In Mingguang Base City, among countless post-apocalyptic modern metal-style buildings, there stands an antique green-tiled building, with an octagonal flying phoenix eaves, wooden walls with gold-painted phoenixes, a half-foot-high vermilion threshold, and a jade lion holding a bead sitting at the door. .
There is a black gold plaque with three golden characters written on it: Jiu Shan Palace.
Judging from the name, this is a restaurant.
Pedestrians with a strong aura and well-dressed clothes, some were talking loudly, some were walking in a hurry, but when they passed the gate of Jiushan Palace, they all glanced at him with envy subconsciously.
"Boom, boom, boom, boom,"
The plaque of the Jiushan Palace trembled slightly, and a sound like the heartbeat of an ancient giant beast came from inside the Jiushan Palace, with a hidden strange rhythm that was low and spread far and wide.
"Boom, boom."
Anyone who hears this voice will feel a rush of blood pouring into their pupils and thoughts, making them feel uncomfortable.
"Congratulations to Master Deng Yuan, for being mutated to the third level!!"
At the same time, a shout came from the Jiushan Palace and resounded throughout the street.
"boom."
There was a crowd, and people's envious, jealous, and longing eyes drifted toward this ancient building that was said to be left over before the catastrophe, and they wished they could replace it with their own bodies.
Nine times of heavy drum music came from the Dengwen drum in Jiushan Palace.
After a while, a man wearing a school officer's military uniform strode out of the gate of Jiushan Palace with a happy face.
He raised his head, clasped his fists, and bowed deeply to the black gold plaque of Jiushan Palace. After half a minute, he raised his body, got into a giant modified off-road vehicle, and drove away.
"People from the garrison..."
"Third-level mutant! Hiss..."
Another middle-aged man smiled sarcastically. Seeing everyone looking at him, he said proudly, "Don't talk nonsense if you don't understand. This is Lord Deng Yuan of the military's second hunting team, the Blood-Slaying Special Forces. No." By the age of thirty, you will already be a third-level mutant, you are so young and promising!"
"Yeah yeah"
"I wonder if Master Deng Yuan has ever been married? Did he take concubines?"
"My niece is naturally beautiful. Do you have a chance to meet Mr. Deng Yuan?"
People were talking a lot.
"I only broke through to the third level at the age of twenty-nine. I'm afraid there will be no hope of reaching the fourth level in this life."
A discordant voice came from the crowd.
"Hey, I dare to ask this servant, what level of mutant are you now?"
"That's right, who is this person? He's dressed sloppily, and his tone is quite serious."
It’s a bit embarrassing if someone else hears what you say in your heart.
There was no talk of envy, jealousy or hatred. After all, Lin Chou was not even a mutant. He could only look up to them and sigh casually.
He threw the two bags of garbage in his hands into the garbage pile and ran back to the Mingguang Training Hall.
After returning to the training hall, Lin Chou gritted his teeth and looked at the plaque of Jiushan Palace opposite, his eyes blood red.
"Sooner or later, I will hang this plaque on the beam of my latrine!"
Feud, absolute feud!
The black and strong Xia Dasha was carrying two bags of garbage. He smiled silly at Lin Chou and said, "Brother Chou, why don't you leave? You'll miss breakfast."
Lin Chou sighed, "The restaurant will be closed in the next few days. It won't be long before this happens."
I have been busy since last night until midnight, and my whole body feels like it is falling apart.
Xia Dasha chirped, "Oh, it's closed."
Xia Dasha watched Lin Chou leave the Mingguang Tactical Training Hall in a bit of a state of despair, and scratched his head, "Did Brother Chou not eat? Well, it must be..."
...
Lin Chou is a little-known little person. If it weren't for the fact that a humanoid species called "otaku" has been extinct for two centuries, he must be one of them.
In the Pythagorean Alley, Lin Chou had a half-dead, shabby storefront, with an iron plaque of the Lin Family Restaurant hanging crookedly on it, the only inheritance left to him by his father.
There are eight tin tabletops, but only three benches. The roof often leaks, and the mouse holes in the corners are covered with spider webs and hung with a lot of dust, proving that even mice are unwilling to settle in the store or have packed up their bed and run away to escape famine. .
Pythagorean Alley is one of the inconspicuous alleys in the slums. It is one of the first buildings that were reassembled from the ruins of Dongsheng City after the zombie apocalypse in the past two hundred years.
It is said that Mingguang Base City started from this alley and advanced step by step, killing and expelling the living corpses, and then built the city and built the separation wall, which is very memorable.
However, this is of no use. Most of the people living in Pythagorean Alley are ants who dare not even leave the three gates of the base city.
These people are like worker ants, doing complicated and heavy physical labor in exchange for three meals a day to support their families.
Lin Chou's family has been passed down by three generations, starting with his father's generation who opened this small restaurant. It took decades to pay off the mortgage.
People often say that after all the hardships come the joys. When the mortgage was paid off, Lin Chou's father, who never drank, got drunk~~ If you are successful in life, you must have all the fun. When it is worth celebrating, you should celebrate it.
In his drunken dream, Lin Chou's father actually began to mutate. If Lin Chou's father mutates successfully, the fate of the two fathers and sons will undergo earth-shaking changes. They will escape from the quagmire of Pythagorean Alley and fly up the branches to become phoenixes.
Unfortunately, the unconscious father did not survive that ordeal.
In a flash, Lin Chou became an adult.
After the age of twenty, there is basically no hope of becoming a mutant in this life. Examples of Lin Chou's father are almost rare. The golden age of mutation is generally between 15 and 20 years old.
Lin Chou was also used to going to the No. 11 vegetable market in the base city every day, buying some tattered vegetable leaves and rat meat that people with a little money would look down upon. Occasionally, a few sparrows or half a pound of wild boar meat were considered rare delicacies. , compared to others, at least Lin Chou can have enough food and clothing, and does not sell his dignity for his livelihood.
Of course, no one will look at me differently...
At six o'clock in the morning, Lin Chou would prepare a meal and open it on time. Today's menu would be written as neatly as possible on a tattered wooden board to provide breakfast for those alley residents who got up early to work, even though few people were willing to pay for this meal.
At noon, the main customers are children.
The city of Mingguang Base pays for every child's lunch, and the principle of proximity applies to meals, so noon is also the time when Lin Chou's business is the best.
The importance that Base City attaches to children is quite outrageous. Contraceptive pills and condoms rank first among the things that have been artificially disappearing from people's sight for two hundred years in the last two hundred years.
Abortion is absolutely prohibited. Even if a pregnant woman has an abortion, there are extremely strict declaration procedures and layers of review. Once it is found that this is not the case, the penalty for the relevant person may be up to hanging.
The reason is simple. The base city needs force and mutants and awakened people to provide strong defense force. Every child has the possibility to become an evolver.
On the day of the catastrophe, when the surviving humans discovered that living corpses could mate and give birth to offspring, their despair was beyond words.
In the zombie apocalypse, on January 31st, 73.1% of the world's population turned into walking zombies. Their eyesight was severely degraded, their sense of smell and hearing were extremely sensitive, they were bloodthirsty, hated humans and were extremely aggressive. At the beginning, humans were once powerless. Resisting living corpses is no different than being reduced to food.
There was no dawn on January 1, 2020, and dark red clouds were gathering in the entire sky. The day of cataclysm for animals, plants, and the entire world had just opened a new label.
Under such a catastrophe, the last surviving humans in the world are less than 110 million, accounting for 0.83%.
At the same time, human reproduction capacity has declined significantly, and the birth rate of newborns will approach zero infinitely within thirty years after the end of the world.
Ten years later, the first generation of living corpse larvae was discovered. At the same time, people with awakened talents and mutants began to appear among humans. Their combat capabilities were extremely different from ordinary people and were extremely powerful.
The extreme evolution of mankind has prevented catastrophe, and those with awakened talents and mutants are both called "sons of mankind in the new era."
To this day, more than 190 years later, those with awakened talents and mutants are still the main force in fighting the living zombies.
"Dawn of the New Era Project! Every child will be the mainstay of the base city in the future. Let the children eat well, play well, and live a good life! Grow in happiness, mutate in happiness, and awaken in happiness!"
Lin Chou retracted his gaze and looked at the large-character advertisement posted on the wall by the Base City Development and Survival Committee (Generation Committee).
This small pictorial represents that Lin Chou's small restaurant is an officially recognized implementation unit of the New Dawn Plan. Every month, with receipts, a certain proportion of food subsidies can be received from the Coordination Department of the Development Committee - roughly half of the food subsidy is paid by the children's families. Fund half.
It was rare today. Lin Chou bought a grass snake for fifteen circulation points. It weighed ten kilograms and was more than five meters long.
The circulation point is an emerging currency after Mingguang Base City reorganized its order, and its purchasing power is quite pragmatic.
Snake meat is a rare thing. It is a great supplement and can be used to improve the diet of a bunch of brats. Even Lin Chou himself has not tasted meat for a week.
Although it is only two thumbs thick, it has a body of more than five meters long. This black and white cauliflower snake looks particularly magical.
Lin Chou held the snake's lower jaw and killed it with one blow while it kept squirming and struggling.
In the apocalypse, even the pickiest children will not have any resistance to meat. Some children even dream of eating rat meat every meal.
Yes, rat meat.
The most common and cheapest meat in slums. Rats are easy to raise, mature quickly, have strong fertility, and low mutation rate. They are suitable for ordinary people to raise and eat. The meat of rats is tender and has a strong earthy smell. It is an ideal source of protein.
"Brother Chou, did you hear that daddy said there is snake meat to eat today?"
"Great! I've never eaten snake meat before!"
A little girl looked at Lin Chou longingly, her dark eyes shining brightly, and said with longing, "Brother Chou, I heard from my father that eating snake meat can mutate children! I want an extra piece of meat!"
"I also want!"
"I…"
Lin Chou threw the snake's head into the soup pot, opened the snake's belly and took out the internal organs, and tore off the snake's skin completely with three quick strokes, smiling broadly.
"They are all there, they are all there!"
The snake head is cooked with cabbage in a pot of soup. After the snake skin is stir-fried, it is extremely crispy and refreshing. It is perfect as a breakfast menu.
There is still an hour left before dinner. It seems that the children learned the news about eating snake meat from their parents in the morning, so they can't wait.
For this last meal, Lin Chou deliberately found the chili peppers that he usually couldn't bear to use from the depths of the cabinet and chopped them into pieces.
"Ah, Brother Chou, this...is this chili pepper??" A child's eyes widened.
Lin Chou nodded, "I'm going to make spicy snake meat today. It's delicious!"
There was a sound of swallowing.
There are basically only two kinds of seasonings used in the store, salt and kelp.
It is said that something called MSG is extracted from kelp, which can make the dishes delicious, but Lin Chou can only use some dried kelp residue to season it. This is because Mingguang Base City is close to the Black Sea, and the waves Rolling some sea vegetables to the shore and feeding a large number of people.
Lin Chou coveted the rare and valuable seasonings such as Sichuan peppercorns, pepper, onions, ginger, garlic, vinegar, soy sauce, cooking wine, MSG and other rare and valuable seasonings in their homes.
Making cheap ingredients taste as delicious as possible is one of Lin Chou's few pleasures.
To be precise, snake meat is not a cheap food. The residents in Pythagorean Alley work hard for a day selling it in the base city, and their wages are only 3-5 distribution points. A pound of rice that is not moldy or spoiled is just Already requires 2 circulation points.
In the last days, food is a very precious thing.
There are 27 children, 9 boys and 18 girls, who eat lunch at Lin's Café all year round. This lunch is much more nutritious than what they can get at home. No matter what the children's family situation is, the base The city mandates that parents of children must spend 1.5 circulation points every day to pay for their children's lunches.
One child, one lunch, inspectors from the Development Committee come to the shop every week to make a surprise inspection to see if the food meets the minimum food standards of the Development Committee.
No matter how harsh a restaurant is, they will not tamper with children's meals. Once discovered, the charge plastered on their foreheads will be no less than "treason" before the catastrophe.
Of course, there are still profits to be made.
Lin Chou has his own way of treating snake meat.
First, wash the snake meat three times with warm water of about 50 degrees Celsius to remove the blood foam, and chop it into three centimeter-long pieces.
Snake meat is white in texture and strong in toughness. It tastes similar to chicken and has the deliciousness of fish.
To make snake meat, you either need to simmer it over low heat for a few hours to cook out the gelatin, or stir-fry it over high heat and heavy oil, and garnish with a small amount of vegetables for seasoning.
The oil is clear oil, squeezed from wild grass seeds, cheap, bland and tasteless.
After the snake meat was put into the pot, a puff of green smoke suddenly shot up, and bright yellow flames surged in the pot and on the snake meat, and it took a long time before it disappeared.
Stir-fry quickly for a while, add crushed dried chili peppers and fine salt, stir-fry until the color changes, take out of the pan and put on a plate.
Since there were only two flavors of seasoning, and in order to ensure the taste of the snake meat, Lin Chou did not choose to add vegetables to it, but fried some vegetables separately in the big pot used to fry the snake meat.
Each child received a bowl of rice, five pieces of snake meat, a portion of fried green leafy vegetables, snake head and cabbage soup, and fried snake skin.
Three dishes and one soup, a luxury that has never been experienced before.
The children ate very delicious and spicy food, and they had to pick up the rice grains that fell on the table and eat them. In the apocalypse, even the youngest children know how to respect every bit of food.
