Chapter 328: The Fierce Skua
Xia Xiaoman had only heard of freezing rain before, but had never seen it with her own eyes. Now that she had seen it with her own eyes, she finally understood what it meant for water to freeze into ice.
She shone her flashlight around, and all the exposed areas, including the walls, the ground, the wood, and the pine trees that had grown new leaves, were covered with a layer of ice. There were also a lot of icicles hanging from the eaves, which were long and sharp and could kill people if they fell.
Xia Xiaoman returned to the house, took out a shovel, and knocked down all the icicles under the eaves. Then he threw a rope next to Maodan, let Maodan bite the rope, and pulled Maodan back.
Let her go out, for example. She doesn't have crampons, and the ground outside the door is covered with thick ice. If she goes out, she will end up like Maodan, falling all over the place.
The freezing rain did not have much impact on the floating city. There were no cars, trains or planes now, so the freezing rain fell as it came. The most we had to do was be careful when going out and try to avoid slipping.
But if you encounter a skua during freezing rain, that’s a different story.
When Xia Xiaoman was knocking the ice on the ground with an axe at the door of his house, he heard the loud cries of skuas from the sky. Looking up, he could vaguely see several black shadows circling in the air.
Before she could react, a skua swooped down and headed straight towards Xia Xiaoman.
Xia Xiaoman did not dodge or evade. Just when the skua flew in front of her, Maodan next to her jumped up and opened his mouth to bite the skua's neck tightly.
The skua flapped its wings and struggled, and its sharp cries could almost pierce a person's eardrums. After waiting for two minutes, the skua gradually stopped struggling.
Maodan saw this and carried the skua into the house, while Xia Xiaoman picked up the feathers that had fallen when the skua was struggling. At this moment, there were knocks on the door.
Xia Xiaoman glanced at the skua in the sky, turned off the flashlight, and walked carefully to the door in the dark.
Outside the door were Li Yu'e's two men, Zhang Can and Zhu Xingliang. Zhang Can saw Xia Xiaoman and said, "Sister Xia, it's been quite cold these past two days. The boss is worried about the cotton in the field, so he asked us two to come and look after it."
Xia Xiaoman looked at them holding the quilts in their hands and asked, "Are you going to keep watch here?"
Zhang Can nodded. "Yes, the boss asked us to stay here and go back every two days. This skua is too rampant, and the boss is afraid that the skua will destroy the greenhouse, so he asked Xiao Zhu and I to guard it here."
"Sister Xia, don't worry, we won't disturb you. Xiao Zhu and I will live in the greenhouse and won't go anywhere."
Li Yu'e had already told Xia Xiaoman about this matter in advance. If the weather was too cold or there were other situations, someone might be sent to guard the greenhouse.
Xia Xiaoman didn't mind. Her house had three doors. The first door led to the fields, the second door led to the yard, and the third door led to the living room. When Zhang Can and his friends came, they could only stay in the fields and could not enter her yard.
"Come in! How did you get here? Didn't you encounter any attack by skuas?" Xia Xiaoman asked casually.
Zhang Can answered honestly: "The boss got some iron sheets and made us a pair of crampons. We can only go out with crampons on."
"On the way, we encountered several skuas attacking passers-by. Xiao Zhu and I were smart. When we saw the skuas flying down, we squatted by the wall and pretended to be dead. After the skuas flew away, Xiao Zhu and I walked along the wall."
When Zhang Can said this, he was still a little scared. This year's skuas were much more ferocious than the year before. They swooped down again and again, attacking humans with their claws and beaks.
Because of the freezing rain, the ground was covered with thick ice. When passers-by saw the skuas, they initially wanted to shoot them down as a snack, but they soon regretted their decision.
It was difficult for them to stand steadily on the ice, let alone catch skuas. After a while, their faces were covered in blood and their clothes were torn by the skuas.
They wanted to hide and escape, but because the ice beneath their feet was too slippery, they couldn't even run away. They could only stay where they were and were tortured to death by the skuas bit by bit.
Zhang Can and Zhu Xingliang huddled in the corner and watched with their own eyes as several passers-by were scratched and pecked to death by skuas. After their death, the skuas surrounded them and ate their flesh. After the skuas had eaten their fill and flew away, Zhang Can took Zhu Xingliang and slowly moved to Xia Xiaoman's house.
I can only say that it was fortunate that Li Yu'e knew from Sun Qing how ferocious the skuas were, and she had warned the gang members not to turn on lights when skuas appeared. If they had to go out, they must not turn on lights.
Without lights, it was difficult for the skuas to detect the location of humans, so Zhang Can and his team were able to escape from under the skuas' noses.
Zhang Can and Zhu Xingliang settled down in the field in front of Xia Xiaoman's house. Perhaps Li Yu'e had specifically instructed them to do so, so they stayed there for several days without disturbing Xia Xiaoman. They also quietly cleared the ice around the field and near the door, and occasionally brought some things to Li Yu'e.
The freezing rain lasted for nearly half a month. Many people stayed at home because of the freezing rain and did not go out, so they did not know how ferocious the skuas outside were.
Half a month later, the temperature slowly dropped. At the same time, the freezing rain turned into snowflakes and fell on the ground. A layer of white snow accumulated on the ground. People trapped at home could finally go out on the snow.
However, not long after they walked out of the door, they were attacked by skuas. For a time, incidents of skuas brutally and unprovoked attacks on humans occurred frequently.
But all this has nothing to do with Xia Xiaoman. With Zhang Can and Zhu Xingliang, she doesn't have to worry about the problem of skuas at all.
After Li Yu'e learned about the skuas, she had people set up traps near the greenhouse. When Zhang Can and Zhu Xingliang saw skuas hovering nearby, they would pull up a large net to prevent them from flying down. If there were too many skuas, they would shoot them with crossbows to drive them away.
With these two people around, Maodan couldn't catch a skua to eat, but even if he caught one, Xia Xiaoman wouldn't let him eat it.
Sun Qing once said that these skuas became so ferocious because they ate sick fish. If Maodan ate these skuas, who knows if his temperament would change drastically. The skua that Maodan bit to death last time was still in her space.
“Ahhh~”
Hearing Maodan's cry, Xia Xiaoman came to his senses and turned his head to look over. He saw Maodan running to Songqing, which he hated the most, and digging the ground quickly with his claws. After a while, he ran back with a steel-toothed rabbit in his mouth and lay at Xia Xiaoman's feet, chewing the rabbit.
Xia Xiaoman saw the rabbit blood spilled on the ground and moved aside in disgust. "The steel-toothed rabbit has also come out, so the temperature is probably going to drop significantly."
After thinking about it, she stood up and informed Zhang Can in the field, telling them that the steel-toothed rabbits had appeared again, and asked them to pay attention to the situation in the fields so as not to feed all the cotton they had worked so hard to grow to the rabbits.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
