After turning over the wooden painting to indicate the termination of the transaction, and watching the two leave, Wang Qi dragged the cart back indoors and went upstairs to find Li Xiang.
When they reached the fourth floor, Li Xiang was still staring at the window, probably afraid that the other party would leave and come back.
Wang Qi walked to her side, and when he stopped, the movement was a little louder. Li Xiang was so startled that his little body trembled and he ducked to the side.
When she saw it was him, she gave him a white eye. Her eyes, which were already completely white, seemed to get even whiter.
Wang Qi smiled, twisted his neck and motioned for her to follow, and the two of them moved to the south end of the corridor one after the other.
He opened the blinds, took out the two hunting knives he had exchanged, and placed them in the sunlight for observation.
Li Xiang also looked at it curiously, but couldn't see the reason.
Wang Qi has many opportunities to deal with construction and materials. He often visits factories to learn about the new production processes adopted by each factory. By the way, he asks the masters what is wrong with eliminating the technology. He also spends a little time on decorative knives.
The blades of these two hunting knives are 23 centimeters long, enough to be called short knives. The blades are not straight and have less obvious internal arcs.
In the previous life, the relatively well-known inner-curved knives included Damascus knives, Gurkha (Nepal) knives, and actually the Tang Hengdao, which was covered up by commercial rumors.
If you don’t look carefully, the Tang Heng knife seems to be a straight knife. If you look at a little reference line, you can see that it is also an internal curved knife. Merchants and stakeholder groups will never mention it because the internal curve is not conducive to the maximum utilization of the plate and the cost will increase. There will also be more forging hours for handcrafting.
The curvature of the two hunting knives in his hands is closer to that of a horizontal knife, and is almost non-existent in the shorter length. Wang Qi did not notice it when he was trading downstairs.
An internally curved knife will cause the center of gravity of the blade to move forward, and the cutting power will naturally be concentrated at the front end. This requires certain usage skills. However, for such a short knife, there is almost no curvature, and the amount of forward movement of the center of gravity can be ignored. This characteristic makes it seem like it is not there. Wang Qi suspected that the curvature was caused by the forging process, not the design.
Japanese swords are more famous for their curvature due to the forging process. The outer curvature of the traditional casting method is gradually produced by multiple quenchings.
The two hunting knives in hand can be seen with obvious traces of forging by the stacked steel method, and the surface of the blade has been blued.
Take two steps, use your feet to pull out a piece of wood that was broken from the door frame from the corner of the wall, make sure there are no poisonous insects crawling around, pick it up and put it on the window.
Nu Zui asked Li Xiang to move, raised the knife and struck hard.
The wood broke with the sound.
Look at the knife first.
The blade surface remains intact and performs well.
Pick up the broken wood and examine it.
The wood had been moth-eaten, and there was a large gap in the cross-section, which gave the knife a lot of advantage. However, the un-worm-eaten cross-section was fairly flat, not smooth, and had few burrs.
Putting the hunting knife on the window sill, Wang Qi took out his original construction steel knife and chopped down the longer section of the remaining wood.
The wood was also broken, but when you picked it up and looked at it, you found that the relatively flat section was only half of the cross section, and the rest was broken by Wang Qi's arm strength... Of course, the main reason was that the wood was quite rotten.
The performance of the blade is completely different from that of weapon steel. There is no chipping, but there is deformation visible to the naked eye. Some parts are crooked and flattened. This change is also reflected in the cut surface of the wood, which makes the cut surface less smooth and the flat surface is Composed of more small fractures.
Wang Qi handed Li Xiang two wood-cutting knives.
Li wanted to know that he was testing the knife, so he put the crossbow behind his back and took the knife. He quickly observed the difference and understood why the meat was given to humans.
She returned the knife, and Wang Qi took it and handed over the unused one with its sheath.
It can be seen that the survivors spent a lot of thought on this scabbard. The main body of the scabbard is made of wood, and the outside is wrapped with thread. If you look closely, you will find that the thread is a kind of fiber that can be used as tinder when twisted. It may be taken from the stem of a certain plant.
"You need something for close-range self-defense. I see that the one you use is the same as mine. It breaks too easily and is not reliable enough. I will give you this one."
"???" I didn't understand.
Maybe you realize what he means, but pretend not to understand.
Wang Qi took her little hand, put the knife on it, and held her hand in the scabbard.
Li Xiang's face turned red and he handed the knife back.
Wang Qi shook his head and took out the knife he had just used: "I have one, but I don't know how to use two knives. It's useless to get another one."
There are often dual-weapon professions in the game. He probably knows that a normal person's use of two swords is not as effective as holding a single sword with both hands, so he has never considered practicing dual swords.
Li couldn't think about it.
Wang Qi blinked, put a finger on her scabbard and pushed it gently.
She struggled for a while, and the strength in her hands decreased. She held the handle and scabbard of the knife in her arms and held it in her arms, her eyes becoming watery.
Wang Qi felt heavy-headed and hated this the most, so he immediately chased people away:
"Go back to sleep. I'll see you again tonight."
…
Today the moon is very round, there are few clouds, the moon has clear boundaries, and the moonlight is reflected again on the snow, making the night not like night.
Later in the evening, Shanna and Anna, who had been delayed for a while to avoid the darkness and wait for the moon to rise, used the moonlight and hand-cranked flashlight to rush on their way, and met Valia at the intersection five hundred meters away from home.
The beard looks very reckless, but in fact Varya is an extremely experienced hunter. He survived alone in the ruins for half a year before being adopted by his mother.
Varya who greeted them out neither lit a torch nor inquired about the results in advance after meeting the two. He just took over the security work that Shana had been responsible for tacitly and escorted the two to move quietly.
Mom was sitting on a single sofa in a good condition in the corner, knitting something in her hands, and occasionally looking up at the door.
There are also black-haired men and women in the hall. The man is standing in the corner, observing the outside through the gap left by the light-blocking board of the window, while the woman is looking after the light-blocking half wall made of stones. Make a fire.
The ingredients have been prepared in the stew pot, but I don't know when or whether the people who have gone out will come back. The pot has not been put on the fire, and the fire is almost extinguished.
The brunette looked at her mother, hesitated briefly, and added a piece of wood to the fire.
In winter, it becomes slightly safer to go out in this hostile world, but the fuel needed to keep warm creates a new conflict with the shorter and shorter days. The peeping eyes of other survivors never stop, and they must rush in at the worst possible moment. Save as much as possible.
But my mother's body didn't allow it, and her knees were probably hurting again.
The three people in the same room were doing their own thing, and the loudest sound was the slight explosion in the fire from time to time.
Suddenly a black-haired man came out from the corner by the window:
"Cook some food, they're back."
Both women in the room let out a breath, and no one said anything.
The black-haired man opened the door and stepped out, leaving the door ajar.
After a while, there was the sound of someone walking in the snow.
Finally arriving home, Varya was not in a hurry to go in and stood at the door observing the surroundings.
The dark-haired man took the initiative to help the two women carry the things on the sled.
Most of them were moved up in the morning and were almost intact. If there weren't two extra hangings of dried meat, one would have to wonder if there was another accident.
After a while, the group returned indoors.
Anna and Shana went to say goodbye to their mother first, helped her into the wheelchair, and pushed her to the fire, where everyone sat around the pot.
"Have you really seen that kind of person?" Mom looked at Anna expectantly and looked at Shana.
She did not call the night ghosts directly, because in her eyes, they were just members of the human race, and they were even more miserable than ordinary people before the disaster.
"Yes, Mom, I saw him. He is very normal. If you don't look at his eyes, he might be even more normal than us."
Mom's cloudy eyes widened a little: "Normal?"
"Well, he speaks very smoothly and slowly. It seems that nothing can make him anxious... By the way, he speaks Qin language."
"Qin Yu...it's such a distant memory."
Elena leaned on the back of her wheelchair and tried to recall some things before the disaster.
Some of the children were curious and waiting for her to speak, while others were indifferent, but none of them bothered her.
Qin language is not a minor language. Her high school classmates, college classmates, and colleagues after work all majored in foreign languages. In college, she even knew two classmates whose native language was Qin language.
However, Elena's language talent is too weak, and her understanding of Qin language, which is known as the most difficult language in the world, is very limited. She still learned a few words while watching TV series.
"I seem to remember a few words, 'Hello'...'I love you' and 'Have you eaten?', hahaha." He laughed as he spoke.
These memories may be the only beautiful things in this cruel world... no, there are also her children.
Elena didn't explain the meaning of those words. Maybe she had forgotten it, or maybe she just didn't want to explain.
After waiting for a while, he realized that his mother had spent too much energy talking and was not going to say anything anymore, so the black-haired man asked:
"What did you use in exchange for the meat?"
"Map, two deserter knives, in addition to the meat, I also got a monkey wrench, brand new before the disaster."
The size of the adjustable wrench is adjustable, which is very convenient when you are out collecting things of unknown size that need to be unscrewed. Therefore, it is also one of the essential survival tools for early survivors.
At the same time, the adjustable wrench has several extra parts, making it less reliable than a fixed wrench. As the use increases, the slipping situation will become more and more serious. When everyone uses it, the loss will be relatively greater. The new adjustable wrench also has good use and trading value among the deserters.
The deserter's knife is not a good thing. In addition to the bandits, there are several groups nearby that can make it. If you can exchange it for an adjustable wrench, you will undoubtedly make money.
But just as Anna thought, everyone had no time to think about the monkey wrench now. They were only surprised that the map could be exchanged for food.
"map?"
"Yes, he expected that we wouldn't understand the Qin language, so he immediately showed the demand map and vehicle battery with a painting on the wooden board. We threw the map to him since we didn't have a battery, and after he saw it, he gave us almost five kilograms of dried meat. "
Five kilograms of dried meat is definitely considered a huge sum of money in the deserter's trading catalog.
It is a very simple calculation. If you give an adult 500 grams of dried meat a day and a little salt, he will have enough physical strength to do heavy physical work such as chopping firewood and logging.
...Maybe it's a little less, but it's impossible for deserters to eat pure dried meat to do manual labor. It's too luxurious. Five hundred grams is already the limit that everyone can think of without eating other things.
In fact, well-preserved meat jerky is mainly used by deserters to eat when they go out to explore ruins and hunt. It can effectively reduce the weight of the luggage. Five kilograms is equivalent to five days of mobility for two people, and there is no need to worry about fainting from hunger halfway. .
"How much meat is he willing to pay if we get the pre-disaster color map?" the black-haired man continued to ask.
"I told you that he spoke Qin and he couldn't understand what I said." Anna explained and tried to guess, "If the map is well preserved and covers a large enough area, we should be able to negotiate the price."
The black-haired man took a wooden stick to stir the fire: "He also wants to leave this hellish place."
Shana glared: "Kai!"
After his name was called, the black-haired man looked up and looked back: "The last time you brought the guard's meat back, someone saw it. Someone passed the news to the bandits. Our house has been targeted in the past two days."
The survivors do not have a strong sense of morality, or most of them have no concept of "morality" at all. Those who can be called bandits can no longer be described as evil. Slavery and murder are not even evil deeds. Before the disaster, they would have been considered evil. Name it the Group Against Humanity.
"If they dare to come, I will kill them!" Shana growled.
Kai looked at her for a while, then lowered his head and continued to stir the fire: "It's good to be determined, but we can't continue to reduce the number of people. We can't survive with one less person."
Shana was choked and opened her mouth, not knowing how to refute.
It is very difficult for survivors to survive. They have to take care of farming, collecting, logging, and guarding their homes. There are few people and there is no need for conflict. As long as they are stared at by bandit scouts or deserters who want to ask for rewards from bandits, they are waiting to die.
The problem is still there and has not been solved, but it must be solved. However, my mother's body cannot support the long journey, and few of them know how to speak.
Elena's mother took the initiative to keep her, but this was unacceptable to the five brothers and sisters.
In silence, dinner was cooked and everyone shared the food in silence. The black-haired woman was responsible for helping her mother eat while holding a bowl.
