Chapter 157
The dense and non-stop buzzing sound outside the window gave him a headache. Mu Nan thought he would not be able to sleep because of the noise. After all, the sound outside was not from a construction site or someone's home being renovated, but from locusts that could break through doors and windows at any time and scratch your face until it bleeds. However, not long after he lay down on the bed, he slept until dawn.
It was already past three in the afternoon when I woke up. I was lazily rolling around in bed and stretching, but suddenly I realized that the noise outside was still there, so I hurriedly took Qin Huai's laptop to check the camera on the roof.
The locusts are still there, flying all over the sky, and even the scorching sun is blocked out by the shadows of these locusts.
They are not afraid of the current high temperatures and are not even affected by them.
Mu Nan was shocked when he saw this. Qin Huai walked into the room and closed his notebook: "Go wash your face and brush your teeth. I'll make you breakfast."
Mu Nan turned his head and looked at the tightly covered bay window: "Aren't they leaving? In the movies I saw, locusts fly quickly over a place, devouring everything they can eat and then quickly fly away to find their next target. Why are they stopping here?"
Qin Huai smiled and said, "Locusts are not harvesters that can finish their harvest in three minutes and then leave immediately. They also need some time to gnaw on food, so they may leave soon. Don't think about it. Go brush your teeth quickly. Do you want to eat thick omelette or fried dumplings today? Wontons are also fine."
Mu Nan slowly got up from the bed: "I want to eat red oil wonton."
Qin Huai directly cooked him a bowl of small wontons with fresh meat filling and some shredded pickled mustard in the soup. He sprinkled some fresh and fragrant dried shrimps on the surface to enhance the flavor and freshness. Except for not adding red oil as Mu Nan expected, this breakfast was still quite comfortable. The soup was juicy and warm, and it made his stomach feel a little more comfortable.
Mu Nan lay on the sofa to digest the food, and did not forget to care for his good friends. He sent a message in the small group: "Are you awake? How is the situation at home?"
Song Jia was probably awake by now, so he was the first to reply: "Very good, my brother and Uncle Cai just cleaned the garage again and killed four or five locusts that escaped. The garage should be completely clean now. There are no locusts in the house at the moment. Fortunately, I followed Qin Huai's example and put up a shield outside, otherwise I think the newly replaced glass may not be able to withstand the impact of so many locusts."
Not long after, Jian Chu also replied, but he posted a creepy video in the group. In the video, there was a snakeskin bag full of things, and the creatures inside were still alive, because the things inside were constantly moving, probably because the spikes on the locusts' feet were too sharp, and some even poked out of the bag.
Jian Chu: "Yu Feng caught the locusts last night."
Song Jia: "??? Ran out to catch locusts? Are you so brave?"
Mu Nan: "They caught them on the balcony. They tied a bag to the balcony railing. There were so many locusts that they fell into the trap."
Song Jia: "Good idea, I'll let my brother try it too. I think we have some thick big bags at home."
Mu Nan: "Keep up the good work, I'll buy locusts from you when the time comes. Also, is it time to harvest the alfalfa you planted?"
Song Jia: “Okay!”
Jian Chu: "Yes, do you want it now?"
Mu Nan: "It feels like my rabbit is about to give birth, so I need to prepare some nutritious food."
Mu Nan planned to exchange rice with them. In terms of material reserves, they certainly didn't have as much as he did, but he couldn't just give them food for no reason. He could use alfalfa to exchange. He had discussed it with Qin Huai, one pound of grass for two pounds of rice. For this kind of family-grown alfalfa, the harvest would only yield 10 to 20 pounds at most. There wasn't enough space to harvest more than that.
For example, Song Jia's family might have more, because Song Jia only grows alfalfa and nothing else. Jian Chu's family also grows some peppers and cabbage, not much, but not too little either. His peppers are growing well and are already bearing fruit, but they are small, the kind of small pointed peppers. It will probably take some time before you can eat them.
As for the cabbage, it has also begun to emerge, but it is only green. It will take another month or so for it to grow up. But at least it has been planted. In the later stage, as long as we water it well, we can wait for the harvest.
Mu Nan sent a hand-drawn list in the group, which listed the types and quantities of food that needed to be replaced, including rice, flour, grain, oil, seasonings, and even instant noodles. The most luxurious item was dried meat, pork jerky and beef jerky. Just like the menu made by Mu Nan, all of them were hand-drawn cartoon versions of the dishes, which looked very tempting.
The rice seems to emit fragrance, although it is obviously different from the real thing, but the material in the painting is rich, with instant noodles with heat waves, tempting pork and delicious beef, it's like being in a newspaper office!
Seeing the list sent by Mu Nan, Song Jia instantly hated the rich: "You have so many good things at home!!"
Song Jia then sent another message: "Do you have to paint so temptingly? I know you can paint, but your painting skills are not used to torture poor people like us who can see but not eat!"
Mu Nan: "It's rare for someone to have a bit of wealth. Although the shelf life is only 24 months, don't worry, I ate it yesterday, it's definitely not bad."
It is definitely impossible for it to go bad. If you put it in the space and take it out for a hundred years, it will not go bad. However, the shelf life displayed on the packaging bag is only that long, so it must be stated. People cannot think that he is cheating people by taking expired and spoiled things.
Jian Chu wanted to be extravagant. He liked to eat snacks and had always liked it. If his conditions had not been bad before, he would have had to work in various places to make ends meet for tuition and living expenses. He lived frugally and did not dare to spend lavishly. His biggest dream was to stay at home every day and have whatever he wanted to eat and drink, with endless drinks and snacks, so that he could live a free life.
Unfortunately, reality does not allow it.
The reality in the past did not allow it, and the reality now does not allow it even more.
So he could only look on with envy, and then reluctantly exchanged it with Mu Nan for the most filling rice and flour and some seasoning.
Jian Chu: "Do you have enough food at home? I heard from Yu Feng yesterday that there might be a real shortage of food in the future. They have estimated a possibility before. The north is short of food and water. In order to survive, they can only go south. All the water and food pressure will be overturned, and our life will only become more difficult."
Mu Nan: "It's enough. Don't worry. If you use rice to exchange for grass to raise rabbits, when the rabbits grow up, you can sell them for more than just a few kilograms of rice. If it doesn't make money, who would bother to raise these things? Just cleaning the rabbit nests every day is enough to make a fuss."
Jian Chuyi thought so too. Even if there was a food shortage in the future, there would always be people who had enough to eat. At that time, those who had enough to eat would only think of ways to make themselves eat well. So, whether it was rabbits or chickens, it would be impossible not to be able to exchange them. Maybe they would even make more money because of their scarcity.
Anyway, Qin Huai is smarter than Mu Nan, and with his plan, they will definitely not suffer any loss, so Jian Chu put down his phone and went upstairs to mow the grass. They can go to each other's house from the rooftop, and they don't have to go out, so they don't have to worry about being attacked by locusts when going out. So Mu Nan can only exchange with Jian Chu now, and Song Jia's family will have to wait a little longer, at least until the locusts fly away.
After a night of hard work, most people in the outer city moved to the East Suburb Indoor Square. Because there were too many people, it was extremely crowded inside. If you lay on the ground, you might accidentally kick the person opposite you. But if you didn't go, you would have to endure the locust attacks outside. So they had to follow the government and hide inside.
Someone posted a photo of the crowded indoor square, which made the Cai family members feel frightened. If Wu Zheng and the others had not taken them in, they would be crowded with others in the indoor square at this moment.
In addition to these people who were relocated, there were also many deaths caused by conflicts, all of which were caused by pushing and trampling. Not many people were actually killed by the locusts. However, this locust incident still caused huge losses in life and finances.
The hot daytime restricted people's travel, so the locusts were wreaking more and more unscrupulously. The scary thing about these things is that they seem to have evolved to eat anything, as long as they can chew it, including the sunshades that people put outside to block the sun, and the worn-out cotton wool used to cover windows to prevent broken glass. They will eat anything.
Mu Nan was really shocked when he found a ray of light coming in from outside the house. It was a ray of light coming in from the gap in the indoor sunshade. If he hadn't caught it out of the corner of his eye while walking, he would have hardly noticed it for a while.
Mu Nan moved the sun visor slightly and saw that most of the old quilt that Qin Huai had nailed to the wall outside the window had been eaten away. Because it was no longer obstructed, Mu Nan saw many locusts crawling densely on it. This unprepared scene shocked him so much that he almost vomited. It took him a long time to calm his twitching stomach. The degree of nausea was definitely no less than the last time he mistakenly thought he had drunk bugs.
Qin Huai pulled him back to the room and lowered the sunshade in the room: "Stay in the room, don't look outside if there is nothing to do."
Mu Nan rubbed his stomach and frowned: "They even eat cotton and cloth?"
Qin Huai poured him a cup of hot water: "They are even eating people now, what are cotton and cloth?"
Mu Nan was a little horrified: "Is our front door made of wood?"
Qin Huai said: "Don't worry, it's made of iron. They haven't evolved to the point where they can eat iron."
Mu Nan couldn't help but send a message to the group: "Are all the quilts you're using to block the outside okay?"
Sun Sisi, one of the girls, was the first to reply: "It's only half left after being eaten. Poor our quilt. We have to find a way to replenish winter supplies before winter comes."
Seeing what they said in the group, Song Jia ran to the window and opened it to take a look. He was immediately furious: "My quilt! Are these locusts not leaving because of this? If we hadn't put the quilt outside to cover them, they would have left long ago without food?"
Tu Juan responded by posting a photo of a house full of locusts, also in District 2. She said: "If you don't use a blanket to cover it, this will be the fate of your house."
Because there was no shelter and no buffer, when a large number of locusts attacked at a rapid speed, the glass could not withstand such a large-scale and high-density impact and shattered long ago.
So although the quilt was part of the reason why the locusts lingered here, it also protected the glass from being broken. Now the locusts have not left, but because the large group is in the circling or docking stage, there is no violent impact. Even if some of the sunshade cloth and cotton wool outside are eaten up, at least there will not be so many locusts rushing down and hitting the glass.
It was not until the sun was about to set that we heard some human movement outside. Some people wearing protective clothing and full-face helmets were holding flamethrowers and spraying fire at the sky. Wherever the vehicles passed, the ground was covered with the corpses of locusts. Some of them were not dead yet, but because their wings were burned, they were jumping and struggling on the ground.
There were vehicles following behind, sweeping the area with brooms, sweeping the locusts that could not fly into the cargo box on the vehicle. Although it was impossible to quickly kill all the locusts, and some of them flew higher and could not be burned by guns, they would still kill as many as they could. Otherwise, if they were not dealt with, they would just leave on their own and go to harm the next residential area.
Song Jia was still sending a message in the group: "Do you smell the aroma of barbecue?"
Mu Nan was lying on the sofa watching a TV series. Seeing this, he replied, "I can give you some cumin for free."
Song Jia: "Can these locusts be eaten?"
Xu Ming rarely spoke up in the group: "It is not recommended to eat them. Judging from some photos taken yesterday, these locusts have become bloodthirsty, that is, they have changed from being herbivorous to carnivorous due to various reasons such as the environment. I don't know what impact this change will have on the genes of the locusts themselves, but one thing is very important, how do you know that the one you ate has not eaten human flesh?"
Hearing what Xu Ming said and smelling the aroma of roasted meat in the air, Song Jia couldn't help but dry heaving twice.
Of course, this was just Xu Ming's guess. When people were so short of food that they could even eat human flesh, what would insects or even animals that had eaten humans matter? However, Xu Ming knew that the people in their small courtyard were not short of food to that extent, so he stopped them from thinking about it in advance. Even as for feeding the chickens with dried locusts, Xu Ming suggested that they first look at the situation and not feed them directly.
In just one day, Yu Feng had collected three large bags of locusts. These locusts flew into the bags by themselves, so Xu Ming's thick sacks were not enough, so he asked Mu Nan and others for a few.
In Yu Feng's words, it's just sitting there doing nothing anyway. If he can sell the fruits, he can sell them. If he can't, he can feed the chickens. Even if he can only exchange them for two eggs, he will make a profit.
Mu Nan was afraid that locusts would fly into the house, so he didn't let Qin Huai go through all that trouble. He would rather buy ready-made ones. But the two of them stayed in the house and did a lot of work. This time the rabbit was born during the day, and Mu Nan happened to have the alfalfa that he had exchanged from Jian Chu's family to give it as a snack. As a result, he found that the rabbit was pulling its belly hair with its mouth, and baby rabbits were constantly being born, just like little mice.
Mu Nan couldn't help but say, "Every time it gives birth to a litter, it pulls out its own fur. It seems that the speed at which its fur grows can't keep up with the speed at which rabbits give birth. I've used so much cotton for it, why is it still pulling out its own fur?"
Qin Huai stood at the door with him and looked inside: "Animal habits, especially those of wild animals, are harder to change."
Mu Nan stood outside until his feet were sore. He saw another one fall to the ground and said, "This is the eighth one. Will there be more?"
Qin Huai saw the rabbit start to turn around and smell the litter of baby rabbits he had given birth to, and then he said, "There should be no more."
Mu Nan held the grass in his hand and asked, "Do you want me to give it to you?"
Qin Huai looked inside and saw that the rabbits had not eaten much of the feed they had been given because they were still giving birth. He said, "Give it to them tomorrow. If we go in today, the rabbits will be frightened."
The birth of a new life is something worth sharing, so Mu Nan posted a photo in the group: "It's born!"
Song Jia replied with a nose-picking emoji: "If someone didn't know, they would think you gave birth."
Mu Nan: "There's a new baby in the family, and they were going to give out wedding candy, but forget it, I'll keep it for myself."
Song Jia: "Congratulations! How many babies have you had? Wow, a whole bunch! That's great! When will you give out the wedding candy?"
Mu Nan responded to him by sending an eyes-rolling emoticon in the group.
The last time they were going to Qinghe to trade, they didn't have enough supplies, so they took away all the little rabbits to make up the number. This time, eight rabbits were born. As long as all of them can survive, Jian Chu plans to buy two from Mu Nan to raise. Not to mention making money, he can also kill them and eat the meat when they grow up.
He was fine at home, sheltered from the wind and sun, and just needed to grow vegetables. But Yu Zibai had a hard time working outside, running around every day, and he had really lost a lot of weight during this period.
Even though they are young, they cannot deprive themselves just because they are young, so they still have to make up for what they need.
Jian Chu had a private chat with Mu Nan. This was something they had agreed on before, so of course Mu Nan agreed immediately. Although he didn't know how many of the rabbits would be male and female, he wouldn't be so unlucky as to have all of them be male. He also hoped that Jian Chu's family could raise them, so that after a few more batches, he would replace the female breeding rabbits. He couldn't just pull out the fur of one, otherwise it would be bald.
After looking at the rabbits enough, the two of them went to clean the chicken coop and washed the floor tiles in the room. The dirty water was placed in a bucket, and Qin Huai took it to the top floor and stored it there until it fermented so that it could be used to water the vegetables.
Mu Nan looked in the chicken coop. The chickens had been brooding for a few days. He didn't know when the chicks would hatch. He had never raised chickens from eggs, so he couldn't grasp the timing. He could only check every day. He changed the water for the chickens, added a lot of food, and finally took care of everything inside and outside the house.
While Mu Nan was taking a shower, Qin Huai inspected the upstairs and downstairs. Now the locusts stayed here and did not fly away, but at least they were not too aggressive towards the windows, so there was no need to worry about any of them being smashed and rushing into the house. All they had to do was wait. Until the government eliminated the locusts and the locusts flew away on their own, they would probably not be able to go out for the time being.
Listening to the sound of water in the bathroom, Qin Huai took off his sweaty clothes and pushed the door open and walked in.
Mu Nan screamed when he was attacked: "I haven't finished washing yet!"
Qin Huai whispered something in his ear, and Mu Nan pushed him out: "Our family doesn't lack this little water!"
Qin Huai turned his hand, turned the person who pushed him around and held him in his arms.
Actually, Mu Nan is almost 25 years old, and can no longer be called a teenager at this age. However, when he held her in his arms, she was still as thin as a teenager. Her shoulder blades were pressed against his chest. When he lowered his eyes slightly, he could see the seductive shape of her collarbone. Under the soft light of the bathroom, fine water droplets gradually condensed in the heat and then slowly slid down.
The slender waist in my hands seems like it will be broken with the slightest force, which makes me want to explore the limit of its flexibility.
Qin Huai's eyes darkened. He lowered his head and gently bit the neck of the person in his arms, extremely close to the earlobe. The hot air sprayed out made Mu Nan tremble slightly uncontrollably, and his hands subconsciously grabbed Qin Huai's arms that were holding him.
Mu Nan was a little bit traumatized by the difficult environment of the bathroom. Moreover, they had been busy all day and had not eaten dinner yet. Their stomachs were already growling with hunger. Naturally, they were busy begging for mercy: "Brother! I, I'm hungry. Please at least give me something to eat first. Even the death penalty has a last meal."
Qin Huai chuckled in his ear: "Exercise, it will taste better later."
Mu Nan stepped back repeatedly, with an accusatory expression on his face: "There are locusts everywhere outside, and many people are still living in dire straits and their lives are in danger, uh uh..."
The rest of the words were sealed in Qin Huai's mouth. His life was in danger, so why should he care about others? Shouldn't he cherish every day as if it were his last?
In the end, in order to save water, Mu Nan was forced to take a bath with Qin Huai.
After taking a shower, Mu Nan collapsed on the sofa. Qin Huai, who was refreshed, went to cook happily. While eating, Mu Nan took out a plate of oysters and pushed it in front of Qin Huai: "You have worked hard. Let me replenish you."
Qin Huai raised his eyebrows: "Are you lingering on the edge of death every day?"
Mu Nan looked innocent: "How could it be! You think too much! Jian Chu reminded me today that his family's Zibai works outside every day and has become thin due to hard work, so he wants to raise two rabbits and give Zibai some meat when they grow up. Don't act recklessly just because you are young. Although you don't work so hard outside, there are a lot of things to do at home, and it's also very tiring. Our family has the conditions, so this tonic should be put on the agenda. A bowl of bird's nest dessert every day is obviously not enough. Men still have to replenish their gas stations!"
There were six oysters on the plate, all fresh. Qin Huai glanced at him, picked them up and ate them without hesitation, saying, "You really need to take some supplements. If you take some, you will be happy."
Mu Nan rolled his eyes and ate angrily. He didn't believe that after all this trouble, Qin Huai would still not let him go. He should at least rest for three days each time. If he was really hurt, wouldn't Qin Huai be the one who would feel bad?
It turned out that with Qin Huai's understanding of Mu Nan, Mu Nan could still bear this kind of torment. Mu Nan, who suffered the consequences of her own actions, cried and shook her head: "Brother, no more, you know, I'm not in good health, this is too useless for my brother, you only have me as a brother!"
Qin Huai gently bit his earlobe and said, "I can cripple my brother, but I can't let down those six oysters you gave me."
Mu Nan: “…”
Woo…
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