Chapter 43: An Ear of Wheat
When the donkey cart drove into Xuzhou, the surrounding scenery immediately changed a lot.
If you can still see the yellow and green grass all over the mountains and plains, and the thin rivers in Qingzhou, after entering Xuzhou, these colors will disappear completely, leaving only dark brown, dry yellow, and patches on the ground. Pieces of condensed black.
It is the color of broken flesh, shed blood, scattered bones and the accumulation of dead people.
Zuo Chen glanced around, and in his eyes, the entire land was repeatedly emitting wild energy and ghost energy.
He frowned slightly.
Not quite right.
This does not seem to be a simple famine.
Although the Qi on the ground is very weak, if he wants to cover a state, Zuo Chen boasts that he can't do it.
But this doesn’t feel like it’s just a forum opening.
Zuo Chen only felt that it was strange and weird, but he couldn't tell what was going on.
The donkey cart gradually went deeper into Xuzhou, and the surrounding colors became more and more pure and monotonous.
Looking up, the sky is filled with blue, and looking down, it is all red.
Both sides of the official road should have been lush and green, full of trees, but now you can only see bare mountain tops. Even if you occasionally see a few trees planted on the roadside, the bark of them is less than the height of a person. All were stripped off.
Overwhelming depression came to him, and the golden boy in Zuo Chen's sleeves stopped playing and making trouble. He huddled up in his sleeves and secretly poked his head out to look around, curious. And fear.
On the relics, the shadow of the monk also appeared head-on.
When he saw his former hometown, he sighed three times.
“When will this wilderness be over?”
Caiyi also stared at the tree with its bark stripped off and swallowed:
"Monk, were you living on this?"
"Yes." The monk smiled, not knowing whether the smile was helpless or numb: "Where was there anything to eat at that time? If you can pull out a piece of bark from this tree, you are considered a wealthy family.
“But girl, you really don’t It is said that after the bark is stewed in a pot until it becomes soft, it tastes really good. It tastes like drinking tea. If a handful of coarse salt can be put in, it will be better than a living god in Xuzhou. Put it in your mouth, but I can chew it for half a day without feeling hungry. ”
“Oh my god. "Although Caiyi sometimes suffered from hunger and experienced days where she had no meal, she could only eat one steamed bun a day at most. She was still full for the time being, and she ate all the stewed bark. She really couldn't do it with eighteen looks.
"What else did you eat besides tree bark? "Caiyi listened to the monk's description. She was brave but curious. She cautiously asked outside and then shrank back in.
"That's a lot. "The monk said: "Wheat husks, corn husks, after the meal is finished, you can only eat the leftovers.
"Oh, some soil is edible. The kind is yellowish. After being soaked with water, it looks like mud. Some people find it fragrant in the mouth, while others find it bitter. Guanyin soil cannot be eaten. Although it can be stuffed into the stomach to make it full, it may Master Guanyin does not allow others to ask for food from his hands. People who steal Guanyin soil will feel full at first, and then their stomachs will become swollen and they will not be able to poop out. They will suffocate to death. "
"Okay, okay." Caiyi waved his hands repeatedly: "It's scary! It's scary!"
The monk just laughed and stopped talking.
The car continued to move forward, and the monk suddenly called out: "What is that?"
Zuo Chen cast his eyes over there.
I saw a solitary ear of wheat growing in the wilderness.
Golden.
He drove the car to the side of the wheat ear, twisted the roots with his hands, and pulled it up from the ground.
Looking in all directions again.
Except for this wheat ear, there is nothing else left.
"I didn't expect that this grain plant could survive." The monk said with emotion: "Maybe the seeds dropped by a wealthy businessman who fled to Qingzhou sprouted. They were not eaten by the people who fled, nor were they eaten by locusts. It's lucky." Zuo Chen held the ears of wheat and remained silent, not knowing what he was thinking.
He returned to the car, still holding the wheat ears in his hand. Caiyi felt strange and asked Zuo Chen:
"Taoist priest, are there any wheat ears? What’s so rare?”
“It’s nothing, just ordinary millet.” Zuo Chen shook his head, but still held it: “I have something I want to test, so I took it with me first.” >
Caiyi didn't know what Zuo Chen was going to do, but she knew that Zuo Chen was very capable, so she didn't say anything and just lay on the board of the donkey cart thinking about something.
Continuing walking along the road, he suddenly saw a store in front of him. Just by looking at it, Zuo Chen felt that there was a fierce light.
There must be many lives in this place.
“This is a famous black shop nearby.” The monk popped up and introduced: “When we ran here, people on the road told us this, and also said that this shop was originally They are law-abiding people. After the famine, they had no choice but to take up the business of selling rice and meat. However, they seem to still stick to their duties and only kill those who enter the store. If they don't leave the store, they will ignore it. "
Zuo Chen sighed slightly.
The world makes living people look more like ghosts than ghosts.
But when they drove by the store, they found that there was no one inside. Zuo Chen picked up his spirit energy and observed, and was slightly surprised:
"No one alive?"
He forced his eyes to take a closer look, and then he discovered that a couple was lying on the ground in the store, and they had been dead for a long time.
Starved to death.
The owner of a black shop in the rice and meat business also starved to death!
The monk also poked his head inside, and after seeing the two corpses, he sighed:
“They didn’t run away.”
No one spoke as the donkey cart drove on.
When Zuo Chen heard Liu Lezi say that there was a disaster in Xuzhou, he didn't have such an obvious feeling. After all, it was difficult to tell how serious the famine was just from words.
Only now did he realize how heavy the words "human cannibalism" he had read in history books really were.
Walking from day to night, there was not even a single animal to be seen on the road, let alone people.
The crows are gone, they have been shot down with slingshots and eaten clean.
The earthworms are gone, and the ground has been dug up three feet, and they are dug out and eaten.
The wilderness is scary.
When the sun set, Zuo Chen was about to stop the carriage and spend the night nearby, but suddenly he saw a bright light lit up not far away.
He looked over and found that there was an extra village on this wasteland. The lights were brightly lit inside, as if a banquet was being held. It was very lively.
Zuo Chen could tell just by looking at it that the village was full of ghosts and looked like a village of the dead.
He is not surprised. So many people have died in this world. It would be strange if there were no ghosts.
But Zuo Chen immediately felt that there seemed to be some living people in the middle of the village, as if several living people were drowning in it by mistake!
After thinking for a moment, Zuo Chen put the donkey on again:
"Let's enter the village."
Caiyi was slightly startled: "Taoist? That's obviously a ghost village. You want to get rid of them to gain merit." ?”
“Actually, I want to find some local people to ask about the situation.”
Zuo Chen said.
Grandpas, please read and vote! Kowtow to all the grandfathers!
(End of this chapter)