Pet King

If you started from Binhai City and head south, past the dog market and a few sizable villages, you would end up at a plot of wasteland near the sea.

This wasteland was situated between Binhai City and the other cities around it and took up a huge area. This area was a barren piece of land as the soil had too much alkaline. There was only a thin layer of soil on top. If you dug further down, all you would get were small stones. Other than the very few species of grass that were hardier, almost nothing of commercial value could grow here.

The value of this piece of barren land was extremely low, but there was something that this plot of land was very suited for. The government had build a gigantic waste disposal and burial facility here, and garbage trucks came here every day on the only road. They brought along a massive stench, kicking up a storm of dust, and upended Binhai City’s trash into the huge hole before burying it.

Predictably, no one was willing to stay here for long. Other than the workers’ dorm at the waste disposal facility, there was no other residential area around here. The employees of the waste disposal were mostly males, up to 99% of them, and finding a partner had become extremely difficult for them. Both Binhai City ladies and ladies from the other city would often leave with their hands on their noses and even delete and block them on social media if they heard that the other worked at the waste disposal.

Thank goodness the waste disposal didn’t have a lot of employees. Other than the drivers of the waste trucks, there were only about twenty to thirty of them staying here long-term. They didn’t leave this place often either, since there was barren land around them for miles—what was there to see? They were exhausted enough by the troubles of survival and finding a partner, so they would rather stay in their dorms and sleep when they could.

Only when they had a long break would they don on their clean clothes and take the bus to the city to play or attend a blind date for the nth time.

Since a long time ago, there had been an abundance of wild and stray dogs in the wasteland. Even though there was nothing here for miles, garbage trucks brought them more than enough food. There were always a lot of strays and wild dogs foraging for their next meal in the mountain of trash. Their noses were sharp, and they didn’t have to worry about not finding food as long as they started trying.

Recently, there seemed to be more and more strays and wild dogs around here, as there was a huge influx of strays coming from Binhai City.

These new strays had been chased here by the stray cats near the dog market.

Previously, stray dogs had had the upper hand in the long struggle between stray cats and stray dogs. But there had been a weird shift recently, completely changing the whole situation around. The cats that were usually solitary started to prowl their territory in groups, attacking all stray dogs on sight without fear, turning their long-standing rivalry on its head.

In a battle not too long ago, a huge group of stray cats had begun their attack, completely annihilating the whole group of stray dogs and forcing them out of their homes until they left the borders of Binhai City. Until then, the strays had not stopped.

The cornered dogs found the piece of abandoned land, the huge landfill, and realized that there were no heart-thumping strays in the area, and so they decided to settle down here long-term—it was embarrassing, but they had no other place to go.

But the original residents of this piece of land wouldn’t just let the new strays come take over their territory and snatch away their food without a fight.

So, the war plays out every single day. Sometimes it was one-on-one, and sometimes it was a group fight, the mountains of trash filled with howls and barks of strays in the midst of their passionate fight for dominance.

The true owners of this place, the employees of the landfill, were troubled over the situation too. The groups of strays had clearly become a hidden threat. But they usually went around in their huge vehicles, like excavators, loaders, padders, tip trucks, et cetera. As long as they didn’t leave the driver’s seat, they wouldn’t get into much trouble.

But even so, there had sporadically been a few cases of strays injuring people, usually happening when the driver was in a rush to use the washroom. They couldn’t possibly answer the call of nature in the driver’s seat, right?

The moment they left the driver’s seat to take a dump beside their car, the stray dogs would have their eyes on them. Well, not them per se, but their freshly expelled sh*t. It was well known that dogs did eat sh*t, and some of them were more than happy to do so.

But the workers didn’t know that. While doing their business, they suddenly heard rustling around them, only to find one, or even several, big dogs surrounding them, looking at their butt as though it was a 5-star hotel’s international buffet line.

Faced with a situation like this, the workers would definitely panic. The smart thing to do was to not wipe and immediately put on their pants and hide in the driver’s seat.

But there were some stubborn people that refused to do so. They picked up any stick or stone or other trash around them to throw at or threaten the strays, wanting to scare them away so they could wipe their butts in peace.

If it were one stray, it might be scared away. But if they came in a group, such an act would only agitate them. Even if they had no intention of attacking a person, they wouldn’t care that much when the adrenaline rushed to their heads.

After getting bitten several times, they had finally learned to be smart. As long as they had to drive out, they had to have at least two employees in a single vehicle. So if they ever encountered a situation where one of them desperately needed to go, the other person could keep watch while they did so in peace—they were all men anyway. The moment they found stray dogs lingering nearby, the guy keeping watch would then quickly alert his partner to hurry up and get in the car.

Not just the employees, but the drivers driving the trash in every day were threatened by the dogs as well.

Other than the call of nature, they had another issue. In order to prevent inconveniencing the general public, most rubbish trucks only operated at night.

With how dark it was in the middle of the night, the drivers often had limited vision. If a dog were to suddenly rush across the front of a truck, the driver would usually slam on the brakes on instinct. However, with such a heavy load on board, it wasn’t easy for the vehicle to come to a smooth stop. A jammed brake could cause the whole car to topple over, endangering both the driver of the truck and any other car and its driver beside them.

There had already been more than one case of a garbage truck toppling over. It was great luck that no one had gotten injured during all these cases, since there were basically no other cars using this freeway, especially during the night.

But not having a single incident up to now didn’t mean that it wouldn’t happen in the future.

The moment someone got injured, or worse, died, it would be an even more troublesome situation to handle.

So the supervisors of the landfill had been getting together to discuss how to deal with the strays and wild dogs in the area. Yet the strays and wild dogs had no idea what was about to come and continued to fight their fights, dig through their litter, and eating their excrement.