What lies before my eyes is a patchy land with barely a single weed growing on it. The trees are tall, but their bark has been stripped off, revealing their yellowish trunks. Only the treetops at the top still have a hint of green left, but one can imagine that trees without bark will not live long.
This place looks like a primeval forest - a primeval forest that has been skinned by refugees from the famine.
Ye Zhou slapped himself.
Well, it was louder and more painful than he had expected.
Now is the third day since Ye Zhou came here. Slapping himself in the face when he wakes up in the morning has become Ye Zhou's signature routine, as if only by doing this, he can wake up from this bizarre dream and return to the normal world.
But it failed again today.
The scenery before my eyes remained unchanged.
Ye Zhou made many assumptions. At first he thought he was crazy and that he must have a mental problem and was having hallucinations.
Later he felt that there was only one possibility that was most likely to have caused the current situation - he was captured by aliens for experimentation.
Because not only did he come, his supermarket was also moved here intact.
The most outrageous thing is that the supermarket still has electricity, water, and even internet, but you can't receive or send messages, and you can't contact anyone.
This can no longer be explained by time travel, it can only be a mysterious power from aliens.
After making sure that he would not be able to "wake up" today, Ye Zhou returned to the supermarket.
Since it has come, Ye Zhou has given up resistance and chose to lie down.
Anyway, I don’t think he will starve to death until he dies of old age.
As for expired food? If the poison doesn't kill him, it's his good fortune. If it does, it's his bad luck.
After eating two pieces of bread and drinking a bottle of milk, Ye Zhou sat at the entrance of the supermarket with his tablet to play games - he could play stand-alone games and charge the phone in the supermarket.
Ye Zhou felt that if he always stayed alone for a long time, his language function might decline and he might even have mental problems.
Robinson also met a Friday, and Chuck also had Wilson.
But Friday is a person, and Wilson is a volleyball.
Ye Zhou felt that the probability of him encountering a human was not high, but he did not want to talk to the ball, so he decided to take a middle ground and see if he could catch a wild bird or cat or something. He would feed it a meal and it would talk to him, which could be considered a fair trade and mutually beneficial.
But in the past few days, Ye Zhou had not seen any birds, let alone bird droppings.
He finally understood what a truly desolate place looked like.
At noon, Ye Zhou went to the supermarket again and had a self-heating rice.
Not to mention, these convenience foods are now really well made and are no worse than some takeout rice bowls. While eating, Ye Zhou was still thinking that some takeouts might just be made directly from cooking bags.
It’s cheap, convenient, tastes good and isn’t toxic.
It may not be nutritious, but it certainly won’t kill you.
After finishing his meal, Ye Zhou cleaned up the garbage. He always sealed the garbage and placed it in the large trash can behind the supermarket. Although he didn't know how long it would take for the can to be full, at least he didn't want to dig a hole and bury it for the time being. If it relied on natural degradation, the garbage might not be completely degraded in a hundred years.
Until I can think of a solution, I'll leave it like this.
In the afternoon, Ye Zhou would take a hatchet and a backpack to survey the terrain nearby. Although he had never known how to draw a map before, he had no choice but to draw one now. In order not to get lost, he would carve a mark on the tree trunk every time he walked a certain distance.
Ye Zhou soon found a river, but it was now dry and only the exposed riverbed was left, and animal carcasses could be seen on the riverbed.
The white bones were covered with yellow sand. He only took two glances, and when he found a dry bone that looked like a human skull, Ye Zhou quickly looked away.
Almost all the barked trees in this forest are dead.
The small trees that were not stripped of their bark also withered, leaving only some towering trees that originally had lush branches and leaves escaped the disaster.
The skin has not been peeled off and the roots are deep enough, so it can still maintain a little greenness.
The scorching sun gradually dimmed. Ye Zhou sat under a tree and took out a bottle of water from his backpack, ready to drink it before heading back. Although he didn't know where he was or if there were any living people there, at least he knew he was safe for the time being.
There were no large beasts about—nor any small ones.
Because the forest has been destroyed, the birds that lived here have almost migrated away.
He dug up bugs and centipedes under rotting trees and found wild mushrooms in caves.
At least these can prove that there is life here.
When it was completely dark, Ye Zhou was still in the woods. He walked back along the marks he had made along the way with a flashlight.
Just as he was about to reach the supermarket entrance, Ye Zhou suddenly stopped.
Two figures stood in front of the supermarket.
Rather than being surprised to meet a living person, Ye Zhou was more cautious at this moment.
He cautiously took two steps back and hid himself behind the dry bushes. In order not to be discovered, he even squatted down and curled himself into a ball.
Ye Zhou had very good eyesight, and even from such a long distance, he could still see the clothes of the two people clearly.
The tattered linen clothes were so torn that their original appearance could not be recognized. The bones seemed to be about to break through the skin. The skeletons that seemed to be still breathing were covered with a few pieces of rags, and their messy hair covered their faces. They stood barefoot on the ground covered with sand and stones.
The two supported each other and used each other as their crutches.
Ye Zhou could hear them knocking on the door, but it wasn't loud. If he was in the supermarket now, he would definitely not be able to hear them.
The voice was so rough and hoarse that it was hard to tell whether it was a man or a woman, young or old.
After observing for another half an hour, Ye Zhou was sure that the two men were harmless - they were definitely no match for him anyway. Only then did he stand up again and walk towards them.
——
Cao'er felt like she was dying. She had heard people say that if a person couldn't urinate, he or she was about to die.
She counted on her fingers and found that she had only urinated five times in the past ten days.
She and her family pulled each other, and rushed to the porridge stall when they saw it, and wanted to break in when they saw the city gate, but there was no rice in the porridge, and the officials guarding the city would not let them in. It was at that time that her father was stabbed to death by the official.
The eldest brother was killed for stealing food.
Later, her little sister was abandoned by her mother.
The second sister was sold by her mother in exchange for a handful of unhusked wheat.
She and her mother didn't know where to go. They didn't know the road and had no strength, so they gradually fell behind the others.
When mother said that they wanted to go into the forest, Cao'er did not stop her, but followed her into the forest.
We will all die eventually, so it is reasonable for my mother to want to find a place like her hometown to die.
She can't live if her mother dies, so let's go together.
When they were hungry, they peeled tree bark; when they were thirsty, they chewed grass roots. They no longer knew what hunger felt like because the word "satisfaction" was too far away from them.
They walked forward aimlessly, and when they were too tired to walk anymore, they closed their eyes.
When she was about to fall, her mother suddenly burst out with a huge force. She pulled her, stretched her neck and leaned forward, and shouted at the top of her lungs: "Cao'er! There are people ahead! There is a house!"
Cao'er rolled and crawled as he ran forward with his mother.
She doesn't want to die!
She wants to live!
Then she and her mother came to the big house in front of them.
Cao'er didn't know how to describe the house in front of her. It was so big and square, bigger than the houses of the landlords in her hometown, but she didn't see any tiles or bricks. The house seemed to be hollowed out of a huge stone, and it was a whole without a place to connect them.
There was a plaque on the eaves, but Cao'er couldn't recognize the words on it.
Neither she nor her mother could read. Only her father could read in the family, but he could only recognize his own name.
They kept knocking on the door from day to night, exhausting all their strength, and their original ecstasy turned into greater despair.
But they didn't dare sit down, as if they would die if they sat down.
"Mom... I'm hungry..." Cao'er leaned on her mother, and her mother leaned on her. She whispered with her last bit of strength, "Mom... go home... go home..."
Cao'er remembered that there was a big banyan tree at the entrance of her hometown. Their home was just behind the tree. Her parents farmed the land of a landlord. The landlord was a good man and only collected 60% of their rent. Although the family was poor, they were not starving.
She could also take her younger brother to herd cattle for the master.
The second sister will cook and take care of the younger sister at home.
The younger brother said he wanted to go to town to learn a craft and become a carpenter in the future. His dark face was full of a young man's yearning for the future. He shyly said to her, "When my sister gets married in the future, I will prepare a dowry for her."
She remembered her brother saying to her, "I'll go! I'll go! Tell mother not to abandon my little sister! I'll bring food back!"
He didn't come back.
Her brother's head was smashed by a stone, and his clenched hands were pried apart, with biscuit crumbs between his fingers.
It's just a piece of cake! Her brother's life is not worth a piece of cake!
"Go home..." the grass kept repeating, "Go home..."
There is no pain, no hunger, no death, no strife and no blood in the house.
She is the strict eldest sister at home. She has honest and hardworking parents, a well-behaved and obedient younger sister, a younger brother who wants to go to town to work to give her a dowry, and a younger sister who is still breastfeeding.
What a wonderful time it was back then...
Cao'er felt that she couldn't hold on any longer and she wanted to close her eyes.
At this moment, a strong light suddenly shone from behind!
Cao'er was blind for a moment. She raised her arms to cover her eyes and didn't put them down until a long time later.
She twisted her neck and looked at the person behind the light in a distorted posture.
A huge beam of light was projected from the other person's palm. She couldn't see his appearance or facial features clearly, and could only see his figure vaguely.
It was a man, and he was very tall.
Behind him was a dark forest, with dead branches baring their fangs and claws setting off him.
Light came from the palm of his hand.
Cao'er looked at him in confusion, with her mother's crying in her ears.
She numbly watched her mother kneel down beside her and heard her mother shout -
"Immortal! Immortal! Immortal, help me!"
She heard the sound of her mother kowtow. She kowtowed so hard and fiercely that she could smell blood.
Cao'er knelt down stiffly.
kowtow!
If they hit their heads, the immortal will save them!
——
Ye Zhou was stunned by the appearance of the two people in front of him. He had seen beggars who deliberately dressed themselves up to look extremely miserable, and he had also seen refugees fleeing famine in film and television dramas, but those were played by modern people after all, and the director could only work hard on the makeup.
Although the refugees in movies and TV shows are dressed in rags, they are not naked, nor are they really skinny.
But when the two people in front of him looked up, he was shocked by their faces.
Their sunken cheeks and eye sockets, and the skin stretched tight over their skulls, made them look nothing like living people.
More like the living dead or the mummy in a horror movie.
Before Ye Zhou could recover from the shock, the two men knelt down one after another and kowtowed to him with a determined attitude as if they were going to die from kowtow.
Ye Zhou was so scared that he quickly walked towards them.
Now he no longer worried that these two people were bad guys.
He was worried that the two men would die in front of him.
"Stop!" Ye Zhou raised his voice subconsciously.
The two people who were kowtowing finally stopped.
They knelt on the ground, looking up at him, two pairs of eyes that were exaggeratedly large because of their thinness staring at him without blinking.
Ye Zhou got goosebumps all over his body.
Ye Zhou swallowed, suppressed the horror and slight fear in his heart, and slowly squatted in front of them.
So that they don't have to look up to him anymore.
Ye Zhou tried hard to force out an approachable smile, and asked in the most gentle voice of his life: "Do you want to eat something? Come in and sit down."
He had never been so gentle in his life.
He himself felt that his gentleness was artificial.
But this tone of voice was very helpful in calming the two people kneeling on the ground.
Ye Zhou saw the older man's lips opening and closing, and he managed to squeeze out a sentence with difficulty: "Immortal... please..."
He was unable to finish his words, for halfway through his sentence his head tilted and he fell straight to the ground.
Ye Zhou: “…”
He was terrified.
Dead?!
No way?!
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