ATDIWR Chapter 44
by VolareGu Jinsheng stayed at home for three days. During these three days, he made delicious food for Ji An. Ji An felt that in just three days, he seemed to have been fattened up.
Early on the fourth day, when Gu Jinsheng left, he even cooked vegetable porridge for Ji An. The thick millet porridge contained well-cooked green leafy vegetables and mutant beast meat. Ji An served a bowl; the saltiness was just right. The corners of his mouth unconsciously curved into a smile.
Having eaten and slept, and slept and eaten at home these past few days, Ji An’s complexion was much better, and he felt completely refreshed.
But he wasn’t in a hurry to go into the laboratory. He thought about strolling over to the orphanage.
The Jing Shi Base had made a fortune relying on nutrient solutions. Ji An’s only request was to establish an orphanage. How could the base not satisfy him? They immediately took over.
No matter what, he was the one who brought the people back, so Ji An decided to go over and check on the situation.
The orphanage was located in a remote area, but since it was funded by the Jing Shi Base, its safety was still guaranteed even in East City.
It took Ji An four to five hours to drive from the bustling West City. On the way, he detoured to a paper bookstore and bought some books suitable for young children’s learning.
In The Apocalypse, nothing was important except food. In the first few years, many paper books were unwanted, leading to the destruction of many paper books and the loss of a large amount of important related literature. This resulted in another gap in inheritance.
Now that life in the Jing Shi Base was relatively stable, education was once again valued. Paper books were also being bought, but the price was very high, more expensive than food.
However, Ji An wasn’t short on money now. Not only did he buy a dozen paper books, but he also bought a lot of paper and pens, such as pencils, fountain pens, watercolor pens, and crayons. Ji An bought quite a lot of things, spending over a thousand credit points.
Ji An also went to a nearby toy store and selected two hundred credit points worth of small toys. Of course, these toys might not be anything good, each one palm-sized, the kind of things from street stalls before The Apocalypse used to fool children.
But for the little beggars in the orphanage who couldn’t even eat enough before, these were already very rare toys.
In fact, in The Apocalypse now, these toys were good things. Many ordinary families couldn’t bear to buy them for their children. On their birthdays each year, they might add one item that the children could play with for a whole year. Some toys might be broken and not move anymore, but the children would still hold onto them like treasures.
When Ji An arrived, the children were learning to write with Yuan Mingan. Yuan Mingan had acquired some simple sandtrays from Earth-type and Wood-type Power Users. These children put the sandtrays on their laps, sat in a circle around Yuan Mingan, listened attentively to her lecture, and occasionally wrote and drew on the sandtrays.
“Mr. Ji.” Yuan Mingan had just finished telling the children a small story about a crow adding water. She looked up and saw him, and immediately greeted him.
Ji An put down the items he was carrying in his left and right hands. The children sitting around Yuan Mingan’s side all had their eyes light up, stretching their necks to look. They vaguely guessed that these might be gifts for them, but they had never received any gifts their whole lives, so they didn’t dare to expect anything.
Perhaps the only time they had received kindness was from Ji An, and then their lives were changed.
Ji An smiled at Yuan Mingan and said, “I originally wanted to come and see the children a long time ago, but I’ve been too busy these past few days and haven’t been able to find the time. You’ve worked hard during this period.”
“It’s not hard, this is what I should do, the base pays me a salary,” Yuan Mingan said with a smile. “Speaking of hard work, Mr. Ji, you’ve been truly busy recently. The auction was held, and people from M Country and R Country wouldn’t stay quiet, constantly causing trouble. In the end, they even came up with Power User Crystal Cores, and M Country even attempted to detonate a Power User Crystal Core to cause internal chaos in our base. Fortunately, a Mental-type Power User stepped forward and shot the crystal core in that M Country Power User’s brain with three consecutive arrows, thus easing the crisis.
Otherwise, who knows how many Power Users would have been injured or killed, and how other bases would have taken advantage of the situation?”
When Ji An released the arrows, only the high-level personnel of the Jing Shi Base were around. The power of Ji An’s three arrows at that time was too great; as a Tier 3 peak Power User, he directly crossed three tiers to shoot a Tier 6 Power User, his strength was terrifying. Secondly, they were afraid of retaliation from M Country afterward, so Gu Jinsheng issued a gag order. There were many rumors in the outside world, but no one knew exactly which Power User shot Cruz. They only guessed.
When Yuan Mingan mentioned the Mental-type Power User who shot Cruz, her eyes were as bright as those of the children in the orphanage when they saw toys, only with more admiration than in the children’s eyes.
“I really want to know who that national hero is, but if knowing would put that hero in danger, then I don’t really want to know.”
Yuan Mingan’s eyes were sparkling. “I hope the hero is safe. But I suspect it’s most likely Han Yaokun. Among the researchers, only his level is the highest. To be able to shoot three consecutive arrows and directly shoot a Tier 6 Power User into an idiot, the accuracy and ability level would not be too low. Calculating this way, the people who fit are Han Yaokun, Na Boyu, Zhou Fanxiu, and Bai Na, these experienced Mental Power Users.”
Yuan Mingan didn’t even consider Ji An in front of her, even though she knew Ji An was a researcher and had developed spatial storage items.
But Ji An’s level was too low. How could he fight above his level and even cross three levels to shoot a Tier 6 Power User into an idiot?
Ji An didn’t take up Yuan Mingan’s words. He really couldn’t answer this topic.
The base worked hard to hide him to protect him. At this time, he couldn’t just jump out and say, I did all of this, right? Where would that put the people who had concealed the secret for him before, where would that put the Jing Shi Base, and where would that put Gu Jinsheng?
After he was exposed, it wouldn’t just be a simple exposure; he might face endless assassinations, and how many innocent people would be implicated by these assassinations?
Of course, he also couldn’t push everything onto others. Although these things sounded glorious, they contained fatal dangers beneath. Ji An couldn’t use others’ lives to shield himself from disaster.
Ji An could only change the subject and say, “Sister Yuan, when I saw you this time, your complexion seems much better than last time?”
The last time Ji An saw Yuan Mingan, her eyes had a feeling of twilight, as if she had no expectation for tomorrow and only indifference was left for this world. Anyway, she couldn’t die, so she might as well just get by.
Her whole spirit was gone, making her look unusually old, like a seventy-year-old woman instead of a fifty-something person.
Seeing her again this time, Yuan Mingan had clearly changed a lot. Her whole spirit and energy had returned. Although her hair was still completely white and her face was covered with wrinkles, she felt different. It was as if there was light and hope in her eyes.
Last time, from meeting to parting, she never smiled once, always appearing worried. This time, from meeting to now, she had smiled countless times.
At this moment, she smiled at Ji An again, not a superficial fake smile that didn’t reach the heart, but a genuine smile that came from the bottom of her heart.
“Mr. Ji, speaking of this, I must thank you!” Yuan Mingan bowed sincerely to Ji An in thanks. “It was you who changed me, and it was you who saved me!”
“Don’t say that,” Ji An quickly helped Yuan Mingan up. “At most, I just helped a few children.”
Yuan Mingan, however, refused Ji An’s outstretched hand to help her up and insisted on giving Ji An a deep bow. “No, you didn’t just save these children, but me too. If you are interested in sitting down and listening to my story, I would be very happy to tell you.”
“I am certainly willing to,” Yuan Mingan led Ji An to sit on the sofa and personally made a pot of iced tea for Ji An. She herself was a Water-type Power User, so she didn’t lack water. She also poured a cup of tea for each of the children who had gathered around to listen to the story.
Yuan Mingan looked at those children with loving eyes, without any disdain. It was clear that she was genuinely willing to take care of these children from the bottom of her heart.
Before The Apocalypse, Yuan Mingan had an unfortunate family. Her family favored boys over girls. She was clearly the youngest in the family and should have been the most spoiled, but just because she was a daughter, she became the least important one in the family. Her parents even forced her to act like a slave to her brother and at one point even wanted to sell her to get bride price money for her brother’s marriage proposal.
Yuan Mingan refused and ran away.
In a foreign land, Yuan Mingan had never received much affection since she was a child, so when a man appeared beside her who showed her care and concern, asking about her three times a day, she thought he was treating her very well. Then she plunged in headfirst, and before long, they were married.
The following year, Yuan Mingan became pregnant and gave birth to their daughter.
What Yuan Mingan didn’t expect was that the family, which had always hidden well, seemingly indifferent to whether she gave birth to a boy or a girl, completely revealed their true colors after she gave birth to a daughter. It turned out that this family was exactly the kind of family Yuan Mingan hated the most, favoring boys over girls to the bone.
They knew that Yuan Mingan hated this the most, so they had hidden their true colors and didn’t expose themselves before Yuan Mingan gave birth.
As a result, after Yuan Mingan gave birth to a ‘girl’ and expressed her unwillingness to have a second child, the man’s family finally couldn’t sit still; the whole family became anxious.
Seeing the expression on that man’s family’s faces, as if she was committing a crime and didn’t deserve to be a woman for not having a second child, Yuan Mingan understood everything. At the same time, in order not to let her daughter follow in her footsteps, Yuan Mingan became even more determined not to have a son. Otherwise, her daughter would be a second her.
Then the man who had always been caring and attentive to her for the first time revealed his ferocious fangs.
“He hit me, just because I didn’t want to have another son, he dragged me, who was still very weak on the third day after giving birth, off the bed and beat me severely.” While saying this, Yuan Mingan’s eyes no longer showed any obvious emotional fluctuations.
She spoke as if she was narrating a very ordinary matter, calm and indifferent, as if it had nothing to do with her, without sadness or resentment.
“Later that man knelt down and begged me, saying to forgive him for the sake of our daughter, asking me to forgive him. He said he would no longer mention having a son and swore he would be good to our daughter. I forgave him again.”
It wasn’t that others thought Yuan Mingan was cheap. People who hadn’t experienced a childhood like Yuan Mingan’s, being neglected, would never understand what that little bit of care and protection meant to Yuan Mingan.
It was no less than that drop of water in the desert that could save a life.
Yuan Mingan was willing to give the man a chance, and also give herself a chance, so she chose to forgive.
For a period after that, the man indeed behaved very well. He no longer hit Yuan Mingan, nor did he mistreat their daughter. He even went to see their daughter first thing after coming home from work every day, kissing her little face and making her giggle.
Yuan Mingan thought that the long-term interaction had changed the man and awakened his deep-seated father-daughter instinct when their daughter had an accident.