, "Aunt, you can drive and you have good driving skills. There are many jobs that can be done by driving in the base. It's just a little hard, you have to avoid zombies in the city. But no matter what, there must be work to do, and it's much easier than here. Come back with me, my cousin is so old, he needs to exercise."

"The baby animals are being protected by their mothers all the time, and it's not going to end well in the end."

These words were so harsh that my aunt and cousin fell silent.

After a long time, grandma finally spoke.

She knew that Xiaodie had special abilities, and she also heard the respect the woman on the other end of the walkie-talkie showed to Erdie, so she knew that life in the community must not be as difficult as her granddaughter said.

The granddaughter must have been annoyed by the immaturity shown in various details by Yuan Bai since they met again, and wanted to temper him.

Actually, that’s fine.

The D City base is not a cannibalistic base. Although it is hard work, people can eat their fill every day, and nothing serious will happen if Yuanbai is left alone.

And before, although Yuan Bai was not very good, he would still help his mother and mother-in-law with their endless work every day. Although he was always self-righteous and put himself first in most things, he was not disciplined by others except for being often taught a lesson by Butterfly since he was a child, but he was not a bad person in nature, much better than his father who loved to take advantage of others.

He is just the same as his father in that he loves to brag, can't keep secrets, and looks down on others.

He is not yet stable, but with some training, maybe he can turn around.

If he can't be changed and he keeps his mouth shut for a long time... then even if he is brought back to City C and goes to Xiaodie's community, he will only be marginalized and guarded.

If there are many such people in the community, it doesn't matter, everyone can just joke around and get by. But I'm afraid that the community is a community where everyone has been carefully selected, and except for him, no one is such a brainless person who talks endlessly. If he goes there, he will only be isolated.

Maybe he feels aggrieved after being isolated, and doesn't know why others look down on him.

"Let Yuanbai stay here. It's good to learn more." Grandma said, "If he still doesn't learn anything after a few months, we can only talk about it when the time comes."

Cao Yuanbai hunched his back dejectedly, and no longer wanted to rub his feet. He put his feet on the edge of the basin to dry.

Fu Erdie was happy to have the support of her grandmother, as at last she was not the only bad guy.

"I will give you thirty kilograms of potatoes," Fu Erdie said, "and I will leave the remaining half bucket of water for you. You can hide it and drink and eat it slowly. I will come to see you next month when I have time."

Cao Yuanbai knew that the family was determined to let him learn something, so he had no choice but to agree.

At night, grandma and aunt slept on the big bed in the bedroom, Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao slept in the box car, and Cao Yuanbai slept on the floor.

He looked at the moonlight that was coming in from the window, and suddenly felt very sad.

Do you want to be alone?

In fact, it’s not bad if you are alone because you don’t have to do the endless chores that mother-in-law and mother have to do.

However, even though I should be feeling much more relaxed, I feel empty and insecure inside.

He looked towards the bedroom, then turned over and looked at the box truck, but in the end he said nothing.

Forget it, it doesn’t matter where I work. Once I learn how to work with cement, I will be a professional. Then I will secretly become stronger and shock everyone!

(End of this chapter)