Chapter 116 Collapse Crisis

The residents were half asleep, and their first reaction was that there was another earthquake. They woke up the people around them, some called their families, some held their children, and ran into the bathroom dragging their thick sofas or long tables, and then hid under.

Only after hiding did they find that the building did not seem to shake. What was the loud noise just now? Where did it come from?

At the same time, the source of the loud noise - the fourteenth floor, to be precise, it should be between the thirteenth and fourteenth floors. The earth-shaking loud noise made the people in the room jump up in surprise.

They were too close, of course they could tell that it was not an earthquake, but something in the house collapsed.

The family of three on the 14th floor came out of the room immediately. After turning on the light, the daughter screamed in surprise and took two steps back to the room behind them. They saw that the originally large living room had collapsed into a large hole.

The collapsed hole was about one meter wide and nearly two meters long. Along the wall separating the dining room and the living room, the sofa and cabinets that were originally placed against the wall had already fallen down along the collapsed ground, and even half of the partition wall was missing.

Because the tenth floor and above are all high-rise staggered floors, each floor is very high, and the collapsed building is equivalent to falling from the height of two floors to the living room of a family below, which will make such a loud noise.

The living room was filled with wall ash and dust from the broken buildings, which made them cough.

The family of three looked at the living room with a big hole in it, stunned and not able to react, but the daughter ran towards them, calling her parents.

"There are ants! Mom! Dad! There are so many ants!"

The wall ash and dust dispersed, and countless "ants" crawled out from the broken wall, some were black and brown, and some were white.

They crawled out from the fracture of the wall like flowing water, toward the side walls and ceiling, and even toward the thirteenth floor below the fracture.

The family of three looked like they had seen a ghost. They didn't even bother to put on their shoes or even take their cell phones. They turned and ran out the door, screaming for help at the top of their lungs.

When Youxi arrived, the 14th floor and the affected 13th floor were already in chaos.

The crying of children, the screams of adults in fear, the sounds of quarrels... all mixed together. The air was filled with a strong smell of pesticides, as well as the strange smell that Youxi had smelled in the home of the resident on the 14th floor.

The "ants" were slightly larger than ordinary ants, and there were so many of them that they seemed to have been brewing for a long time. They spread from the 14th floor to the 13th floor along the fault, and then spread to other residences on these two floors. Some even climbed up the stairs and seemed to continue to spread to the upper and lower floors.

Insecticides can kill even giant cockroaches and mosquitoes, but they don't seem to be very effective against these "ants".

The 13th floor was innocently affected. A big hole collapsed in the living room ceiling, and concrete blocks, sofas, cabinets, and walls fell down one after another. The living room of this house was even more messy than the 14th floor, with building debris and crawling "ants" everywhere.

"These are not ants! These are white termites!" Xu Yan also rushed over. He lived on a lower floor, unlike the other floors closer to these two floors. He was awakened by the loud noise from the beginning. "These termites should have changed. The missing food from this family was placed in the wooden cabinet that fell down. It is most likely related to termites."

You Xi roughly understood that the swarm of termites crawled out from the partition wall on the 14th floor, because this wall was made by the residents of the 14th floor themselves later, and the material was different from the overall building material of the building. No one knew what went wrong, and there was such a large nest of termites living inside.

Although the size of these termites has not changed much, they must have mutated, otherwise they would not eat human food.

Termites secrete mylic acid. Before the mutation, termites could even eat silver. After the mutation, they secreted mylic acid directly in the food and then ate it cleanly, and then returned to the wall along the cracks in the wooden cabinets, leaving no trace at all.

Such a large number of termites would not form on their own. It is estimated that there should be a queen ant in the broken wall. The queen ant mutated and produced termites in large quantities. There were too many termites, and they eventually hollowed out the interior of the building, causing the collapse accident.

In the eyes of other residents, the family on the 14th floor was the culprit, so they naturally scolded them.

"Let's call the rescue first!" Youxi took out his mobile phone, "There are so many termites, we can't clean them up, and we can't even control them. If they spread to the whole building, with their reproduction rate, this building will be eaten away sooner or later."

Fortunately, the situation was different this time. The request for help was accepted. After recording the situation and address, the other party said that the rescue team would soon land directly on the roof and asked them to be prepared.

In the time it took to make a phone call, the termite group had already crawled along the wall towards the 12th floor. The residents of the 12th floor had already woken up. The closest to the stairwell was the family that had raised turtles and caused the oolong before.

The parents of this family saw the dense swarm of termites and screamed in shock. Their child had already woken up. He was ordered by his parents not to go out before, but he didn't care and ran out in his slippers. Surprisingly, behind the child, there was a turtle the size of a washbasin.

Cold-blooded animals originally have no IQ, but at this moment, this turtle was like a domestic puppy, following the child all the time. Even when the child ran to his parents and stopped, it opened its mouth to bite his pants and feet and pulled him towards the house.

That posture was like a smart puppy that sensed the danger ahead and was warning the little master to go home quickly.

Fortunately, the parents found their child running out, and stimulated by the termites, they immediately ran home with the child in their arms. However, the termites did not go to the ground, but directly moved from the wall on the 13th floor to the ceiling of the corridor on the 12th floor, and went towards their house.

Soon, the door of their house was crawling with dense termites. The father took a step back, not knowing whether to open the door and go in, or to take his family and escape directly.

But their home was here, and it was so dangerous outside. Where could they escape to?

Just when they were at a loss, the turtle that was originally following them crawled towards the door, then opened its mouth, stretched out its tongue and licked the door hard, licking a bunch of termites, and then put it into its mouth and swallowed it in two smacks.

Youxi happened to come downstairs and saw this scene: ...

The parents of the child were completely stunned, except for the boy of six or seven years old, who struggled to get down from his father's hands and shouted at the turtle: "Little turtle is great! Hurry up and eat all the ants, so we can go home!"

The turtle seemed to understand, turned around and glanced at the boy, then opened its mouth and began to lick the door at several times the speed just now.

After licking the places it could reach, the turtle looked at the other termites above the door panel, tilted its little head and seemed to be lost in thought. After a while, it stopped licking, opened its mouth, stretched out half of its tongue, and stood there motionless. There

seemed to be a very strange smell in the air. The family of three did not smell it, but Youxi felt it keenly.

Soon, she found that the termites that had gathered on the door panel and started to gnaw the wood turned around and crawled towards the turtle's tongue. In this way, every time the turtle's tongue was full of termites, it would eat them with two smacks and then extend its tongue again.

The tongue was like a lure that emitted attractants. After repeating this process several times, it finally ate all the termites near the door. In the end, the turtle burped.

The child's parents: ...

Youxi: ...

**

Ten minutes later, several rescue members brought several experts in protective clothing and landed on the roof of their building from a helicopter. Those experts were all equipped with very professional tools and were skilled in their movements. Even when they saw the walls full of termites, they did not panic.

The leader of the team was an acquaintance who had been to their two districts twice before. Youxi and Xu Yan both recognized him.

He also remembered them. After approaching, he took off his protective mask, nodded at them, and then told the other panicked residents that the team members were experts in killing termites. This was not the first time that termites appeared. There had been several similar termite crises in the city, all within the past one or two days.

Moreover, the incubation period was very long, and they were not discovered until the walls or floors collapsed. At that time, the termites had multiplied to an astonishing number, and ordinary people had no way to deal with it.

They also studied and improved it several times before they developed this effective drug, which is not to kill, but to lure all the termites into the box they brought.

The effect of this lure is stronger than the lure of the turtle just now. Termites swarmed in like a stream of water, scrambling to crawl into the box brought by the expert.

Twenty minutes later, the termites that had spread to the 15th and 12th floors were cleaned up.

But the expert did not leave, but took out a smaller box, came to the 14th floor where the termites appeared, and continued to wait.

After waiting for another five minutes, a huge white insect, more than ten times the size of other termites, crawled out from the broken wall on the 14th floor.

The insect's body looked like a silkworm, but its head was very small. It twisted and squirmed, and finally crawled in through the small hole on the box.

"What, what is this..." The resident on the 14th floor was so scared that his teeth were chattering.

"This is the queen ant. The termite colony is reproduced by it. Generally, there is only one queen ant in a termite colony." An expert replied, "Don't worry, the queen ant has come out, and there will be no more termites in the future."

But how can they rest assured? As long as they think about the fact that there are so many termites hiding in their home every day, and there is a fat queen ant that keeps laying eggs, they are terrified and still dare not step into the house, always feeling that there are still insects hiding in some corner.

The rescue team stayed for half an hour and solved the termite crisis. After that, they began to clean up the termite eggs that may exist in the broken wall. However, these termite eggs are the same as before the mutation. If they leave the care of the ant colony, they will not be able to hatch and will die soon.

They were just being cautious and didn't want to leave hidden dangers after coming here, so they finally took down the entire partition wall, and then took the half that fell from the living room on the 13th floor and some fragments to the top floor to burn and destroy them.

Finally, they checked other parts of the building up and down, and after using a caustic to confirm that there were no other termites, they used the intercom to contact the helicopter and asked it to come back to pick them up.

The Gou brothers and some other people also watched the whole process. When they saw the rescue team was about to leave, they couldn't help but follow them to the top floor.

Xu Yan and You Xi had reacted before them, and were now talking to the captain on the top floor. Naturally, they were asking about the situation outside.

Although the Internet is well developed now, a lot of really useful information cannot be seen from the Internet alone.

They asked very skillfully, and the captain did not give a direct answer, but the general meaning was revealed. In the short term, S City will maintain the status quo. At present, some people have actually left S City and gone to other cities with better conditions.

The rescue team will not leave. They are carrying out rescue missions every day, but due to various restrictions, the rescue efforts cannot be the same as before.

At present, the most serious impact of the excessive growth of plants in S City is the urban area. The situation in the suburbs is actually okay, and the driveways are not completely undriveable.

It’s just that if you leave the city, it is tantamount to giving up the assistance of airdropped supplies and the rescue team. Because of the current situation in the city and the various difficulties in people’s lives, the authorities have invested most of their efforts here.

As for the other part of the force, it was deployed in the shelter.

In short, after the previous lesson, their current approach is mainly to take a slow and roundabout approach. Of course, they have been making preparations for both situations. If they can't stay in the city in the later stage, they will have to withdraw in the end.

But the living conditions in the shelter are well known. After all, there are too many people. It can only provide a place of refuge for the time being.

Youxi could hear what the other party meant. The two thanked each other, and the helicopter came soon. The other party nodded to them, put on the protective mask again and left.

After the helicopter left, Xu Yan and Youxi saw several people standing at the entrance of the stairs.

Gou Yaoyang spoke first: "Let's call a meeting of the people in the group tomorrow morning."

Everyone understood.