Chapter 225 Exclusively published on Jinjiang Literature City: The Unfortunate Disaster Victims
Xiong Mao has always been impulsive and liked to show off.
He was very envious of Lu Xuan's experience of being thanked and admired by countless disaster victims after his trip.
Therefore, after arriving at the first seemingly dilapidated settlement, he decided to follow Lu Xuan's example and fly down in his flying vehicle to make a spectacular entrance and experience what it's like to be treated like a god!
Based on Ge Yuan's previous style of doing things, this approach would have been too high-profile and not within his consideration. However, since his face was restored, Ge Yuan's mentality had become much "younger," somewhat like an "old man suddenly feeling young again," so he did not stop Xiong Mao.
Then, the two of them paid the price for it.
Upon landing, the aircraft was immediately surrounded by strong and fierce refugees from the settlement. Then, the group of people began to smash the aircraft with sticks and boulders.
Xiong Mao: "!!!"
Ge Yuan: "!"
Xiong Mao was both anxious and angry. "Are these people crazy?! What did we do to them? They started attacking as soon as they arrived! Don't they know we came here to deliver supplies to them?!"
Hearing the group of disheveled disaster victims outside still shouting "monsters," Xiong Mao angrily cursed, "Bullshit! We are gods! You are the monsters! A bunch of blind fools!"
Ge Yuan's face darkened. "Stop talking nonsense. Quickly open the car door and put the aircraft away. If they damage the aircraft, we'll have to pay Lu Xuan for everything, not only will we not make any money, but we'll also have to give him all the supplies at home."
Xiong Mao was jolted awake and realized the seriousness of the situation. He quickly opened the hatch and jumped out with Ge Yuan.
The refugees outside stopped attacking when they saw the monster spit out two people.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Xiong Mao stored the aircraft, which had already been smashed and marked, into his spatial storage.
After finishing his work, he turned around angrily, ready to unleash a torrent of curses, only to find that although the surrounding refugees did not attack him and Ge Yuan, their eyes were glowing with a greedy, bestial look, as if they were staring at food.
Xiong Mao felt uneasy under their gazes and couldn't help but ask Ge Yuan, "Uncle Ge, what's wrong with these people? I feel like there's something wrong with their eyes."
Ge Yuan: "..." Of course something's wrong; they're being treated like food.
Before Ge Yuan could explain, the disaster victims had already lost control and started ordering food.
"That young guy looks very tall, I want one of his legs!"
"Then I want his other leg, and nobody's allowed to take it from me!"
"Bullshit! You're all going to eat one leg per person? Aren't you afraid of bursting? Same as always, ten people share one leg, five people share one arm!"
"I'm not going to fight you for it, I want that old man's belly fat!"
Ge Yuan's face turned ashen. "Who are you calling old!"
After undergoing cosmetic surgery in the medical pod, he looked no different from a strong young man; he didn't look old at all!
However, what these people said confirmed his guess, and Xiong Mao's face turned green after he understood the reason.
"These beasts!"
Ge Yuan said with a dark face, "Let's just do it."
As he spoke, he flipped his hands and pulled out two energy guns, pointing them at the people around him.
Xiong Mao clenched his fists and roared, unleashing a barrage of earth spikes—both in power and quantity—that had doubled after level two. They shot out mercilessly under the terrified gazes of the frenzied disaster victims.
"ah--"
"What's this!"
"Pfft!"
"Monsters! They really are monsters! Kill them!"
A chaotic brawl soon broke out.
...
Fifteen minutes later.
Inside the dilapidated camp, the refugees who had been fierce and greedy not long ago were all lying on the ground, with multiple wounds on their bodies from energy guns or earth spikes.
Although the two of them inevitably suffered injuries while fighting against hundreds of people, with bruises all over their faces and bodies, and blood still oozing from the wounds on their arms and backs caused by sharp stone tools.
But Ge Yuan and Xiong Mao showed no mercy. The people lying on the ground were in a much worse state; half of them had already stopped breathing, and the rest were barely breathing.
A man in front of Xiong Mao was still muttering, "Monster, damn it, monster... die, die... I'll eat your leg..."
Annoyed, Xiong Mao conjured another earth spike and stabbed it into the opponent's already riddled thigh with several bloody holes. "Eat my ass! You still want to bite my leg? I'll cripple your leg first! You inhuman bastards, I don't know how you've managed to survive until now! Truly, evil lives on!"
After cursing and swearing for a while, he seemed to remember something, rubbed the red and swollen places on his body from being beaten with sticks, turned to Ge Yuan and said, "Uncle Ge, when we get back, you have to explain to my wife for me. This wasn't me being violent. If I hadn't been so fierce, we might be reduced to ashes by now."
Ge Yuan ignored his words, looked around to make sure he didn't see any women or children, and said, "Walk around and see if there are any other living people besides these people."
These people can attack them, and they might also attack other innocent disaster victims.
Xiong Mao also thought of this, and the two quickly separated to search the small village-sized camp.
Finally, they found five adults, many of whom were missing flesh and barely alive, in a thatched hut near the center of the camp.
The stench of blood, rotting meat, and sweat mingled together inside the thatched hut, making it hard to breathe.
It took the two of them a lot of effort to get the people out. They took out some dry ice and poured hot water on it to cool down the surrounding area. Then they fed the people some water and nutrients, and bandaged the still bleeding wounds.
Based on their own experiences, the two subconsciously assumed that these people were also innocent victims who had been captured and persecuted.
But when two of them regained their strength after eating something, they took advantage of their momentary lapse in attention and quickly opened their mouths to tear at the flesh of their companions on either side, their fierce expressions exactly the same as those of the previous disaster victims.
Not to mention, one of them was driving a car with a group of people lying nearby, shouting in a hoarse voice, "Brother, you killed my brother, pay with your lives, pay with your lives..."
Ge Yuan and Xiong Mao instantly understood something, and their eyes turned completely cold.
Xiong Mao roughly threw the people he had helped up back to the ground, cursing, "These people are rotten to the core, not worth saving at all. Let's not waste our medicine."
Ge Yuan did not object.
These people have completely abandoned their humanity and are indeed beyond saving; doing business with them is naturally out of the question.
A little further from the camp, the two also found many bones that were obviously not from young adults, which were carelessly discarded together and had obvious signs of being gnawed on.
Before leaving, the two lit a fire in the camp.
When they boarded the aircraft again and left, they could still see, from afar, some survivors who hadn't quite died in the sea of fire getting up and grabbing and biting others nearby.
·
Lei Yan and Wu Yue formed a team.
The two were treated somewhat similarly to Xiong Mao and Ge Yuan at the beginning. They were both initially regarded as prodigies because they fell from the sky. However, when Lei Yan demonstrated his level two lightning ability, which allowed several bolts of lightning to strike the ground, the disaster victims living in the high mountain Buddhist temple near the grassland began to kneel and worship them, treating them as gods.
Not only did some families send them young boys and girls, but others even sent women to serve them.
Lei Yan only had Lu Qing in his heart, and Wu Yue was still a son-in-law who had married into the family, so he naturally wouldn't accept these things. He only repeatedly emphasized that they were merchants who came to do business.
The subsequent transactions went very smoothly.
In addition to the supplies sold by the Wu family father and son, Lei Yan and Wu Yue also prepared a lot of ice. However, it was too hot and the ice melted quickly. The disaster victims felt that it was not cost-effective and not many people bought it. They preferred dry ice, which they could use whenever they wanted.
Lei Yan and Wu Yue discussed it and decided to change their sales method.
Ice cubes are not sold separately, but are added to other drinks to sell chilled beverages.
Iced plum juice, iced mung bean soup, iced fruit juice, and iced milk tea—although they're all gone in one go, these delicious and refreshing fruit drinks offer disaster victims a much greater enjoyment than chewing on ice cubes, and they're not expensive either.
There is a small lake near the Buddhist temple. The people here have no shortage of water or fish to eat, and are relatively well-off compared to other disaster victims who cannot afford to eat.
Compressed biscuits, which are even cheaper than nutritional supplements, are also quite popular.
Because many Buddhist temples collapsed in the earthquake, the disaster victims were living in cramped conditions, and some tents and mobile shelters were sold.
Lei Yan also sold a batch of animal offal and bones that his family members didn't eat, and that the villagers, having developed picky palates, didn't eat much of either, which had a strong fishy smell.
The number of disaster victims in the Buddhist temple totaled seven or eight hundred. Even if each person only received a little bit of something in exchange, the total number was still considerable.
The Buddhist temple was managed by the village chiefs of several villages with large populations. The two men traded a batch of high-quality grain seeds that the villagers had just harvested before their departure with the village chiefs and signed IOUs.
Looking at the IOU for grain owed, which was more than double the amount of grain sold, Wu Yue sighed inwardly, "Indeed, doing business is a way to make a lot of money!"
·
There was a slight problem with the coordinates that Zhang Chengming and Jin He arrived at.
They chose a small town of similar size to the gathering place where the Wu family father and son finally went.
But when they arrived at their destination, they found that the town was divided into several parts by underground fissures. All the living people in the town were unfortunately trapped in one of the small areas, and people could be seen lying on the ground or leaning against the wall everywhere.
When they first saw them, the two almost thought they were all dead. But upon closer inspection, they found that most of them were still breathing, though they probably wouldn't last much longer.
The two parked their aircraft in another area, took out their hoverboards, flew over, and approached several disaster victims to check on them. They found that most of them were unconscious, and a few were still somewhat conscious, muttering "water" and "hunger."
The two realized that these people had not encountered any other unknown danger, but were simply starving to death.
How can we do business when our trading partners are all going to die?
There may still be a lot of supplies in the other buildings that were split apart by the cracks, but those supplies most likely belong to these people. It would be despicable for them to abandon their owners and plunder the supplies.
After discussing it, the two took out some nutritional supplements and fed them to the disaster victims little by little. Some of them had a fever and kept gagging after eating a little of the nutritional supplements, complaining of headaches. They were clearly suffering from heatstroke, so they were given a heatstroke medicine.
Prepare the dry ice, and then use Zhang Chengming's wind-based ability to create a gust of wind to spread the coolness of the dry ice even faster.
After a flurry of activity, the lifeless town finally came alive again.
Realizing they had been rescued, the disaster victims drank thick, sweet, chilled mung bean soup. Some were in a daze, as if they were on cloud nine, their faces full of disbelief, while others kowtowed to Zhang Chengming and his companion with tears streaming down their faces to express their gratitude.
"Thank you, thank you so much for saving my life."
Zhang Chengming hurriedly said, "Hey, no, no, no, don't kowtow."
Jin He couldn't help but ask them curiously, "Why are you all trapped here?"
While they were still recovering, he went to the other fragmented areas to make sure that the absence of people in other areas wasn't due to death, but rather that the townspeople were actually all there.
Speaking of this, the disaster victims cried their eyes out.
They were just unlucky.
That was back to the time of the polar night beast attack.
To avoid the large number of casualties caused by the personnel being too scattered during the beast attack, everyone stayed together and looked after each other during the battle, which minimized casualties.
Everything went smoothly at first.
But who would have thought that an earthquake would suddenly strike midway through the journey? The massive tremors caused the ground to crack inch by inch, splitting the town, which had survived the major earthquake without major damage, into five parts.
And they were so unlucky, they were completely trapped in one area.
To avoid the beasts damaging the supplies, they specifically chose this empty street area that had already been looted.
They managed to survive for about a month on the prey left behind by the beasts and the wild vegetables and even weeds that grew after the earth revived in spring. But food always runs out eventually.
They ate the last bite of food, and two days later, people began to die, and the number of deaths increased every day.
By now, they have been starving for four days, and the death toll has reached one-fifth.
The most painful thing in the world is not that you are alive but have no supplies, but that the supplies are right there on the other side of the earth, but you can see them but can't eat them.
The town is surrounded by abundant forests and mountains. As long as they can go out, they can find plenty of wild vegetables, mushrooms, game, and even tree bark!
But we just can't get out!
They could only be defeated by hunger, feeling their bodies weaken little by little until they could no longer get up.
That feeling was unbearable, both psychologically and physically.
It was precisely because they had experienced this kind of despair that the gratitude and ecstasy that erupted after they were saved from the brink of death were all the more intense.
Ignoring Zhang Chengming and his companion's attempts to dissuade them, the disaster victims continued to kowtow to them, then embraced each other and wept bitterly, laughing and crying at the same time, venting all the emotions they had accumulated over this period.
Fearing that their bodies might suffer from extreme joy or sorrow, Zhang Chengming quickly said, "Do you want to leave this place? How about we help you cross the underground fissure?"
The disaster victims were stunned for a moment. "Send us across the crack? How will we get across?"
No sooner had the words left his mouth than someone suddenly remembered, "Speaking of which, weren't these two benefactors from before?"
Some people recalled seeing someone fly by before they were about to faint from hunger, but how can people fly? They were probably hallucinating from hunger...
Watching Zhang Chengming and Jin He step onto long planks suspended more than three meters in the air, and then whoosh across the crack to reach the other side that they could never reach, all the disaster victims gaped in shock.
Someone murmured, "It's not a hallucination, it really can fly?"
Zhang Chengming and Jin He quickly demonstrated to them that not only could they fly, but they could also take the entire town with them.
Amidst a series of screams of agony, more than a dozen victims were led to the other side of the crevice.
These people's legs were weak when they got off the skateboard, but when they realized that they had really left the place that had trapped them for two months, they couldn't help but howl again.
Zhang Chengming and his companion did not have a hoverbus; they could only carry one person at a time.
Even though some people starved to death in the town, more than two thousand people still survived. Each of them had to make a thousand trips to transport everyone away. Even if they took out all the other skateboards they had prepared, it would still take a lot of time to learn how to use them.
So the people who were transported first helped the two find suitable places on both sides to tie sturdy ropes, and the people on the other side tied safety ropes around their waists, and then swam over directly.
For those who have a fear of heights and are too afraid to go, or those who are too old or too young, two people will personally escort them over.
They struggled like this until sunset, and finally all two thousand people were freed.
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