Chapter 72: Locust Plague 1
Wen Jianfeng has average facial features, but he is tall and has a good personality. He will take the initiative to help people who are weaker than himself.
In Li Yu'e's eyes, such people are easier to control and give her a sense of security.
So when she was assigned to the same group with Wen Jianfeng, she approached Wen Jianfeng intentionally or unintentionally, wanting to find a man she could rely on in this bad society.
Zhou Qiuyang saw Li Yu'e's intention, so every time he saw her approaching Wen Jianfeng, he would try every means to prevent her from contacting Wen Jianfeng.
To be fair, after working with her for such a long time, I can tell that Li Yu'e is serious about her job. Although she has a hot-tempered personality, she is not completely unreasonable.
But this purposeful approach to Wen Jianfeng still made him wary. If Wen Jianfeng was single, he would not meddle in his affairs, but Wen Jianfeng had two children.
If Li Yu'e was just looking for a long-term meal ticket for herself, it would definitely be bad for the twins. After all, he was called brother by Wen Xu and Wen Ling, so it was only right for him to help their father block bad peach blossoms.
The longer they were trapped in the building, the more anxious Wen Jianfeng became. "Xiaoyang, I'm going to go outside to see if there are fewer locusts. You stay here."
As soon as the voice fell, Li Yu'e immediately said: "Brother Feng, I will go with you!"
Zhou Qiuyang quickly pulled Li Yu'e's arm and said, "Sister Yu'e, Uncle Wen is worried about the two children at home and is anxious to go home. You are not in a hurry to go home, so what are you doing outside?"
Subtext: Wen Jianfeng already has a child, so Sister Yu'e, please stop bothering him.
The corners of Li Yu'e's mouth twitched. She realized that Zhou Qiuyang was the stumbling block in her relationship with Wen Jianfeng!
"Brother Feng, I have a way to get you back!" She just wouldn't believe it. She had finally found a man she liked, and she wouldn't let him run away!
Wen Jianfeng was stunned for a moment, "Do you have a way to let me go back?"
Li Yu'e nodded. "I went upstairs and saw that the partitions between two offices were made of aluminum plates with holes as thick as fingers on them."
"We can take down these plates, tie them up with wire to make a square box, and then get into the box and carry it. This way locusts can't fly in, and we can also see the road outside through the holes."
Wen Jianfeng was delighted and asked hurriedly, "Yu'e, where is the plate you are talking about?"
"I'll take you there." Li Yu'e was the first to walk out of the tool room, not looking like she was afraid of the locusts outside at all.
…
It was 4 p.m., more than three hours after the locusts appeared.
The huge army of locusts finally decided to leave, leaving only a small number of troops stationed there.
Xia Xiaoman was wearing long sleeves and long pants and cleaning the corpses of electrocuted locusts on the balcony when she suddenly heard the sound of slamming on the door outside.
She walked out and wanted to open the door, but she didn't expect Su Ran had already opened the door first.
Wen Jianfeng and Zhou Qiuyang were outside the door. Su Ran was pleasantly surprised. "Why did you come back? I was thinking of waiting until there were fewer locusts and then going out to look for you."
Zhou Qiuyang smiled and said, "With your small body, you'd better not go out. Be careful not to get heatstroke again."
He, Wen Jianfeng and other colleagues made the aluminum plates into a box, and the five of them slowly carried the aluminum box back home.
Because the community they lived in was quite far away, they needed to send other colleagues home first, so they were delayed for a long time before returning.
Wen Jianfeng asked as soon as he entered the room: "Are Lingling and Axu okay?"
Su Ran replied: "It's okay, they have been with me the whole time, they are just a little worried about you. Did anything happen on your way back?"
Wen Jianfeng was in a hurry to see the children and had no time to answer his questions. Zhou Qiuyang said as he closed the fire door: "We are fine, but that may not be the case in the future."
"When we came back, we found that the newly grown grass and leaves on the roadside had been eaten by locusts. Even some tender wood and grass roots floating on the soil were eaten clean."
"The weeds on the roadside are like this, and the crops in the farmland outside the city have probably been eaten up by locusts."
What does it mean when all crops are eaten by locusts? It means that if you want food, you have to plant again.
However, replanting crops requires certain conditions. The temperature cannot be too high. If the temperature is 30 or 40 degrees every day, it will be difficult for any crops to survive.
Another issue is water. After more than two months of high temperatures, the mountain streams have become significantly smaller, and it is still a question whether there will be enough water to irrigate the fields in the future.
The final problem is time. Planting a new crop, no matter how short its maturity period, takes at least three months.
There has been no harvest for three months, only expenditure. Even if Fucheng has a lot of grain stored, it cannot withstand such consumption.
With the appearance of locusts, many people realized that a food crisis was about to occur again and the chaos during the floods might reappear.
Zhou Qiuyang could fully imagine what kind of chaos Fucheng would be in after the locust plague. By then, he didn't know whether he and Wen Jianfeng would be able to continue their electrician jobs.
Compared to Zhou Qiuyang and the others who looked worried, Xia Xiaoman was in a pretty good mood.
The sky is full of chicken feed and rabbit feed. If she collects all the locusts in the sky, she will have the confidence to open a chicken farm.
…
As the sky gradually darkened, there were fewer and fewer locusts in the sky.
Xia Xiaoman caught all the locusts that broke into her house, and at the same time she was thinking about how to talk to her neighbors and ask them to help her catch the locusts.
Before she could figure it out, Fucheng sent out a notice overnight that trading points would purchase large quantities of locusts. Five kilograms of locusts could be exchanged for one kilogram of rice, and the purchase of locusts would officially begin tomorrow.
Xia Xiaoman was stunned when she heard the news. She didn't expect that the trading point would compete with her for business.
Su Ran looked puzzled. "Why did the trading point buy locusts? Do you want to eat them?"
Xia Xiaoman's mouth twitched. "The locusts in the locust plague are poisonous. Eating too many can kill people. The trading point is not so stupid as to buy the locusts and eat them themselves."
"Then why do they collect so many locusts? I haven't heard of anyone raising chickens in large quantities in the floating city."
Xia Xiaoman said: "In addition to feeding chickens and ducks, locusts can also be used as traditional Chinese medicine. They can also be dried, crushed and sprinkled on the soil as good fertilizer."
Su Ran shook his head. "I think what you said is not very reliable. There are not so many chickens and ducks to feed at the trading point. Chinese medicine does not require so many. Drying and crushing them for fertilizer is not possible. It is too troublesome. It is not as convenient as using chemical fertilizer directly."
He still insisted that the purpose of collecting so many locusts at the trading point was to eat them, but he didn't know who they were for.
Xia Xiaoman was impressed by his imagination, but also felt a little shaken. Could it be that the trading point really had to eat these locusts?
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