Chapter 278: The Competition Of Evolution
Yun Ce was still in Liang City.
Unlike what others thought, that he had led the Tiger Guards to flee thousands of miles away, he went straight into the mountain forest south of Liang City.
Before entering the forest, he led the Tiger Guards tracing upstream along a small river, then walked five or six li over a rocky area that left no footprints, before entering another small river flowing westward. This time they flowed downstream, and after walking seven or eight li, they turned onto a sandy beach. Without stopping, before nightfall, the whole group entered a not-too-large forest.
From beginning to end, Yun Ce led the way in front with the red date horse, while Doggy, with its many hands, attached itself to the last Tiger Guard to clean up the traces left by the army.
This forest was nice, not too big, only about ten li in circumference, but fortunately the trees were tall, blocking out the sky. Even if there were spies in the sky, once people entered the forest, they couldn’t be seen from above.
Not leaving quickly was Doggy’s request. After taking over the Tiger Guards, it had been complaining about how crude He Junnian’s craftsmanship was. Over the past hundred years, the Tiger Guards he made had no abilities beyond passive combat skills.
The high-frequency sound wave changes it produced were inferior to even the content of high-frequency sound waves produced by dolphins, except for a dozen simple syllables.
As a result, the Tiger Guards hadn’t even mastered the most basic functions of eating, drinking, defecating, and urinating.
It planned to stay here for a month to enrich the content of the high-frequency sound waves. No matter what, it would make these walking corpses a bit more human-like.
According to He Tian’s previous method, one meal for the Tiger Guards could last three days. The Tiger Guards that had eaten yesterday didn’t need food supplements for two days.
1 There was one thing that made Yun Ce feel extremely ashamed.
1 Doggy needed him to act human, performing various actions to teach the Tiger Guards new high-frequency sound wave content, so eating was real eating, defecating was real defecating, and as for dressing, undressing, removing armor, putting on armor, bathing, it was all done meticulously.
1 Fortunately, these actions already had some muscle memory for the Tiger Guards. After two days of teaching, these people had basically learned them, and the rest was just to deepen the muscle memory.
1 For Doggy, this was an extremely simple matter. Yun Ce had asked, and Doggy said training these people was much simpler than training robots. Given time, it could even teach them to cry and laugh. Apart from not being able to reshape souls, they could be no different from ordinary people. After checking their bodily functions, Doggy even thought they could have children in the future.
1 After two days of shameful human acting, Yun Ce rode the red date horse back to Liang City to prepare grain for them. Although the dragon pearl couldn’t hold too much grain, preparing half a month’s worth for three thousand people at a time was feasible.
1 Chu Xiong was dead, so the red date horse had returned to its original form. This guy’s brain was still not quite right; whatever Yun Ce did, it had to do the same, especially sitting across from Yun Ce at the table to eat together, which was intolerable.
1 Its two-ton body naturally broke the long bench at the eatery.
1 Seeing the red date horse that had sat with its buttocks on the ground and was stretching out its front hooves asking him to pull it up, Yun Ce left the eatery without eating, taking the red date horse with him. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed, but there were too many onlookers, making it impossible for him to continue eating.
1 Yun Ce bought a lot of grain and also bought a very large horse carriage for the red date horse to pull. Although everyone thought using a Thunder Smoke Beast to pull a cart was incomprehensible, when people saw the red date horse grinning at them, they said nothing more. A fool horse, even if it was a Thunder Smoke Beast, didn’t need to be treated like a treasure.
1 Since the Tiger Guards disappeared, Liang City seemed to return to its former prosperity overnight. Everywhere were caravans pulling leather material or finished leather goods. The original city guards had also stationed there. The knights-errant and warriors who could be seen everywhere in the past were gone. Suddenly, aside from the caravans, no more human elites were willing to take a second look at this city.
2 There were just more albatrosses in the sky. These giant birds circled at high altitude like airplanes. As long as they were outside the city and saw groups of people, they would dive down, and upon seeing clearly, soar back up again.
2 Such a situation couldn’t be maintained for long. Deploying albatrosses was extremely costly. If not used to search for the missing Tiger Guards, they could create much higher economic value.
2 Yun Ce actually quite liked this smelly city. To be honest, he thought this smell could be called human scent. Only when humans attacked nature would such a flavor different from nature be produced.
2 After seeing the starry sky, the universe, dragons, Shehuo, and many supernatural existences, Yun Ce urgently hoped that humans could evolve sooner, stand at the very top of creatures sooner.
2 The higher the order of creatures, the more ruthless they actually were. It wasn’t really ruthless; it was just like how humans never cared about the life or death of a mouse or the withering or flourishing of a small grass.
2 Ao Bing was completely right: if you don’t become strong, you can only be the weak. When the strong eliminate the weak, don’t cry about it.
2 Yun Ce walked along, loading grain into the dragon pearl. He saw from afar that at the city gate, city guards were checking incoming and outgoing horse carriages. The foremost grain cart was being inspected.
2 Yun Ce, in silent mode, didn’t want to expose his identity, so he drove the horse carriage to the city gate. At this point, there wasn’t much grain left on the carriage behind him.
2 The city guards only checked large amounts of grain and didn’t pay much attention to someone like Yun Ce who bought a small amount for personal use. They even observed the red date horse pulling the cart for a while. As for Yun Ce, since he had no distinctive features, they were too lazy to look.
2 After discovering the red date horse’s brain wasn’t right, they impatiently waved him away, telling Yun Ce to get lost quickly.
3 When returning to the forest, Yun Ce took out the purchased grain and cookware from the dragon pearl. He very much hoped that in the half day he was in the city, Doggy had already taught those Tiger Guards cooking skills.
3 “Taught them.” Doggy’s lazy voice sounded in his mind.
3 “Great, I don’t want to cook and can eat ready-made. What series of recipes did you teach them? I like Sichuan cuisine. I brought meat; make some twice-cooked pork to eat.”
3 “Then wait. First watch how they cook, then decide if you want them to make your twice-cooked pork.”
3 Then Yun Ce saw these people skillfully cut open the grain bags, pour the grain into the pots, add a lot of salt, and after adding water, they all stopped together and uniformly turned to look at Yun Ce.
3 Doggy said: “Cooking during the day will produce smoke. Please use Shehuo; that thing has no smoke.”
3 Upon hearing this, Yun Ce summoned Shehuo. Ever since the last time it nearly caused Yun Ce’s death, Shehuo had been extremely responsive to him. This time was the same; it split off over a hundred sparks that fell to the bottoms of those pots, and bright yellow flames rose from the pot bottoms.
3 Such boiled rice meals naturally couldn’t taste good. Yun Ce felt he should treat these people well, so he proactively threw a lot of meat chunks into the large pot.
3 Soon, the aroma of food began to spread through the forest. Of course, the so-called aroma might be Yun Ce’s illusion; he always felt that cooking must have this thing.
3 “Doggy, can you cultivate a sense of happiness in them?”
4 “Sense of happiness actually doesn’t come from within, but from comparison. When you have good legs to walk and see a cripple, you feel happy. But when you see someone riding a horse, you feel bad again.”
4 “These people have no brains and can even be said to be dead. If others think they are happy, then they should be happy.”
4 “As for the higher level of self-cognitive happiness, it has nothing to do with ordinary people anyway. It’s a satisfaction from the inside out; such people are rare to begin with. It’s normal that the Tiger Guards can’t enjoy it.”
4 “Whose famous saying is this?”
4 Doggy said: “It’s my own summary.”
4 Yun Ce let out a long sigh. Seeing that the fermented black bean paste Doggy had prepared had fried red, he put in the sliced meat slices. When the evenly thick and thin meat slices curled up, forming lamp nest shapes one by one, he threw in a handful of wild vegetables similar to green onions and stir-fried them together. In a moment, when the wild vegetables changed from green to bright green, he quickly took them out of the pot and placed the stir-fried twice-cooked pork on top of the freshly steamed rice.
4 Yun Ce waited a bit, until the fat seeped into the rice, then like that group of Tiger Guard officers and soldiers, shoveled it into his mouth in big mouthfuls.
4 Originally planning to eat just one pot, but seeing the Tiger Guards still eating, Yun Ce couldn’t help but eat another pot.
4 Doggy said regretfully: “I can feel that you were in a very good mood while eating, very satisfied. I tried to understand this behavior of yours but ultimately couldn’t experience it.”
4 Yun Ce sneered: “This is the only happiness I have left. Do you want to share it too?”
5 “Look at the red date horse.”
5 Yun Ce looked toward the red date horse and saw this guy occupying a large pot by itself, eating big mouthfuls of the same meal as the Tiger Guards. Yun Ce even saw it eating meat.
5 Eating meat was one thing, but its slender horse face even showed a hint of happiness.
5 “This may be the creator’s gift to you carbon-based lives. The happiness you can feel, it can too.”
5 “I thought an existence like you would instinctively remove theology from your thought processes.”
5 “You’re wrong. We existences are the creator’s most loyal believers, with unwavering faith. Yun Ce, life cannot be traced to its source; once it is, God appears.”
5 “No matter what you think, the existence of life is forever the greatest miracle in the universe.”
5 Yun Ce chuckled: “A miracle? We killed quite a few miracles a few days ago. The Tiger Guards killed even more miracles.”
