Inside the room, Jiang Li assisted Gu Jin, handing her tools and carrying wooden planks. It took them quite a while to seal the large window shut. To be on the safe side, they added two more layers of sheet metal inside, ensuring there were no gaps before the job was considered complete.
"Let's check other places to see if there's anything that needs fixing. Let's not clean these things up yet. We'll clean them up after we've thoroughly checked and finished everything."
In the living room, Gu Jin took off her gloves, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and addressed everyone.
"OK."
After agreeing on their plans, the group split up and thoroughly inspected the villa. Only after confirming there were no other entry points for the centipede did Jiang Li put away his tools.
The area outside the base was swarming with centipedes. They were everywhere—on the roads, rooftops, and even on vehicles—ready to devour people.
Some people are now anxiously pacing around at home. Most families have no food reserves at all, and they are starving. It's no wonder they are anxious.
All work in the fields and factories came to a halt, and everyone retreated indoors to wait for the centipede swarm to retreat.
In one of the farm’s small rooms, a group of people who had just been evacuated from the fields huddled together, shivering.
A man was bitten on the leg by a centipede but did not flinch, quietly enduring the excruciating pain while huddled in a corner. Large beads of sweat rolled down his pale face, and he felt as if he were being burned from the inside out.
The man's right calf, where he had been bitten, was so swollen that it stretched his loose trousers into a round, bulging shape. The half of his calf was throbbing and throbbing uncontrollably from the swelling and pain.
It wasn't until the man's face grew increasingly pale and even turned bluish before he completely lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground that the others noticed something was wrong. Several of the bolder ones quickly went forward to check on him.
"Look at his leg, why is it so swollen?"
A woman pointed to the unconscious man's legs and spoke to the people who came forward to check on him.
The man closest to the man immediately squatted down and gently pinched the man's calf. It was hard and seemed to have something wriggling inside. He could feel something slipping through his fingertips from time to time.
The man swallowed hard, carefully took the sickle from the unconscious man's hand, and slowly and carefully cut open the pants that were tightly pressed against the unconscious man's swollen right calf without hurting him.
What came into view was the man's dark purple, even swollen and shiny half of his lower leg. Compared to the healthy leg, this half of his leg was so swollen that it looked like it was about to burst open.
What's even stranger is that there seems to be something small inside the man's leg, occasionally sliding under the skin of his swollen leg.
"Holy crap, am I seeing things? Is there something moving inside his leg?"
A man rubbed his eyes in disbelief, then stared intently at the man's legs for a while. This time, seeing nothing, he thought he was seeing things.
"Huh? I think I saw it too, but when I look again, it seems there's nothing there."
"Yeah, I thought I was seeing things too."
"Did everyone see that? My goodness, it's terrifying! What could be inside?"
Before people could finish chattering and go to investigate, more and more densely packed things began to move inside the man's body, causing his ashen face to ripple with each passing moment.
With a "pop," the swollen calf of the unconscious man, bitten by a centipede, suddenly burst open, spraying out a ring of dark red blood mixed with yellow pus. In that pool of disgusting liquid, there were even many small black centipedes mixed in.
One by one, the centipedes twitched a few times and immediately crawled up. More and more centipedes poured out of the man's body, crawling out of his ears, nose, mouth, and even eyes.
"Ugh~"
"ah!"
The sounds of vomiting mingled with screams, and the little centipedes crawled towards the crowd like madmen.
But they were still too small and not as intimidating as the centipedes outside. The people inside the house jumped up and frantically stomped on the little centipedes, causing clumps of slime to burst on the ground.
Many small centipedes were trampled to death, but some slipped through the blind spots of people in the chaos of the house and pounced on them, biting them relentlessly. In the instant of the stinging pain, the venom carried by the centipede spread rapidly and wildly through the wounds of those bitten.
After things calmed down completely, only seven or eight of the original thirty-odd people in the room remained, still panting as they stood.
Fortunately, these small centipedes didn't have the ability to put their eggs into the bodies of those who were bitten, so the small centipedes were quickly cleared out. However, at the same time, there were also many injured people lying on the ground with swollen bodies. It was chaotic on one side, and other places were also suffering. Almost the entire base was engaged in a battle of wits and courage with the centipedes.
Jiang Gujin and the others were also trapped in the villa at this moment and could not get out, after all, no one wanted to confront these things head-on.
Jiang Li stood by the window looking out. Suddenly, she had a whimsical idea. She grabbed a piece of cloth next to her, wrapped it around a thin wooden stick in the corner, lit it with a match, quickly opened the window, and threw it out.
The centipedes that had been densely surrounding the house immediately retreated a considerable distance, only slowly gathering around again after the stick had completely burned out.
It seems that fire is something many animals fear, including insects in the past and centipedes now.
"Fire is really useful."
Fang Qingxun saw the centipedes and they were excited, saying...
"Yes, how come I didn't think of that? The insects before were also afraid of fire. Centipedes are a type of insect, so of course they are also afraid of fire."
Fu Xiaxia patted her forehead and said.
To conduct the experiment, Gu Jin lit another piece of firewood and went outside. The centipedes, which were usually eager to pounce on people, were wary of the firewood in Gu Jin's hand and retreated a short distance away, watching intently as the firewood went out before attacking.
Gu Jin wasn't going to give them that chance. He walked around outside with a simple homemade torch for a couple of hours to make sure the centipedes really wouldn't come up and attack him.
Back inside, the instant the door closed, Gu Jin forcefully flung the wooden stick out, slamming it heavily onto the pile of centipedes not far away. The fire quickly spread, and for a moment the air was filled with the disgusting smell of burnt centipedes.
At 5 p.m., the persistent strange birds came to harass the base again, this time discovering something even more interesting: centipedes.
Jiang Li and Gu Jin stood at the window on the first floor, watching the strange bird and the centipede that had crawled into the yard fight fiercely.
At first, some birds underestimated the centipedes and were bitten. They quickly fluttered around and died. Later, they mastered the technique. These birds used their sharp beaks to frantically peck at the centipedes, then swallowed them whole with a tilt of their heads.
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