What Qin Minghui does most every day is research 01.
01 is her experimental subject and also her partner. She is full of curiosity and expectation about him—curious about how much he can change and looking forward to him really becoming a "person".
She is interested in this matter and enjoys doing it every day. At the same time, she also has a sense of responsibility because she inherited this body.
Although she is not Qin Ledan's real daughter, as they share the same surname Qin, she has a natural affinity for Qin Boyi and Qin Ledan. She is willing to continue the will of these two and help 01, whom they have poured their life's efforts into, escape the fate of becoming a killing machine.
In another world, she died at the age of twenty and her life was extremely short. In this world, her life might be even shorter, but in this short time, she still wanted to do something meaningful.
…
On the sixty-second day after coming to this world, Qin Minghui met living people again. It was a team of about twenty people, driving a simple and strange-looking car, followed by cows and horses carrying things.
They wrapped themselves tightly, like a group of ants suddenly appearing from the hillside.
Qin Minghui, who was warned by 01 in advance, was not frightened by them, but they were frightened by the tall robot they had never seen before. However, after hesitating for a moment, they still approached.
There were more than twenty people on the other side, and most of them looked like men. Qin Minghui was a little scared. She was afraid that if these people had bad intentions, they would all be killed by 01 with one shot.
She taught 01 a lot of things, but she didn't really want to teach him how to kill.
"Hi! We have no ill intentions, little girl. Do you want to chat?" A man leaning against the car shouted at her, waving his hands as he shouted.
Qin Minghui agreed, patted 01's fingers, asked him to sit here and wait, and walked to the hillside over there alone.
After finally meeting some living people, she still wanted to have a normal chat with them. After coming to this world for so long, she had seen fewer living people than tigers. Now looking at them, she felt a sense of intimacy in her heart.
The group's attitude towards her was unexpectedly friendly, perhaps because it was almost impossible to see other people in a place like this, and everyone was happy to finally see someone of the same kind.
"Where are you from? I've never seen such a big robot. It's amazing!" A young man in the team looked at 01, who was waiting not far away, with fear and envy.
Qin Minghui sat in their makeshift camp, surrounded by a group of strange people. They took off their blindfolds, revealing pairs of big eyes full of curiosity.
Before she answered the previous question, an older woman asked her worriedly, "Why are you walking outside alone without even covering your head and face? What if you get infected with blood-sucking worms?"
Qin Minghui is not really afraid of this. She has already been infected anyway, and this thing will not cause secondary infection or be transmitted from person to person.
She was still thinking about how to respond to this worried woman when another person said, "We are an exploration team from the Northern Safe Zone. You are not from our area, are you? Which safe zone are you from? Or are you a survivor living outside? My God, your robot is so big. Can I come over and touch it?"
"… "
Qin Minghui had a basic understanding of the four safe zones in the southeast, northwest, northeast and southwest through the movie. Holland and his friends were in the southern safe zone. Later, he got the robot 01 and started a war, and the smaller northern safe zone fell.
She considered and answered some questions selectively.
These people didn't know whether they believed what she had made up or not, but it seemed that they were just asking casually and had no intention of investigating the matter in detail.
The team was supposed to walk all day and rest at night, but today they rarely encountered a living person, so they stopped early to rest and started cooking.
Qin Minghui smelled the long-lost aroma of grain and couldn't help but look towards the other person's pot.
The two young men who had been talking to her saw her and shrugged their shoulders and laughed. The older woman hit them each and asked, "What are you laughing at?"
The two young men stopped laughing and were driven by the woman named Ama to help the uncle who was cooking.
Many people were sitting in a disorderly manner nearby. Qin Minghui sat neither too far nor too close to them, listening to them curiously and occasionally having awkward conversations with others.
When Ama looked at her, he felt that this young and naive girl was like a lamb that suddenly appeared on the hillside, which was very rare.
When she saw the pair of shoes on Qin Minghui's feet, she turned around and went to her car and took out a cloth bag.
After returning to sit next to Qin Minghui, Ama took out a raincoat-like garment similar to the one she was wearing from the cloth bag and said to Qin Minghui, "You can wear this garment. It's not the season when bloodworms often appear, but it's dangerous for you to walk around outside like this. You'd better cover yourself up."
Then he took out a pair of shoes from the cloth bag and handed them to her.
"These shoes are too small for me, they might be a good fit for you."
When Qin Minghui woke up, she only had one set of clothes and no shoes. The shoes she had worn along the way were all made by herself using things she could find. She had tried to use leaves, wood, grass stems and rabbit skins to make shoes. The pair of shoes she was wearing now were made of rabbit skins. They looked particularly shabby and it was inconvenient for her to walk every time. Her feet were covered with blisters and had several layers of skin.
Holding the clothes and the pair of tightly stitched leather shoes, Qin Minghui looked at the strange woman in front of her with a little surprise, "I have nothing to exchange with you."
Ama smiled. Although she had not taken off the mask on her face, her wrinkled eyes were crooked. She touched Qin Minghui's head with her rough hands and said, "What do you want to exchange for? I'll give it to you."
She looked at Qin Minghui, sighed, and her tone became a little melancholy. "These years, there are fewer and fewer people. When I was a teenager, I went out with my parents every year. At that time, I could still meet some people living outside. When we met, we would get together and talk. Now I am in my forties. In the past few years, I often don’t meet a living person when I go out. I wonder if there is no one outside anymore..."
Qin Minghui also felt uncomfortable after listening to this.
"Hey, it's time to eat!" The chef, whose arms were as thick as Qin Minghui's waist, banged on the pot and shouted.
In the team, those who were sorting their things, resting, and those who were surrounding Qin Minghui to see the novel all got up, found their bowls, and went to get their meals.
Ama also went over. Qin Minghui sat there alone, put on her slightly worn but comfortable shoes, and stamped her feet on the ground.
"Hey!" A big bowl was thrust in front of her. A young man who had just been sent by her father to help held the bowl and smiled brightly at her, "Eat it. I asked Uncle Hai to give you more!"
They were eating a hodgepodge of grains, vegetables and meat, which didn't look very good, but smelled delicious. Qin Minghui thanked him shyly and took it. The young man didn't leave, but squatted in front of her with his big bowl, and ate up half of it in a few mouthfuls.
"You eat too slowly. If there are so many people eating together, there will be no food to be had!"
Ama came over with a bowl, listened to the young man talking nonstop, and kicked him again, "Go away, eat, why are you always staying around a little girl?"
The young man looked aggrieved, "I was bringing her food."
But Ama ignored him and kicked him away. The young men in their team were running around like wild horses. Looking at the quiet and pretty appearance of this little girl, she hoped she would not be scared by them.
"You look so thin, eat more. Here's a bowl of stewed egg and sweet soup, which Dahai made especially for you." Ama handed the bowl to her carefully.
Dahai is the fierce-looking chef, and he seems to be the leader of this team.
Qin Minghui followed them for a meal and sat in their camp at night to chat with them, listening to them talk about things in the Northern Safety Zone and how their exploration team came out to look for crop seeds, fruit and vegetable seeds, and some animals that could be raised.
Walking on the deserted ground, it was rare to see someone like me, and this was a little girl who seemed to know nothing. No matter what we said to her, she would show an expression of surprise. The group of people found her reaction interesting, and they became particularly excited when bragging.
Ama listened to the young people talking loudly and showing off their own bad looks intentionally or unintentionally. He shook his head in disgust, sat next to Qin Minghui, and quickly sewed shoes for her with rabbit skin.
Her craftsmanship was much better than Qin Minghui's. The next morning, Qin Minghui had two new pairs of rabbit leather shoes and a rabbit leather hat.
Ama asked her if she wanted to go back to the North Security Zone with them, but Qin Minghui refused. Ama looked very sorry, but didn't say much. He gave her a small bag of food and said, "Child, I hope to see you again next time."
They had to hurry on their way and couldn't stay here for too long, so they quickly said goodbye to her.
Qin Minghui stood on the hillside and watched the team move in another direction.
The young man sitting on the roof of the car waved at her and shouted, "Hey, if you can't survive alone out there, take your robot to the safe zone. There's no one outside, and there are still many friends in the safe zone!"
"Don't give up! We'll meet again if we're lucky!"
Perhaps they have left their safe zones year after year and come to the outside world, and have seen too many desperate people like them who have given up their lives.
Qin Minghui waited until they were out of sight, then returned to 01 and sat on his toes.
"01, are they really gone?"
[Yes, little miss.]
"... Actually, when I saw them yesterday, I was thinking that they might be bad people. They might want to take you away, they might ask me about your secrets, they might put drugs in the food..."
"It turns out I was wrong." She looked at the shoes on her feet and sighed in relief, "That's great."
Her biggest impression of this world is the greedy and vicious Holland, the sinister and cunning Huo Yin in the movie, and the ordinary people whose homes were destroyed in the war. In such a depressing atmosphere, everyone is painful and desperate. It seems that they cannot find positive emotions. Warmth and kindness are all covered up by the numbness to life.
That’s why she was a little reluctant to get close to those safe zones, and was wary of everyone she met.
But now, she suddenly understood.
This kindness from a stranger was so precious that it filled her heart with warm strength.
Although she only spent a short time with them, she felt that she had a closer connection with the world because of it.
This is not that narrow movie, but a more real world.
"01, if we have a chance in the future, let's go to the North Safe Zone to have a look?" After she upgraded 01 and had a way to deal with the bloodworms.
[Yes, little miss.]