Volume 1 Animal World Chapter 9 Comrade with a Serious Face
Wei Dong and Dong Dong's faces changed at the same time. Wei Dong stammered, "I don't really want to go to that kind of place..."
"I'll go." Ke Xun said, "Think of a solution first, then you go to the administrator's office, and I'll go to the slaughter room and food processing room."
Mu Yiran finally looked at him and said calmly, "We can only go during the day when the wind is blowing. There are no cows on the lawn at that time, and no cows will notice our movements outside. But the important problem is that the cows are likely to be in the administrator's room. If we want to go in, we need to take a big risk."
"So what do you mean?" Qin Ci asked.
"Lead the cows out of the manager's office." Mu said happily, "I'll do it."
In view of the urgency of time, Mu Yiran still divided the work for tomorrow's operation.
Qin Ci and Dong Dong were responsible for searching the administrator's office, Ke Xun and Wei Dong were responsible for the slaughter room, and Mu Yiran and Zhu Haowen were responsible for the food processing room.
After discussing tomorrow's plan, everyone sat in a corner and stopped talking.
Before tomorrow comes, we must first go through tonight's death selection. Maybe after tonight, one or even several companions will be missing from tomorrow's three groups of people. Plans can never keep up with changes.
After eating and drinking, the people in the painting stayed obediently in the corner of the compartment. No one dared to come forward and pick on the people outside the painting like those fools did yesterday. Only Mo Wei looked at Mu Yiran with a gloomy look from time to time, as if he was always plotting to usurp the throne.
Mu Yiran didn't even look at him, just closed his eyes and rested, but Ke Xun stood in the corner, looking up.
To put it bluntly, these cubicles are like pig pens in a pig farm, with pigs kept in cubicles one by one. They are surrounded on all sides with a roof exposed so that pig farmers can feed them from above.
This "human circle" is also surrounded on all sides , with two brick walls and one wall being the back wall of the entire farmhouse, which goes all the way up to the roof. There are windows embedded in the wall, and iron bars embedded in the windows. On the other side is an iron gate, the upper part of the gate is also a brick wall, flush with the brick walls on both sides, and on the lower part of the iron gate, there is a door as wide as a person that can be opened and closed for people to enter and exit.
Ke Xun observed the scene, walked to Mu Yiran's side, and lowered his voice: "I think this painting is different from the previous ones. The previous ones are full of ghosts and gods, involving some "fields" or non-human forces, so we can't move around at night. There will always be various situations to restrict our actions, such as suffocating if we walk out of the specified range. But this painting, I think it's different."
Mu Yiran lowered her eyes and thought while listening to him speak.
"The absolute masters of this painting are animals, in other words, the 'humans' of this world. Since they are 'humans' and they are the ones who choose our death, does that mean that they are the absolute power that has the right to choose in this painting? Is there no higher power above them that can dominate our fate?"
When Ke Xun finished speaking, Mu raised his eyes with a slightly fixed gaze.
"If they are the 'humans' in this world, it means that they only have 'human' power, not divine power, just like us in the real world. Their advantages over animals are only in size, strength, height difference and intelligence," Ke Xun continued, "but after all, this is a painting created by humans, and we can't make an absolute replacement. So we still have human wisdom here, and we can still walk upright and free our hands. The difference between us and them here is only in size, height and strength. If those indescribable powers did not exist, wouldn't it be proved..."
At this point, Ke Xun leaned close to Mu Yiran's ear and whispered, "In this painting, as long as there are no restrictions on personal freedom, we can move around anywhere at night?"
Mu Yiran's long and slightly curled eyelashes drooped and lifted right in front of Ke Xun's eyes. Ke Xun sat up straight and moved a few inches to the side.
Mu Yiran didn't pay any attention to his little movements, but just moved his eyes around the compartment, finally landing on the corner of the two walls.
"You can give it a try." He responded.
Ke Xun smiled, scratched his nose with his fingertips, and added in a low voice, "Actually, I think there is another place mentioned earlier that 'seems like you can't go, but you might actually go', besides the administrator's office, the slaughterhouse, and the food processing room."
Mu Yiran finally moved his gaze to his face.
The distance between the two was still quite close, so when they suddenly looked at each other like this, everything on each other's faces was clearly presented to each other's eyes.
The eye contact was a little sudden, and Mu Yiran seemed to be caught off guard and turned his head away quickly.
Ke Xun also turned his head, took a deep breath silently, and then said: "Outside the farm. Maybe outside the farm, we can go too, as long as we find a way to get out."
"You're right." Mu Yiran said calmly.
Then the two of them stopped talking and just sat side by side in silence.
Strangely and fortunately, no bulls came to select who to kill until the giant bulls came to flush the stalls, cleaned up and left the farmhouse.
"What's going on? Are we really going to vote tomorrow?" Wei Dong came over in surprise and asked in a low voice.
Ke Xun also couldn't understand why the vote required all the surviving people outside the painting to do it together, but the men's and women's farmhouses were separated. Would there be a special scene to lock everyone up together before voting?
Mu Yiran thought for a moment and asked Xiang Kexun, "Among the five women outside the painting, are there any older ones?"
Ke Xun scratched his head: "I didn't look closely, my back was turned to them the whole time, let me think about it."
Mu Yiran stopped talking and waited silently until Ke Xun spoke again: "Yes, I recalled their voices, and one of them sounded like she was about 40 or 50 years old."
Mu Yiran paused and said in a deep voice: "Then maybe it's not that the giant bulls didn't make the death selection tonight, but that they just didn't make the selection in the men's dormitory."
"You mean... they chose women?" Wei Dong felt a little scared and a little sad.
"And it's probably the old lady in her 40s or 50s," Ke Xun understood what Mu Yiran meant. "Young women are kept for breeding, but older women are not worth keeping. They can't give birth anymore, and they can't wait until they're too old to chew. So when they're 40 or 50 years old... they can't wait any longer to slaughter them."
There was a moment of silence.
I have to say that after the silence, I felt a little more relaxed, at least I knew I had saved my life tonight.
It was midnight and the whole farmhouse was silent. Apart from the occasional snoring, no one could be heard talking. The few people living in the same house had fallen asleep. Even Weidong and Zhu Haowen had already begun to doze off. However, Mu Yiran stood up quietly at this moment.
Ke Xun, who was always paying attention to him, also stood up and asked him in a low voice: "What are you going to do?"
Mu Yiran also lowered his voice and pointed to the angle between the two walls: "I have practiced rock climbing. I want to try to climb up from here and flip over to the outside to take a look."
"I'll go with you." Ke Xun said without hesitation.
Mu Yiran glanced at him and said, "Don't be so impulsive. This wall is too high. If you haven't practiced it before, you might fail or run out of energy. Falling down is no joke."
Ke Xun smiled, "Don't underestimate me. When I was in school, I was second in physical strength in the department, and no one dared to claim to be first. I have not stopped exercising since graduation. You don't have to worry about my physical strength. As for whether I will fail, that depends on you. You are in front and I am behind. I will follow you wherever you pick . As long as you don't fail, I won't fail."
Mu Yiran didn't say anything more. He knew that Ke Xun would not compromise on such a matter and he would not let him take risks alone.
He took him to the corner and whispered to him some quick rock climbing techniques. Then he realized that Ke Xun was indeed a student of physical education and had an extraordinary talent for sports. He only needed to briefly explain the techniques and he could immediately grasp them and even apply them to other situations.
After finishing the explanation and giving a few more reminders, Mu Yiran woke up the dazed Qin Ci, whispered his plan to him, and asked Qin Ci to help keep an eye on them - mainly on the people in the painting. If anyone woke up and found that he and Ke Xun were not in the compartment, and started shouting and attracted the giant bull over, it would be a big deal.
Mu Yiran told Qin Ci to act according to the circumstances, and if it really didn't work, he would knock him out with a knife.
Qin Ci was speechless for a moment.
Even though he was a doctor, he would not dare to chop someone's neck with a knife lightly. He was not as bold as Ke Xun, as a mistake in the chop could cost someone's life. He was a doctor, and his job was to save lives, not to kill people. However, he also understood the importance of this matter. If he couldn't bring himself to do it, it would be these people outside the painting who would die, so he agreed.
When Mu Yiran was about to start rock climbing, Ke Xun regretted it.
He had to look up and watch him climb so that he could know where his hand and footholds would be.
But when he looked up, the scene he saw made him feel confused all of a sudden. This... was simply... ah...
At this time, Ke Xun sincerely admired Mu Yiran.
This person is truly open and honest, calm and composed in any situation and any circumstance. He doesn't do unnecessary things, doesn't have any unnecessary thoughts, is always ready to respond, and has a heart as strong as iron.
Ke Xun silently sang the national anthem several times in his heart, then climbed up with a solemn expression.
Mu Yiran didn't climb very fast. In order to take Ke Xun's speed into consideration, he stopped from time to time to look down to judge whether he was still able to keep up.
Obviously, Ke Xun was very reassuring in this regard. When he climbed halfway up, Mu Yiran saw that his fingers clinging to the cracks between the bricks were still as steady as before. He couldn't help but feel relieved and continued to climb upwards.
It took the two of them more than twenty minutes to finally climb to the top of the high wall. Standing on the top of the wall and looking around, the entire farmhouse came into view, with tall and spacious houses, two rows of neat partitions, and huge brooms, tables and chairs placed in the corners of the house. It gave them a strange feeling of having arrived in the land of giants.
The two of them looked around carefully in the moonlight outside the window. Ke Xun found a way out first and pointed to the wall close to the roof - there was a vent there, big enough for a human to get out!
