Dow and Carbon-Based Monkey Breeding Guidelines

Chapter 1016 Beautiful Scenery (Part )

Radumos squinted his eyes and used a fine brush soaked in grease to scrape the bore little by little. According to his old routine, this kind of work must be done in a strict manner: first use cleaning oil to remove rust, then apply a layer of protective oil film, and finally apply special lubricating oil. But now he is a little lazy, anyway, this is a spare weapon, a "self-defense tool" brought to him by Tell, in other words, it is used to deal with face-to-face situations. There will be no such situation today, and he is just doing maintenance to kill time, and it will not hurt if he really needs it.

At the aluminum picnic table behind him, Hai Yaxin and Lacey were arguing about the composition of winter oil. Radumos didn't even raise his eyes, but just pricked up his ears to distinguish their accents. He already knew the root of this disagreement: it was obvious that the two usually worked at different latitudes, and their understanding of the word "winter" was completely different. They themselves didn't come to their senses, and they were still smacking their noses at the viscosity of castor oil. It would take at least two more minutes to argue. Radumos didn't point it out, but just worked slowly on the work at hand, with a lazy and satisfied smile on his face, just like an old man sitting by the river enjoying fishing alone - except that he exuded a strong smell of kerosene, and even the stool under his butt was stained with oil, because a few hours ago he helped the equipment team tinker with those big guys.

Lacey was talking about a bursting accident, and suddenly he asked, "Why does this bird always flap its wings?"

"It wants to fly away," Hai Yaxin said. "This place is too attractive to it."

"No, I think it's because Aihu kept staring at it. It was a little scared."

They paused their argument, bent over on the camping chairs, and looked at the horse dog named Aihu in the bushes. Aihu was tied to a locust tree with a thick iron chain. Its black pointed ears were moist in the bright sunlight, like metal parts brushed with kerosene. It had been specially trained, and it would lie still without any instructions, just sticking out its tongue, panting with excitement, and its black bean-like eyes were spying on the birdcage on the table.

The parrot in the cage was extremely frantic. The water basin had long been overturned by its fluttering feathers, forming a pool of grayish-yellow, foul-smelling feces at the bottom of the cage. It flew up and down between the compartments tirelessly, trying to find the door to freedom, but the way out had long been strangled by several thick iron wires. Hai Yaxin and Lacey were silent for a moment, just staring at it thoughtfully.

"A trapped animal," Lacey said. "It's frightened by something out there."

"How pitiful." said Hai Yaxin.

Radumos carefully brushed the last groove on the bolt, and then turned his head calmly and gracefully. "Please don't open the cage just because you are soft-hearted." He said to the two people in a gentle manner, "I locked this little thing up out of kindness. It has been raised since it was a child. If it flew away in a place like this, it would be hung on a branch by a shrike tonight."

He continued to wipe the parts with cotton cloth. In the earphones, the groups scattered several kilometers away reported their progress from time to time. In fact, there was no new progress. Everything was arranged this morning. The personnel were in place, and all the equipment passed the test inspection after assembly. Tell kept talking about air visibility, wind speed and wind direction. Of course, these are the most dangerous and important uncontrollable factors. Although the wind detector has been arranged and the observer is a reliable veteran, what if explosive and lethal equipment is used... The air has been too dry these days, and there are only a few drops of rain on the ground. The fire-fighting equipment they mobilized may not be enough. However, Radumos did not think much about this aspect. Neither environmental protection nor government public relations is his responsibility.

Several channels in the headset alternated. One of them had a particularly loud voice, which made the voices of others sound like whispers. It should be Walken in a special position. It is said that this person was accidentally deafened by a dud bomb when he was young. Even though his new boss later provided a very successful hearing recovery operation, he still couldn't change his habit of shouting. Few people protested to his face. After all, he was a rare professional talent and a priceless treasure. Radumos couldn't help laughing when he heard their boss say this. But then again, Walken was indeed reliable; he was even willing to break into the ruins of the streets under fire just to steal a piece of information of unknown use from the museum that could be destroyed at any time. It can be imagined that as long as the boss gave the order, killing and arson would not be a problem. The situation of those who were sent here today was generally the same.

Radumos hummed a tune silently, and continued to think: This is not a good sign! The people who were transferred here are not the largest team, but the most loyal personnel, the most loyal of the loyal, the most trusted of the trusted. Such a major operation involving life and death has to be planned by such personnel, so they must be preparing to make some "bold decisions".

"Why did you choose this place?" Lacey said at the camping table, "There's nothing special here, and the transportation is not convenient."

"There are few people here." Hai Yaxin replied, "It's easy to hide."

"I don't think a stranger here would be too conspicuous. Could he also want to set fire here?"

"Why set the fire? There's nothing special here. Does he want to burn himself to death?"

Lacey said that mentally ill people would set fires for no reason, not to kill anyone or to gain some benefit from it; they did it for the psychological pleasure, the relaxation or excitement from burning things, which is called pyromania in medicine.

"I sometimes think about it," Hai Yaxin commented. "Every time my high school teacher asked me why I skipped classes, I wanted to set the school on fire with explosives or smash the place with a meteorite. As long as I think about this, I get excited."

"So why did you skip class?" Lacey asked.

"My classmates laughed at my acne and called me a toad. I just didn't want to see them."

"Then go and tell the parents and the teacher."

"That's useless, and it makes me look petty. They will gang up on me and bully me even more."

"Then go to the hospital and get some medicine to cure your acne. This thing should be able to cure it, right?"

"Let's just blow up the school," Hai Yaxin said. "This is the simplest and most reliable way. No one can use the past to bully me again."

"Hey," Lacey said in a tone that was not too accusatory, "there must be someone in school who didn't mess with you, right? Like the cleaner? My mom used to sweep the floor at school, and she never laughed at the students."

"So I transferred to another school later." Hai Yaxin said readily.

They were about to continue talking when they were interrupted by an off-road vehicle coming down the slope. The off-road vehicle drove along the edge of the forest, rolling over the potholes and tree roots, and rushed straight into their faces. Aihu was barking loudly beside the tree stump, and the parrot suddenly stopped moving, looking timid and alert.

The driver's door slammed open, and Li Li jumped out. She had put on her hood and put her hands in her pockets. The wind from the wetlands blew upward from the bottom, and she was like a ball of blood and fire that was swaying, biting the tips of the yellowish grass leaves all the way to the front of the camping site. Radumos was about to put the bolt back, and she picked up the recoil spring from the side and put it on the guide rod.

"Good afternoon, Radu."

"Maggie," Radumos said with a smile on his face. He put down the bristle brush and rubbed his hands on the cotton towel while watching Li Li assembling the bolt. The gloves looked thick and heavy, but she assembled the movements easily. "How was your trip last night?"

"It was a good harvest. I even passed by the hunting ground you took me to before."

"Ah, is everything okay there?"

"The scenery is still the same as before." Li Li said, "Would you like to go to the hunting ground together some other day?"

Radumos smacked his lips. "It's still early, let's wait until next month. With this year's climate, I don't think the deer will reproduce very well."

“Is your dermatitis better?”

“It’s pretty good for this season.”

"You should try that medicine I told you about."

"As long as the situation is under control, I will not eat anything I don't understand." Radumos sighed, "That poor guy, he just trusts new things too much."

"What happened with Cid was an accident."

"There can't be any more accidents today."

"Did you bring what I wanted?"

Radumos continued to wipe his hands carefully with a damp cloth, not even leaving the gaps between his nails. After the oil on his fingers was completely wiped off, he reached under his coat and pulled out a small square package wrapped in a silk handkerchief from his inner pocket. He untied the knot on the silk handkerchief, revealing a maple-red colored paper package underneath - a square package the size of a business card box.

He handed the small, beautifully wrapped cube in the handkerchief to Li Li. "This is it."

"Have you opened it and looked inside?"

"No, it was exactly like that when I found it. Pajaniya must have left it in his office for a long time. I just dug it out from the bottom of the drawer and wrapped it in a handkerchief and took it away. It was completely intact, not even a speck of dust on it."

"But you know what's inside." Li Li said, "Ladu, you used the detector in the base without permission last week."

Radumos smiled cheerfully. "Safety first."

"Is there any greeting card hidden in here?"

"No. I guess he plans to write it on the day, or just deliver it in person." Li Li stuffed the colored paper package into her coat pocket. As she did so, Radumos casually stretched his neck and looked at her face under the hood. His expression did not change, but his red nose wrinkled slightly.

"It's funny, Maggie," he said, in a voice that the other two behind him couldn't hear. "You know, there was a time, the last two years or so, when I thought you were really dead."

"You shouldn't be so gullible. This isn't the first time I've disappeared."

"Going to do some spiritual practice?"

"Yes," Li Li said happily, "I have always been interested in exploring the spiritual power of human beings."

"I thought it was limited to digging in the lab! I thought that if you suddenly stopped caring about real life and started clamoring like your father about going to the temple to practice, it would mean that you were really going to die."

"It seems you guessed wrong."

"People get confused when they get old," Radumos said kindly, "but it's still very interesting... It's different from the previous times. The complete silence makes me think a lot..."

"Didn't Pajaniya mention that I was still in touch with him?"

"Pajania is also an interesting young man." Radumos kept nodding his head. "What a pity! What a pity! This young man does not have many problems of your generation, nor does he have the bad habits of the small circle. He is a completely honest old-fashioned person; but he has too many secrets, and it is difficult to ignore his weird little skills. He is always so absent-minded and can hardly hide things... I often feel that he is not telling me the truth. Of course, his starting point may be good, unlike your former friends who like to tease people."

"I don't remember having such a friend." Li Li said calmly.

"Ha!" Radumos said, "You're not going to admit it? That red-haired kid who stole the employee information, that female director who wanted to interview your brother... and this one in front of us, right down the hill, this one is even more incredible."

He jerked his chin in front of the campsite. Where his red nose pointed, the vast plain reached the edge of the dome. The swaying reeds on the river had lost their green color, and the pale white spikelets whistled with the ebb and flow of the tide; the sky was extremely clear, and the light of the beautiful sun fell layer by layer from the flowing clouds, adding gold and color to the colorful and magnificent things. The rustling business wind rushed out from the depths of Luchuan, filled with the intoxicating and refreshing fragrance of autumn dew, and moistened the gardens on the high slopes with frost. The orchard that once contributed summer shade is now lush and magnificent, and the harvest day is already in sight; the lush branches and leaves form a splendid canopy, hiding the farmhouse and fields behind.

"What a nice place." Radumos said with some regret.

Li Li handed him back the weapon he had assembled. Radumos still had his hands on his knees, like he was enjoying the cool air in the park. "You're not taking it with you?" he asked casually.

"No use for this."

"I'm just a little curious," Radumos said. "Snipers and powerful hypnotic drugs are understandable, but when you are only preparing to deal with a single target, you don't have to think about how to set the entire field on fire from a few kilometers away, right?"

"The vision here is not ideal, and snipers may not be useful. If necessary, I need to call for range fire."

"A killing radius of fifty meters?" Radumos asked slowly. "Steel fragments? White phosphorus? What are we fighting? A Goliath?"

"Just to prevent unexpected events."

"If you really want to be prepared for accidents, you shouldn't go there in person now."

"I'm going to make one last attempt," Li Li said. She put the thing in her hand back on the table and raised her arm to adjust her hood. Radumos grinned as if he had a toothache and let out a slight inhalation of distress.

"One last piece of advice." He glanced at the person next to him and said quickly, "I really don't like that guy."

"You don't like anyone who can see through your sweet talk - unless she is very beautiful."

"That guy looks familiar to me," Radumos said. "Don't take friendship too seriously when dealing with this kind of person... If you insist on standing in his way, girl, he will kill you."

"That's not a problem."

"Ha! So magnanimous?"

"Ladu," Li Li said, "Because I would do the same."

She turned and greeted the two people at the camping table. The parrot stood in a corner of the cage, still staring at her quietly. Ai Hu stopped calling now, just lying in the grass, flaring his nose, his eyes full of doubt. It was still wondering what it had seen, and Li Li had already walked to the bottom of the slope. The grass rustled at her feet, as if there were insects and snakes lurking in it; the bees were nowhere to be seen - after the day of the accident, they used their connections to temporarily block the woods, cleared all the beehives, and tried to drive away nearby birds to avoid triggering some subtle hidden mines or causing unexpected biological mutations.

At the edge of the orchard, she came across a slender tower nearly as tall as a person. It was one of the many anemometers that Tell had placed in the surrounding area. Accurate sniping from two or three kilometers away cannot rely solely on luck and feel. In order to be as inconspicuous as possible, they also painted the anemometer in camouflage. The rotating wind cup and the swaying wind vane were all colorful brown and green, like a strange scarecrow shaking its head in the forest. Through the camera on the anemometer, Tell also saw her and greeted her in the private channel.

"Two o'clock," he said, and said no more.

Li Li continued to move forward at her own pace and direction. There were already several existing paths in the orchard, paved with gravel bricks and reed stalks. They were not paved very carefully, but they were easier to walk on than the beekeeping forest on the slope. Looking out from the gaps between the tree trunks and the leaf crowns, the countryside and the wetland were indistinguishable, like a low stage background behind the curtain, a whole bright and smooth oil painting: in the foreground of the canvas, the inula flowers resembled pocket-sized sunflowers, shining in spots among the weeds; the bees and butterflies driven out of the linden forest found a new paradise, and they all entangled in groups in the fields. The green gauze tent in the field has already sprouted, dotted with milky white or purple-pink tassels; the topaz-like okra flowers have dark red hearts, like a pool of blood oozing from the front of the chest. In front of the houses beside the fields, there are rows of red-flowered Lycoris radiata - a distant relative of the same family, people call it "wind and rain flower", which always blooms in large patches when wind and rain come - but now the new and the old are not connected, and only a few flowers are left sparsely.

Still in full bloom in front of the house is the crape myrtle. The crape myrtle is planted in a large porcelain pot, presumably to isolate it from the soil of the wetland itself. This special care allows it to bloom and bear fruit in a place where the water and soil are not suitable. The crape myrtle trees, which are like red clouds and pink mist, and rows of sturdy willows lean against the outer wall of the farmhouse. From the deep shade of the willows, the delicate chirping of cicadas can be heard, floating between the silent eaves. There is no human voice, even the singing of birds is very far away; there is also no trace of people. The green gauze tents with ears of corn are like layers of fences. When the wind blows, shadows are hazy and rustling, as if many invisible people are walking inside.

A farmer squatted under a corn stalk to weed. He wore a straw hat and carefully pulled up the weeds by the roots with cotton gloves covered in mud. Sometimes when the grass roots were pulled up, there was too much mud attached to them, leaving an ugly and abrupt hole on the surface of the field. The farmer used a scraper to shave off the soil around the grass roots and fill the hole in the ground again. For thousands of years, farmers have always come and gone like this; the earth has sprouted new buds from under the surface with endless vitality, and the new buds have been dug up by generations of people, constantly leaving holes and constantly filling them up.

Li Li walked towards him like a lost tourist. "Is there a place to rest nearby?" she asked. The farmer who was weeding in the cornfield raised his head, and his face under the straw hat was clearly divided: the left half was covered with strange scars, as if it had been pressed hard against a red-hot wire mesh, and it was almost unrecognizable; the right half was miraculously intact, and the former appearance and style still remained between the eyebrows. They looked at each other for a long time. The farmer was pulling weeds while thinking, and his face gradually showed surprise.

"You..." the farmer said, his voice still calm.

"We went to the old secret base," Li Li explained, "and found the sealed old equipment."

The farmer looked her up and down several times, and a smile appeared on his wooden face: "Interesting."

"Sir, what's wrong with your face?"

"There was an accident."

"It doesn't look like a deep wound. I can try to arrange repair surgery."

"Why bother?" Luo Binhan said. He threw away the scraper and grass roots in his hand, took off his work gloves, stood up and stretched his muscles. "You look pretty good, your face looks like the projection... but the eyes are not good enough."

“Performance first.”

"Yeah, that makes sense." Luo Binhan lowered his head and patted the mud off his trouser legs. "Performance is more important - but you don't have taste receptors installed? You can't eat or drink?"

“It’s too late to improve this.”

"What a pity! I was going to entertain you." Luo Binhan said seriously, and couldn't help laughing at himself, "What a distinguished guest."

(End of this chapter)