Chapter 141 The Last Piece of Land
Zheng Feifei and Chen Fa turned around almost at the same time. Zheng Feifei was even two seconds faster than Chen Fa. She rushed to the door of the short-term rental house and first checked the situation in the corridor outside through the peephole. After confirming that there was no one, she immediately opened the wooden door on the inside and reached out to pull the outer iron gate with force.
This iron gate is quite old. Due to the constant rain and humidity, the iron fence is rusty. Like other iron gates in the building, most of them have not been used for a long time and are usually folded to one side of the door frame like a decoration.
She exerted great strength to pull it open halfway.
She was about to turn around to ask for help, but Chen Fa, who was two seconds slower than her, had already reached out her hand. She was much stronger than Zheng Feifei, and with the two of them working together, the fence gate that was stuck due to rust was finally pulled shut.
However, the lock on it had long been broken. Chen Fa thought about it and was concerned about Wu Shaoshan who was not fully aware of the situation. So he picked up his backpack and used the backpack as a cover to take out an older-looking chain and a large lock, and locked the fence gate.
Zheng Feifei quickly closed the wooden door and locked it.
Afterwards, Zheng Feifei and Chen Fa tacitly and unanimously started to move heavy objects such as cabinets to block the door.
This room is located in the middle and back of the corridor on the fourth floor of the building, far from the stairs, and the whole corridor is narrow and dirty. This room is independent, with a living room with a kitchen inside the door, and a short corridor inside, with a bedroom on one side and a bathroom on the other.
The house has no windows facing the corridor and only one entrance and exit: the front door.
The other two windows are in the living room and the bedroom respectively. The building is four stories high. This height cannot be considered absolutely safe, but it would take some effort for an ordinary person to climb up.
As long as they guard these two windows and the door in the corridor, they can be safe for the time being.
Zheng Feifei and her mother had experienced being besieged in a residential area by thugs. Zheng Feifei said a few words to her, and her mother went to look around the stove, found a few knives, picked out a long pointed knife, and gave it to Zheng Feifei.
Zheng Feifei had already dismantled the clothes drying rack by the living room window, and then found a rope and tape from her backpack, and tied the knife handle firmly to one end of the aluminum stick.
Chen Fa didn't expect that she was so capable of action. He stood aside and watched her and smiled.
Zheng Feifei noticed Chen Fa's gaze, raised her eyes and looked at her, and smiled back at her: "Shu Fu taught me."
The riot outside lasted for several hours. The thugs, both men and women, running through the streets below, were mostly young and strong.
Some of them lit the Molotov cocktails in their hands and threw them at the exterior walls of the buildings around the street before the flames were extinguished by the rain. The continuous explosions of flames shattered the glass on the lower floors, and the wall bricks made buzzing sounds, causing people hiding in the buildings to scream.
Some people were running down the street, screaming and laughing, holding knives or thick metal sticks, hitting everything that could be broken: glass doors and windows of shops, car doors and windows...
All the tables, chairs and shelves in the store were thrown out by them. Some people hiding in the shops on the first floor issued various warnings, and some people resisted, but these sounds soon turned into screams, one after another, which was creepy.
These thugs smashed everything they saw, looted everything they saw, or simply opened the packages and stuffed them into their mouths, eating voraciously, and even trampled on things they couldn't take away. They acted like crazy, without any scruples, like a group of wild beasts that had broken into human civilization.
Some of the thugs wore scary masks and held unknown glass bottles in their hands. The bottles were smashed all over the streets and in shops with broken doors and windows. They made crisp sounds when they hit the ground, and then dark yellow smoke spread out, like fog, but thicker than fog.
Even though it was still raining outside, the yellow smoke could not disperse in the air for a while. It was like a bunch of yellow clouds floating in the air, floating for a while before gradually spreading, fading and then disappearing.
As the dark yellow smoke filled the streets, the faces of the thugs who were rushing and smashing things around were vaguely visible in the smoke, and there seemed to be a faint blood-red light in their eyes.
Inside the short-term rental house, Chen Fa, who had been checking the situation outside, felt something was wrong. He immediately checked the windows and made sure they were all closed. Then he turned around to get his backpack and used the backpack as a cover to look for a mask in the compartment of his backpack.
But she had put all the small items like masks into a large cardboard box before putting them into her backpack. If she wanted to take them now, she had to take out the entire large cardboard box. She was about to find an excuse to go to the bathroom when Zheng Feifei on the other side had already taken out a stack of masks from the room. They were all medical KN95 and medical N95 masks with better effects.
Although the other people didn't understand why, due to the atmosphere and Chen Fa's unhappy expression, they immediately took the masks and put them on one by one.
"Is it useful?" Zheng Feifei asked Chen Fa a little uneasily. The latter shook his head at her and said that he couldn't be sure, but they didn't have gas masks, and this was already their best defense mask.
Fortunately, it was raining outside, their house was on the fourth floor, and the floating smoke only maintained at a height of about two to three floors. As long as they stayed in the house with the doors and windows closed, they would be somewhat safe.
Zheng Feifei nodded. Although they had just met today, she could already tell that among the four people in the other party, Chen Fa was the most reliable one, and her grandmother Chen Yuezhen was also very calm and composed.
The girl named Wu Shaoshan, who looked the thinnest, was also very calm, but she probably had never experienced such chaos. Her face suddenly turned pale when the shops along the street were smashed and the people inside were dragged out and thrown into the rain and beaten, causing them to scream miserably.
There is another girl named Zhang Tian, who is said to have lived in Sand City for a long time. In her impression, the order in Sand City has always been good. After all, it is one of the official base cities in Xizhou Province.
Even if there was a small-scale chaos in a certain block before, resulting in casualties, the troops would arrive soon. These team members were equipped with guns, and if the situation was not right, they would directly shoot the people who caused the chaos.
So she was praying silently at this moment, hoping that the troops could arrive as soon as possible.
But Zheng Feifei had experienced large-scale riots. This kind of chaos was different from the chaos of small-scale fights. It did not occur randomly. The seemingly chaotic behaviors actually had a strict and huge plan behind them.
The troops will definitely not be able to arrive in a short time, so they cannot put all their hopes on external support. They have to protect themselves.
Of course, the situation now is different from that of Lou Yuncheng. They had originally planned to leave Zhashui County tomorrow evening, so if possible, the best way to protect themselves is to find an opportunity to break through.
Chen Fa agreed with this: "Observe first, and then find a chance to leave." Although she had a car, high-tech weapons, and a lot of bullets, that gun was not a submachine gun after all, and the firing rate was too slow. In addition, there were many of them, so if they rushed out rashly, the success rate would be too low.
The riots did not only occur near the street where they were. Although Zhashui County was not large, it had many blocks, and more residents were in the newly built shelters on the other side of the county.
The buildings there are new and solid, with a high safety factor, making it more suitable for people who want to settle in Zhashui County for a long time.
Therefore, there are densely populated areas there. If the purpose of these people is pure destruction and to create terrorist incidents, there will definitely be more thugs going to that area.
Sure enough, the sounds of explosions, smashing and screaming on the streets near the short-term rental house gradually subsided after more than an hour, and the last group of thugs left after leaving behind clumps of floating dark yellow smoke.
The buildings on both sides of their street were also randomly broken into by thugs, who were holding weapons and Molotov cocktails. Their arrogant shouts and laughter echoed in the stairwells and corridors.
They randomly selected houses to smash and destroy. Some doors that were originally flimsy were quickly broken open, and screams suddenly broke out from inside the houses, but soon the screams faded away.
The door of the short-term rental house where Chen Fa and the others were staying was also banged on from the outside. The horrible sound of the door slamming made Zhang Tian, who was curled up in a corner of the sofa, tremble. She subconsciously wanted to scream, but Wu Shaoshan beside her was quick enough to cover her mouth with her mask.
Wu Shaoshan also covered her mouth with her other hand. She knew that the people in the house must not make any sound in this situation. If they didn't make any sound, the other party might think the house was empty, and if they couldn't break down the door, they would quickly change their target.
But once they made a sound, since they were all girls, their screams would definitely attract the attention of the thugs outside, which would then attract more people and make them interested in their house, and they would throw more lethal Molotov cocktails at their doors, and the situation would be bad.
So, even though she was also trembling with fear from the noise outside, she still covered her own and Zhang Tian's mouths tightly.
She knew that Zhang Tian had moved to Shacheng with her parents a long time ago. Shacheng was located in the inland at a high altitude and had been under construction and development by troops. Even though she had encountered family changes in the past two months, it was just a family ethics drama. Now it had suddenly jumped into a horror thriller and she would definitely not be able to react all of a sudden.
Wu Shaoshan has experience in dealing with natural disasters, but she has little experience with man-made disasters like this one. However, she knows who has the most experience and who has the strongest ability in this small team.
She couldn't be as sharp and vigilant as Chen Fa and Zheng Feifei, but at least she had to keep an eye on herself and Zhang Tian, and prevent them from causing trouble for others and becoming a drag on the others.
The thugs really didn't stay outside their door for long. Compared to such dead silence, they preferred to hear warnings, expulsions and curses from the people inside when they broke the door. Of course, these sounds would eventually turn into screams...
As the noise around gradually shifted, shrill cries began to be heard from the buildings near the street.
Some people rushed out the door and frantically put out the fire in the corridor, while others acted decisively, quickly packed up their things, and prepared to leave when the thugs returned to the area again.
The fire in the corridor where Chen Fa and her friends were was not big because the building was very humid. The residents affected by the fire quickly came out with basins of water and put out the fire in a few strokes.
Chen Fa, Chen Yuezhen and Zheng Feifei stood by the window, opened the curtains and looked outside. They saw someone rushing out of the building quickly. They didn't want to sit there and wait for death, and since they had a car, they planned to leave the town as soon as possible.
"We also have a car!" Zhang Tian lowered her voice and spoke. She really didn't want to stay here for even a second.
Their car was not parked on the street, but behind a building. Because Zheng Feifei and her mother felt that they were fugitives, she had told them in advance to find a low-key parking spot, as they felt they would be seen with so many people coming and going on the street.
It's just right now, the car is parked in a hidden place and is less likely to be damaged.
"Wait a little longer, the yellow smoke outside hasn't dissipated yet." Chen Fa shook his head.
Several people had been standing at the window to observe the situation outside. They saw the first group of people who left quickly ran across the street and rushed to where they parked their cars. Some people were lucky, their car windows were broken, but the tires were intact and they could still be driven.
Some people were unlucky and found that their cars were severely damaged and could not be driven, so they began to look for people with cars and asked for a ride. During the struggle, some agreed and some refused. For a while, everyone on the street was shrouded in the dark yellow smoke.
The smell of the smoke seemed to be very unpleasant. They saw those people began to stretch out their hands to disperse the smoke. Some people even coughed and shouted loudly, "It stinks, what is this?"
Amidst the chaos, some people quickly reached an agreement, got into their cars, started the car and left.
Zhang Tian kept looking at the people leaving below anxiously. She also wanted to join them, but Chen Fa didn't move, and Wu Shaoshan didn't move either. How could she dare to go down alone and take a stranger's car?
The car drove over the bumpy road caused by the explosion of Molotov cocktails, avoided the broken debris of doors, windows, tables and chairs, and quickly drove out of the street.
There were still many people like them in the building who were temporarily watching, but some of them couldn't help it when they saw the first group of people leave smoothly, and many of them left the building and prepared to leave.
But at this moment, a huge crash sound came from the direction where the first batch of cars left. The sound sounded like a car accident occurred among the cars that had just left.
Soon someone stumbled back from the direction of the car crash. The person had a broken head and his face was covered in blood, staining the mask on her face red. She waved to the others who were still standing on the street while running: "Go back quickly, the street ahead is full of that yellow smoke! The smoke is poisonous! Those people are crazy——"
She shouted loudly, but did not stop. She shook off several people who tried to grab her and ask her about her situation, and quickly rushed back into the building.
"There is indeed something wrong with the smoke!" Chen Fa said in a cold voice.
At this moment, everyone in the room was glad that they did not leave in a hurry.
"The woman came back conscious. It seems that even if the mask is not 100% effective, it can still block the smoke for a while." Zheng Feifei also obtained some useful clues from the survivor who ran back.
After that, time became extremely unbearable. Although the thugs did not return to this block to smash, destroy and injure people, the dark yellow smoke on the nearby streets kept increasing.
The same thugs wearing scary masks as before sat in a car, quickly passing the street, and threw small bottles to both sides. The bottles shattered and dark yellow smoke clouds rose up, which frightened the people around who originally wanted to escape and could only stay in the house.
Of course, there are also a few people who not only stockpiled masks, but also gas masks. They don’t have cars, but it is getting dark outside, and they plan to leave the town on foot after it is completely dark.
But when it was getting dark, some people with strange and scary looks and staggering steps suddenly appeared on the street outside.
Chen Fa and Chen Yuezhen recognized these people at the first moment. They were - patients with ichthyosis!
**
Thousands of miles away, the waters.
Even after connecting to the Internet, Shu Fu was unable to find the information she wanted on the few websites available today. Finally, she thought of Lan Lan.
She called Lu Zheng's satellite phone. The other party answered with an anxious tone, and asked her worriedly what happened.
"Don't be in a hurry, these are just some guesses. Let Lu Ce bring Lan Lan to my place." Because the two rafts at the back could not yet share the network function, they had to be on her raft to connect to the network.
No one knew what Lu Zheng said to Lu Ce, but in less than two minutes, Lu Ce appeared on the rear deck holding Lan Lan, followed closely by Lu Zheng.
The original rear deck of the house was small and had no guardrails, so Shu Fu took them to the second-floor glass balcony. There were simple tables, chairs and sofas there. Shu Fu put a tablet on the table, and Lu Ce asked her if she had more platforms and mobile phones that could be taken out so that Lan Lan could operate them together.
So in the end, there were two mobile phones, two tablets and a laptop lined up on the table.
Lan Lan, who had been curled up in Lu Ce's arms with his eyes half closed and feeling lazy, was awakened. He looked at his little master who was holding him, then jumped lightly onto the table, stretched out his two front paws, and started tapping on five machines at the same time at lightning speed.
This was an extremely discordant scene.
Shu Fu was originally quite worried, and Lu Zheng and Lu Ce were also affected by her, with solemn expressions, causing the atmosphere in the whole space to be a little heavy. But at this moment, she saw a furry cat stretching out its short paws and operating five machines at the same time with a mysterious look, and she was still touched.
Lu Ce and Lu Zheng seemed to be used to it. They said that when they were in Cham County, because there was internet, they would sometimes wake up at night and see it taking someone's phone among them and squatting there swiping it.
Sometimes it was on the table, sometimes on the sofa, and the most outrageous time was in the bathroom. It seemed that Dakuai Longsheng forgot to take his phone with him after going to the toilet. When it saw it, it went online and chatted with a "beautiful girl" that Dakuai met online. After that, it hacked into the phone of that "beautiful girl" and found out his real gender, appearance, and chat records between him and other people...
Shu Fu: ...
While they were talking, Lanlan had already finished its work.
Lu Ce walked forward to take a look, and seemed to lower his head to communicate with it for a few words. Shu Fu was so close that he couldn't understand how they communicated.
Soon Lu Ce turned around and told her that Lan Lan had checked out all the recent news related to ichthyosis, whether it was currently on the Internet, or had appeared on the Internet before but quickly disappeared, as well as some other news that might be related to ichthyosis, and had sent them all to the laptop. She had organized them into a timetable, which could be opened to view in chronological order.
"Great!" Shu Fu exclaimed, and quickly sat down at the table, moved the laptop over, and began to check the form.
Sure enough, in addition to Na'an County, there have been many ichthyosis patients in other places in Xizhou Province, but the nature of the cases is different from that in Na'an County, and is closer to the condition that Zheng Feifei told her about before, that is, Zheng's father's illness.
After the cold winter, new patients with ichthyosis have continued to appear in Xizhou Province, but the locations and populations of the patients have been irregular, and even if we want to find the cause, we have no idea where to start. It seems that the virus has evolved again after a winter.
Many patients who did not respond to medication had transfer records, and it seemed that they were all transferred to private hospitals. Their families all gave similar explanations, saying that they wanted their family members to spend their last days more comfortably.
There is very little news about the sanatorium, it only appeared once or twice, both times near Shacheng.
In addition, there is no news online that an extreme natural disaster occurred in Shacheng or its surrounding suburbs this evening that caused signal interruption. However, the weather forecast predicts that in the next few days, Xizhou Province will experience the longest and most widespread thunderstorm weather.
Finally, there is a mysterious website on the Internet that can only be logged in through an invitation code. There is no substantial information on it, only some specious brainwashing statements.
For example, humans will eventually evolve, and people with special powers are all alien visitors, aliens who want to occupy the planet.
Life comes from water, and humans also come from water.
Water is not a disaster, but an ecology that will give birth to new species - evolvers.
Evolvers are the product of struggle, and they are the general trend of the future of this planet.
Soon, the last landmass on the planet will be submerged in water, and unevolved humans will lose all habitats in which to survive.
In the future, humans will completely evolve into amphibians, and new homes will be built bit by bit on the seabed. One day, a huge and prosperous city like the one that once existed on land will be built on the seabed.
Ichthyosis is not a disease, but a process of evolution, the wheel of history moving forward.
One day, when everyone around begins to evolve, no one will call their new form a disease.
When being hated and feared becomes the norm, and humans can only live on land now, it is a disease.
…
Many of the words and sentences on the website seem crazy to Shu Fu and others, but if these words fall into the eyes of the family members of ichthyosis patients, it will be a different story.
Terrible disease, incurable pain, compared with the patients themselves, the family members suffer more.
They are in despair. If someone gives them new hope at this time, telling them that this is not a terminal illness, but evolution, their family members are still alive, just one step further than the current humans.
Then all the despair that is suffocating them will disappear.
"So..." Lu Zheng concluded, "Is it still the same organization that was in Youcheng before? They changed their method to brainwash the patients' families? The private hospital and the sanatorium in the suburbs of Shacheng were all established by that organization?"
"But - that's Sand City. Even if the suburbs are big, the guys in this organization are too bold!" Lu Ce still remembers what happened in Youcheng that night.
"If this organization can still exist until now after a series of encirclements and suppressions, then the one supporting it must be a behemoth. It is not difficult for such an organization to set up a place of its own in the suburbs of Sand City. After all, no one would have thought that the origin of the organization that has caused unrest and created many human disasters is actually in the suburbs of Sand City - right under the noses of the government!"
"It's darkest under the lamp." Shu Fu interjected. Not long ago, Zheng Feifei also used this method to hide safely in Zhashui County.
In fact, these people still don’t know what the organization wants to do, but it is obvious that if they can use the entire north of Youcheng as a huge experimental base, then they can also use Na'an County or even the sanatorium in the suburbs of Shacheng as experimental bases.
According to Zheng Feifei, Zhashui County is not far from the sanatorium.
Chen Fa and his group, Zheng Feifei and her daughter, are all in Zhashui County at the moment, and they have lost contact at the same time.
Shu Fu did not think these things were coincidences.
"Zhashui County is not only far from us, it is located in the heart of the plateau, deep inland. From the current position of the raft, even if we walk in a straight line, it is 1,200 kilometers!" In some ways, Lu Zheng still understood Shu Fu. He guessed her thoughts by looking at her expression, "If you want to go, you have to walk at least 1,200 kilometers by land."
She could think of the following words without him having to say them.
Now their rafts are all towed. If she goes to Zhashui County by land, the two towed rafts will certainly be unusable. This also means that whether it is Xu Tingfeng, Jiang Dai and others, or Yao Ruoyun's family, they will have to passively follow them on the road.
Not only does this trip take many days on the road, but the journey is also not smooth.
Shu Fu didn't say anything. She opened the map of the entire Fengshang Plateau that she had downloaded previously on her tablet, and took out her map panel.
Because the map panel was invisible to anyone except her, Lu Zheng only knew that she was studying the topographic map.
But in fact, Shu Fu was comparing the water map with the Fengshang Plateau.
"I heard from Zheng Feifei that there is a river in Zhashui County that meanders all the way to the southeast and flows through several counties." Shu Fu quickly found the river on the Fengshang Plateau map.
Lu Zheng stepped forward and took a look, frowning: "This is an inland river."
According to the map, the river winds southeast for about 200 kilometers before ending. There are also river marks after that, but they are intermittent, indicating that the river is cut off for a distance.
"No! This is the old topographic map. The situation has changed now." Shu Fu looked at his map panel. On it, there was a real-time global water map, which naturally included rivers on land.
In the past, the Fengshang Plateau had little rainfall, so some rivers dried up and were cut off. But after a long period of rain, and now it is summer with storms, those broken rivers have been connected together.
In addition, Xizhou Province does not have this one river. From the waters outside the land, you can cut another river to enter the Fengshang Plateau, first heading north and then west, which can shorten the journey by about hundreds of kilometers.
Lu Zheng stretched out his hand, his fingertips brushed across the broken rivers, and finally stopped at the other river she mentioned: "You mean, the river from the southern border cuts into the plateau? This river is indeed very long, but when it passes through this mountainous area, it will change its course to the north again, and then no longer go west. Even if we cut into the plateau here, plus the broken rivers you mentioned are connected together, the difference between the two is still nearly 300 kilometers."
"I know, but look here, there is a provincial road here. We can go ashore where the river changes its course, and then travel west by land."
"What about the last section of the road?" Lu Zheng pointed to the area on the map that was infinitely close to the Broken River. "This area is full of primitive mountains. There are no roads. How are you going to get there by land?"
"Look carefully." Shu Fu enlarged the map of Fengshang Plateau and asked them to look carefully at the last area pointed out by Lu Zheng.
"What are you looking at?" Lu Ce was confused.
Shu Fu pointed his finger at a certain place on the map, where there was a small area of light blue.
"Is this - a lake?" Lu Zheng zoomed in on the map again, and finally saw the faint dotted line connecting the lake. He suddenly realized, "You - are you planning to do this!?"
"Yes." Shu Fu nodded. "There is an underground river here, connected to the lake, right under this mountain range. We can dive and go through the underground river."
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