Chapter 54

In less than an hour, every human living within the East District Base received the news: Chen Guangshan and Wang Jing, while conducting a pair observation mission for the Special Operations Team, had encountered a human toddler!

A live human toddler under five years of age!

At the moment they received the news, a wave of intense cheers erupted among the survivors throughout the entire East District Base.

A human toddler under five years old?

This was no longer just an ordinary toddler in the ordinary sense; to everyone, this little one, reportedly named "Yoyo," was the brand-new hope that humanity in this apocalyptic era could still manage to continue and endure!

"So? Old Chen, what's wrong with you! How could you actually fail to bring the toddler back?!"

After undergoing a series of virus quarantine and disinfection procedures, Chen Guangshan and Wang Jing finally entered the base. By this time, the commanding officers inside the base had already extracted the footage from the portable mission cameras the two men carried, capturing the exact moment when Wang Jing and Chen Guangshan first discovered the toddler.

When the leaders of the base heard Wang Jing telling Chen Guangshan to keep his hands steady, even though they already knew from the two men's accounts that the toddler was temporarily safe and sound, their hearts still gave a fierce jolt.

Fortunately, both Wang Jing and Chen Guangshan were genuinely experienced veterans. Although they were somewhat overwhelmed by the sudden appearance of a live human toddler, overall, they had done a very good job—at least they hadn't further provoked the Zombie King, and they had remembered to leave food and water for the toddler along their escape route, even calling out a reminder to the distant child.

In short, after viewing the video footage brought back by Chen Guangshan and Wang Jing and confirming that this five-year-old-looking human toddler truly existed, everyone swept into action like a whirlwind.

Rescue the child!

Go rescue the child right now!

Although the base's zombie behavior research experts, after reviewing the footage from Chen Guangshan and Wang Jing's cameras, judged that the Zombie King seemed very interested in the toddler and temporarily had no intention of threatening the child's life...

Still, that was a zombie after all!

No matter what, keeping this newly emerged glimmer of human hope right by the side of a zombie was enough to give anyone restless nights. At that moment, every single person in the base shared the exact same thought: Rescue the toddler back immediately!

Naturally, the rest of the Special Operations Team members who were still on standby at the base received the news and rushed to respond at the very first moment. As they answered the call, these people immediately began to endlessly nag Chen Guangshan and Wang Jing.

Listening to everyone's chatter and complaints, Chen Guangshan retorted with annoyance, "You think you're so capable? If you're so capable, why don't you go rescue the child yourself?"

A group of special operations personnel from the base were gathered together, watching the video footage of the toddler projected in the multimedia room.

Among these special operations personnel were both men and women, all of whom formed the backbone of the base. However, each of them was actually quite old, mostly in their thirties. Looking around, one could hardly find a single special operations member under the age of thirty.

This wasn't to say that there were no young people left in the base at all. It was just that the younger people in the base were needed to cooperate with the research institute's demands and participate in various research-oriented tasks. Moreover, based on the research findings of the institute and the hope for the possibility of human reproduction, the base implicitly avoided letting young people in their optimal reproductive age go out to participate in overly dangerous missions.

When it concerned the survival of humanity in the apocalypse, human reproduction was no longer driven by personal preference.

In short, there were no young people under thirty among the special operations team members, and the limited number of young people left in the base had their own duties to attend to.

The special operations team members sitting in the multimedia room watched the toddler in the recorded footage, and suddenly someone sighed with emotion:

"When I was sixteen or seventeen years old, kids used to annoy me to death. Who would have thought that nowadays, seeing a kid makes my eyes glow like a thief's?"

As soon as these words were spoken, the special operations team members nodded and laughed one after another.

"Who wouldn't feel this way? Do you all remember? Before the apocalypse, global fertility rates were dropping steadily. Experts even predicted that at that rate of reproduction, some small countries would naturally go extinct in just a few centuries. But before those small countries could naturally go extinct... the apocalypse arrived."

If such a topic had been brought up in earlier years, it probably would have been met with a dead silence, as the topic of the apocalypse was once a taboo in everyone's conversations. However, as the time humans spent surviving in the apocalypse grew longer—marking the twenty-fifth year of the New Apocalypse Era by now—humanity had long since adapted to life in the apocalypse over such a long span of time.

There was even a subset of young people who were actually born right in the apocalypse and had never experienced the peaceful world before it.

Therefore, topics concerning the apocalypse had gradually become ordinary conversation topics, devoid of any taboos.

Now, everyone was much more concerned with the question of human survival—roughly starting from the sixth year of the New Apocalypse Era, virtually no newborns had been successfully born. For instance, the youngest child in their base had been conceived at the end of the year prior to the sixth year of the apocalypse. Now nineteen years old, he had been watched by the entire base as he grew up. Unfortunately, after him, not a single new baby was born in the entire base.

"We used to think children were just noisy and bothersome, but now we're desperately wishing some kids would just pop up in the base."

While expressing their emotions, the special operations team members of the East District Base also felt a wave of worry as they looked at the child on the screen.

"I wonder how long the higher-ups will take to prepare. Do you guys think the Zombie King in Sector C32 will hurt this toddler?"

"Judging by the tone of the experts at the research institute, probably not. Otherwise, would those guys at the institute be able to sit still right now? They would have already made us charge into Sector C32 to grab the child!"

***

At that very moment, the Zombie King, who was being suspected of potentially harming the toddler, was actually holding hands with the little one, approaching the pile of food together.

Little Su Yoyo was most fond of food!

After all, he was far too terrified of going hungry. Even though his pockets were currently stuffed full of food, seeing new food appear right before his eyes naturally made him happy!

If not for the fact that the people who left the food had already gone, the little fellow would have definitely said a sincere thank you to them.

Thinking just that, the little guy patted his small belly and blinked his eyes: "Yoyo is hungry!"

Looking at the fresh and unfamiliar food before him, the tiny toddler couldn't help but crave it. He let go of the hand of his new friend, which he had been holding, and squatted down right in front of the provisions.

Having finally relaxed his vigilance now that the two humans had left, the Zombie King originally wanted to grab his "food" and quickly flee the area—his wild instincts told him that those two annoying creatures had not given up their covetous eyes on his food, so he should hide his food as quickly as possible and not let those guys snatch it away!

However, before he could take the food away, his food dragged him over here instead, and now it had even let go of his hand. Because his "food" suddenly slipped out of his control, the Zombie King instinctively wanted to grab the "food's" hand again. Before he could make a move, he saw Su Yoyo, who had squatted down, tilt his head up and ask with a full of anticipation, "There are so many delicious things here! Do you want to eat together?"

The Zombie King: "..."

Naturally, the Zombie King had zero interest in human food; the only things that interested him were humans emitting a vibrant aura of flesh and blood.

Yet for some reason, the Zombie King, who ought to have been incapable of reading human emotions, managed to read an emotion called "anticipation" from the eyes of the "food" in front of him. The Zombie King stood frozen and silent in place. He felt that there was no need for him to cater to the "food's" expectations, but under the expectant gaze of the "food," the stiff Zombie King ultimately slow-motioned and crouched down right beside the base's emergency food supplies, mimicking the toddler's posture.

The little one looked at the food in front of him, his eyes filled with absolute joy and satisfaction—after all, he was a baby who had known hunger and knew that food was the most precious treasure of all!

The little guy tilted his head, looking left and right, and then reached out to take a piece of compressed biscuit from the pile of food left behind by Chen Guangshan and Wang Jing.

Su Yoyo wasn't in a hurry to eat it himself. Instead, he first tore open the paper wrapping the compressed biscuit and then handed the food directly to the Zombie King.

Blinking his eyes, the little fellow said full of anticipation, "Let's eat together!"

The Zombie King: "..."

The powerful Zombie King used a slightly awkward, stiff posture to imitate Su Yoyo's action of squatting in front of the pile of food. Yet, while the exact same action looked utterly adorable and harmless when done by Su Yoyo, the equally diminutive Zombie King looked like a tense, feral dog, ready to violently lash out and drive away any bastard coveting his food at any second.

Now, the "feral dog" Zombie King looked at the "biscuit" handed to him by the little one, and then glanced back at the toddler full of anticipation. Although he had zero interest in human food, he still reached out and took the utterly unappealing item from the toddler's hands, then imitated the toddler's behavior by stuffing it into his mouth and chewing, chewing, chewing.

At first, Su Yoyo didn't notice anything unusual about the Zombie King. It wasn't until he had finished eating the compressed biscuit in his own hands and looked up that he noticed his new friend was still continuously "chewing, chewing, chewing." That piece of compressed biscuit seemed to have been completely chewed to pieces by his new friend, yet none of it was swallowed; it just remained crammed inside the Zombie King's mouth.

There was no moisture in the Zombie King's mouth either. With his chewing motions, the compressed biscuit turned into powder and then started spilling out from the corners of the Zombie King's mouth.

The little one tilted his head and watched his new friend's movements for a moment. Then, after the Zombie King gradually stopped his stiff chewing motions, Su Yoyo asked with a frown, "I'm sorry, do you not like eating biscuits?"

Faced with the toddler's gaze, the Zombie King instinctively felt a sense of guilt, so he stopped chewing, though he had no idea how to explain it to his "food."

Knowing that his new friend couldn't speak, the little one thought for a moment and finally called upon the system that had been quietly accompanying him all along.

"Tongtong?"

The system's quiet and gentle voice sounded right on cue: [Yoyo, I'm here.]

At the exact moment Su Yoyo asked the system a question, the Zombie King vigilantly knitted his brows. With the unspat biscuit powder still packed inside his mouth, he spread his psychic energy outward in all directions, trying to track down this "Tongtong" the toddler kept mentioning.