Ye De slowly took a small sip of the coffee that had already turned cold.
He waited for the cold coffee to slide into his stomach. After a few seconds, the coffee released a thin layer of energy into his body. It was as thin as a cloud, but it did help his mind clear up a little.
Ye De was completely relieved. His guess was right. There was no problem with this method of drinking coffee.
After Lin Sanjiu introduced the [Bulletproof Energized Coffee] to him, a thought popped up in his mind. If the amount of energy he consumed depended on the amount of energy he consumed, and the amount of energy he consumed had to be the same, why would he drink it all in one go?
If he drank it all in one gulp, his energy would increase tremendously. However, there was a limit to how long it could last. Once the effect wore off, he would pass out and become as useless as a dead person.
[Aren't there slow-release drugs?] If he drank it in small sips, he could gain a little bit of energy from the coffee each time. At the same time, he could also digest a little bit of the after-effects of the coffee. If that cup of coffee could last him for a long time, he could do a lot of things.
At first, Ye De didn't know how much he should drink and how often he should drink it. So, when he lay in the aircraft, he couldn't think clearly. He spent a long time trying to reactivate the spare head. It was only when Lin Sanjiu entered Fan Jia City alone that he finally grasped the information flow and managed to communicate with her. At that time, he also figured out when and how much coffee he should drink.
Even though there was no problem in theory, there were a lot of inconveniences when it came to actual practice. If the interval between two sips of coffee was too long, Ye De would drowsily return to the time 30 years ago. He would revisit the orphanage 97 and the warm sunlight that filled his childhood.
It was not that he did not welcome it.
"You can just call me Ye Jing," Ye Jing said with a shudder, "I'm almost 30, but big sister is still a little mushy."
She was always like that. Her mind spun quickly and her ideas changed quickly. Once, when it was time for dinner, she brought all eight children from the orphanage for a field trip.
The location of the outing was an open field where posthumans would train their skills and abilities. Usually, if there were any adults who dared to watch them train there, they would have been thrown off the mountain. However, the posthumans did not think that it was a big threat to a lazy woman and a group of ordinary children. Therefore, no one came to chase them away for the whole evening.
At first, the children were scared and curious. Suddenly, they grew extra necks and craned their necks to watch. Most of them had never seen such a fast, magical, and powerful evolved human for the first time. Sometimes, they would laugh, and sometimes, they would scream. Because they were too noisy, they were scolded by Ye Jing.
When they gradually became familiar with each other and were no longer afraid, they began to pretend that they were also good at fighting. They imitated the posthumans and played around for a long time, imagining a complete set of evolved abilities for themselves. They even argued for a long time about who could defeat who. Even though they were hungry, Ade had a lot of fun that evening.
Later, he found out that the orphanage had run out of food that day.
The orphanage was a "charity project" set up by the management of Fan Jia City at that time. If someone remembered the orphanage at that time, they would be able to enjoy the resources that ordinary people could not enjoy: milk, vegetables, flour, and all kinds of books. If the people in charge of the orphanage forgot about the orphanage, and they often did, Ye Jing would have to rack her brain to feed all eight mouths. If she failed, she would find a way to make them forget that they still had mouths.
Therefore, when the entire orphanage went on outings, went to school together, and went to work and run errands together, there was always a layer of half-starved food. However, now that Ye De thought about it, he couldn't remember the unbearable hunger.
"I'm not lying to you. Changing diapers is one of the compulsory lessons for posthumans." Another time, Ye Jing passed him a crying baby with a serious face and said, "If you want to become a respectable adult, you must first learn how to change diapers for Xiao Peng."
Even Ade, who was only six years old at that time, knew that she was talking nonsense. If changing diapers was the standard of being respected, Ye Jing would have been beaten up by everyone.
There were still a lot of things she could not do well. For example, mending clothes, washing clothes, cooking, putting children to sleep … The slightly older children in the nursery soon helped her share part of the work. It was really not a big deal for Ade to do an extra diaper changing job.
None of the children in the orphanage complained about the workload. It was not because they had high self-awareness, but because it was fun to be with Ye Jing. When they hung out with her, they could learn new knowledge and listen to stories. She had a lot of games in her head, and she could even fight. It was said that the men were always at a disadvantage. Ade remembered that there was a girl named Blue Sky, who was a few years older than him. He said, "Just treat it as us taking care of Ye Jing."
After changing diapers, Xiao Peng disappeared.
"I don't want to do this anymore."
On the afternoon when they could not find the baby, Ade accidentally saw Ye Jing talking to another man on Route 95. When she was angry, she became a lively fire. Even though the person she was talking to was a posthuman, she was not afraid at all. "You can find whoever you want to do this job. I would rather pump water! Didn't we agree that it was only temporary? I didn't sign up to take care of children. I signed up for the patrol team. I don't know how to take care of children. Besides, I don't have anything. What am I going to take care of? "
"It's just a dead baby." The posthuman opposite her did not seem to take her anger seriously. "The baby was a little sick to begin with. No one blamed you. Alright, alright. I'll just give you more stuff next time. You did a good job. Look at the other children in the orphanage. Aren't they all good? "
Ade later realized that Ye Jing might really not like the orphanage.
When the other adults talked about their patrol, how they traveled to and fro the human settlements, how they risked their lives and worked with posthuman, Ye Jing's expression was just like the expressions of the children in the orphanage when they listened to her stories.
Adults always thought that children did not know anything, but in fact, they were searching, observing, and memorizing every detail from every word, expression, and action. They were always trying to solve the big mystery of the "adult world."
"If I was soaked in smoke, I would definitely evolve," Ye Jing said when she was drinking with her neighbors. She probably thought that all the children in the orphanage were sleeping indoors. "I'm not bragging. I know I have potential."
"How did you know?" A neighbor asked.
"A posthuman helped me look at it," Ye Jing said. "I did her a favor and she showed it to me. She also said that if I evolve, I might be able to develop Higher Consciousness. Not every posthuman has it. "
She suppressed her pride, but she was teased by her neighbors. "That's great, our Ye Jing! Then why don't you evolve? Just walk down the mountain. "
"If I evolve, won't I be teleported away?" Ye Jing muttered. "Being homeless … isn't good either."
She would definitely be happier if she became a posthuman. However, she never mentioned a word to the children in the orphanage that she could become a posthuman.
Ah De did not know if Ye Jing tried to change jobs. However, when he left the orphanage at the age of fourteen, the bed frame in the orphanage was cracked. The milk cabinet in front of the door was long gone. Even the management in Fan Jia City had changed twice. Ye Jing still lived in the orphanage. She welcomed new crying siblings and sent away the grown-up boys and girls who could work on their own.
Now that she thought about it, if she wanted to be transferred away, it would have been very simple. She just had to ignore the children in the orphanage from the beginning.
No one would punish a young, strong, and healthy female laborer for the sake of a child who no one knew if he or she would grow up or not.
After Ye De left the orphanage, she did not join the patrol team, nor did she evolve. Her mouth was still as unpleasant as it used to be. What was amazing was that a woman with such an unpleasant mouth managed to convince the two management organizations to continue allocating resources to the orphanage. However, there were only two of them.
"You have to choose a name. It can't always be Ad Ad Ad," Ye Jing would say to him when he came back to see her. "It sounds like you came from a nursery. People will look down on you."
Ye De was too embarrassed to tell her that he always used the name "Ye De" when he was outside.
"Why are you still running the orphanage?" Ye De reprimanded her. "Didn't the new Gui He refuse to allocate funds to the orphanage? No one is forcing you to take care of the children anymore. You can do whatever you want now. "
Ye Jing was forty-seven years old that year. Generally speaking, posthumans who were born in the Twelve Worlds Centrum would still be as smooth and healthy as a normal person in their twenties due to their early evolution. However, Ye Jing looked like she had been soaked in years, labor, and fatigue.
"There's nothing I can do with my current physical strength." Ye Jing was at a loss for a moment. Then, she smiled and said, "I can't do anything other than taking care of the children."
Ye De carefully looked around at the current situation of the orphanage.
Fortunately, Street 97 wasn't near the edge of the mountain. Otherwise, a gust of wind would have blown it into dust. There were no more resources allocated to the orphanage, and no one came to check on the situation. Ye Jing had to take care of all the food, clothing, housing, transportation, and education on his own. However, the number of children in the orphanage was increasing. Everyone in Fanjia City knew that there was an orphanage here that could raise the children who cried and begged for food one by one.
When he was young, he didn't think much of it. However, after he became an adult, he realized that raising a group of children was far more than mending clothes, cooking, and washing clothes.
When Ye De left, he had already made up his mind.
In the next four to five months, he was busy fighting for a job, so he didn't go back to see her. After he got the job, he kept accumulating the necessary resources. He didn't go back to see her before he had enough.
By the time he returned to the crumbling, dilapidated nursery on Route 97, more than a year had passed.
Ye Jing sat quietly in a broken chair. Her two long legs were exposed to the sunlight, and her tattered and dirty pants were exposed to the light. He knew that she used to enjoy the sunlight, but now, if she didn't bask in it, her joints would hurt at night. A group of children ran in and out, screaming and playing. The noise was so ear-piercing that Ye De felt like his head was about to explode. He didn't know how Ye Jing didn't hear them.
Ye De squatted down beside her legs. Her eyes were still bright and powerful, but they weren't as distinct. She still had a lazy look on her face because she got tired easily.
She was the closest thing to a mother that he had.
Even though she had been forced into this role unwillingly for twenty years, she had been forced into it.
"Ye Jing," he said softly. He quietly took out a bottle from his backpack and shook it. The liquid inside gurgled. "... Do you still want to evolve? I finally got enough Water of Smoke. "
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