On the underground floor not far from Wang Qi's base, several survivors who had just finished their morning routine gathered around the fire to discuss matters.
There were five people in total, two men and three women. Judging from their appearance and skin texture, they were approximately 25 to 35 years old.
"The situation in the market is not good. Several familiar faces are missing. Those damn bandits have raised the price of food by another 20%."
The man who spoke first had a curly brown beard. If you didn't look at the natural curl of the beard, his eyebrows and eyebrows were somewhat similar to that of a figure who wielded a snake spear that was eight feet long.
Several people were silent for a while, and another man fiddled with the fire with a wooden stick in his hand, then threw the wooden stick into the fire:
"Move. If you don't move this year, you'll have to eat people next year."
What he means by cannibalism is cannibalism in the literal sense.
It is not a new thing for people to eat each other in the year of great disaster. Those who persist in not eating people until now are actually outliers.
In places where there is a lack of food diversity, people suffer from severe night blindness. It is difficult to see through the moonlight and they can only go out during the day.
Daytime is the home territory of [Scorpion Ants]. They are more active during the day, more difficult to deal with, and difficult to use as a stable food source. The needs of five... no, six people cannot be satisfied by the occasional [Scorpion Ant] entry.
"Mom's body can't support the move. Also, will there be more food after moving? What about more [demon hunting]? What about the ghosts in the other world? We don't know anything about the distance. I don't agree to move. .”
Of the three women, the one with the shortest hair, the thickest eyebrows, and the most obvious muscle lines in her arms, with her left eyebrow cut off by a short scar, expressed her objections.
Several people looked at each other, and the only woman with light blond shoulder-length hair said: "Let's find another place to raise [Brick]."
Everyone frowned, especially the man who was moving had a gloomy expression.
Brick is a giant meat-producing cockroach developed before the disaster to solve the food crisis. Its full name is [High-yield Meat Genetically Improved Cockroach - Brick No. 21]. People don't like to call it cockroach, but just call it the project. code name.
Brick is indeed an important food solution and even a staple food for this group of people, but opening a new breeding site involves more than just finding and feeding.
The most troublesome thing is that Brick itself is the main food source of scorpion ants. The breeding scale is slightly larger. Once discovered by scorpion ants, they will have to face swarms of scorpion ants.
A single scorpion ant is not scary, but the ant colony operation will have a large network of reconnaissance scorpion ants, and the slightest mistake in action will lead to a situation where it is necessary to run away. Even if there is a team of ten or twenty people, or even the [Demon Hunting] that everyone fears, the result will not be different.
It's snowing heavily now, so there's no need to worry about scorpion ants causing trouble. However, winter here has just begun, and the surface temperature will not return to above freezing for another six months.
With such a low temperature, raising another litter of Bricks by any means can barely make up for the food gap in the winter. After the beginning of spring, as scorpion ants become more and more active, just traveling between the safe house and the new breeding site poses a major safety hazard.
Overall, labor input is not directly proportional to output.
It’s no longer possible to pick up good ones when picking up rubbish. Make handmade wooden tools and arrows and trade them with bandits for food and iron tools. Although the overall output is slightly inferior to raising a new brood of Bricks, it is better because the safety is guaranteed.
It's just that since they are called "bandits", they are not a character that they want to fight with. The surrounding survivors have already been harmed to a great extent.
Comparing the two is a bad idea.
The five people were not faced with this dilemma the day before. They looked at each other for a while and then made a decision:
"Shana and I will take a walk south."
Shana, who had short hair, raised her eyebrows that were cut off by the wound, said nothing, and touched the bayonet on her waist.
To the south, the former city center has become synonymous with danger, an area that even demon hunters are reluctant to approach before winter.
At the same time, danger also represents opportunity. The garbage that has not been plundered, more scorpion ants that are frozen waiting to be killed, and the wild Brick that is left unattended.
The dark-haired girl, who had a slightly smaller face and had been silent, took out a cloth bag from somewhere and handed it to Shana.
There was no need to open it, it was dried meat, and the amount was hard to measure. Given her and Big Beard’s physical needs, it was all eaten in one meal. They would have to rely on this little thing to survive at least two nights.
Getting the dried meat is equivalent to everyone voting, and the tacit understanding between them does not require any more words.
Shana and Beard went to say goodbye to their mother.
If they didn't come back, the remaining three younger brothers and sisters could survive with their mother, but they probably wouldn't be able to escape the fate of being captured by the bandits... Well, just swallow your last words or something.
There was no time for sentimentality, so the two packed up and headed out with the sled.
Compared with someone's craftsmanship, this wooden sled is several notches higher in both beauty and practicality, with real seats that are separated from the front and rear of the shelves.
The two people sat in the sled and used wooden poles to support the sled like skiing. It's strenuous, but overall it's easier than two people dragging a sled through the snow.
Moving less than four hundred meters south, we reached the edge of the survivors' activities.
After getting off the vehicle and walking, one person carries the sled traction rope harness, and the other person is responsible for opening the road ahead and guarding, alternately.
The area two hundred meters wide and about three hundred meters wide in front is a community of bungalows, the main area where survivors actively hunt scorpion ants.
The two of them did not stop here, but went directly across the main road to Makarov Street.
This is one of the rare streets whose name can be remembered by survivors. This east-west street is bounded to the south by a dangerous area. It is the regular high-density deployment range of scorpion ant scouts. Outside of winter, you have to brave Mortal belief comes in.
The two siblings walked west for a while and discovered the situation.
"Someone has been here." Shana raised her hand to warn.
The bearded man threw away the rope, lowered the bow from his crossbody to the back of his waist, and approached Shana with the hand axe.
Shana had already turned away from the bookstore to check the surrounding situation, and reminded her brother: "Quickly confirm the situation, we still need to find a place to stay."
The bearded man said nothing, tightened the ax in his hand, and got into the bookstore.
Books have a special place in this world.
The vast majority of survivors are illiterate. For them, books are just tools for storytellers. They can be exchanged for the opportunity to listen to books for free. However, even if storytellers read from them, no one can understand them. Their value is infinitely close to none.
For literate people, the attitude toward books is a mixture of love and hate.
They like stories about life before a disaster being like paradise, and the so-called crime is as beautiful as childhood games; they are worried about the contradiction between spending energy and time reading and obtaining survival resources, which will hasten the arrival of death.
My mother was born before the disaster. In addition to educating her brothers and sisters in literacy, she also tried hard to let them learn some knowledge other than stories. Unfortunately, it was of no use and did not allow everyone to obtain food in a better way.
Looking at the annoying books in the room, Lu Hu quickly found clues, including stacked footprints and a broken wooden board.
Looking at the color and dryness of the fracture, as well as the size and direction of the footprints, we came to the conclusion: "There has been no rainfall recently, and this mark is no more than fifteen days old. It is very likely that there is only one person looking for the book with a purpose."
"Fifteen days?" Shana expressed the question in her tone.
"That's right, before the big snow and after the first snow."
"What do you think?"
"I don't know, it could be deserters, or it could be something else..." Deserters generally would not come to this street alone, but it is not ruled out that there are hungry people who want to survive.
Deserters are the survivors in my mother's mouth. I don't know when, but they gradually replaced the latter in everyone's mouth.
The two communicated briefly with their eyes and decided to continue taking action.
More than an hour passed quickly, and no stiff scorpion ants were seen on Makarov Street. Things would not be that easy after all, so we had no choice but to continue heading south.
There must be a place to stay if you continue to the south, starting from the large group of residential buildings on the south side.
In order to search for garbage, they learned to pick locks, but their skills were average, and most of the door locks were rusted, so whether they could open them mainly depended on luck.
Violent door breaking is also a way. There are indeed many solid wooden doors in this residential building that can be broken open, but what happens after they are broken open?
If there is too much garbage to take away in one trip, you can only give others an advantage. In addition, every time a door is destroyed, the next time any deserter comes over, there will be one less option for a settlement and one more place for scorpion ants to ambush.
Therefore, the unspoken rule of the deserters is that they will not carry out demolition work until they are desperate.
Until three o'clock in the afternoon, after opening several doors, I was still not satisfied. Either the floor was not high enough or there was air leakage.
The lower the floor, the greater the chance of being attacked at night. Although it is only a three to one-tenth change, no one wants to bet on it, because night blindness means that everyone relies almost entirely on intuition when fighting at night.
Because window walls are damaged and air leakage is more common, and the higher the floor, the more serious it is. In order to bring as much supplies home as possible, the two did not bring bedding. After rummaging, they found something that could be used, and the temperature was -10 to 20 degrees. , even if there is a bedding, air leakage will be fatal.
When he was about to search at another point, the bearded man who was currently responsible for exploring the path kicked something wrong under the snow.
Opening it up, it was a scorpion ant with only the front half left.
Scorpion ants are full of treasures, and no one will waste them and let their companions recycle them, unless...
"There's danger, not people."
