Nurturing Humanity

Just a Surface Girlfriend

Chen Xi stood at the door and looked inside the yard before asking, “Why are you plowing the land all by yourself? How can plowing make you so happy? Is farming really that fun?”

“It’s okay. Farming makes me happy,” said Xu Zhi.

“Just look at yourself babbling away, does being cheeky make you happy?” Chen XI cast a glance at Xu Zhi and was instantly shocked again.

“How could you…”

She looked at Xu Zhi, dumbfounded. It was as if her entire body was in shock.

Xu Zhi immediately felt uncomfortable all over. Could it be that she had realized he’d changed his appearance again? He had clearly reverted to his original appearance and looked like he had before.

“What’s wrong?” Xu Zhi asked while maintaining a calm expression.

“I keep feeling like there is a change in your aura. You have become so classy… You’re really a different person than you were before, aren’t you? I’m dead sure and I have solid evidence to prove it.” Chen Xi stared at him.

Xu Zhi might have changed back to his former appearance, but after going through three rounds of mass extinction and three events of the world being destroyed, the transcendent aura that he now exuded was hard to change. Xu Zhi simply touched her forehead and said, “Are you sick or hallucinating? What are you talking about?”

Chen Xi was stunned. Was it really just an illusion?

She was forcibly blindsided and could only change the subject. “By the way, you’re not bored just staying in this yard of yours? Want to hang out with me once in a while? Go shopping, go on a date or something?”

Xu Zhi looked at her in shock. “Wait, a date? Are you serious?”

“Of course.” Chen Xi hesitated for a moment, then proudly raised her head. She was not the least bit bashful or embarrassed at all. “Where’s your previous girlfriend? That quite pretty one!”

Xu Zhi replied, “We broke up. We were originally colleagues. But I got sick, so I resigned and also broke up with her.”

“So when you were at the prime of your life, you were hit with a terminal disease, you lost your job, and your girlfriend left you. So you had to come back here to the countryside to spend the rest of your life alone. That’s quite sad,” Chen Xi said. “I can be your girlfriend and accompany you through the final days of your life.”

“Are you pitying me?” Xu Zhi’s eyes widened.

He had felt sorry for himself before.

He was dying; the world around him felt gray. He had indeed fallen from the peak of his glorious career that he had fought so hard to reach and had hit rock bottom.

But now, life was full of hope. After all, though his cancer was terminal, he could at least hope to live for a few more months. This was equivalent to several thousand years in the sandbox world. Over such a long period of several thousand years, he believed that he would find a way to enable him to survive!

“I do feel sorry for you, but in a way, I also get to fulfill my childhood wish…”

It seemed that Chen Xi had spent a long time thinking about this, and now, without hiding anything, she said, “I’ve thought about it! I will keep you company before you die. For me, it’s sort of like fulfilling my wish, while at the same time, I can fill your days with more warmth and make you a little less lonely.”

“I have experience as a volunteer at the hospital, and I’m good at taking care of terminally ill patients.” She spread her fingers and began counting. “I can cook for you, shop for you, and chat with you. I can make you a little happier before you die.”

Before I die?

Xu Zhi was speechless for a moment. Then he looked at her with what seemed like a forced smile on his face and asked, “Are you serious? You’re going to fulfill the obligations of a girlfriend?”

Chen Xi shuddered and hurriedly took a few steps backward. She pulled her clothes closer together to cover herself and looked extremely wary. “Are your thoughts running wild? This will be a pure love. You’re a dying man and you’re still thinking about ruining my innocence?”

Xu Zhi was lost for words.

“It turns out that you have been delivering food to me all this time, looking around and all, with an ulterior motive in mind. The way of the world these days! Even girls are bold enough to chase after boys,” he thought.

Chen Xi hurriedly went on to say, “People are saying things like they are brothers on the surface. We can just be a couple in a shallow relationship, and we shall just immerse ourselves in a beautiful love story. If you don’t say anything, I’ll take it as your promise to me.”

“Alright.” Xu Zhi was surprisingly straightforward.

He did hold strong feelings and a great liking for this young lady, but it was probably because they were too familiar with each other. His heart had never beat faster or fluttered in her presence. However, he did try to be nonchalant about the whole thing.

“There’s a high school gathering this summer in a few days. You can accompany me to that.”

Chen Xi spread her fingers wide apart and smiled. “You’re so good-looking that no one can help but take a second look. Now, with this aura, you’ve become even better looking. None of the girls will be able to take their eyes off you, not even for a single second… In bringing you there, I will definitely be the glorious one. Everyone’s eyes will be on you, and I will be the envy of all the ladies.”

Xu Zhi was surprised.

“So, feelings don’t matter. The most important thing is I am good-looking enough to make you look good?” he wondered.

“Let’s go! Come shopping with me and buy some clothes for this class gathering. We will both be so presentable, dressed in expensive new clothes. We will show off thoroughly and make them all so jealous!” Chen Xi winked at Xu Zhi and casually tapped him on the shoulder. “Anyway, you’ve been plowing land all this while, I guess you probably still have a lot of money. You’re a dying man. It’s pointless to leave money behind after you’re gone. Might as well spend it all with me, to our hearts’ content, without inhibitions.”

Was this something a decent human would say?

“I’ve confirmed this through the look in her eyes. I’ve definitely fallen into a pit,” he thought.

“This girl came looking for me because she did not have the money to buy clothes and she lacked a good-looking boyfriend that she could show off to other people.”

...

Xu Zhi accompanied Chen Xi into the city in her electric car.

The two of them were very careful and meticulous when it came to spending their money. After walking through most of the shops on the street, he bought her a beautiful dress that cost three hundred yuan. And under her direction, he also bought himself a suit that cost slightly more than three hundred yuan. Then they were both exhausted, so they got in the car and headed back to the countryside.

“For no reason at all, I’ve gotten myself a new surface girlfriend.”

Xu Zhi felt as though he was in a trance and could not help but laugh aloud.

“I’ll just take it as gaining a babysitter. This young lady is a nine days’ wonder, so it will only be a brief period of enthusiasm. But every day, she will prepare my meals for me enthusiastically and meticulously. There’s no need for me to frequently go into town during the day just to get something to eat.”

After all, with gastric cancer, he had to pay attention to his diet. The food out there was too unhygienic and lacking in nutrition.

He was not really bothered about such things and returned to the sandbox in his courtyard to study the evil-eyed creature from earlier on. He might have trampled on that player, killed him, and driven him out, but the race of which that creature came from was still in the sandbox.

And it was about to become extinct.

After all, it would be strange if extinction did not happen!

Two-thirds of its body was taken up by its eyeball. When a creature supplied all the nutrients in its body to the eyeball just so that it could see a little better and clearer, it would have wasted a great amount of its body’s energy. In that case, it was destined to be eliminated by nature.

“Does it have the potential to become a supernatural species?” Xu Zhi asked.

The hatchery of the Insecta replied, “Yes. According to my analysis, this creature is simple-minded, maniacal, and evil, but due to its huge eyeball, its psychic force is surprisingly also extremely strong.”

If he were to simply leave them alone, then this deformed species would definitely become extinct.

However, it might be just like the bugapes that were too weak at the beginning. If it could survive extinction, the deformed body structure of this “big-eye monster” species might start to develop and perhaps, could become stronger.

“Should I try putting it into the big sandbox and see what happens?”

Xu Zhi thought about it and decided that he would introduce this species to the big sandbox.

He planned to create a swamp in the big sandbox that occupied a hundred mu of land. After all, the environment of the large sandbox was too monotonous. There were no swamplands or desert areas.

Adding a swamp area of ten square meters would be the size of an entire mountain range for creatures like ants.

“As for how this terrain appeared, the Great Flood subsequently gave rise to a vast hoard of seawater, so the emergence of muddy swamp zones was considered normal… And a terrain like this swamp zone is first and foremost a muddy terrain that is sticky, muddy, and fertile. I better go find some fertilizer!”

The first thing that came to Xu Zhi’s mind was farmyard fertilizer.

In the countryside, many people used their own excrement as fertilizer. It was natural and pollution-free.

But he found the thought somewhat disgusting. However, later, as he revisited the thought, when the bugapes and various other races were exploring this black swampland, they had, in fact, set foot in this fecal digestion tank, where they swam about…

This picture, just the thought of it was simply appalling!

The use of human feces was definitely out of the question. So, Xu Zhi left the farm, headed next door to where Chen Xi lived, and asked Aunt Li for some farmyard fertilizer such as chicken and cow dung, telling her that he needed fertilizer for his farm.

After returning home, he took a big shovel and started on transforming the ten square meters of land.