Volume 1 Animal World Chapter 8: Upright Comrades
Wei Dong's eyes were red and swollen. He rushed over and scratched Ke Xun's head in surprise: "Are you okay?! Fuck, you're okay?! That's great! That's great, that's great! You're okay, hahahahaha you're okay!"
"Calm down, calm down, easy." Ke Xun broke free from his grip and patted him on the shoulder, "I'm fine, put your little heart back in your chest, look at how ugly you look after crying."
"Who the hell am I doing this for!" Wei Dong wiped away the tears that were overflowing again and walked aside, afraid that Ke Xun would talk about him again.
Ke Xun looked at Mu Yiran who had been looking at him, and raised his lips into a smile.
Mu Yiran looked away, paused, and then looked back: "Where did they take you?"
The smile on Ke Xun's face suddenly disappeared, and he said hesitantly: "Maybe... gay purgatory?"
Perhaps it was because the experiences during the day were too tortuous and stimulating, and he did not sleep well last night, Ke Xun sat down, applied cold compresses to the wounds he sustained from the fight with Mo Xun, and fell asleep unknowingly.
He was awakened by a bottle of Coke. When he opened his eyes, Ju Niu was distributing dinner to each room.
Considering that Yuan Yuan was chosen yesterday, several people outside the screen were not in the mood to eat at the moment, for fear that they would get fat accidentally and become a plate of fat human meat slices next to the hot pot of the giants.
Ke Xun rubbed his still painful nose, sat up and leaned against the wall, and saw Wei Dong looking at him with complicated eyes.
"I heard that you were taken away for breeding?" Wei Dong asked in a strange tone.
Ke Xun guessed that Dong Dong had been questioned by everyone, and couldn't help but look at him. He saw him sitting there with a tired look on his face, carefully putting chocolate into his mouth.
Wei Dong came closer and lowered his voice: "I saw his legs were weak when he walked. I'm afraid he was drained of energy."
Ke Xun: "Haha, men are all pigs who can't control their lower body."
Weidong asked him: "What about you? Did you lose the city gate?"
Ke Xun kicked him and said, "You are humiliating an upright comrade, do you know that?"
Weidong: "There is no 'straight' in your dictionary, remember?"
Ke Xun looked around and felt something was wrong, so he asked Wei Dong, "Why do we seem to have changed a few people in this compartment?"
"Of course," Wei Dong said, "Didn't you notice there's another familiar face?"
Ke Xun cast his eyes towards the people in the painting who were fighting over food, and was surprised to see Mo Xun's face.
"what's the situation?"
"It's just a change of personnel," Wei Dong said. "Juniu took the previous ones to another room, and these few were stuffed in again. They look stronger than the previous ones. But the amazing thing is that they became very obedient when they saw Boss Mu was here. They didn't dare to come up and grab the food when it was distributed just now. They were very servile and let Boss Mu choose first, and then they dared to come up and eat. Even Mo Mao was like this. Isn't this the so-called deterrent power of the leader?"
Ke Xun nodded: "Yes, the leader chicken in the flock has the right to choose food and mate first."
"..." Wei Dong looked at Mu Yiran who was sitting opposite him with a complicated expression, "If I were a chicken, I would be so envious of him. Oh, there is one more thing... Bi Jing was taken to another room by Ju Niu, and I don't know why."
"Maybe it's because he's too thin." The speaker was Zhu Haowen, who had been sitting nearby, fiddling with a few macadamia nuts in his hands.
"What do you mean?" Wei Dong asked hurriedly.
"People are divided into groups," Zhu Haowen pointed at the people in the room, "We are all young and strong. If you look closely, you will see that they have good figures and looks, which is consistent with what the middle-aged uncle said about 'good breed'."
"So it's divided into excellent, good, medium, poor, and bad grades?" Wei Dong realized, then he was shocked, "Shit, are we going to start with our room?"
Ke Xun looked at him with a mentally retarded look in his eyes: "If you raise chickens and cattle, do you eat the strong and young chickens and cattle first, or the old and infertile chickens and cattle first?"
Wei Dong scratched his head: "But what did Yuan Yuan say yesterday?"
Ke Xun continued to look at the idiot: "When you cook hotpot, do you want to have old beef or young fat beef?" Although it was a bit disrespectful to Yuan Yuan to say this, it was obvious that this was the fact.
Wei Dong's eyes lit up: "So, people like us will most likely not be chosen again?"
Ke Xun shook his head: "The rule in the painting is that someone dies almost every day, and judging by the nature of this painting, there shouldn't be a chance for us to get together and vote for the dead, so no matter if we are fat cows or not, we will definitely be controlled to the rule of at least one death every night. You know, there are more than just a few of us strong people, there are plenty on this farm, a few more or less of us won't make much difference, and someone will definitely die tonight."
Wei Dong became depressed and sighed, "We look relaxed in this painting every day, but it is actually the most powerless painting we have ever seen. Facing the absolute difference in size and strength between the giant bull and us, we have no ability to resist, and we don't even have the possibility of escaping. This is purely... just waiting to die. We are completely powerless."
"We have to find the signature as soon as possible." Ke Xun said.
"How can we find him if we're locked up here? We've already searched the lawn outside. Where else can we go except these two places?" Wei Dong said dejectedly.
Ke Xun stood up, walked to Mu Yiran who was sitting opposite him, squatted down, and tilted his head to look at him: "My male god, do you have any clues about the signature? The giants may come to pick people again tonight."
Mu Yiran's eyes fell on the ground in front of him: "If you want to find the signature, you must first decipher the painter's intention, and then analyze the content and structure of the picture."
"I usually regard these surrealist painters as half crazy and half genius," Ke Xun said. "First of all, I'm not a crazy person, and secondly, I'm not a genius, so I find the psychology and intentions of these people the most difficult to understand."
"This one is actually relatively easy to understand," Qin Ci joined in. "Since the title of the painting is 'Animal World', it is obvious that in the worldview designed by the artist, animals are the masters of this planet, and humans have replaced the roles and ranks of animals in reality, resulting in a major reversal of status here."
"What I'm curious about is, since humans in this painting have become low-level animals, then what is the painter himself?" Ke Xun said, "Does he see himself as a low-level human, or as a high-level animal? If it's the former, then humans in the painting have no dignity, and they don't even deserve to have a name, so what qualifications does he have to leave his signature in the painting? If it's the latter, then this person is a bit dirty. Other humans are low-level, but he is high-level? Okay, he is the painter, so let's not argue with him about this. Then what kind of animal is he, the noble panda among animals? Or the lion king?"
Weidong nodded: "This is a problem."
"For some animal protectors or enthusiasts," Mu Yiran said, "in their minds, humans are worse than animals."
"Humans are selfish, dark, cruel, and have countless bad qualities. They are indeed worse than animals." The person who spoke was Zhu Haowen, who had followed along at some point.
"Comrade Xiao Zhu, Hao Wen'er," Ke Xun made a hand gesture, "The subject of human nature is really too big. If we continue to discuss it here, we may not be able to finish discussing the first chapter even after seven days. The first task now is to find signatures. Let's brainstorm and Yi Ran speak first."
Mu Yiran seemed too lazy to correct Ke Xun's address. He still didn't look at him and said while thinking: "According to past experience, signatures will not appear in places we cannot reach. Wherever our ability can reach, it is the range where signatures appear. So think about it the other way around. If there is no possibility of signatures appearing in the places we can currently reach, does it mean..."
"Some places that seem out of our reach are actually reachable!" Ke Xun continued, "That makes sense! Why didn't we think that if we think about the problem in reverse, we will often get unexpected answers. You are indeed a big shot, your thinking is more active than ours."
Everyone: “…”
Qin Ci said: "What Xiaomu said does make sense. The only places we can reach now are this compartment and the lawn outside.
"The lawn is in full view, and Xiaomu and I have already stood on a high place to observe during the day. Neither the terrain nor the grass texture can form a seal pattern or signature font, so the lawn can be ruled out.
"As for the compartment, first of all, this one is definitely not possible, and other rooms are also unlikely because they are meaningless. The corridor outside the compartment and the entire farmhouse are also unlikely. After all, as long as we look up, or when we go in and out during the breeze, we can see everything. If the signature is here, it will be easily discovered.
"There are only two places we can go on a daily basis. If there are no signatures at these two places, they can only be somewhere else. It seems impossible for us to go to other places, but if it is according to Xiaomu's statement, maybe we can go there. It's just that we think it's impossible because we haven't tried it.
"We are looking for places like this now, places where signatures are likely to appear and where we can go with our abilities. Let 's think about what places have such properties."
Ke Xun: "The administrator's office? We can go there, but the premise is... well, you know. But when I went there, I was held captive and couldn't move freely. If we want to go there to test it, we can only go there secretly, and it's probably quite dangerous, after all, there are cows inside."
Dong Dong also coughed: "Also...we can go to the farm over there with the woman..."
"No," Mu glanced at him, "There's no point in going there. It's the same as the men's farm. If there's no possibility of signatures in the farmhouse and on the lawn, there won't be any there either. So the administrator's office is one possibility. In addition, I think there should be a slaughterhouse and a food processing room nearby."
